57 Books Like Dreaming the Biosphere

This was one of the first books to open my mind to the possibility of a country that would put social responsibility and ecological sustainability at the forefront of its goals.

Ernest Callenbach’s story is told through the journalist reports and personal writings of William Weston, who visits Ecotopia to report on this unique country, originally the Pacific Northwest and Northern California.

I love how Weston’s skepticism turns toward understanding. He eventually embraces what Ecotopia stands for and decides to live there himself to be a conduit of connection to the world outside of Ecotopia.

I was so moved by how a fictional story could so illuminate our own fears, our own hopes, and the possibilities of our future, that my own writing turned toward eco-fantasy after reading this book. 

I loved this book as it opened up a whole new perspective on climate change for me, and how we can tell a different story, a new one.

Discussions about climate change are often characterised by an adversarial nature and war-like terminology (we need to fight climate change, we need to prove the sceptics wrong), and the book moves beyond simplistic carbon reductionism and climate fundamentalism to focus on our love of nature and how we can use that to create a different story of “interbeing,” a story of regeneration, of reanimation, of love and of abundance to care for and protect nature on which we all depend.

And who can argue with love?

Architect-philosopher Paolo Soleri writes in an oracular style introducing his way-outsized book of designs for hyper-dense, concrete-megastructure cities in the deserts or oceans or even in space, none actually realized except for a very small prototype called “Arcosanti” in the high plateaus north of Phoenix, a campus that could have been built in a summer by a middle-sized reinforced-concrete contractor but in fact has been slowly erected by trainee-volunteers and a diehard community of followers over the last half-century. But there is something to it. “Tightly-woven minimalist packages will become mandatory.” I recommend the tabloid-sized original edition: it fits the buildings.

How many times have I reread it? Science/futurist fiction in the style of an Odyssey-scale and -style epic poem about (yes) the terraforming of Mars, a spectacular interplanetary saga framed against the background of the struggle against a misanthropic and authoritarian “Ecotheism” that has taken over Earth, and ending with a long and compelling hymn to the result, a new start on our transformed sister planet. Ecotopia, in short... on Mars!

I am a huge fan of dreampunk books and this book helped create the genre. Reading it took me into a dreamworld that lead into another dreamworld and then yet another.

As with all Philip K. Dick books I was left wondering if I ever did return to the reality I believe I live in. I also found the character of Palmer Eldritch himself to be one of my all-time favorites.

This book has the ideal traits I appreciate in science fiction—as with H.G. Wells’s classic tales, it’s reasonably short and can be read as pure adventure or allegory. We meet the archetypal figure of the “Teacher” birthed by a bioprinting machine on a starship soon to terraform an exoplanet. The Teacher has to grapple with survival, his purpose, the ship’s mission, and his realization that everything is haywire in this high-tech Eden full of monsters. Hull Zero Three is a detective tale with philosophical undertones as the Teacher slowly makes sense of the chaos that surrounds him, contends with his earlier clones, and undergoes a quest. Anyone who has ever experienced the drudgery of actual teaching will appreciate Bear’s creation of the Teacher as a mythic archetype.  

This is a captivating and thought-provoking novel set on a multi-generation starship traveling to another star. Robinson skillfully develops the characters' backgrounds and personalities.

I found the meticulous detail Robinson provides about the ship's design and operation particularly fascinating. The rotating artificial gravity, the precarious workings of the ship systems, and the ecological balance required to sustain life on the starship are described with such precision that Aurora feels like a real place.

The story takes unexpected turns, and through the struggles of the characters and the harsh realities of space colonization, he emphasizes that our home planet is irreplaceable and that it's a better choice to preserve it than to depend on the hope of life in outer space.

This book blew my mind! It changed my life and gave me food poisoning; well, maybe it was some lousy shrimp that did that, but it came around the same time anyhow.

I loved the initial point of revenge, how the main character was abandoned to die in a broken spaceship in the middle of nowhere. I, too, would be pissed if a ship flew by me without stopping to save my butt.

I was happy that the book also played with metaphysical notions and cranked up the ending to a glorious finish that broke from the standard good-guy wins trope.

This one might seem an odd pick at first. I thought so too when a friend gave me a copy. I was surprised there was an Anne McCaffery book I hadn’t read!

This book belongs on the list for its beautiful depiction of what love and community can do for a group of mismatched outcasts, refugees on a dangerous planet—a collection of peoples all very different from one another working together to survive.

Their destiny was to become a cohesive extended family despite all their differences, and to become empowered individuals at the same time. There’s a steamy romance, too. So that’s always yummy. It goes to show that when destiny calls, the love that answers can be with a voice of multitudes.

On the planet of January, one side is in permanent daylight and the other side is permanent night, with people managing to live on a strip of moderate light between the two extremes.

Sophie, a shy teenager, breaks the rules and is sent to the dark side to die, only she survives.  While she is in the dark, she meets telepathic creatures who, despite their terrifying visage, are kind-hearted—a shock to someone raised in a community who believes the creatures (and others) are awful because of the way they look.

Together with her best friend, Bianca, they decide to save the human race, against all dark odds, including secret outlaws. 

This TV series would showcase all the strange glory of Anders, along with the emotional depth that will have us rooting for our young heroines who literally go between the darkness and the light. Hey, J.J. Abrams, you listenin’?