The Mountain in the Sea

Red Moon

Kim Stanley Robinson2018

An American engineer, a travel reporter, and a pregnant revolutionary flee across a colonized Moon after a political murder.

pace0·prose0·bleak-1

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.

Same meditative register

pace-1·prose+1·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.

meditative → dreamlike

pace-1·prose+1·bleak0

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.

meditative → sardonic

pace0·prose+1·bleak0

Wallbanger

Alice Clayton2012

Caroline is kept awake by her neighbor's loud sexual encounters. She confronts him, leading to a relationship built on banter and frustration.

meditative → playful

pace+1·prose-2·bleak-2

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

John Gray1992

A guide to heterosexual relationships that attributes communication conflicts to inherent psychological differences between men and women.

meditative → earnest

pace0·prose-2·bleak-2

Wildfire

Hannah Grace2023

Two college students who had a one-night stand discover they are working as counselors at the same summer camp.

meditative → playful

pace+1·prose-2·bleak-2

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.

meditative → propulsive

pace+2·prose-2·bleak-2

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.

meditative → propulsive

pace+2·prose-2·bleak-1

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.

meditative → playful

pace+2·prose-2·bleak-2

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.

Same meditative register

pace-1·prose+1·bleak-1

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.

Same meditative register

pace-1·prose+1·bleak-1

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.

meditative → elegiac

pace-1·prose0·bleak-2

Fiasco

Stanisław Lem1986

Humans on a spaceship attempt to force communication with an alien civilization that refuses to respond. It ends in a total failure of logic.

meditative → clinical, still hard scifi

pace0·prose0·bleak+1

Salt

Adam Roberts2000

Two groups of colonists with opposing ideologies settle on a salt-covered planet, leading to a total breakdown of their society.

meditative → bleak, still hard scifi

pace0·prose0·bleak+1

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.

meditative → cold

pace0·prose0·bleak+1