Loreful
HomeDiscover
Search series, authors…⌘K
Loreful

Reading orders for SF/F series and shared universes — with your place kept in every one.

Explore

UniversesSeriesWorksAuthorsAtlas

Help

FAQAboutSite map

Account & legal

Sign inCreate accountPrivacyTerms

Data

Built on ISFDB, Wikipedia, Wikidata and Open Library. Curated reading orders carry their reasoning on the page; the rest follow publication order. Data sources & licenses

© Loreful · data: ISFDB · CC BY

More like Alien Main

anchored on:science fictionaliensour worldfar futurepost-apocalypticfaith and religion+2 more

but

Mood

The mood the book leaves you in.

  • The reading experience is propelled by journeys, exploration, and physical risk; excitement and forward momentum dominate over dread or introspection.
  • Joy and loss are deliberately mixed; the resolution grants characters something real while taking something else away, leaving warmth and sorrow together.
  • The book demands work from the reader — dense prose, difficult structure, unfamiliar ideas, or morally uncomfortable material — as part of its intended effect.
  • Grim events, cruelty, or despair dominate the atmosphere, and the book does not soften them with comfort or comic relief.
  • The atmosphere is quietly unsettling — wrongness, unease, and the uncanny pervade the book without necessarily escalating into overt horror.
  • The book is built to move the reader; character feeling is foregrounded and major scenes aim at a strong emotional response.
  • Humor is a primary aim and the prose plays for laughs — comic situations, wit, or dialogue produce sustained comedy, not occasional levity.
  • The book insists that things can improve; effort and decency are shown to matter, and the arc bends toward better outcomes even through hardship.
  • The book teaches as it goes — real facts, history, science, or craft are conveyed in enough depth that learning is part of the reading experience.
  • The book is designed to uplift and motivate, presenting perseverance or achievement in a way that invites the reader to aspire or act.
  • The overall register is cheerful and easygoing; stakes are kept gentle and the book avoids dwelling on pain or dread.
  • Withheld information drives the experience; the book sustains enigmas and secrets the reader wants resolved, whatever its genre.
  • The book is contemplative and inward-looking, giving more weight to thought, memory, and meaning than to external events.
  • The book works as comfort reading — low tension, a soothing pace, and an atmosphere the reader can unwind in.
  • Grief, loss, or melancholy set the dominant register, and the book lets sorrow stand rather than resolving it into comfort.
  • Sustained suspense is the point; the book keeps the reader braced for what happens next through danger, pressure, or impending revelation.
  • Playful invention and charm define the register — fanciful conceits, light absurdity, and a narration that delights in its own oddity.

About

What the story runs on.

  • Stories in which extraterrestrial beings are central — as characters, cultures, or the object of the plot.
  • Stories about venturing into space to explore — survey missions, astronauts, and the frontier of the unknown beyond Earth.
  • Stories structured as a quest — a journey undertaken to find, deliver, or destroy something of great import.
  • Stories in which staying alive against nature, catastrophe, or scarcity is the central problem.
  • Stories of lovers kept apart by law, family, faith, or station, where the obstacle to love is the plot.
  • Stories in which a friendship — its making, testing, or loss — is the emotional center.
  • Stories of growing up — a young protagonist crossing from childhood into adult knowledge and responsibility.
  • Stories about who a character truly is — self-discovery, doubled lives, and the search for a self.
  • Stories in which a buried family truth — hidden parentage, crimes, or shames — surfaces and reorders the present.
  • Stories driven by maneuvering for power — factions, conspiracies, and statecraft conducted in shadow.
  • Stories in which war itself is the subject — combat, occupation, and what warfare does to soldiers and civilians.
  • Stories organized around investigating a killing — the case, the clues, and the pursuit of the killer, in any genre's clothing.

Shelf

Where it sits in the library.

