LitQueuelitqueue

After

The Technicolor Time Machine

Harry Harrison1967

5 of 6 directions open — nothing to recover from

More like it

1 more ↓

  • The Company

    Tom Holt2008

    A man takes a job at a firm where the employees are immortal and the CEO is the devil. It is a workplace satire about corporate bureaucracy.

    Same playful register, still satire

    pace0·prose0·bleak0

Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    playful → dreamlike

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+2

  • 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.

    playful → sardonic, still satire

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+2

  • City of Saints and Madmen

    Jeff Vandermeer2001

    A collection of stories, histories, and pamphlets about the city of Ambergris. It uses found documents to build a surreal urban history.

    playful → dreamlike

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+2

Faster

playful → sardonic, still satire

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    pace+1·prose+1·bleak+1

  • The Martian

    Andy Weir2011

    A man does arithmetic to stay alive on Mars. Problem, attempt, result, repeat.

    playful → wry

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak0

  • 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.

    playful → propulsive

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak0

Slower

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    playful → meditative

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak+1

  • The Pale King

    David Foster Wallace2011

    An unfinished, experimental novel about the mundane daily operations of an IRS processing center in 1985 Illinois.

    playful → sardonic, still satire

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak+2

  • 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.

    Same playful register

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak0

Heavier

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    playful → sardonic, still satire

    pace0·prose0·bleak+3

  • 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.

    playful → bleak, still satire

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+3

  • This Is the Way the World Ends

    James Morrow1986

    A man buys a suit to survive a nuclear war and is put on trial by the ghosts of people who will never be born. It is a satire of nuclear policy.

    playful → sardonic, still satire

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+3