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 Paradiso Lost

anchored on:science fiction

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 settling other planets or habitats — founding, sustaining, and governing colonies off 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.

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 Cities in Flight
                  Cities in Flight

                  series · 10 books · 1950

                  completed

                  similar byspace colonizationscience fictionfar future+1 more

                  Cities in Flight is a four-volume series of science fiction novels and short stories by American writer James Blish, originally published between 1950 and 1962, which were first known collectively as the "Okie" novels. The series features entire cities that are able to fly through space using an anti-gravity device, the spindizzy. The stories cover roughly two thousand years, from the very near future to the end of the universe. One story, "Earthman, Come Home", won a Retro Hugo Award in 2004 for Best Novelette. Since 1970, the primary edition has been the omnibus volume first published in paperback by Avon Books. Over the years James Blish made many changes to these stories in response to points raised in letters from readers.

                • Cover of Company Wars
                  Company Wars

                  series · 7 books · 1981

                  part of Alliance-Union Universe

                  similar byscience fictionfar future+1 more

                  Company Wars gathers the novels C. J. Cherryh set during the breakaway conflict between Earth's colonial Company and the newly independent Union, within her wider Alliance-Union future history. Anchored by the Hugo Award-winning Downbelow Station, the books follow different ships, stations, and crews caught on either side, from merchanter traders to military spacers, rather than a single continuing cast. Read in any order, they build up a picture of the political and economic pressure that reshapes Cherryh's larger Alliance-Union universe.

                • Cover of Search the Sky
                  Search the Sky

                  C. M. Kornbluth & Frederik Pohl · standalone novel · 1954

                  similar byspace colonizationscience fictionother star systemsfar future

                  Search the Sky is a satirical science fiction novel by American writers Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth, first published in 1954 by Ballantine Books.

                • Cover of Pandora
                  Pandora

                  series · 4 books · 1966

                  similar byscience fictionother star systemsfar future+1 more

                  The Pandora Sequence opens with Frank Herbert's solo novel Destination: Void, in which a starship crew must jury-rig a working artificial consciousness after their vessel's control systems fail. Bill Ransom co-writes the three novels that follow, carrying the survivors to the world Pandora, where they must contend with both a manipulative machine intelligence and the planet's own hostile ecology. Across its four books the series moves from a claustrophobic ship-bound crisis to a generations-long struggle over faith, control, and survival on a dangerous new world.

                • Cover of Heorot
                  Heorot

                  series · 4 books · 1987

                  similar byspace colonizationscience fictionother star systemsfar future

                  Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Steven Barnes's The Legacy of Heorot strands human colonists on an idyllic-seeming alien world where they discover apex predators -- grendels -- hidden beneath the surface, forcing them to fight for survival. Beowulf's Children continues the colony a generation later as the children born on the planet clash with their parents over how to live alongside the grendels, and a fourth book, Starborn and Godsons, returns to the settlement decades further on. It's hard-SF creature-horror crossed with generational colony drama.

                • Cover of 2312
                  2312

                  Kim Stanley Robinson · standalone novel · 2012

                  similar byspace colonizationscience fictionother star systemsfar future

                  In the eponymous year, when Earth's ecology is degraded and humanity has settled throughout the solar system by terraforming and genetic engineering, mysterious disasters strike some human communities and an assortment of human types from throughout the system seek to find and eliminate the cause.

                • Cover of Pax / Astra
                  Pax / Astra

                  series · 2 books · 1954

                  completed

                  similar byscience fictionfar future+2 more

                  Andre Norton's The Stars Are Ours! (1954) and its sequel Star Born (1957) follow a group of scientists and their families who flee a repressive future Earth to colonize a distant world they name Astra, and then the next generation, who must contend with that world's original inhabitants. Star Flight appears to be a later omnibus or reissue rather than a third original novel.

                • Cover of Catteni Sequence
                  Catteni Sequence

                  series · 5 books · 1970

                  completed

                  similar byscience fictionother star systemsfar future+1 more

                  The Catteni series is a tetralogy of science fiction novels by American writer Anne McCaffrey. In this universe, humans are slaves of aliens, the humanoid Catteni. Woven through all four of the books are details of the relationship between Kristin Bjornsen, a former slave, and Zainal, a renegade Catteni.

