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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 Space Blasters

anchored on:science fictiontransported to another worldcontemporaryadventurous

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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 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 about mourning — living through the death of a loved one and what loss does to the survivors.
  • 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 Restoree
                  Restoree

                  Anne McCaffrey · standalone novel · 1967

                  similar bytransported to another worldscience fictionadventurous

                  Torn from Earth by a bizarre and nameless black force, Sara has no idea where she is or why she inhabits a beautiful new body. Controlled by brutal guards and tamed by terror, she can not comprehend her role as a nurse for a man who appears to be an idiot. She discovers that the planet she had been brought to was Lothar and that the man she was caring for was its Regent, Sara knows the restorees had to escape. When they do, they become fugitives on a world of multiple evils. (adapted from the back cover of the Baen edition)

                • Cover of The Secret Sea
                  The Secret Sea

                  Barry Lyga · standalone novel · 2016

                  similar bytransported to another worldscience fictionadventurouscontemporaryyoung adult

                  "Three friends find themselves plunged into a world of quantum physics, a rare disease that only affects identical twins, and a mysterious fact about a real-life global catastrophe"-- Zak is standing on the subway platform when the tunnel starts to fill with water. He sees it before anyone else; a voice only he hears warns him to run. His friends Moira and Khalid believe this is more than a premonition, and soon all three find themselves in an alternate universe that is both familiar and seriously strange. As Zak unravels the mystery behind the voice, he faces decisions that may mean the end of their world at home-- if they can even get home!

                • Cover of Out of Their Minds
                  Out of Their Minds

                  Clifford D. Simak · standalone novel · 1970

                  similar byscience fictiontransported to another worldadventurouscontemporary

                  From the back cover of the first DAW printing: "Out of their minds and the force of their imagination, men have created countless beings, from demons and dragons and monsters of legend to story-book heroes and comic strip characters. What if their world were real - if vampires, devils and Don Quixote hobnobbed with Dagwood Bumstead and Charlie Brown. Such a world would have its fascinations... and its dreadful perils - if it existed. Horton Smith found out that it did exist... and that he was right in the middle of it!"

                • Cover of Rebecca's World: Journey to the Forbidden Planet
                  Rebecca's World: Journey to the Forbidden Planet

                  Terry Nation · standalone novel · 1975

                  similar bytransported to another worldscience fictionadventurouscontemporary

                  Rebecca is mysteriously transported to a distant planet as she looks at it through her father's astral telescope. There she makes friends with three very bizarre characters: Grisby, who has the most painful feet in the universe; Captain 'K', a reluctant and bespectacled superman; and Kovak, an unemployed spy known as the man of a thousand faces - all of them embarrassingly alike. She meets the sinister and smooth-talking Mister Glister, and his two henchmen, Lurk and Cringer. And she comes face to face with the evil GHOSTS who control the planet. Rebecca's new friends tell her about the legend of the GHOST tree and its strange power over the GHOSTS. They explain that if the tree could be found the GHOSTS could be banished forever. The only trouble is the tree is located somewhere in the heart of the Forbidden Lands-a dark and mysterious region filled with weird creatures and hidden perils-where no one has ever dared to venture. Much against their better judgement, Rebecca persuades her three companions to go there with her. Their exciting journey, with its dramatic climax, is the story of Rebecca's World.

                • Cover of Journey to Terezor
                  Journey to Terezor

                  Frank Asch · standalone novel · 1989

                  similar bytransported to another worldscience fictionadventurouscontemporarymiddle grade

                  During a devastating flood, Matt and his parents are transported to a mysterious planet inhabited by other misplaced earthlings and ruled by robots where Matt teams up with two young geniuses in an effort to escape back to Earth.

                • Cover of Transit
                  Transit

                  Edmund Cooper · standalone novel · 1964

                  similar bytransported to another worldscience fictionadventurous

                  Transit... to another world. As a human being - an Earthman - Richard Avery was not particularly successful. He was mediocre as a teacher, and a failure as an artist. The rewards of Earth had passed him by. Still... Earth was home. It was where he belonged, where he could at least go his way unnoticed. Until that afternoon in Kensington Gardens, and that gleaming, hypnotic crystal that transported him - instantaneously - to a new and alien world. He was not alone, at least. There were three other Earth people marooned with him, all without a hint of the location or reason. And four more oddly assorted individuals would have been hard to imagine... Together, they faced sudden, savage onslaughts from an unknown foe. Together, they faced a fantastic implacable environment. And alone, they faced themselves - for to win, or even to survive, they had to re-discover what it meant to be human... (from the back cover of the Lancer first American edition)