    • Fiction built on magic or other supernatural elements that have no scientific explanation.
    • Secondary-world fantasy at large scale, where the fate of nations or the world turns on the protagonists' struggle.
    • Fantasy set in a recognizably modern city or contemporary world where the supernatural intrudes on everyday life.
    • Fantasy that blends in horror's atmosphere and imagery, keeping a fantastical frame around grim or frightening material.
    • Action-driven fantasy following warriors or rogues with personal stakes against sorcerous threats, rather than world-spanning conflicts.
    • Fantasy set in a real historical period or a close analogue of one, with magic woven into the era.
    • Fantasy in which protagonists cross from the ordinary world into another world through a portal or similar passage.
    • Fiction that retells or reworks a traditional fairy tale in a new form or setting.
    • Fantasy drawing directly on myths, legends, and folklore, retelling them or building on their figures and logic.
    • Fantasy of ghosts, vampires, shapeshifters, psychics, and similar phenomena, usually set in an otherwise ordinary world.
    • Fiction mixing science-fictional trappings with overtly magical or impossible elements in one setting.
    • Low-stakes fantasy emphasizing comfort, community, and everyday pleasures over conflict and peril.
    • Speculative fiction of pervasive moral ambiguity, violence, and cynicism that rejects heroic conventions — fantasy and SF alike.
      • Fiction that extrapolates from science and technology — future societies, space travel, or speculative inventions — within at least nominally natural laws.
      • Science fiction of interstellar scope — starships, galactic polities, and adventure across star systems.
      • Science fiction committed to scientific rigor, where technical plausibility constrains the story.
      • Science fiction centered on armed forces and warfare, told largely from a military point of view.
      • Science fiction of networked, corporate-dominated near futures, pairing high technology with social decay.
      • Science fiction styled on nineteenth-century steam-powered technology, often in a Victorian or pseudo-Victorian setting.
      • Fiction depicting an oppressive or catastrophic society, presented as a warning.
      • Fiction set after civilization's collapse, following survivors in the ruins of the old world.
      • Fiction in which characters move between past and future, and the mechanics or consequences of that travel drive the plot.
      • Fiction exploring a world where a historical event went differently and history diverged from ours.
      • Science fiction about humanity's first encounter and communication with an alien intelligence.
      • Science fiction in which extraterrestrial forces attack or occupy Earth and humanity resists.
      • Fiction whose primary aim is to frighten or unsettle the reader through dread, menace, or the monstrous.
      • Horror of vast, indifferent, incomprehensible entities before which humanity is insignificant, in the Lovecraft tradition.
      • Horror of decaying houses, buried family secrets, and oppressive atmosphere in the Gothic literary tradition.
      • Horror centered on hauntings and the returning dead.
      • Horror located in the mind — paranoia, obsession, and unreliable perception rather than external monsters.
      • Horror built around the reanimated dead and survival amid their outbreaks.
      • Horror defined by explicit, transgressive gore that refuses to cut away from violence.
      • Speculative fiction of the strange and uncanny that resists both natural explanation and standard genre categories.
      • Fiction organized around solving a crime or puzzle, typically following an investigator toward the identification of a culprit.
      • A puzzle-first mystery that lays out clues so the culprit's identity can be deduced before the reveal.
      • Crime fiction of moral ambiguity, fatalism, and hard-edged style, set among the corrupt and the doomed.
      • A mystery following the realistic routines of police work — forensics, interviews, and case-building.
      • A gentle mystery with an amateur sleuth, a small community, and violence kept off the page.
      • A mystery set in a past era, where the investigation works within that period's methods and society.
      • Fast-paced fiction driven by imminent danger, pursuit, or high-stakes conspiracy, built to sustain tension.
      • A thriller of espionage — agents, tradecraft, and intelligence services in conflict.
      • A thriller centered on lawyers and the courtroom, where litigation carries the suspense.
      • A thriller driven by detailed contemporary or near-future technology, often military or scientific.
      • A thriller whose tension comes from mental states and manipulation between characters rather than external action.
      • Fiction whose central plot is a romantic relationship and its development toward an emotionally satisfying resolution.
      • Romance in which one or both partners are supernatural beings, blending fantasy elements into the love story.
      • A fantasy-romance hybrid in which the romantic arc and the fantasy plot carry equal weight.
      • Romance set in a past era, with courtship shaped by the period's society and manners.
      • Romance set in the present day, without supernatural or historical elements.
      • Fiction set in a real past period, where the historical setting materially shapes characters and events.
        • General and literary fiction emphasizing prose style, character interiority, or formal ambition over genre plot conventions.
        • Fiction in a realistic world where magical events occur and are treated as ordinary, in the tradition of Latin American literature.
        • Fiction that ridicules people, institutions, or society in order to criticize them.
        • Fiction of dreamlike, irrational imagery and logic that breaks from realistic representation.
        • Fiction that plays with narrative convention through metafiction, fragmentation, and self-reference.
        • Fiction propelled by journeys, exploration, and physical peril, where action and survival carry the plot.
        • Adventure fiction of ships and seafaring — naval engagements, voyages, and life at sea.
        • Fiction of the American frontier West — gunmen, ranchers, and lawmen, typically in the late nineteenth century.
        • Fiction centered on soldiers, campaigns, and the experience of warfare, historical or imagined.
          • Fiction written primarily to amuse, using comedic situations, wit, or parody as its organizing principle.
            • Multi-generational fiction following a family or dynasty across decades, with inheritance and kinship as the through-line.
              • Fiction whose world runs on explicit game mechanics — levels, stats, and skills that characters can see and exploit.
                • Fiction about costumed or superpowered heroes and their conflicts with comparable villains.

