Here are 96 books that The Three-Body Problem fans have personally recommended once you finish the The Three-Body Problem series.
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I am a scientist, educator, successful entrepreneur, and author. I believe that human civilization is threatened by the wonderful and dangerous technologies that we created in the last two centuries: fossil fuels, nuclear weapons, gene editing, AI, and social media. As a creator of technologies, I feel responsible that more hasn’t been done to properly control them. My current mission is to sound an alarm about the potential tyranny of technology through my novels, 100 Years to Extinction and the sequel, 12 Years to AI Singularity, on my website and on social media. While the recommended books on my list are nonfiction, my fictional story presents the science and technology accurately as nonfiction would.
As in my second recommendation, Harari adds the historical perspective to humanity’s survival.
The coming battle with AI is just the latest for humans. One hundred thousand years ago, at least six humanoid species inhabited the Earth and battled for survival. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens.
Harari does a beautiful job of explaining how our species succeed in the battle for dominance. He describes how our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms; how did we come to believe in gods, nations, and human rights; to trust money, books, and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables, and consumerism?
We need to understand our past to properly control our future with AI.
100,000 years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?
In Sapiens, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the…
I grew up on a diet of dystopian fiction, and when I first began taking craft more seriously and diving into short stories, that was the genre I found myself writing most. I suppose what draws me to the genre is how dystopian fiction has the ability to illuminate society’s faults and injustices and humanity as a whole, the bleak futures that it could create if certain ideologies were allowed to persist, the way individual behaviours and actions can well shape the future and dictate whether it becomes one filled with hope or one that falls into disaster.
What fascinates me most about this novella is its ability to capture such depth and fullness in such a short length.
This book explores the concept of time and language, and how the way humans perceive time vastly differs from the alien species, and the way language ultimately affects time perception and decision-making as well.
'A science fiction genius . . . Ted Chiang is a superstar.' - Guardian
With Stories of Your Life and Others, his masterful first collection, multiple-award-winning author Ted Chiang deftly blends human emotion and scientific rationalism in eight remarkably diverse stories, all told in his trademark precise and evocative prose.
From a soaring Babylonian tower that connects a flat Earth with the firmament above, to a world where angelic visitations are a wondrous and terrifying part of everyday life; from a neural modification that eliminates the appeal of physical beauty, to an alien language that challenges our very perception of…
I’m a novelist and game designer from Bangalore. I’ve been a lifelong reader of science fiction and fantasy. Growing up, I almost never encountered futures that included people like me—brown women, from a country that isn’t the UK/ US, and yet, who are in sync with the rapidly changing global village we belong to. Over the last decade, though, I've found increasing joy in more recent science fiction, in which the future belongs to everyone.The Ten Percent Thiefis an expression of my experiences living in dynamic urban India, and represents one of our many possible futures.
I’m fascinated by the possibilities presented by post-nation futures. Infomocracy looks at a future where ‘centenals’—groups of 100,000 people without historic nationalist borders—elect an international corporate-affiliated body to govern the world.
High-stakes political intrigue fuels the biggest election in a century as multiple factions battle it out to seize power through the vehicle of futuristic democracy. To me, the highlight of this novel is its exploration of democracy—it’s peppered with paradoxical and intense arguments that are rewarding to engage with, and enhance the richness of its world.
It's been twenty years and two election cycles since Information, a powerful search engine monopoly, pioneered the switch from warring nation-states to global microdemocracy. The corporate coalition party Heritage has won the last two elections. With another election on the horizon, the Supermajority is in tight contention, and everything's on the line. With power comes corruption. For Ken, this is his chance to do right by the idealistic Policy1st party and get a steady job in the big leagues. For Domaine, the election represents another staging ground in his ongoing struggle against the pax democratica. For Mishima, a dangerous Information…
I grew up when the space race was starting, and I became fascinated by all things regarding the planets, rockets, and the cosmos. For several years, I lived in the Houston area and spent hours and hours at the Johnson Space Center, where the history and future of space exploration are on display. The books on my list represent a major theme in my writing, which is futuristic in concept and asks the question: what we would do if our planet became uninhabitable. The answer provides the canvas to explore the advantages of technology, but most importantly, the determination of the human spirit.
This book grabbed me with the horrific opening scene and made me think about how this planet is moving into a climate-threatening situation.
I loved the way Robinson made me feel what it was like to live in a heat-ravaged world. I liked the main character, the head of the Ministry for the Future, because she was believable. She was smart, compassionate, and politically savvy, the kind of person you could trust in this position.
