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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 The Missing Man

anchored on:science fictionnear future

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 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 Fahrenheit 451
                  Fahrenheit 451

                  series · 2 books · 1951

                  completed

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                  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.

                • Cover of Blade Runner Universe
                  Blade Runner Universe

                  series · 6 books · 1968

                  similar byscience fictionidentitynear futurebig city+2 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.

                • Cover of Eastern Standard Tribe
                  Eastern Standard Tribe

                  Cory Doctorow · standalone novel · 2004

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                  Eastern Standard Tribe is a 2004 science fiction novel by Canadian writer Cory Doctorow. Like Doctorow's first two books, the entire text was released under a Creative Commons license on Doctorow's website, allowing the whole text of the book to be read for free and distributed without the publisher's permission.

                • Cover of A Clockwork Orange
                  A Clockwork Orange

                  series · 4 books · 1962

                  completed

                  similar byscience fictionsurveillancenear futureour worldbig citydystopia+1 more

                  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.

                • Cover of Stranger in a Strange Land
                  Stranger in a Strange Land

                  Robert A. Heinlein · standalone novel · 1961

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                  Stranger in a Strange Land is a 1961 science fiction novel by the American author Robert A. Heinlein. It tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human who comes to Earth in early adulthood after being born on the planet Mars and raised by Martians, and explores his interaction with and eventual transformation of Terran culture.

                • Cover of I Will Fear No Evil
                  I Will Fear No Evil

                  Robert A. Heinlein · standalone novel · 1970

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                  I Will Fear No Evil is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, originally serialised in Galaxy and published in hardcover in 1970. The title is taken from Psalm 23:4.

                • Cover of Childhood's End
                  Childhood's End

                  Arthur C. Clarke · standalone novel · 1953

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                  Childhood's End is a 1953 science fiction novel by the British author Arthur C. Clarke. The story follows a peaceful alien invasion of Earth by mysterious Overlords, whose arrival begins decades of apparent utopia under indirect alien rule, at the cost of human identity and culture.

                • Cover of The Drowned World
                  The Drowned World

                  J. G. Ballard · standalone novel · 1962

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                  The Drowned World is a 1962 science fiction novel by J. G. Ballard. It first appeared in shortened form in the January 1962 issue of the UK edition of Science Fiction Adventures and was published in book form later that year by Victor Gollancz Ltd in London; an American edition followed from Berkley Medallion. Critics have grouped The Drowned World with Ballard's early science-fiction novels as part of an "ambiguous apocalypse" sequence that also includes The Drought and The Crystal World, from the period in which he was developing the ideas he described as "inner space". Set in a future in which solar radiation has melted the polar ice caps and transformed London into a flooded tropical lagoon, the novel follows biologist Robert Kerans as he becomes increasingly drawn toward the altered environment rather than toward restoring the old social order.

                • Cover of Library of America P. K. Dick Collection
                  Library of America P. K. Dick Collection

                  series · 9 books · 1962

                  completed

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                • Cover of The Affinities
                  The Affinities

                  Robert Charles Wilson · standalone novel · 2015

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                  After becoming a part of the Tau, one of twenty-two large global network Affinities in the near future, young Adam Fisk thinks his life has improved for the better until the different Affinities begin to go to war with one another -- in a conflict that will change Adam's world forever.

                • UU
                  Uglies Universe

                  series · 9 books · 2005

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                  Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series is set roughly three centuries in the future, after industrial collapse, in a society that classifies everyone by mandatory cosmetic-surgery life stages - Uglies, Pretties, Middle Pretties, and Crumblies - policed by the surveillance division Special Circumstances. Tally Youngblood, the original tetralogy's protagonist, initially awaits her own operation before learning it also surgically dulls independent thought, driving her toward the hidden resistance community called the Smoke. Beyond the four core novels (Uglies, Pretties, Specials, Extras), the franchise extends into other formats, including the manga-influenced graphic novel Shay's Story, co-written with Devin Grayson, and a later Impostors spin-off series.

                • Cover of Never Let Me Go
                  Never Let Me Go

                  Kazuo Ishiguro · standalone novel · 2005

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                  Never Let Me Go is a 2005 science fiction novel by the British author Kazuo Ishiguro. It was shortlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize, for the 2006 Arthur C. Clarke Award and the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award. Time magazine named it the best novel of 2005. It included the novel in its '100 Best English-language novels published since 1923—the beginning of TIME'. It also received an ALA Alex Award in 2006. A film adaptation directed by Mark Romanek was released in 2010.

                • Cover of Time Is the Simplest Thing
                  Time Is the Simplest Thing

                  Clifford D. Simak · standalone novel · 1961

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                  Time Is the Simplest Thing is a science fiction novel by American writer Clifford D. Simak, first published in 1961. The story combines paranormal abilities with themes of space and time travel. The underlying theme is intolerance of ordinary people towards those with unusual abilities.