                Practical

                How long a commitment, whether it stands alone, and whether it has finished.

                Tap a chip to ask for it · tap again to rule it out · once more to clear. Numbers show what would be left.

                • Cover of This Immortal
                  This Immortal

                  series · 2 books · 1966

                  similar byour worldfar futurescience fictionpost-apocalypticaliens

                  This Immortal is a single science fiction novel by Roger Zelazny, expanded from his 1965 serial ...And Call Me Conrad. In a depopulated future Earth largely toured by an alien race, its long-lived, secretive protagonist Conrad Nomikos is assigned to guide and protect a visiting alien across the ruins of Greece and Egypt, uncovering old grudges and assassination plots along the way. The novel shared the 1966 Hugo Award for Best Novel with Frank Herbert's Dune.

                • Cover of In the Days of the Comet
                  In the Days of the Comet

                  H. G. Wells · standalone novel · 1906

                  similar byhopefulour worldscience fiction+1 more

                  In the Days of the Comet is a 1906 science fiction novel by H. G. Wells in which humanity is "exalted" when a comet causes "the nitrogen of the air, the old azote," to "change out of itself" and become "a respirable gas, differing indeed from oxygen, but helping and sustaining its action, a bath of strength and healing for nerve and brain." The result: "The great Change has come for evermore, happiness and beauty are our atmosphere, there is peace on earth and good will to all men."

                • Cover of Project Hail Mary
                  Project Hail Mary

                  Andy Weir · standalone novel · 2021

                  similar byhopefulscience fictionour worldaliens

                  Project Hail Mary is a 2021 hard science fiction novel by American writer Andy Weir. It centers on science teacher and former biologist Ryland Grace, who wakes up aboard a spacecraft, afflicted with amnesia.

                • Cover of The Fountains of Paradise
                  The Fountains of Paradise

                  Arthur C. Clarke · standalone novel · 1979

                  similar byhopefulfar futurescience fiction

                  The Fountains of Paradise is a 1979 science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke. Set in the 22nd century, it describes the construction of a space elevator. This "orbital tower" is a giant structure rising from the ground and linking with a satellite in geostationary orbit at the height of approximately 36,000 kilometres. Such a structure would be used to raise payloads to orbit without the expense of using rockets. The novel won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel.

                • Cover of Saint Leibowitz
                  Saint Leibowitz

                  series · 6 books · 1955

                  completed

                  similar byfar futurescience fictionpost-apocalypticfaith and religion

                  Walter M. Miller Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), assembled from three novellas he had published earlier in the decade, follows the monks of a Catholic monastery in the post-nuclear American Southwest as they preserve fragments of scientific knowledge across centuries, watching civilization slowly rebuild itself and edge back toward the mistakes that destroyed it. Miller's posthumous sequel, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, completed by Terry Bisson from his notes after his death and published in 1997, returns to the same abbey and its world decades later. Together the two novels form a sparse, decades-spanning series about memory, faith, and the cycles of civilization.

                • Cover of The Lost Art
                  The Lost Art

                  Simon Morden · standalone novel · 2007

                  similar byour worldfar futurescience fictionpost-apocalypticfaith and religion

                  A MILLENNIUM AFTER the formidable war machines of the User cultures devoured entire civilizations and rewrote planetary geography, Earth is in the grip of a perpetual Dark Age. Scientific endeavor is strongly discouraged, while remnant technology is locked away--hidden by a Church determined to prevent a new Armageddon.This is the world to which Benzamir Michael Mahmood must return. A descendant of the tribes who fled the planet during those ages old wars, he comes in pursuit of enemies from the far reaches of space. The technology he brings is wondrous beyond the imaginings of those he will meet, but can its potency match that of the Church's most closely guarded treasure?For centuries it has lain dormant, but it is about to be unearthed, and the powers that will be unleashed may be beyond anyone's capacity to control. Even a man as extraordinary as Benzamir . . .From the Hardcover edition.

