More like Purpose
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- Kairos
series11 books1962
completed
similar by+2 more
The Time Quintet is a science fantasy series of five young adult novels written by American author Madeleine L'Engle and made up of A Wrinkle in Time (1962), A Wind in the Door (1973), A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978), Many Waters (1986), and An Acceptable Time (1989).
- VALIS
series4 books1981
completed
similar byidentityreflective+3 more
The VALIS trilogy is a set of science fiction/philosophical novels by author Philip K. Dick which include VALIS (1981), The Divine Invasion (1981), and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982). Dick's first novel about the VALIS concept originally titled "VALISystem A", was published as Radio Free Albemuth after Dick's death in 1985.
- Whileaway
series4 books1972
completed
similar byreflectivecontemporary+3 more
Joanna Russ's The Female Man (1975) is a single feminist science fiction novel, not a multi-book series, built around four women from parallel timelines with very different gender arrangements. One of them, Janet, comes from Whileaway, an all-female utopian Earth ten centuries in the future where men died out in a plague; the other three come from realities closer to Russ's own, and their collisions are used to interrogate what womanhood and equality could mean under different social rules.
- The Blue Ant Trilogy
series3 books2003
similar bycontemporary+2 more
Hubertus Bigend is a fictional character appearing in the third trilogy of novels of science fiction and literary author William Gibson. Bigend is the antihero of Gibson's Pattern Recognition (2003), Spook Country (2007) and Zero History (2010). In an interview Gibson says "I've always had a sense of Bigend as someone who presents himself as though he knows what's going on, but who in fact doesn't. It's just my sense of the subtext of the character: he's bullshitting himself, at the same time as he's bullshitting all of us."
- Concrete Island
J. G. Ballardstandalone novel1974
similar byidentityliterary & generalreflectiveour worldcontemporary
Architect Robert Maitland crashes his car onto a stretch of wasteland trapped between three converging motorways -- visible from thousands of cars, reachable by none of them. Injured and unable to climb back to the road, Maitland adapts to life on what he starts calling the Island, scavenging food thrown from car windows, and discovers he isn't alone: a runaway sex worker hiding in a bunker, and a brain-damaged former circus acrobat, both long past expecting rescue. What begins as a survival story turns into a question of whether Maitland even wants to leave. A J. G. Ballard novel of urban isolation, grouped with Crash and High-Rise.
- Dream Archipelago
series16 books1976
completed
similar byidentityliterary & general+2 more
Christopher Priest's Dream Archipelago stories return again and again to a vast chain of islands stretched across a world locked in permanent, distant war between two continental powers, without ever quite settling whether the archipelago is a real place or something closer to collective dream or fiction within the fiction. Novels like The Affirmation and The Islanders, along with numerous short stories, revisit the setting from different, often contradictory angles rather than building one continuous narrative. The ambiguity between what's real and what's invented is treated as the point, not a gap to be resolved.
- Castle Rock
series16 books1978
similar bycontemporary
Castle Rock is the fictional Maine town that links a cluster of otherwise separate Stephen King novels and novellas, including The Dead Zone, Cujo, The Dark Half, Needful Things, and Elevation. Rather than telling one continuous story, the books share a setting and occasional recurring figures, such as Sheriff Alan Pangborn, while each follows its own self-contained plot and cast. Any title can be read on its own without needing the others.
- Lost
Gregory Maguirestandalone novel2001
similar byidentityliterary & generalreflectiveour worldcontemporary
Lost is a 2001 novel by American author Gregory Maguire. Unlike many of Maguire's other adult novels, Lost is set in the real world. The novel's concept is that the protagonist is a distant relative of the man who inspired Charles Dickens' character of Ebenezer Scrooge.
- The Satanic Verses
Salman Rushdiestandalone novel1988
similar byidentityliterary & generalour worldcontemporary+1 more
The Satanic Verses is the fourth novel by British–Indian writer Salman Rushdie. First published in September 1988, the book was inspired by the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. As with his previous books, Rushdie used magical realism and relied on contemporary events and people to create his characters. The title refers to the Satanic Verses, a group of Quranic verses about three pagan Meccan goddesses: Allāt, Al-Uzza, and Manāt. The part of the story that deals with the satanic verses was based on accounts from the historians al-Waqidi and al-Tabari.
- A Visit from the Goon Squad
series2 books2010
similar byliterary & generalreflectivecontemporary+1 more
Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad follows a loosely connected group of characters orbiting the music industry across several decades, told through interlocking chapters that jump between narrators, timelines, and, in one chapter, a PowerPoint presentation. The Candy House returns to several of the same characters and their descendants a decade later, in a world reshaped by a technology that lets people access and share their memories. Egan links the two books through recurring characters more than a continuous plot.
- Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Richard Bachstandalone novel1970
similar byidentityliterary & generalreflectiveour worldcontemporary
Jonathan Livingston Seagull is an allegorical fable in novella form written by American author Richard Bach and illustrated with black-and-white photographs shot by Russell Munson. It is about a seagull who is trying to learn about flying, personal reflection, freedom, and self-realization. It was first published in book form in 1970 with little advertising or expectations; by the end of 1972, over a million copies were in print, the book having reached the number-one spot on bestseller lists mostly through word of mouth recommendations.
- Mother Night
Kurt Vonnegut & Jr.standalone novel1962
similar byidentityliterary & generalreflectiveour world
Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American playwright who grew up in Germany, writes his memoirs from an Israeli prison cell awaiting trial for war crimes. As the Nazis rose to power, Campbell stayed on, married a German actress, and was recruited by an American agent to serve as a double agent, broadcasting Nazi propaganda over the radio while secretly passing coded intelligence to the Allies. The catch, as Campbell tells it, is that he became one of the war's most effective propagandists in the process, whatever his loyalties. Kurt Vonnegut's darkest novel asks what a person becomes when the mask he wears for a cause is indistinguishable from his face.
- Ghostwritten
David Mitchellstandalone novel1999
similar byliterary & generalreflectiveour worldcontemporary+1 more
Various individuals around the globe cross paths, while the complexities of modern societies lead to human civilization's inevitable end.
- Briefing for a Descent Into Hell
Doris Lessingstandalone novel1971
similar byidentityliterary & generalreflectiveour worldcontemporary
Briefing for a Descent into Hell is a 1971 psychological novel by British novelist Doris Lessing. It was shortlisted for that the 1971 Booker Prize.
- Empire of the Sun
series2 books1984
completed
similar byreflective+3 more
J. G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun draws on his own childhood to follow Jim, a British boy separated from his parents in Japanese-occupied Shanghai during World War II and interned in a civilian camp for the rest of the war. Ballard revisited the same period and a version of the same character years later in The Kindness of Women, a more explicitly fictionalized continuation into Jim's adult life. Empire of the Sun is the more directly autobiographical and better-known of the two.