I like that the climate threat is the canvas upon which the characters need to react. For me, it is very relevant to our current situation.
“The best science-fiction nonfiction novel I’ve ever read.” —Jonathan Lethem
"If I could get policymakers, and citizens, everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future." —Ezra Klein (Vox)
The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite…
Sci-fi has been part of my life since Sunday afternoons in front of the radio listening to Journey to the Moon and the original Quatermass serial. Then it was Doctor Who and Star Trek. Despite this, I have never written a serious sci-fi book until now, but I can boast of knowing all the characters in both the radio and TV sci-fi shows. I guess I can admit to being a Trekkie.
I think this is everybody’s favourite. A classic from the master storyteller.
I love the building tension in the story and the way Wells has the knack of making the story an exciting adventure at the same time. I prefer the book to the movie, which did not convey the mystery and tension build-up as in the book.
The plot is very simple but clever. Nothing seems to stop the Martians, but in the end, they are defeated by our diseases on Earth. A good story to enjoy at any time.
A powerful, delightful new edition. Cylinders land on earth and the invaders, from Mars, with their huge, round bodies and tentacles, start to vaporize the people of Earth. Houses, towns and cities are soon destroyed in a spiral of violence, creating civil panic and mass evacuations before a foul black smoke is released by the aggressive alien force. But the fightback must begin, and it comes from an unexpected quarter. H.G. Wells' classic tale of invasion has stirred our imagination for over a hundred years. Its intense mix of realism and fantasy continues to prick at anyone interested in a…
I am a business and technology journalist with a particular interest in mobility startups. I penned my book after purchasing an EV from startup Better Place, only to discover the company was nearly bankrupt. How did I miss that? I’m supposed to be able to do due diligence! I started writing about cars as a reporter for the Advanced Interactive Media Group. I’m a regular contributor to The Jerusalem Post and Israel21c and have also ghostwritten four business books. Before I wrote about tech, I was starting companies: My own Internet publishing startup, Neta4, raised $3.2 million in 1998. I received my B.A. in Creative Writing from Oberlin College.
When I was deliberating over whether I could write a nonfiction business book of my own, Julia Angwin’s detailed insider story of the rise and fall of the first uber-popular social media site was my inspiration.
I loved the way she mixed deep reporting with revealing interviews to describe how MySpace changed the world—and how it was then done in that very changing world. This book never got the acclaim it deserved, but for me it was transformational.
A fast-paced and deeply reported look at the unlikely success of MySpace, the Web 2.0 phenomenon, and the drama surrounding one of the biggest deals of the Internet age. Barely funded, technologically inept, conceptually derivative, and driven by rivalries, the company that was to morph into the biggest Internet site in the world had an unlikely beginning. This is the fascinating and surprising story that includes all the elements of a great business narrative: obsessive characters from co-founders Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe to Rupert Murdock, relentless and unlikely innovation, and dizzying back room deal-making; all centered around an epic…
I am a business and technology journalist with a particular interest in mobility startups. I penned my book after purchasing an EV from startup Better Place, only to discover the company was nearly bankrupt. How did I miss that? I’m supposed to be able to do due diligence! I started writing about cars as a reporter for the Advanced Interactive Media Group. I’m a regular contributor to The Jerusalem Post and Israel21c and have also ghostwritten four business books. Before I wrote about tech, I was starting companies: My own Internet publishing startup, Neta4, raised $3.2 million in 1998. I received my B.A. in Creative Writing from Oberlin College.
If this book doesn’t sound like it’s for you, it’s time to reconsider. This well-researched analysis is all about how we’ll buy and sell cars in the future—something that nearly all of us will experience at multiple points “down the road,” so to speak. I’m not a car dealer, but I thoroughly enjoyed learning what drives the industry.
Steve Greenfield knows his stuff: His venture capital firm, Automotive Ventures, invests exclusively in mobility startups.
The future of mobility is evolving at an accelerating pace. This is most evident in the automotive retail channel, as both car dealers and automakers are experiencing an enhanced level of change.
The Future of Automotive Retail provides a framework for how these changes are impacting both automaker and automotive dealer.
The book provides a handy framework to categorize these changes across vehicle production, evolving consumer expectations, vehicle ownership, vehicle power sources, autonomy, connectivity and servicing of vehicles.
