Jurassic Park

Deepsix

Jack McDevitt2000

A pilot leads a team to a planet that will be destroyed by a rogue moon in three weeks. They must find artifacts before the collision.

Same tense register, still survival

pace0·prose0·bleak0

Nova Express

William S. Burroughs1964

An experimental narrative uses the cut-up technique to depict a war between intergalactic criminals and the police. It is a collage of imagery.

tense → sardonic, still science fiction

pace-1·prose+2·bleak+1

Dhalgren

Samuel R. Delany1975

An amnesiac wanderer enters Bellona, a city cut off from the world where time and geography shift. He joins a gang and writes poetry.

tense → dreamlike

pace-2·prose+2·bleak+1

Valis

Philip K. Dick1981

A man experiences a beam of pink light that imparts vast information. The narrative explores his mental breakdown and search for God in California.

tense → meditative

pace-1·prose+2·bleak+1

The Last Question

Isaac Asimov2007

A short story told in seven vignettes spanning billions of years. Humanity asks a supercomputer if the heat death of the universe can be avoided.

tense → meditative, still science fiction

pace0·prose-1·bleak-1

Dream Park

Steven Barnes1981

A security chief investigates a real death during a high-stakes holographic role-playing game. The story tracks the game mechanics and the murder.

tense → propulsive, still science fiction

pace0·prose-1·bleak-1

The Butterfly Kid

Chester Anderson1967

Hippie protagonists in Greenwich Village discover that a new drug allows them to manifest hallucinations into reality to fight an alien invasion.

pace0·prose-1·bleak-1

The 22 Murders of Madison May

Max Barry2021

A journalist pursues a killer who murders the same woman across multiple parallel realities. The story follows her jumps between different lives.

tense → propulsive, still technothriller

pace+1·prose0·bleak0

The Martian

Andy Weir2011

A man does arithmetic to stay alive on Mars. Problem, attempt, result, repeat.

tense → wry

pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

Ready Player One

Ernest Cline2008

A teenager in a dystopian future hunts for a digital easter egg inside a massive simulation. The quest relies on 1980s pop culture trivia.

tense → propulsive

pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

Invisible Cities

Italo Calvino1972

Marco Polo describes fifty-five imaginary cities to Kublai Khan. The book is a series of short, prose-poem meditations on urban existence.

tense → meditative

pace-2·prose+2·bleak0

Gödel, Escher, Bach

Douglas R. Hofstadter1979

An exploration of how cognition emerges from hidden neurological patterns. It uses math, art, and music to explain self-referential systems.

tense → playful

pace-2·prose+2·bleak-1

Ulysses

James Joyce1914

Three characters wander through Dublin on a single day in 1904. Each chapter uses a different literary style to mimic thoughts and sensations.

tense → playful

pace-2·prose+2·bleak0

Hellspark

Janet Kagan1988

A linguist travels to a new planet to investigate a murder. She must determine if the local species is sentient while navigating a conspiracy.

Same tense register, still science fiction

pace+1·prose+1·bleak+2

The Running Man

Richard Bachman

A man enters a deadly reality show to fund medical care for his daughter. He must survive thirty days while the entire world hunts him for money.

tense → propulsive, still science fiction

pace+1·prose0·bleak+2

Strangers

Gardner Dozois1978

An artist living among the alien Cian on a distant planet falls in love with a local woman and attempts to navigate their incompatible biology.

tense → elegiac, still science fiction

pace-1·prose+1·bleak+2