                • Cover of The Kraken Wakes
                  The Kraken Wakes

                  John Wyndham · standalone novel · 1953

                  similar byour worldscience fictionalienspost-apocalyptic

                  " Behind a spectacular meteor shower actually hides the beginning of an invasion by a mysterious and powerful alien race. Earth's life is disrupted by the attacks of extraterrestrials whose war machines, emerging from the depths of the oceans, seem indestructible. The coalitioned forces of the whole world are worthless, powerless in the face of the indecipherable and deadly plans of a superior intelligence, capable of bringing the entire planet to the brink of catastrophe" Goodreads May 20, 2022

                • Cover of The Martian
                  The Martian

                  series · 2 books · 2012

                  similar byhopefulscience fictionour world

                  Andy Weir's novel The Martian, first self-published in 2011 before a commercial re-release, follows astronaut Mark Watney after he is stranded alone on Mars when his crew presumes him dead and departs. Using scientific improvisation and dark humor, Watney works to keep himself alive long enough for a rescue to reach him. It is a single, self-contained survival story.

                • Cover of City at World's End
                  City at World's End

                  Edmond Hamilton · standalone novel · 1951

                  similar byour worldfar futurescience fictionpost-apocalyptic

                  An experimental atomic weapons test in small-town America goes catastrophically wrong, hurling the entire town of Middletown, buildings, streets and all, untold ages into Earth's future, to a time when the sun is dying and humanity's last city struggles on beneath a darkening sky. Cut off from everything and everyone they knew, the townspeople have to find a way to survive in a world that has nothing left to spare for latecomers. Edmond Hamilton's novel strands a slice of mid-century America at the literal end of the world.

                • Cover of Stranger in a Strange Land
                  Stranger in a Strange Land

                  Robert A. Heinlein · standalone novel · 1961

                  similar byscience fictionaliensfaith and religionour world

                  Stranger in a Strange Land is a 1961 science fiction novel by the American author Robert A. Heinlein. It tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human who comes to Earth in early adulthood after being born on the planet Mars and raised by Martians, and explores his interaction with and eventual transformation of Terran culture.

                • Cover of Riddley Walker
                  Riddley Walker

                  Russell Hoban · standalone novel · 1980

                  similar byour worldfar futurescience fictionpost-apocalyptic

                  WorldCat: Composed in an English which has never been spoken and laced with a storytelling tradition that predates the written word, RIDDLEY WALKER is the world waiting for us at the bitter end of the nuclear road. It is desolate, dangerous and harrowing, and a modern masterpiece.

                • Cover of Alas, Babylon
                  Alas, Babylon

                  Pat Frank · standalone novel · 1959

                  similar byhopefulscience fictionpost-apocalyptic

                  Classic novel of nuclear war and aftermath in rural Florida. From the back cover of a Bantam Pathfinder edition: "The day that the bomb dropped the thousands of years of "progress" that had covered the treacheries and weaknesses of ordinary man with a thin veneer of civilization were dissolved and melted like snow on the desert's dusty face. Then - the law of the jungle reigned but in the wreckage a few courageous survivors, men and women with the guts to have hope, were determined to build a new and better world on the ruins of the old. This is their story."

                • Cover of Tripods
                  Tripods

                  series · 4 books · 1967

                  completed

                  similar byscience fictionour worldpost-apocalypticaliens+1 more

                  The Tripods is a series of young adult science fiction novels by John Christopher. The series takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity is enslaved by "Tripods"—gigantic three-legged walking machines piloted by an alien race later identified as the "Masters". The first two books were the basis of a science fiction TV series, produced in the United Kingdom in the 1980s.

                • Cover of The Sirens of Titan
                  The Sirens of Titan

                  Kurt Vonnegut & Jr. · standalone novel · 1959

                  similar byfar futurescience fictionaliens+2 more

                  The Sirens of Titan is a comic science fiction novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., first published in 1959. His second novel, it involves issues of free will, omniscience, and the overall purpose of human history, with much of the story revolving around a Martian invasion of Earth.

                • Cover of Downward to the Earth
                  Downward to the Earth

                  Robert Silverberg · standalone novel · 1969

                  similar byfar futurescience fictionaliensredemption

                  Edmund Gunderson was the Terran administrator of the colony world of Belzagor, and he returns to it after it has gained independence, feeling a sense of guilt for the way he has treated its dominant species, the elephant-like nildoror, whose animalistic appearance had kept Gunderson from taking them seriously as sentient beings. On his return, he feels a new sense of kinship with the natives, perhaps more than for the Terran tourists. The nildoror undergo a process of rebirth, and Gunderson's greatest guilt comes from having denied rebirth to seven nildoror to make them help him repair flood damage.(From Wikipedia)

