series2 books1967
completed
similar bydemonsbig city+3 more
Rosemary's Baby follows a young wife in a Gothic Manhattan apartment building who grows increasingly convinced that her elderly neighbors, and even her own husband, are part of a conspiracy surrounding her pregnancy. Ira Levin returned to the character thirty years later in the 1997 sequel Son of Rosemary. Together the two novels form a short, self-contained horror series about faith, control, and motherhood.
series6 books2006
similar bynear future+3 more
Justina Robson's Quantum Gravity series opens with Keeping It Real, set six years after a catastrophic 'Quantum Bomb' tore open the boundaries between Earth and other dimensions, leaving humans in uneasy contact with elves, elementals, and demons. The series follows cyborg special agent Lila Black across five novels as magic and technology collide.
universe65 books1898
Start hereThe War of the Worlds · Start here
similar byscience fiction+1 more
No one would have believed, in the closing years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched keenly and closely from the timeless worlds of space. And then the cylinders fell. H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds opens in the quiet of the Surrey commons, where a falling star proves to be the first Martian craft — and from the pit rise the towering tripods, the Heat-Ray, the choking Black Smoke and the creeping red weed, wielded by minds that regard mankind much as we regard the creatures we boil for supper. This is invasion rendered as natural disaster: cold, methodical, and vast beyond argument. Wells' 1898 novel is the seed; everything else grows from that Martian soil. The catalogue gathers direct sequels and continuations alongside a wide field of other hands. In War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches the invasion is retold across the whole planet through the eyes of Twain, Verne, Tolstoy, Lowell and Kipling; in the Manly Wade and Wade Wellman crossover, Sherlock Holmes, Watson and Professor Challenger take the field against the machines; and Scott Washburn's Great Martian War stretches the fighting into a decades-long alternate history of steam, artillery and grinding attrition. It is a loose shared world — no single decreed sequence, many voices answering one calamity. What sets this world apart is its refusal of heroics: the invaders fall not to generals but to the smallest things of Earth, humbling and indifferent. Begin, always, with Wells' original novel — it is short, and it is the ground every later book stands upon. From there follow your appetite: Global Dispatches for the panorama, the Holmes campaign for adventure, Washburn for the long war.
series4 books1962
completed
similar byscience fictiondarknear futureour worldbig city
Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel is narrated by Alex, a teenage gang leader in a near-future Britain gripped by a youth subculture of extreme violence, recounting his crimes in Nadsat, an invented slang blending English with Russian-derived words. After his crimes catch up with him, Alex is made the subject of a controversial state program meant to forcibly reform his behavior, and the novel uses his ordeal to question whether imposed goodness is worth the loss of free will. It is a standalone novel.
series7 books1953
completed
similar by+4 more
After Such Knowledge is James Blish's loosely linked trilogy on the costs of forbidden or dangerous knowledge. It opens with A Case of Conscience, in which a Jesuit scientist studying a seemingly sinless alien race is forced to weigh what he finds against his own faith, continues with the historical novel Doctor Mirabilis about the medieval friar and scientist Roger Bacon, and closes with the two-part Black Easter, in which a magician is hired to loose Hell's demons upon the world for a single day. The three books share a theme rather than a continuous plot or cast.
series4 books1938
completed
similar byscience fiction+2 more
The Space Trilogy is a series of science fiction novels by British writer C. S. Lewis. The trilogy consists of Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943), and That Hideous Strength (1945). A philologist named Elwin Ransom is the protagonist of the first two novels and an important character in the third.
series6 books1968
similar byscience fictiondarknear futurebig city+1 more
Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? follows bounty hunter Rick Deckard as he tracks escaped androids through an irradiated, near-abandoned San Francisco, using the hunt to probe questions of empathy and what separates human from machine. The novel became the basis for Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner, and Marvel Comics later published an illustrated adaptation of that film. Together the two trace the story's path from prose original to screen and comic-page adaptation.
John Brunnerstandalone novel1968
similar byscience fictiondarknear futureour worldbig city
Stand on Zanzibar is a dystopian New Wave science fiction novel written by John Brunner and first in part published in New Worlds magazine in 1967 and in book form in 1968. The book won a Hugo Award for Best Novel at the 27th World Science Fiction Convention in 1969, as well as the 1969 BSFA Award and the 1973 Prix Tour-Apollo Award.
series9 books1962
completed
similar byscience fictionnear future+2 more
series3 books2020
similar by+1 more
Crescent City follows Bryce Quinlan, a half-Fae, half-human young woman in the magical city of Lunathion, whose life is upended by a violent murder and pulls her into an uneasy partnership with the fallen angel Hunt Athalar as they dig into a conspiracy reaching into the city's ruling powers. Sarah J. Maas set the trilogy — House of Earth and Blood, House of Sky and Breath, House of Flame and Shadow — in Midgard, a world built separately from her earlier series, with political intrigue and romance driving events as much as the mystery.
series3 books1990
completed
similar bydark+1 more
Lives of the Mayfair Witches is a trilogy of Gothic supernatural horror fantasy novels by American author Anne Rice. It centers on a family of witches whose fortunes have been guided for generations by a spirit named Lasher. The series began in 1990 with The Witching Hour, which was followed by the sequels Lasher (1993) and Taltos (1994). All three novels debuted at No. 2 on The New York Times Best Seller list.
