100 Books Like Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

As shocking as I felt Kubrick’s film was, I think the book is possibly more startling. Some scenes Kubrick played for laughs are described as violent and sadistic in the novel. If, like me, you are a fan of the film, it’ll fill in some blanks for you. Ever wonder why Alex and his friends drink milk?

The book is written in futuristic teen-speak that did take me a while to get my head around, but this ultimately adds to the strangeness of the insular world these ‘droogs’ inhabit. Though it was first published in 1962, I think this is still a very relevant and unflinching look at the place of violence in society.

It was a toss-up here between this book and The Scar, set in a different part of the same world. One of Miéville’s acknowledged influences is the wonderful Mervyn Peake, and like Peake, he’s never in a hurry to get a story underway.

I’d have probably tossed Perdido Street Station aside after 100-200 pages except for a friend’s fervent recommendation—and I’d have missed out big time if I had! Because the story as it develops is truly grand, truly epic. Like Peake, Miéville has a gift for raising action to a mythical status. I love, love, love a novel that builds up to a long, rolling, thunderous climax!

I first read Josef K.'s haunting tale when I was a teenager. I hadn’t read anything by Kafka before and was initially quite frustrated because it wasn’t clear what the hell was going on, which, in retrospect, is rather the point.

I read this book again about five years ago and still found it a disturbing reflection on how society dehumanises the individual, often with no rhyme or reason, one might say Kafkaesque. Interestingly, I found it even more relatable as an adult.

I am one of those people who were really into Lovecraft until they discovered he was a huge racist and homophobe, among other things; the contemporary reclamation of Lovecraft’s iconic mythology is delicious, and this book is a wonderfully eerie, weird entry into the new canon.

This book checks a lot of my personal boxes, like secretive government experiments, shady, half-revealed lore, and lyrical writing. I’m a huge fan of stories where you know just enough about what’s going on to keep up, and the characters are so sympathetic that you’ll follow the mystery for their sake alone. 

Before I began to write my own cycle of flash fiction and microfiction, I decided to study virtuosos of the form. Bender’s book was my first encounter with fast fiction. Her surreal, emotionally raw flashes and short-shorts walk a tightrope between the absurd and the profound. Her characters often exist in dreamlike states—wearing prosthetic arms, dating monsters, or grieving through magical realism. These compact stories don’t just surprise; they haunt.

As a novelist who leans towards conventional storytelling, I found this book foundational for taking risks to be weird and brief.

I believe this book is one of the classic staples of surreal fiction. Its disjointed, spiraling narrative and sprawling non-linear plot lines challenge the definition of what a ‘book’ is. It uses everything from footnotes to text alignment to color schemes to make the act of reading itself increasingly difficult, which matches the house’s influence on the narrators’ memories and interests.

Reading it for me was like learning Latin or watching Casablanca–it gave context to decades of experimental media inspired by it, from TV shows to DOOM game mods. Love it or hate it, it’s a solid tool for any inhuman’s toolkit. 

After I published Blubber Island, I received messages from readers telling me BI was one of the best Splatterpunk books they’ve read. The funny part was I had no idea the genre existed. In order to sample a range, I ordered Sammon’s anthology. These guys were hardcore! They are what makes slasher movies awesome and hilarious. No apologies, no prisoners taken. With pornographic levels of hyper-violence, SP’s collects writers who found the edge and flew over it on dirt bikes.

This is a cyberpunk classic, but what I really love about it is the combination of modern computer technology with Sumerian mythology, the Tower of Babel myth, and how well Stephenson is able to integrate them, so we have hackers throwing around Sumerian terms like 'me' and 'nam-shub'.

And for me, I love that there’s just a lot of cool stuff happening here, like a biker with an atomic bomb on a deadman switch, a nuclear-powered needle gun. And our lead character is named Hiro Protagonist. But probably the biggest point for me is that despite the dystopian setting, there really is more hope in this story than one would think.

An ex-nuclear researcher takes his mentally handicapped son out of school because he fails to convince the teachers and parents that the children should be trained in combat for when society inevitably decides to kill all handicapped children in Japan. So, naturally, they set off on a divine mission concerning warring student political factions, an atomic bomb, terrorism, and a shadowy mastermind named Big Shot. Their adventure is absolutely absurd, a demented dark comedy. Yet Ōe uses his profound ability to write with dire seriousness, which results in a mind-bending story.

I grew up with and write horror stories, so it’s very difficult for a book to unnerve me; this is one of the only books I can think of that earns the honor. It is half an ecological text and half a horror story, with its romantic prose balanced by intense natural research to create a surreal, unnerving description of the natural world.

This book made me hyper-aware of everything from the grass outside my window to the cells that make up my body, and I love how it uses both existential horror and the real, biological horror of being a living creature to leave a lasting unease. Are you aware you’re breathing? Can you feel your tongue in your mouth? Your heart’s nonstop beating? You can, now.