After

New York 2140

Kim Stanley Robinson2017

pace
prose
structure
bleakness

5 of 6 directions open — nothing to recover from

More like it

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The Blue, Beautiful World
Karen Lord2023
As climate change reshapes Earth, an ensemble of activists and celebrities prepares humanity for an impending alien arrival.
Same earnest register, still ensemble cast
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January Fifteenth
Rachel Swirsky2022
Four women experience the day the Universal Basic Income is distributed. The story follows their differing social and economic perspectives.
Same earnest register, still cli-fi
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Termination Shock
Neal Stephenson2021
A billionaire builds a giant gun to fire sulfur into the atmosphere to cool the planet. Multiple characters react to this unilateral climate action.
earnest → wry, still ensemble cast
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Fifty Degrees Below
Kim Stanley Robinson2005
A scientist lives in a treehouse in a frozen Washington D.C. He uses bureaucracy and engineering to mitigate a sudden ice age.
Same earnest register, still cli-fi
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Contact
Carl Sagan1985
A radio astronomer detects a signal from Vega containing blueprints for a machine. Scientists work to decode the message and build the device.
Same earnest register
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Denser prose

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Against the Day
Thomas Pynchon2006
A massive ensemble cast navigates the globe between the 1893 World's Fair and WWI. The plot spans airships, math, and secret societies.
earnest → playful, still ensemble cast
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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.
earnest → dreamlike
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3 more ↓

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Too Like the Lightning
Ada Palmer2016
In a 25th-century utopia, a convict narrates the discovery of a boy who can perform miracles. The prose uses 18th-century styles and gender terms.
earnest → sardonic
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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.
earnest → meditative
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Shadow & Claw
Gene Wolfe1983
A torturer travels across a far-future Earth where technology is indistinguishable from magic. He recounts his exile in dense, archaic prose.
earnest → meditative
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Faster

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The Martian
Andy Weir2011
A man does arithmetic to stay alive on Mars. Problem, attempt, result, repeat.
earnest → wry
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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.
earnest → propulsive
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All Systems Red
Martha Wells2017
A self-aware security android hacks its own governor module to watch soap operas while protecting a team of scientists on a distant planet.
earnest → wry
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Skin Game
Jim Butcher2014
Wizard Harry Dresden joins a team of villains to rob a vault in the Underworld. It is a fast-paced heist set in a modern fantasy Chicago.
earnest → propulsive
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The Kaiju Preservation Society
John Scalzi2022
A food delivery driver joins a secret organization that travels to an alternate Earth to care for massive, dinosaur-like creatures.
earnest → playful
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Slower

pace-1prose+1bleak+2
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.
earnest → dreamlike
pace-1·prose+1·bleak+2
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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.
earnest → meditative
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3 more ↓

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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.
earnest → meditative
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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.
earnest → playful
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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.
earnest → playful
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Heavier

earnest → bleak, still cli-fi

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The Sheep Look Up
John Brunner1972
The United States collapses under total environmental toxicity and corporate greed. It follows several characters through a series of disasters.
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The Sea and Summer
George Turner1987
In a future Melbourne drowned by rising seas, the population is divided into the employed 'Sweet' and the welfare-dependent 'Swill'.
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The Deluge
Stephen Markley2023
A large cast of characters navigates the political, social, and environmental collapse of America over several decades of climate change.
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The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood1985
In a totalitarian state with a plummeting birth rate, a woman is enslaved as a reproductive vessel. She records her daily life and memories.
earnest → cold
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Doomsday Book
Connie Willis1992
A student travels to 14th-century England while a virus spreads in the present. She arrives during the Black Death due to a technical error.
earnest → bleak
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