The book wraps by providing a perspective on the future of the automotive dealership, as well as some practical advice on how…
Three events in my life have had a profound effect on the narratives created within my novels. After receiving a chemistry set for my 10th Christmas, I succeeded in causing an explosion, resulting in my extended hospitalization. While in the hospital, I had a near-death experience (NDE). During an amateur telescopic outing with a friend during our teenage years, we experienced a UFO sighting. While doing my doctoral thesis in experimental quantum physics, I began to sense a strong link between elements of quantum physics and consciousness. These events occasionally entered my thinking over the next decades. I developed a passion for writing novels to explore links between quantum physics and consciousness.
I love this book because of its excellent job of tackling the nature of free will and consciousness and their impact on the human condition.
In 2009, particle physicist Lloyd Simcoe designed a high-energy experiment for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), designed to detect the Higgs Boson. Success would bring him the Nobel Prize. During the experiment, all those present lost consciousness for two minutes and seventeen seconds.
As it happens, the loss of consciousness is global. Without warning, seven billion people on Earth black out for those two minutes and seventeen seconds. Millions die as planes fall from the sky, people tumble down staircases, and cars plow into each other. People experience a glimpse of their life twenty-one years and six months in the future. Some see only darkness, death? The interlocking mosaic of these visions threatens the present and the future.
Suddenly everyone in the world loses consciousness for two minutes. Planes fall from the sky, there are millions of car crashes, millions die. And when everyone comes round they have had a glimpse of their life in the future.
When it awakes the world must live with the knowledge of what is to come.
Some saw themselves in new relationships, some saw exciting new technologies, some saw the stuff of nightmares. Some, young and old alike, saw nothing at all ...
A desperate search to find out what has happened begins. Does the mosaic of visions offer a clue?
I started in publishing at the Advocate magazine, twenty years ago in its heyday, then moved to Alyson Books, who first published Emma Donoghue among many others, offering a place for queer writers showcasing queer stories to find their audience. Afterwards, I became involved with Gertrude literary journal, a beloved, 25-year-old non-profit, LGBTQA journal that has now evolved to The Gertrude Conference. All the while, I read, wrote, and supported queer stories, like these gems!
James Hynes’ novel focuses on Jacob, nicknamed “Sparrow”, who’s a slave in a brothel in New Carthage at the end of the Roman Empire. Yum!
Although the book itself is too brutal for my taste, as it goes through development, perhaps they could add a thread of lightness, especially in the lives and friendships Sparrow develops with many of the “Wolves” (prostitutes). As a series, this could be a Gladiator-meets-Harlots, with a darkness and depth that would give us insight into the lowest rung of the Roman Empire, with the possibility of a dozen sub-stories to fill out as we trod through this dark time.
'A stunning work of historical imagination . . . masterful in its portrayal of love, sex and friendship' - The Observer 'Utterly engrossing, vivid and honest' - Emma Donoghue, author of Room
Meet Sparrow, a boy slave in the city of New Carthage in the twilight years of pagan Rome.
Raised in a brothel on the margins of a great empire, a boy of no known origin creates his own identity. He is Sparrow, who sings without reason and can fly from trouble. His world is a kitchen, a herb-scented garden, a loud and dangerous tavern, and the mysterious upstairs…
I’m a New Zealand philosopher who’s written a lot about the human enhancement debate. Philosophers are well known for their willingness to defend unpopular conclusions against all critics. Sometimes they engage in what I call “philosophical shit-stirring". You may think that’s a profanity but it’s actually a technical term. I’ve advocated some deliberately unpopular shit-stirring conclusions in the past. One of these is liberal eugenics - the idea that you can turn an evil like eugenics into something good by prefacing it with the feel-good term “liberal”. These dialogues are the beginning of a philosophical stock-take on what we should or might become.
What can you do if you’re gloomy about the state of the world? Rushkoff’s is a book in which the rich have largely given up on the all-in-it-together ideology of earlier times.
If the system is crumbing, can you get rich enough to escape before its final collapse? Reading Rushkoff’s book I wondered if the replacement of earlier times’ get-rich-quick schemes by today’s get-super-rich-super-quick offers explained how so many people were gulled by the fraudulent offers of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto hedge fund.
Suppose you do manage to quit these schemes with sufficient money before they crash. Where can you flee? New Zealand, Mars…? During the Pandemic we in New Zealand heard much about people who wanted to shelter in Jacinda Ardern’s Aotearoa. If rich escape fantasists Google “New Zealand” and “climate change” they might want to hold out for Mars.
Five mysterious billionaires summoned Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk. The subject? How to survive the "Event": the societal collapse they know is coming. Rushkoff argues that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley-style certainty that they and their cohort can escape a disaster of their own making-as long as they have enough money and the right technology.
Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, AI futurism, and the metaverse. Through fascinating characters-master programmers who want to…