                • Cover of Star Wartz
                  Star Wartz

                  Patrick Tilley · standalone novel · 1995

                  similar bytransported to another worldscience fictionadventurouscontemporary

                  Andrew Webber is an ex British military pilot who was kicked out of the air force due to his wild flying. Becoming a freelance journalist he struggles to make ends meet. But one fateful day while opening junk mail he is drawn into investigating the New Intergalactic Fax Directory which he is invited to participate in. To find out more Andrew rings the number and makes a lunch appointment. Arriving at the offices of the Olympic Marketing Enterprises in down town Soho, he finds the place deserted. Noticing a copy of the Intergalactic Fax Directory he makes himself comfortable in what he thinks is a normal office setting and suddenly awakes to find himself transported to the other side of the universe. Thus begins Andrews adventures in the Rimworld; A chain of 1000 planets orbiting twin suns on the edge of the galaxy.

                • Cover of Un Lun Dun
                  Un Lun Dun

                  China Miéville · standalone novel · 2007

                  similar bytransported to another worldadventurouscontemporaryyoung adult

                  Un Lun Dun is a young adult fantasy novel by China Miéville, released in 2007. The title is derived from 'UnLondon,' the name of the alternate realm where the book is set. It also contains illustrations by Miéville. It was first released in January 2007. The novel also won the 2008 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book.

                • Cover of Almuric
                  Almuric

                  series · 1 book · 1964

                  similar bytransported to another worldadventurous+1 more

                  Published posthumously in 1964, Robert E. Howard's Almuric is a single planetary-romance novel rather than an ongoing series: Earthman Esau Cairn is transported to the savage world of Almuric, where he fights beast-men and wins the love of Altha, in a story indebted to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom books.

                • Cover of InterWorld
                  InterWorld

                  series · 3 books · 2007

                  similar byadventurousscience fictioncontemporaryyoung adult+1 more

                  InterWorld follows Joey Harker, an ordinary teenager who discovers he can walk between parallel Earths and is recruited into a band of alternate versions of himself defending the multiverse from two rival forces, one of magic and one of science, that want to conquer every reality. Michael Reaves developed the story with Neil Gaiman, and Reaves's daughter Mallory Reaves co-wrote the two sequels. It's a fast-moving, portal-hopping adventure aimed at younger readers rather than a slow-burn epic.

                • Cover of Bromeliad
                  Bromeliad

                  series · 3 books · 1989

                  completed

                  similar bytransported to another worldadventurouscontemporary+1 more

                  The Nome Trilogy, also known as The Bromeliad, is a trilogy of children's books by British writer Terry Pratchett, consisting of the books Truckers (1989), Diggers (1990) and Wings (1990). The trilogy tells the story of the Nomes, a race of tiny people from another world who now live hidden among humans. Through the books they struggle to survive in the human world and, once they learn of their history from an artefact known as "The Thing", make plans to return home.

                • Cover of No Passengers Beyond This Point
                  No Passengers Beyond This Point

                  Gennifer Choldenko · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar bytransported to another worldadventurouscontemporarymiddle grade

                  Fantastical adventures of three siblings as they travel to visit their uncle in Colorado.

                • Cover of The Transall Saga
                  The Transall Saga

                  Gary Paulsen · standalone novel · 1998

                  similar byscience fictiontransported to another worldadventurousyoung adult

                  The Transall Saga is a 1998 post-apocalyptic survival novel by American author Gary Paulsen. It is a survival story like most of his other books but also involves the science fiction genre. There are also themes of speculative evolution.

                • Cover of Podkayne of Mars
                  Podkayne of Mars

                  Robert A. Heinlein · standalone novel · 1963

                  similar byscience fictionadventurousyoung adult

                  From the back cover of the Baen 1995 edition: "Meet Podkayne Fries, a thoroughly modern Martian Ms. who thinks that Earth is not really fit for habitation and that humanity evolved in the now-exploded Fifth Planet. Poddy has one goal in life, to be the first female starship captain. She has her strategy all scoped out, and with her determination, looks and I.Q. she'll get there, never you doubt! But all work and no play would make Poddy a Dull Girl, so when a chance comes her way to travel to distant Earth via Venus with her elderly uncle, Poddy jumps at it, even if it does mean having her loathsome little brother along for the trip: Travel, Adventure, the chance to cuddle up (in a nice way) with real spaceship officers and ruthlessly pump their brains - she'll have it all. What Poddy doesn't know is that "Unca Tom" is more than her warmly supportive relative: he is also the Ambassador Plenipotentiary from Mars to the Three Planets Conference (travelling not quite incognito enough) and that certain people will stop at nothing to gain control of his vote - including kidnapping and doing terrible things to sweetly innocent Poddy Fries..."

