Books like Firefall — picked by fans

As I mentioned, I teach math. Math can open doors, but it often hides behind symbols until someone relates it to real life.

Ted Chiang does something similar: He explores themes such as time, language, memory, and consciousness. Exhalation is a collection of SF shorts, unsettling because it’s written so clearly. His ideas are delivered with such simplicity that there is no hiding from the thoughts that follow after each piece.

Also, I must mention, "The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate" is the best story I’ve ever read about time travel!

This is the most evil book on my list.

As a math teacher, I thought Egan’s world of numbers would give me some kind of home-field advantage. I admit I lost that feeling rather quickly. The story explores post-human minds, simulation theory, and far-future consciousness, and Egan keeps the pace intense.

His skill with math makes the confusion feel real. By the end, I wasn’t sure of anything. Even now, I'm still not sure.

This is technically a trilogy, but Remembrance of Earth's Past brings all three books together in one huge, essential volume. I read nonstop, and I couldn’t just recommend the first book without the rest.

Cixin Liu’s work deserves the top spot. I was already interested in the Dark Forest Theory before reading it. Many books have a great idea, but Cixin constructs and deconstructs an entire universe around it, in a way that just blew my mind.

I’m truly grateful to have experienced it. I now live, forever frozen, in a Van Gogh painting, thanks to him. What stands out most is the scale. Simply put, this is the Tolkien of science fiction, at least in terms of sheer volume.

This book could have been first on this list, perhaps it should have been, but then it might not have been a list—because Lem, with the particular patience of a man who had clearly lost all faith in the genre he was writing in, and possibly in the human species as a whole, decided to write a novel that doesn’t so much engage with the first contact premise as slowly, methodically, and with what I can only describe as contempt, dismantle every single assumption the premise rests on, including the assumption that we would be able to recognise an extraterrestrial signal if we ever received one, or that we could decode a signal if we in fact managed to recognise it, or that we could, in any sense, agree on what it meant if we actually did manage to decode it, and furthermore, that meaning itself would even survive such… show more.

This book holds a very special place in my heart because this is the book I was reading on the day I decided to become an author. The way the characters, world-building, mythos, and action came together in this story was pure magic, and I wanted more.

I’ve since read the entire series, though it’s ongoing, and I haven’t been disappointed. The heart and soul of this book is how much the main character cares about her friends and how far she will go to keep them safe. Joining Mercy’s pack, even for just a few pages at a time, feels like coming home.

Looking for a hero who puts his life on the line for others? Then you’ll love Adrian’s Breed Vampires as much as I do!

The warriors of the Order are pressed upon to fight their own kind whenever a vampire goes dangerously rogue, making for some angst-ridden clashes. Kiss of Crimson earned a spot at the top of my list once again for the dark, sexy hero.

“Dante…was wearing biker’s leathers and a fitted tank that showcased both his inked tattoos and his more elaborate Breed markings. His thick biceps were banded with intricate scrollwork, which, to human eyes would seem oddly abstract… Vampire eyes would see the symbols for what they truly were; dermaglyphs…like living tattoos, the glyphs changed hues according to a vampire’s emotional state.”

Top-notch world-building here! 

Although this is part of Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, it is the ghost story involving the entity known as Goblin that fascinates me the most in this novel and challenges me to write ghost stories as well.

This was the first story I read where a spirit is miraculously tethered to a specific living being, Quinn Blackwood, from the beginning of his existence and throughout his lifetime, influencing every decision that he makes; a blueprint for Griffin Meade’s journey with the ghost of Angelus Bartholomew III in my novel.

The final plot twist as to why Goblin haunts Quinn blew me away and I dare anyone to try and guess it!

Speaking of video-game and anime industry pioneers, it would be a complete miss not to mention Yoshitaka Amano, a man whose personal style marked the entire legendary Final Fantasy franchise, after which I was delighted to learn that he also did the original illustrations of my all-time favorite anime "Vampire Hunter D". His imaginative dynamic visuals are as equally beautiful as they are simple, and yet he keeps shocking with his ability to perfectly fuse traditional imagery with sci-fi buildings and details.

This book took me into an amazing and often terrifying world. It was absolutely fascinating—the way the town worked and all the rules. I loved being a newcomer in Morganville, along with the main character, Claire. I loved seeing her grow into herself, become more confident, and so very clever. I also loved the dynamics between Claire and her roommates and the relationships that bloomed between them. So many characters are amazing or fear-inducing, and some are both, but none are more swoon-worthy than Shane and Michael.

Claire encounters many dark, dangerous, and heart-wrenching moments throughout the series, and I was engrossed in each one, holding my breath at times and laughing out loud at others. I really love this series, and it’s another that’s stayed with me vividly.

Auerbach’s book takes the vampire story into more contemporary territory and, some might say, into more treacherous waters. Although beginning again with Polidori, she follows the evolution of the vampire tale through to Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, and Tony Scott’s 1983 film The Hunger (starring an elegantly wasted David Bowie). She shows how homoeroticism has been a part of the vampire narrative since its nineteenth-century inception, notably with Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novella Carmilla, and how readily the narrative lent itself as an allegory of the 1980s AIDS epidemic. I don’t agree with all of Auerbach’s interpretations, but she has some zinging one-liners.