After
The Pisstown chaos
David Ohle2007
- pace
- prose
- structure
- bleakness
5 of 6 directions open — nothing heavier
More like it
Same sardonic register, still dystopian
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Brave New World
Aldous Huxley1932
In a future of genetic engineering and mandatory happiness, a man from a 'savage' reservation is brought into a high-tech London society.
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Stand on Zanzibar
John Brunner1968
A fragmented portrait of an overpopulated 2010. The story uses news feeds and slogans to track a spy and a student in a corporate-run world.
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The Year of the Flood
Margaret Atwood2009
Two women survive a man-made plague within the confines of a religious cult. The story moves between their past and the empty present.
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The Wanting Seed
Anthony Burgess1962
In an overpopulated future, a couple navigates a society that enforces infertility. The state eventually collapses into cannibalism and war.
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1 more ↓ ↑
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Shadrach in the Furnace
Robert Silverberg1976
A doctor serves a global dictator who is obsessed with achieving immortality. He must oversee gruesome experiments to transplant the Khan's mind.
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Denser prose
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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.
Same sardonic register, still dystopian
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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.
Same sardonic register
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3 more ↓ ↑
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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.
sardonic → meditative
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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.
Same sardonic register, still dystopian
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Hunter of Worlds
C. J. Cherryh1977
A human is abducted by the Iduve, a cold and powerful alien race, to serve as a translator and pawn in their internal political conflicts.
sardonic → cold
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To recover
sardonic → playful
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Electric Idol
Katee Robert2022
In a modern-day Olympus, Eros is ordered to kill Psyche but chooses to enter a fake marriage with her to protect her from his mother.
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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.
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3 more ↓ ↑
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Fifty Shades of Grey
E.L. James2000
A college student enters a sexual contract with a wealthy businessman. The story focuses on their power dynamics and BDSM encounters.
sardonic → earnest
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Smokin' Seventeen
Janet Evanovich2011
A bounty hunter investigates bodies found in her boss's lot while choosing between three suitors. The story follows her daily mishaps in New Jersey.
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The Martian
Andy Weir2011
A man does arithmetic to stay alive on Mars. Problem, attempt, result, repeat.
sardonic → wry
pace+2·prose-2·bleak-3
Faster
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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.
Same sardonic register, still dystopian
pace+2·prose-2·bleak-2
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The Martian
Andy Weir2011
A man does arithmetic to stay alive on Mars. Problem, attempt, result, repeat.
sardonic → wry
pace+2·prose-2·bleak-3
3 more ↓ ↑
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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.
sardonic → propulsive
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Red Rising
Pierce Brown2014
A laborer on Mars discovers his caste is being lied to and undergoes surgery to infiltrate the ruling elite. He joins a brutal war games academy.
sardonic → propulsive, still dystopian
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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.
sardonic → wry
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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.
sardonic → dreamlike
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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.
sardonic → 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.
sardonic → meditative
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Translated Accounts
James Kelman2001
Anonymous witnesses describe life under a military regime. The prose uses broken, bureaucratic syntax to mimic a literal translation.
sardonic → bleak, still dystopian
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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.
sardonic → elegiac
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