                • Cover of Our Friends from Frolix 8
                  Our Friends from Frolix 8

                  Philip K. Dick · standalone novel · 1970

                  similar byour worldfar futurescience fictionaliens

                  Our Friends from Frolix 8 is a science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was written from 1968 to 1969 and was published in 1970 by Ace Books. The novel is set in the 22nd century, when humanity is ruled by mutated humans, "New Men" and "Unusuals", while normal "Old Men" are discriminated against. The story follows Nick Appleton, a low-class Old Man worker who becomes a subversive to the system, and Willis Gram, the Unusual ruler of the Earth. Separately, resistance leader Thors Provoni has left the planet to find an ally to the Old Men, finally returning with an alien from far away in space. The novel is best known for a single scene where the characters discuss the dead body of God having been found in space.

                • Cover of Unstoppable
                  Unstoppable

                  series · 4 books · 2021

                  similar byhopefulfar futurescience fictionaliens

                • Cover of The Prince Who Fell from the Sky
                  The Prince Who Fell from the Sky

                  John Claude Bemis · standalone novel · 2012

                  similar byour worldfar futurescience fictionpost-apocalyptic+1 more

                  When an orbital spacecraft crashes on a post-apocalyptic Earth where animals have regained control, a cubless mother bear adopts the lone survivor, a young boy, and leads him on a journey toward safety from the ruling wolf clans.

                • Cover of A Half-Built Garden
                  A Half-Built Garden

                  Ruthanna Emrys · standalone novel · 2022

                  similar byhopefulour worldscience fictionaliens

                  On a warm March night in 2083, Judy Wallach-Stevens wakes to a warning of unknown pollutants in the Chesapeake Bay. She heads out to check what she expects to be a false alarm—and stumbles upon the first alien visitors to Earth. These aliens have crossed the galaxy to save humanity, convinced that the people of Earth must leave their ecologically-ravaged planet behind and join them among the stars. And if humanity doesn't agree, they may need to be saved by force. The watershed networks aren't ready to give up on Earth. Decades ago, they rose up to exile the last corporations to a few artificial islands, escape the dominance of nation-states, and reorganize humanity around the hope of keeping their world liveable. By sharing the burden of decision-making, they've started to heal the wounded planet. But now corporations, nation-states, and networks all vie to represent humanity to these powerful new beings, and if any one accepts the aliens' offer, Earth may be lost. With everyone’s eyes turned skyward, everything hinges on the success of Judy's effort to create understanding, both within and beyond her own species.

                • Cover of Past Master
                  Past Master

                  R. A. Lafferty · standalone novel · 1968

                  similar byour worldfar futurescience fictionfaith and religion

                  Past Master is a science fiction novel by American writer R. A. Lafferty, first published in 1968. The novel follows the attempt of a future Utopian society in preventing its decline, by bringing Sir Thomas More to the year 2535.

                • Cover of Maurai
                  Maurai

                  series · 6 books · 1959

                  completed

                  similar byour worldfar futurescience fictionpost-apocalyptic

                  The Maurai series is a series of short stories and a novel by Poul Anderson set in a resource depleted, post-apocalyptic earth several centuries in the future. The series is named after its most frequent protagonists, citizens of the Maurai Federation. The Maurai dominate the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Fearful of the social and ecological implications of a return to large-scale industrial society, they use their considerable might and covert resources to prevent other nations from developing nuclear power.

                • Cover of Relic
                  Relic

                  Alan Dean Foster · standalone novel · 2018

                  similar byfar futurescience fictionalienspost-apocalyptic+1 more

                  Relic is a 2018 pastoral science fiction novel by Alan Dean Foster. It is about Ruslan, the sole surviving member of the human race after a lethal virus, who is rescued by aliens who study him and seek to recreate the human race and possibly find the mythical home planet of humans.

                • Cover of Books of Ember
                  Books of Ember

                  series · 4 books · 2003

                  similar byscience fictionfar futurepost-apocalyptic+2 more

                  Jeanne DuPrau's Books of Ember begins with The City of Ember (2003), in which two teenagers in a decaying underground city search for a way to the surface before its failing infrastructure kills everyone left behind. The post-apocalyptic quartet continues with The People of Sparks, following survivors after they reach the world above, and concludes with The Prophet of Yonwood and The Diamond of Darkhold.

                • Cover of Kingdom (Dan Abnett and Nik Vincent)
                  Kingdom (Dan Abnett and Nik Vincent)

                  series · 1 book · 2014

                  similar byour worldfar futurescience fictionpost-apocalypticaliens