13 books like The Commonwealth Saga

I liked this book because it has a sense of humor and yet approaches interesting questions about how we might meet another species of intelligent life in the universe.

Sawyer is not a scientist, but an enthusiastic amateur astronomer, with training in anthropology and a fascination with the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, interests that inform many of his novels.

I also enjoyed this novel as a detective mystery with an astronomical puzzle that is part of its solution. 

I discovered Alastair Reynolds, who is now my favorite science fiction writer, by reading this book, which was a mind-opening experience. I especially enjoy his combining a kind of “film noir” sensibility with realistic science ideas (the latter is not surprising since he has a Ph.D. in astronomy.) 

This first novel in his series is an excellent way to delve into his marvelously imagined Universe, where humanity exists in a number of genetically modified variants, and intelligences have to contend with ancient and powerful machines that deem organic life too war-like to be permitted to live.

I bought this book in Hatchard’s bookshop because I liked the cover, and because I like stories about Hell. A great choice on my part—this wonderful crime/fantasy novel features a detective called Thomas Fool in the most lawless land there can be. Thomas has to investigate a series of grisly murders which threaten the Devil’s domain; and to make his police procedural story work Unsworth has to invent a whole new mythology of Hell in which murder is even possible. The writing is stunningly evocative and the logic of the world building is remarkable even if it is,  ultimately, bonkers. This book and its sequel, The Devil’s Evidence, are the noirest of noirs and are completely unputdownable. 

Arguably the greatest of all detectives, Sherlock Holmes died early in his career when his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sent him hurtling down the Reichenbach Falls in ‘The Final Problem’. But Holmes soon came back to life—firstly in The Return of Sherlock Holmes and in later years as a character in numerous spinoffs/riffs/reboots. One of the best of these is James Lovegrove’s series of Lovecraftian horror stories featuring Holmes and Watson. They are all great but the third one, Sherlock Holmes and the Sussex Sea-Devils, has the best title. Lovegrove writes stylishly and wittily and his deadpan approach to the absurd monsters he conjures up makes these a delicious read.   

Dante Valentine is a Necromance who works as an investigator for the police—solving murders by conjuring up the spirit of the dead person then asking, ‘Hey, who did this?’ Like Jim Butcher, Lilith blends humour and action, and she locates her stories in a unique futuristic/fantasy world in which demons wear black jeans. These books are afire with narrative energy and also brim with passion and love and eroticism. Dante Valentine is a superb kick-ass heroine and if you like a walk on the dark side, I’d warmly recommend the five volumes in this series. 

When I first encountered Harry Dresden, a professional wizard solving a double homicide in Chicago, I was instantly hooked by its noir, fantasy, and traditional mystery with dollops of humor. This novel—the first in The Dresden File series—kept me engaged the entire time with a fast-moving plot and interesting characters.

I could see in my mind’s eye Chicago’s skyscrapers and their reflection in Lake Michigan as Harry dug deeper into the crimes and the supernatural world. This was my first urban fantasy read, and Butcher’s ability to blend a private investigator story with the supernatural ensured it was not my last.

I think this novel, by physicist Gregory Benford, is one of the best fictional representations of how science is really done and of the real world of scientists and graduate students.

It is also an early exploration of the concept of tachyons, particles that cannot move slower or as slow as the speed of light but always have to go faster. (These have been proposed only in theory, but what makes them exciting is that they would travel backward in time.) In the book, that property enables people in the future to communicate with us in their past.

Another thing I like about this book is that some of his characters are thinly disguised (or not disguised) versions of real astronomers of the time.

This is my favorite hard sci-fi classic. I love the beautiful mix of real science (wormholes excepted), compelling story, and characters, and it touches on both first contact and the way in which human nature might cause us to react to it. That is the power combo, in my opinion!

The movie of the book was very good — Robert Zemeckis is a brilliant director — although it left out some fantastic details that, as a math and science fan, I really loved! (I won’t spoil it here; it’s too good.)

Ever wondered if you'd survive in the Mad Max universe? Here's the assurance you can, well maybe if you've loaded die. Choose your own adventure has been a staple literary source of my youth and Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson are both united champions of the genre. Freeway Fighter is one of their few which lends more to science than fantasy, and is thoroughly invigorating. For mind-bending characterization, here you've got the original immersion you need in self-discovery.

The biggest challenge to setting out a worldview within a universe is describing the detail about entities that imbues the feelings associated with living as those entities within it. Banks manages the sensation of living beings masterfully, where they are so alien and so abstract your pure imagination is put to the test. What would life be like for you as a jelly blob that flies around a gas giant? Pretty damn good thanks to Iain, and it's something I tackled in my book too with not nearly as much success it seems, at least yet.