                • Cover of Beyond This Horizon
                  Beyond This Horizon

                  Robert A. Heinlein · standalone novel · 1948

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                  From the front flap of a 2001 Baen reprint: "Utopia has been achieved. For centuries, disease, hunger, poverty, and war have been things found only in the history tapes. And applied genetics has given men and women the bodies of athletes and a lifespan of over a century. They should all have been very happy... But Hamilton Felix is bored. And he is the culmination of a star line, each of his last thirty ancestors chosen for superior genes. Hamilton is, as far as genetics can produce one, the ultimate man. And this ultimate man can see no reason why the human race should survive, and has no intention of continuing the pointless comedy. However, Hamilton's life is about to become less boring. A secret cabal of revolutionaries who find utopia not just boring, but desperately in need of leaders who know just What Needs to be Done, are planning to revolt and put themselves in charge. Knowing of Hamilton's disenchantment with the modern world, they have recruited him to join their Glorious Revolution. Big mistake! The revolutionaries are about to find out that recruiting a superman was definitely not a good idea..."

                • Cover of The Light of Other Days
                  The Light of Other Days

                  Arthur C. Clarke & Stephen Baxter · standalone novel · 2000

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                  An industrialist devises a technique to use tiny wormholes as light pipes to enable viewing of any event anywhere; and subsequently it becomes possible to use them to view any event in the past as well. The effects on society are enormous.

                • Cover of Shadrach in the Furnace
                  Shadrach in the Furnace

                  Robert Silverberg · standalone novel · 1976

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                  Shadrach in the Furnace is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert Silverberg, first published as a serial in Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine in the August, September, and October 1976 issues. It was subsequently published by Bobbs Merrill in 1976. The novel was nominated in 1976 for the Nebula Award, and in 1977 for the Hugo Award.

                • Cover of Socialist Union of American States
                  Socialist Union of American States

                  series · 4 books · 1989

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                  Maureen F. McHugh's China Mountain Zhang is set in a 22nd-century America reorganized along socialist lines under Chinese global dominance, told through several interwoven characters including its gay, mixed-race title character navigating a society with no comfortable place for either trait. The related novella Protection returns to the same future without following Zhang directly.

                • Cover of Dogs of War (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
                  Dogs of War (Adrian Tchaikovsky)

                  series · 3 books · 2017

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                  Adrian Tchaikovsky's Dogs of War follows Rex, a genetically engineered "Good Boy" - a hulking bioform supersoldier built for a private military contractor - as he begins to question the nature of his own obedience and personhood after his handler disappears. Dogs of War, Bear Head, and Bee Speaker widen from that first book's battlefield into questions of AI rights, corporate power, and non-human consciousness across a near-future Earth. The trilogy uses its engineered-animal soldiers to interrogate free will and loyalty rather than play them as straightforward action heroes.

                • Cover of Oath of Fealty
                  Oath of Fealty

                  Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle · standalone novel · 1981

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                  Oath of Fealty is a 1981 novel by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, published originally by Phantasia Press, then by Timescape Books, with numerous reprints. Set in the near future, it involves an arcology, a large inhabited structure, called Todos Santos, which rises above a crime-ridden Los Angeles, California, but has little beyond casual contact with the city. The novel popularized the phrase "think of it as evolution in action", which occurs elsewhere in Niven's books. The novel anticipated the building of the Los Angeles subway. It was included in David Pringle's book Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels.

                • Cover of The Dream Master
                  The Dream Master

                  Roger Zelazny · standalone novel · 1966

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                  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 Stand on Zanzibar
                  Stand on Zanzibar

                  John Brunner · standalone novel · 1968

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                  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.

                • Cover of Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
                  Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

                  Kate Wilhelm · standalone novel · 1976

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                  Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang is a science fiction novel by American writer Kate Wilhelm, published in 1976. The novel is composed of three parts, "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang," "Shenandoah," and "At the Still Point," and is set in a post-apocalyptic era, a concept popular among authors who took part in the New Wave Science Fiction movement in the 1960s.

                • Cover of We Can Build You
                  We Can Build You

                  Philip K. Dick · standalone novel · 1972

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                  We Can Build You is a 1972 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. Written in 1962 as The First in Our Family, it remained unpublished until appearing in serial form as A. Lincoln, Simulacrum in the November 1969 and January 1970 issues of Amazing Stories magazine, re-titled by editor Ted White. The novel was issued as a mass market paperback original by DAW Books in 1972, its final title provided by publisher Donald A. Wollheim. Its first hardcover edition was published in Italy in 1976, and Vintage issued a trade paperback in 1994.

                • Cover of Brave New World
                  Brave New World

                  series · 8 books · 1932

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                  Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel imagines a future World State where reproduction, social caste, and desire are all engineered before birth, and the population is kept content through conditioning, sleep-hypnosis, and a mood-altering drug called soma. The story follows the disruption this seemingly stable order suffers when an outsider raised beyond its reach is brought into it, exposing what the society traded away for comfort and order. Some editions pair the novel with Huxley's own 1958 nonfiction essay collection, Brave New World Revisited, which reassesses the book's ideas rather than continuing its story.