                • Cover of Fallen Dragon
                  Fallen Dragon

                  Peter F. Hamilton · standalone novel · 2001

                  similar byspace colonizationscience fictionother star systemsfar future

                  Fallen Dragon is a science fiction novel by British writer Peter F. Hamilton. It was first published in 2001 by Macmillan. It follows the adventures of the mercenary Lawrence Newton as he attempts to capture what he believes is a fabulous treasure, only to find something of much greater importance.

                • Cover of Bronson Beta
                  Bronson Beta

                  series · 5 books · 1933

                  similar byscience fictionother star systems+2 more

                  When Worlds Collide (1933) and its sequel After Worlds Collide (1934), written together by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie, follow a small group of survivors who escape a doomed Earth as the rogue planet Bronson Alpha destroys it, landing on its companion world Bronson Beta to begin again. The two novels form a self-contained disaster-and-survival duology.

                • Cover of The Martian Chronicles
                  The Martian Chronicles

                  series · 30 books · 1946

                  completed

                  similar byspace colonizationscience fiction+1 more

                  The Martian Chronicles (1950) is Ray Bradbury's fix-up novel, a chain of linked short stories following waves of settlers leaving a troubled Earth to colonize Mars and encountering its native Martians, before Earth itself is ultimately consumed by nuclear war.

                • Cover of The Songs of Distant Earth
                  The Songs of Distant Earth

                  Arthur C. Clarke · standalone novel · 1986

                  similar byspace colonizationscience fictionother star systemsfar future

                  The Songs of Distant Earth is a 1986 science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, based upon his 1958 short story of the same title. Of all of his novels, Clarke stated that this was his favourite. Prior to the publishing of the novel, Clarke also wrote a short step outline with the same title, published in Omni magazine and anthologised in The Sentinel in 1983.

                • Cover of Jem
                  Jem

                  Frederik Pohl · standalone novel · 1979

                  similar byspace colonizationscience fictionother star systems

                  The discovery of another habitable world might spell salvation to the three (Food Bloc, Fuel Bloc & People Bloc) bitterly competing power blocs of the war torn & resource-starved 21st century. But when their representatives arrive on Jem, with its three intelligent species, they discover instead the perfect situation into which to export their rivalries. Subtitled, with savage irony, 'The Making of a Utopia', Jem is one of Frederik Pohl's most powerful novels.

                • Cover of Nemesis
                  Nemesis

                  Isaac Asimov · standalone novel · 1989

                  similar byspace colonizationscience fictionother star systemsfar future

                  The expanding population and ensuing ecological degradation of Earth leads to the establishment of orbital habitats which continue to compete with each other as well as with Earth, leading one of them to abandon the Solar System entirely, to establish itself around a neighboring star.

                • Cover of Deathworld
                  Deathworld

                  series · 4 books · 1960

                  completed

                  similar byspace colonizationscience fictionother star systemsfar future

                  Deathworld is the name of a series of science fiction novels by American writer Harry Harrison, including the books Deathworld, Deathworld 2 and Deathworld 3, plus the short story "The Mothballed Spaceship". The central hero is a gambler who becomes involved with colonists of an extremely hostile planet.

                • Cover of Helliconia
                  Helliconia

                  series · 4 books · 1982

                  completed

                  similar byspace colonizationscience fictionother star systemsfar future

                  The Helliconia trilogy is a series of science fiction books by British writer Brian W. Aldiss, set on the Earth-like planet Helliconia. It is an epic chronicling the rise and fall of a civilisation over thousands of years as the planet progresses through its incredibly long seasons, which last for centuries.

                • Cover of The Face of the Waters
                  The Face of the Waters

                  Robert Silverberg · standalone novel · 1991

                  similar byspace colonizationscience fictionother star systemsfar future

                  On the ocean world of Hydros -- a planet with no land beyond a scatter of artificial floating islands -- the human settlers of Sorve commit an offense against the native aquatic Hydrans serious enough to get their community banished, forbidden from settling on any other island. With nowhere else to go, Sorve's people set out across the water in a makeshift flotilla, chasing rumors of a mythical island called the Face of the Waters that may or may not exist, forced to reckon with what they owe the world they've spent generations treating as theirs. A Robert Silverberg novel of exile and search, told through Sorve's displaced islanders.

