LitQueuelitqueue

After

Level 7

Mordecai Roshwald1959

5 of 6 directions open — nothing heavier

More like it

1 more ↓

  • Dust

    Hugh Howey2013

    The final book in the Silo series. Juliette attempts to unite the underground silos and escape to the surface before they are destroyed.

    clinical → tense, still dystopian

    pace0·prose0·bleak-1

Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • Infinite Jest

    David Foster Wallace1996

    A sprawling narrative centered on a tennis academy, a halfway house, and a lethal film. The text includes hundreds of pages of detailed endnotes.

    clinical → sardonic, still dystopian

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak-1

  • Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

    William S. Burroughs

    A series of nonlinear vignettes follow a drug addict's hallucinations and travels. The prose is fragmented and satirical.

    clinical → sardonic, still dystopian

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak0

  • Winterlong

    Elizabeth Hand1990

    In a decaying, post-apocalyptic Washington D.C., a girl with empathic powers is drawn into the plots of a decadent ruling class.

    clinical → dreamlike, still dystopian

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak0

To recover

3 more ↓

  • Building a Second Brain

    Tiago Forte2022

    A guide to a digital organization system designed to store and retrieve ideas, notes, and information for long-term projects.

    clinical → earnest

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-3

  • 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.

    clinical → meditative

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-3

  • A Choice of Gods

    Clifford D. Simak1972

    After humanity vanishes, a few survivors live for centuries on a quiet Earth. They eventually learn where the rest of the population went.

    clinical → meditative, still post-apocalyptic

    pace-1·prose0·bleak-3

Faster

3 more ↓

  • Get Jiro!

    Anthony Bourdain2012

    In a future Los Angeles, master chefs rule as warlords. A sushi chef who kills rude customers is caught between two warring food factions.

    clinical → sardonic, still dystopian

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-2

  • The Martian

    Andy Weir2011

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

    clinical → wry

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-3

  • 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.

    clinical → propulsive

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-3

Slower

3 more ↓

  • Beelzebub's tales to his grandson

    Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff1950

    An extraterrestrial being explains the history and strange behaviors of humanity to his grandson during a long space voyage.

    clinical → meditative

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak-2

  • Translated Accounts

    James Kelman2001

    Anonymous witnesses describe life under a military regime. The prose uses broken, bureaucratic syntax to mimic a literal translation.

    clinical → bleak, still dystopian

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak0

  • Riddley Walker

    Russell Hoban1980

    A twelve-year-old boy travels across a primitive, post-nuclear England. The story is written entirely in a broken, phonetic future dialect.

    clinical → meditative, still dystopian

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak-1