series10 books1981
similar byscience fictiondarknear futurebig city
The Sprawl Trilogy is William Gibson's foundational cyberpunk sequence: Neuromancer (1984), in which hacker Case is drawn into a high-stakes heist alongside an artificial intelligence and a damaged ex-soldier, followed by Count Zero (1986) and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988), which widen the same near-future world of corporate power and networked cyberspace to new characters. Johnny Mnemonic, an early short story set in the same fictional milieu, predates the novels and introduces the courier Molly Millions before her role in the trilogy. Together these works established much of cyberpunk's visual and thematic vocabulary.
series10 books2011
similar byscience fictionnear futurebig city+1 more
Divergent, also known as The Divergent Series, is a series of young adult dystopian novels by American novelist Veronica Roth set in a post-apocalyptic dystopian Chicago. The trilogy consists of Divergent (2011), Insurgent (2012), and Allegiant (2013). A related book, Four (2014), presents a series of short stories told from the perspective of one of the trilogy's characters, the male love interest Tobias. A later short story, We Can Be Mended (2018), serves as an epilogue five years after the events of the trilogy, again from Tobias/Four's perspective.
Harry Harrisonstandalone novel1966
similar byscience fictiondarknear futureour worldbig city
Make Room! Make Room! is a 1966 science fiction novel written by Harry Harrison exploring the consequences of both unchecked population growth on society and the hoarding of resources by a wealthy minority. It was originally serialized in Impulse magazine.
series2 books1951
completed
similar byscience fictionnear future+1 more
Fahrenheit 451 began life as "The Fireman," a novella Ray Bradbury published in 1951, which he then expanded into the full novel released in 1953 under its now-famous title. Set in a future where books are outlawed and firemen exist to burn them, it follows fireman Guy Montag as doubts about his job push him toward the very literature he's supposed to destroy. The novella and novel are one story's evolution rather than two separate books.
universe13 books1995
Start hereHis Dark Materials · Start here
In a world like ours and unlike it, every human soul walks outside the body in the shape of an animal — a daemon, who speaks, who cannot be lied to, and who settles into one fixed form only when childhood ends. This is the country of His Dark Materials: a company of parallel worlds across which an invisible dust of consciousness drifts down upon the waking mind; where a Church that calls itself the Magisterium would sooner sever a child's soul than let that Dust be understood; and where a golden instrument, the alethiometer, answers true questions for anyone with the patience to read it. Philip Pullman's design stands in two trilogies and a scatter of shorter tales. His Dark Materials — Northern Lights (published in America as The Golden Compass), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass — carries Lyra Belacqua from the rooftops of a shadow Oxford across the borders between worlds. The Book of Dust returns to that same territory: La Belle Sauvage looks back to Lyra as an infant carried through a great flood, while The Secret Commonwealth follows her grown and less certain into adulthood, with a concluding volume closing the arc. Around them sit slim companion books — Lyra's Oxford, Once Upon a Time in the North, Serpentine — and Nicholas Wright's stage adaptation, made with Pullman's blessing. The register is grave and luminous at once, its title lifted from Milton and its quarrel drawn from Blake: a story that takes the side of curiosity, love, and the physical world against any authority that would forbid them. It reads as adventure — armoured bears, aeronauts, knife-cut windows between skies — yet reasons like philosophy. Begin with Northern Lights / The Golden Compass and read the first trilogy through before turning to The Book of Dust, which deepens everything the first has already made you feel.
John Shirleystandalone novel2002
similar bydemonsscience fictiondarknear futurebig city
Writers from Clive Barker to Bruce Sterling and Roger Zelazny have praised John Shirley's searing, apocalyptic visions of postmodern hell on earth. Now this perversely brilliant author, one of the seminal representatives on the cyberpunk movement, unleashes his newest masterpiece.DEMONSIn a future uncomfortably close to the present day, the apocalypse has surpassed all expectations. Hideous demons roam the streets in an orgy of terror, drawing pleasure from torturing humans as sadistically as possible. Divided into seven clans, these grisly invaders--gnashing, writhing, bloodthirsty monsters--seem horrifically to belong in our world.Ira, a young San Francisco artist, becomes involved with a strange group of scientists and philosophers desperately trying to end the bloody siege. Yet through it all, Ira continues to paint--for in his canvasses lie crucial clues to the demons' origins.Yet the demons draw their strength from an all-too-familiar evil--a deadly malevolence supported by some of the greatest powers on earth, concealed beneath the trappings of status, success, and abused power. Ira and his allies-- including a compelling young seeress--come to believe these demons didn't just appear. They were summoned. But the most shocking revelation is yet to come . . .EXCLUSIVE TO THIS EDITION: The original novella Demons was published as an acclaimed, limited edition hardcover which Publishers Weekly called a "mini-masterpiece." Now the terror continues, as the sequel story, "Undercurrents," takes the reader on a macabre journey into the center of the conspiracy that may lay waste to the Earth. From the Hardcover edition.
series9 books1977
similar byscience fiction
Cluster is a series of science fiction novels by Piers Anthony. Anthony originally conceived of and wrote the series as a trilogy but later added two additional volumes. Although the central problem of each novel is unique, the books feature shared themes of cooperation, tolerance, open-mindedness, introspection, self-knowledge, and understanding. There is also a generous amount of alien sex/mating.
series4 books1949
similar by+2 more
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) is George Orwell's novel of a totalitarian future Britain kept under constant surveillance and thought control, following Winston Smith's doomed attempt at a private rebellion against the ruling Party. Sandra Newman's Julia (2023), written with the Orwell estate's authorization, retells the same events from the point of view of Winston's lover Julia, filling in a life and set of motives the original largely left offstage.