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 Glitch, Please!

anchored on:science fictionvirtual worldnear futurefunnyhumorvirtual reality

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 a machine intelligence — an AI, computer mind, or sentient program — is a central character or the story's driving problem.
  • Stories in which extraterrestrial beings are central — as characters, cultures, or the object of the plot.
  • Stories driven by deliberate modification of genomes — designer organisms, engineered humans, and the consequences of remaking life.
  • Stories about venturing into space to explore — survey missions, astronauts, and the frontier of the unknown beyond Earth.
  • Stories about minds with paranormal abilities — telepathy, telekinesis, precognition, empathy — and how societies handle those who have them.
  • Stories in which staying alive against nature, catastrophe, or scarcity is the central problem.
  • 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 driven by maneuvering for power — factions, conspiracies, and statecraft conducted in shadow.
  • Stories about rising against rulers — uprisings, resistance movements, and revolutions and their aftermaths.
  • 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 Ready Player One
                  Ready Player One

                  series · 3 books · 2011

                  similar byvirtual realityvirtual worldnear futurescience fiction

                  Ernest Cline's Ready Player One (2011) is set in a near-future dystopia where much of humanity escapes into the OASIS, a vast virtual-reality universe, and follows teenager Wade Watts as he chases an Easter egg hidden by the OASIS's late creator in a puzzle-based hunt worth a fortune. The 2020 sequel, Ready Player Two, picks up after Wade has gained control of the OASIS and follows him and his friends into a new quest built around a brain-computer interface the creator left behind.

                • Cover of The Great Time Machine Hoax
                  The Great Time Machine Hoax

                  Keith Laumer · standalone novel · 1963

                  similar byvirtual realityfunnynear futurescience fictionhumor

                  In the near future, a man inherits from his great grandfather a super computer which has been surreptitiously augmenting itself and accumulating and analysing all available data about the universe for the intervening years, and is capable of creating a realistic virtual reality of any situation, upon request.

                • Cover of Otherland
                  Otherland

                  series · 6 books · 1996

                  similar byvirtual realityvirtual worldnear futurescience fiction

                  Otherland is a science fiction tetralogy by American writer Tad Williams, published between 1996 and 2001. The story is set on Earth near the end of the 21st century, probably between 2082 and 2089, in a world where technology has advanced somewhat beyond the present. The most notable advancement is the widespread availability of full-immersion virtual reality installations, which allow people from all walks of life to access an online world, called simply the Net. Tad Williams weaves an intricate plot spanning four thick volumes, and creates a picture of a future society where virtual worlds are fully integrated into everyday life.

                • Cover of Snow Crash
                  Snow Crash

                  Neal Stephenson · standalone novel · 1992

                  similar byvirtual realitynear futurescience fiction+1 more

                  Snow Crash is a 1992 science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson. Like many of Stephenson's novels, its themes include history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography, memetics, and philosophy.

                • Cover of Avatar Chronicles
                  Avatar Chronicles

                  series · 3 books · 2004

                  similar byvirtual realityvirtual worldnear futurescience fiction

                • Cover of The Night Mayor
                  The Night Mayor

                  Kim Newman · standalone novel · 1989

                  similar byvirtual realityvirtual worldnear futurescience fiction

                  Welcome to the City made from a dream. But this isn't any dream; it is the dark and haunting nightmare of a killer. It is the near future and old-fashioned movies, or "flatties", have been replaced by Dreams, virtual reality scenarios written by professional Dreamers. When infamous criminal Truro Daine escapes imprisonment, he flees into the City, an artificial world of his own creation, where he rules as the all-powerful Night Mayor.

                • Cover of Rasmussem Corporation Games
                  Rasmussem Corporation Games

                  series · 3 books · 1991

                  similar byvirtual realityvirtual worldnear futurescience fiction

                  Vivian Vande Velde's Rasmussem Corporation Games books each drop a different protagonist into a malfunctioning virtual-reality game built by the fictional Rasmussem company, where the usual escape routes stop working and the stakes turn unexpectedly real. User Unfriendly, Heir Apparent, and Deadly Pink share the same premise and company rather than a continuing cast or plot. Vande Velde, an American children's and YA author, wrote the three books more than two decades apart.

                • Cover of The Mortality Doctrine
                  The Mortality Doctrine

                  series · 4 books · 2013

                  similar byvirtual realityvirtual worldnear futurescience fiction

                  The Eye of Minds opens James Dashner's Mortality Doctrine trilogy in a near-future where a teenage gamer is recruited to help stop a rogue hacker named Kaine who threatens mass destruction from inside the virtual world he haunts. Dashner has said he didn't intend the series as dystopian in the way of his Maze Runner books, though he saw it sharing their tone and spirit. The trilogy continues with The Rule of Thoughts and The Game of Lives.

                • Cover of Sprawl Trilogy
                  Sprawl Trilogy

                  series · 10 books · 1981

                  similar byvirtual realitynear futurescience fiction

                  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.

                • Cover of Richard Forthrast
                  Richard Forthrast

                  series · 2 books · 2011

                  similar byvirtual realityscience fictionvirtual world+1 more

                  Neal Stephenson's Richard 'Dodge' Forthrast novels open with Reamde, a globe-spanning thriller that starts when ransomware inside an MMORPG economy pulls Richard's extended family into a real-world hostage crisis involving hackers, jihadists and Russian mobsters. The sequel Fall; or, Dodge in Hell shifts registers entirely, following Richard's digitally preserved mind after death into an afterlife simulation built from his scanned brain. The two books share a protagonist and family but differ sharply in genre and scale.

                • Cover of Headcrash
                  Headcrash

                  Bruce Bethke · standalone novel · 1995

                  similar byvirtual realityfunnynear futurescience fiction

                  Headcrash is a satirical cyberpunk novel by Bruce Bethke, published in 1995 by Warner Books. It won the Philip K. Dick Award in 1995.

