After
The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy
Stanisław Lem
- pace
- prose
- structure
- bleakness
6 of 6 directions open
More like it
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Little Heroes
Norman Spinrad1987
A record company creates a computer-generated rock star to bypass human musicians. A cynical aging rocker is hired to give the digital avatar soul.
satirical → sardonic, still satire
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Tonguing the Zeitgeist
Lance Olsen1994
In a corporate future, a musician is surgically and mentally altered to fit a commercial image. It is a satire of media and body modification.
satirical → sardonic, still satire
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Immortality, Inc.
Robert Sheckley1959
A man dies in a car crash and wakes up in the future, where his mind has been placed into a stranger's body. He navigates a world of body-trading.
Same satirical register, still satire
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Wetware
Rudy Rucker1988
In a future where robots have gained independence, a bopper attempts to create a biological hybrid. It is a satire of evolution and corporate greed.
satirical → playful, still satire
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1 more ↓ ↑
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Stable Strategies and Others
Eileen Gunn2004
Short stories featuring corporate workers who use genetic engineering to become more competitive. The tone is satirical and surreal.
satirical → sardonic, still satire
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Denser prose
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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.
satirical → sardonic, still satire
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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.
satirical → playful
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3 more ↓ ↑
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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.
satirical → sardonic, still satire
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Neuromancer
William Gibson1984
A washed-up data thief is hired for one last job in a high-tech underworld. The prose is dense with technical jargon.
satirical → cold, still cyberpunk
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VAS
Steve Tomasula2002
A man considers a vasectomy while the book uses diagrams and varied typography to explore the history of eugenics and biotechnology.
satirical → clinical, still cyberpunk
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To recover
satirical → sardonic, still satire
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Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson1992
A pizza delivery driver and a teenage skateboarder investigate a digital virus that can crash the brains of hackers in a corporate-run Los Angeles.
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Headcrash
Bruce Bethke1995
A computer programmer loses his job and enters a virtual reality underworld to seek revenge on the corporate elite. It is a satire of 1990s tech.
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3 more ↓ ↑
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Redshirts
John Scalzi2012
Low-ranking crew members on a starship realize they are disposable characters in a sci-fi television show. They attempt to escape their fate.
satirical → playful, still satire
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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.
satirical → propulsive, still cyberpunk
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Year zero
Reid, Robert2012
Aliens discover that Earth's music is the best in the galaxy and they owe humanity trillions in copyright fines.
satirical → playful, still satire
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Faster
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Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits
David Wong2015
A young woman inherits her estranged father's criminal empire in a lawless future city. She must survive assassins using high-tech gadgets.
satirical → sardonic, still satire
pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1
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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.
satirical → propulsive, still cyberpunk
pace+1·prose-2·bleak-2
3 more ↓ ↑
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Slaughtermatic
Steve Aylett1998
A bank heist goes wrong when a time-traveling version of the protagonist appears in the vault. Reality and virtual simulations begin to blur.
satirical → sardonic, still satire
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Akira, Vol. 1
Katsuhiro Ōtomo1984
In a rebuilt post-WWIII Tokyo, two teenage bikers get caught in a government conspiracy after one develops psychic powers.
satirical → propulsive, still cyberpunk
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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.
satirical → sardonic, still satire
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Slower
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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.
satirical → dreamlike, still unreliable narrator
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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.
satirical → 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.
satirical → meditative
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Dandelion Wine
Ray Bradbury1946
A twelve-year-old boy experiences a series of vignettes over one summer in 1928 Illinois. The chapters focus on small-town life and aging.
satirical → elegiac
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For Us, the Living
Robert A. Heinlein2003
A 1930s pilot wakes up in the year 2086. The book consists of long dialogues explaining the social, economic, and sexual norms of the future.
satirical → earnest
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Heavier
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Dr. Adder
K. W. Jeter1984
In a broken future Los Angeles, a surgeon performs extreme genital modifications for a subculture of outcasts.
satirical → cynical, still cyberpunk
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A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess1962
A teenage gang leader is imprisoned and subjected to state-mandated psychological conditioning. The story is told in a slang called Nadsat.
satirical → sardonic, still satire
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3 more ↓ ↑
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The Stepford Wives
Ira Levin1972
A photographer moves to a suburb where the wives are unnervingly submissive. She investigates whether the local men are replacing them with robots.
satirical → tense, still satire
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Cat's Cradle
Kurt Vonnegut1963
A writer researches the creator of the atomic bomb and discovers a substance that freezes all water. He joins an island cult.
satirical → sardonic, still satire
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Chain-Gang All-Stars
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah2023
Prisoners in a private American penal system fight to the death in televised matches for a chance at freedom.
satirical → bleak, still satire
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