                • Cover of Homecoming (Orson Scott Card)
                  Homecoming (Orson Scott Card)

                  series · 5 books · 1992

                  similar byscience fictionother star systemsfar future+1 more

                  The Homecoming Saga is a science fiction series by Orson Scott Card. The series is patterned on the Book of Mormon. Some of the names also come from the Book of Mormon.

                • Cover of To the Stars (Harrison)
                  To the Stars (Harrison)

                  series · 3 books · 1980

                  completed

                  similar byscience fictionother star systemsfar future+1 more

                  The To the Stars trilogy is a series of science fiction novels by Harry Harrison, first published in 1980 (Homeworld) and 1981. The three books were re-published in an omnibus edition in 1981.

                • Cover of Aurora
                  Aurora

                  Kim Stanley Robinson · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar byspace colonizationscience fictionother star systemsfar future

                  Aurora is a 2015 novel by American science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson. The novel concerns a generation ship built in the style of a Stanford torus, traveling to Tau Ceti to start a human colony. The novel's primary narrative voice is that of the starship's artificial intelligence. Aurora was well received by critics.

                • Cover of The Outposter
                  The Outposter

                  Gordon R. Dickson · standalone novel · 1972

                  similar byspace colonizationscience fictionother star systemsfar future

                  From the flap of the Lippincott first edition: "Rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief - the lottery played no favorites. If your number came up, you joined the rest of the losers marked for exile from overcrowded Earth. Shipped to a raw new outpost in space, you were officially called a colonist. But your whispered name was "garbage," your destination was oblivion, and you had few illusions about your chances of survival. The Outposters - a token band of specially trained personnel - were given the impossible task of guiding and protecting these outcasts in their harsh new environment. Will indifferent support from Earth, supply lines ran thin and raids by hostile aliens were increasing unchecked. Only one young Outposter, Mark Ten Roos, dared to challenge the system and change the odds. To help him, Mark hand-picked a strange assortment of allies from the new shipment of colonists: a brash opportunist, every instinct honed for personal survival; a midget woman with a professorship in philosophy; a widowed mathematician, expert in position astrophysics; an ex-marine with a dishonorable discharge. And help came to Mark from a source he had not expected - the daughter of the Outer Navy's ranking officer. When Mark Ten Roo put his plan into action, he knew he was also putting his life on the line."

                • Cover of Destiny's Road
                  Destiny's Road

                  Larry Niven · standalone novel · 1997

                  similar byspace colonizationscience fictionother star systemsfar future

                  Destiny's Road is a science fiction novel by American writer Larry Niven, first published in 1998. It follows Jemmy Bloocher's exploration of Destiny's Road, a long scar of once-melted rock seared onto the planet's surface by a spaceship's fusion drive. Jemmy is descended from the original Destiny colonists, who were stranded when their landing craft deserted them.

                • Cover of History of Rustum
                  History of Rustum

                  series · 10 books · 1959

                  completed

                  similar byspace colonizationscience fictionother star systemsfar future

                  Poul Anderson's History of Rustum follows a human colony on the planet Rustum across generations: Orbit Unlimited is a fix-up of four magazine stories from the colony's founding years, while New America gathers later Rustum stories from the mid-1970s. Rather than one throughline plot, it reads as an episodic future history of how a deliberately isolationist colony holds its founding ideals as it grows.

                • Cover of Isis
                  Isis

                  series · 3 books · 1980

                  completed

                  similar byspace colonizationscience fictionother star systemsfar future

                  The Keeper of the Isis Light, by Monica Hughes, opens a science-fiction trilogy for young readers set on the distant colony world of Isis, orbiting the star Ra, as new settlers from Earth arrive to find the planet already has a solitary young guardian who isn't glad to see them. The trilogy continues through The Guardian of Isis and The Isis Pedlar, later collected together as The Isis Trilogy.