                • Cover of Pi Andromeda
                  Pi Andromeda

                  Christopher Frost · standalone novel · 2013

                  similar bytransported to another worldscience fictionadventurouscontemporary

                  "Pi Andromeda is more than just a lesser star in the Andromeda constellation. In fact, it eventually will be a destination for all of us on this planet we call Earth. Roman Warwick, a successful architect, husband, and father gets to know this place all too well. The only problem is, he didn't ask to visit. Pi Andromeda takes the reader along with Roman as he is thrust into a new world in which he doesn't belong but will have a rather difficult time avoiding. Along the way he will face some interesting revelations, assume a challenging new role, and be all but forced to forget everything he thinks he knows to be true. Of course being an award-winning architect did not come easy and Roman is used to finding solutions to problems that arise unexpectedly. It will take more than ingenuity and a slide rule to get him out of his predicament and return him to those that mean more to him than his own being. Pi Andromeda is an interesting story that will captivate a reader's imagination and give a unique perspective on what the universe's secrets may contain. In addition to identifying with the main character's predicament and also his fears, readers can decide if they would agree with Roman's actions he takes in trying to regain everything he had that has been taken away." – quoted from this book's product page on Amazon.com as of 2017-07-17.

                • Cover of Starman Jones
                  Starman Jones

                  Robert A. Heinlein · standalone novel · 1953

                  similar byscience fictionadventurousyoung adult

                  Starman Jones, a 1953 science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, features a farm boy who wants to go to the stars. Charles Scribner's Sons published the book as part of the Heinlein juveniles series.

                • Cover of The Paradise Trap
                  The Paradise Trap

                  Catherine Jinks · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar bytransported to another worldadventurouscontemporarymiddle grade+1 more

                  Eleven-year-old Marcus is spending a week at the beach with his mother in a tiny old travel trailer, but boredom turns to terror when a new friend discovers a cellar that has magical doors through which people keep disappearing.

                • Cover of Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation
                  Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation

                  Edwin L. Arnold · standalone novel · 1905

                  similar bytransported to another worldscience fictionadventurous

                  Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation is a novel by English writer Edwin Lester Arnold, combining elements of fantasy and science fiction, first published in 1905. Its mediocre reception led Arnold to stop writing fiction. It has since become his best-known work, and is considered important in the development of 20th century science fiction in that it is a precursor and possible inspiration to Edgar Rice Burroughs's classic A Princess of Mars (1917), which spawned the planetary romance aka 'sword and planet' genre. Ace Books reprinted Arnold's novel in paperback in 1964, retitling it Gulliver [sic] of Mars. A more recent Bison Books edition (2003) was issued as Gullivar of Mars, adapting the Ace title to Arnold's spelling.

                • Cover of The Kaiju Preservation Society
                  The Kaiju Preservation Society

                  John Scalzi · standalone novel · 2022

                  similar byscience fictionadventurouscontemporary

                  Covid lands Jamie with no job, no money and a lot of obligations. She'll take pretty much any job. After a detour through pizza deliveries, she says yes to a job handling large animals, that need protection. But when it comes to further details, everybody's very secretive. First stop: Greenland.

                • Cover of Movie Maniacs
                  Movie Maniacs

                  series · 3 books · 2011

                  similar bytransported to another worldadventurouscontemporary+2 more

                • Cover of Watchers
                  Watchers

                  Dean R. Koontz · standalone novel · 1987

                  similar byscience fictionadventurouscontemporary

                  This probably qualifies as a science-based adventure rather than a science fiction novel. The premise, and only speculative fiction element, is that a U.S. government funded laboratory creates a golden retriever that's as intelligent as a human for use in intelligence gathering and also creates a monkey hybrid that's intended for a military police dog role and as a killing machine on battlefields. The animals escape and the story plays out as a straight adventure novel with a good chunk of romance thrown in.

                • Cover of Fireball
                  Fireball

                  series · 3 books · 1981

                  completed

                  similar byscience fictionadventurouscontemporaryyoung adult+1 more

                • Cover of My Teacher Is an Alien
                  My Teacher Is an Alien

                  series · 4 books · 1989

                  similar byscience fictionadventurouscontemporarymiddle grade

                  My Teacher Is an Alien is a four-book science fiction children's book series authored by Bruce Coville. The titles include:My Teacher Is an Alien (1989) My Teacher Fried My Brains (1991) My Teacher Glows in the Dark (1991) My Teacher Flunked the Planet (1992)

                • Cover of The Stonehenge Gate
                  The Stonehenge Gate

                  Jack Williamson · standalone novel · 2005

                  similar byscience fictionadventurouscontemporary

                  Stumbling on ancient stones in the Sahara Desert, four adventurous excavators and poker buddies realize that they have discovered a gateway to other worlds, from technologically advanced planets to primitive civilizations.