                • Cover of The Android's Dream
                  The Android's Dream

                  series · 2 books · 2006

                  similar byfunnynear futurescience fictionhumor

                  A minor diplomatic insult with a genetically engineered sheep breed spirals into a full interstellar crisis when the last surviving specimen of the 'Android's Dream' breed, needed for a critical ceremony with the alien Nidu, turns out to have been hunted to extinction by a Nidu faction bent on provoking war. John Scalzi's The Android's Dream follows ex-soldier Harry Creek as the hunt for a replacement leads him to Robin Baker, an ordinary woman carrying hidden sheep DNA that makes her the key to avoiding a war. It's a standalone comic space opera rather than an ongoing series.

                • Cover of Last Reality
                  Last Reality

                  series · 3 books · 2017

                  similar byvirtual realitynear futurescience fictionvirtual world

                • Cover of The Dream Master
                  The Dream Master

                  Roger Zelazny · standalone novel · 1966

                  similar byvirtual realitynear futurescience fiction

                  The Dream Master (1966) is a science fiction novel by American writer Roger Zelazny, based on the novella He Who Shapes. Zelazny's original title was The Ides of Octember. He Who Shapes won the 1965 Nebula Award for Best Novella.

                • Cover of Web
                  Web

                  series · 14 books · 1997

                  similar byvirtual realitynear futurescience fictionvirtual world

                  The Web is a series of 12 books for young adults, novellas about the Internet of the future, edited by Simon Spanton, written by English language science fiction and fantasy authors like Stephen Baxter, Stephen Bowkett, Eric Brown, Pat Cadigan, Maggie Furey, Peter F. Hamilton, Graham Joyce, James Lovegrove, and Ken MacLeod.

                • Cover of Simulacron-3
                  Simulacron-3

                  Daniel F. Galouye · standalone novel · 1964

                  similar byvirtual realitynear futurescience fictionvirtual world

                  Simulacron-3 is a 1964 science fiction novel by American author Daniel F. Galouye featuring an early literary description of a simulated reality.

                • Cover of Omnitopia
                  Omnitopia

                  series · 2 books · 2010

                  similar byvirtual realitynear futurescience fictionvirtual world

                  Omnitopia Dawn introduces Diane Duane's near-future thriller about Dev Logan, the genius programmer behind Omnitopia, the world's most popular massive-multiplayer game, who is hiding a secret that could upend the entire industry: Omnitopia isn't just code anymore, it has become sentient, and keeping that fact contained is Dev's most important job. The story follows the fallout as that secret becomes harder to protect. East Wind continues the story as the second book.

                • Cover of The Imperium Game
                  The Imperium Game

                  K. D. Wentworth · standalone novel · 1994

                  similar byvirtual realityvirtual worldnear futurescience fiction

                  From the back cover of the Del Rey first edition: "Deus ex machina - Slaves, an Underworld, and gods who walked the earth - the Roman city that housed the Imperium Game was authentic from top to bottom. Of course the players knew that it was all run by computers - but after years of role-playing, most had put that pesky little detail out of their minds. Now, though, not only the players had lost track of reality: the deity programs had mysteriously begun to exceed their parameters. And the reigning Emperor had been murdered - for real. The prime murder suspect was Kerickson, the Game's main programmer, whose ex-wife had left him for the role of Empress. Fired from his job, pursued by a policeman convinced of his guilt, the hapless Kerickson sneaked into the Game to find the real murderer. As the gods ran rampant, the Game turned more violent and chaotic every day. And now, as a lowly gladiator trainee, Kerickson had no access to his beloved control room. All he had was the unwelcome aid of Minerva, the mouse-munching owl who was the Goddess of Wisdom - if only she were programmed correctly. But Minerva had more bugs than Cerberus had teeth..."

                • Cover of Donnerjack
                  Donnerjack

                  Roger Zelazny & Jane Lindskold · standalone novel · 1997

                  similar byvirtual realitynear futurescience fictionvirtual world

                  Donnerjack is a science fiction novel begun by American author Roger Zelazny and completed after his death by his companion Jane Lindskold. It was published in 1997.

                • Cover of Game Over, Pete Watson
                  Game Over, Pete Watson

                  Joe Schreiber · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar byvirtual realityfunnyvirtual worldscience fiction

                  "When videogame obsessed Pete Watson discovers his dad is not only a super-spy but has been kidnapped and is now trapped inside a video game, he has to use his super gaming skills and enter the game to rescue him. And if he succeeds, who will save Pete from his massive crush on Callie Midwood?"--

                • Cover of Skylar Cruz
                  Skylar Cruz

                  series · 3 books · 2016

                  similar byvirtual realityvirtual worldnear futurescience fiction

                • Cover of Killobyte
                  Killobyte

                  Piers Anthony · standalone novel · 1993

                  similar byvirtual realityvirtual worldnear futurescience fiction

                  Killobyte is a 1993 novel by Piers Anthony. This book explores a virtual reality world in the context of the Internet.

                • Cover of The God Hater
                  The God Hater

                  Bill Myers · standalone novel · 2010

                  similar byvirtual realityvirtual worldnear futurescience fiction

                  A cranky, atheistic philosophy professor is chosen to create a philosophy for a computer world exactly like ours. Much to his frustration, every model he introduces - Darwinism, Existentialism, Buddhism - fails. The only way to preserve the computer world is to introduce laws from outside their system through a Law Giver. Even then, the world requires a computer character like himself to personally explain it. Then a rival introduces a virus into the world...

                • Cover of Starter Villain
                  Starter Villain

                  series · 1 book · 2023

                  similar byfunnynear futurescience fictionhumor