Notes from a Regicide

Slow Gods

Catherine Webb2025

elegiac → tense, still space opera

pace0·prose0·bleak0

Inherit the Stars

James P. Hogan1977

Scientists find a 50,000-year-old human corpse on the moon. The story follows their attempt to solve the biological and temporal puzzle.

elegiac → dark, still space opera

pace+1·prose+1·bleak+1

Transition

Iain Banks2009

Agents of a secret organization travel between parallel Earths to manipulate history. The story shifts between multiple perspectives.

elegiac → dark, still space opera

pace+1·prose+1·bleak+1

A World Between

Norman Spinrad1979

On a media-saturated planet, a man and woman lead opposing factions during a global ideological war between two off-world superpowers.

elegiac → dark, still space opera

pace+1·prose+1·bleak+1

Radiance

Catherynne M. Valente2015

A documentary filmmaker disappears on Venus in an alternate 1980s solar system. The story is told through scripts, interviews, and letters.

elegiac → dreamlike, still space opera

pace0·prose+3·bleak+1

Perhaps the Stars

Ada Palmer2021

A global war between ideological factions reaches its conclusion. The story is told through a dense, 18th-century style narrative voice.

elegiac → meditative, still space opera

pace+1·prose+3·bleak+1

To Sail Beyond the Sunset

Robert A. Heinlein1987

The mother of Lazarus Long recounts her life from the 1880s through a century of time travel and rejuvenation. It is a non-linear memoir.

elegiac → playful, still space opera

pace0·prose+1·bleak-1

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.

elegiac → wry, still space opera

pace+2·prose0·bleak-1

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.

elegiac → wry, still space opera

pace+2·prose0·bleak-1

The Star Wars Trilogy

George Lucas2018

A farm boy joins a rebellion against a galactic empire. He learns to use a mystical force under the guidance of an exiled knight.

elegiac → earnest, still space opera

pace+2·prose+1·bleak0

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.

elegiac → dreamlike

pace-1·prose+3·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.

elegiac → meditative

pace-1·prose+3·bleak0

Consider Phlebas

Iain Banks1987

A shape-shifting mercenary works for an alien empire to retrieve a rogue AI during a galactic war. He faces a series of deadly set-pieces.

elegiac → bleak, still space opera

pace+1·prose+2·bleak+2

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.

elegiac → bleak, still time travel

pace0·prose+1·bleak+2