Here are 92 books that His Master's Voice fans have personally recommended if you like
His Master's Voice.
Book DNA is a community of 13,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I love first contact fiction. When I was a kid, my uncle once told me about seeing a UFO, a ship landing in the Varangerfjord in northern Norway. No one believed him, of course, but the way he told that story made me feel like I was right there with him.
These books pull me in because they highlight the difference between what we experience and reality. All of them left me with more questions than answers. I am a math teacher and an indie science fiction writer, and I'm still not entirely sure if that uncertainty is a good thing or a warning.
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!
'Lean, relentless, and incandescent.' Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys
This much-anticipated second collection of stories is signature Ted Chiang, full of revelatory ideas and deeply sympathetic characters. In 'The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate,' a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and the temptation of second chances. In the epistolary 'Exhalation,' an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications not just for his own people, but for all of reality. And in 'The Lifecycle of Software Objects,' a woman cares for…
In this collection of nine stories, J.C. Gemmell takes readers on a quest into the future.
Tion is a dystopian civilisation built on the wreckage of a drowned Earth. Here, technology saves and oppresses, and mankind clings to survival in a place where the privileged live above the clouds, and…
I love first contact fiction. When I was a kid, my uncle once told me about seeing a UFO, a ship landing in the Varangerfjord in northern Norway. No one believed him, of course, but the way he told that story made me feel like I was right there with him.
These books pull me in because they highlight the difference between what we experience and reality. All of them left me with more questions than answers. I am a math teacher and an indie science fiction writer, and I'm still not entirely sure if that uncertainty is a good thing or a warning.
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.
A quantum Brave New World from the boldest and most wildly speculative writer of his generation. "Greg Egan is perhaps the most important SF writer in the world."-Science Fiction Weekly "One of the very best "-Locus. "Science fiction with an emphasis on science."-New York Times Book Review
Since the Introdus in the twenty-first century, humanity has reconfigured itself drastically. Most chose immortality, joining the polises to become conscious software. Others opted for gleisners: disposable, renewable robotic bodies that remain in contact with the physical world of force and friction. Many of these have left the solar system forever in fusion-drive…
I love first contact fiction. When I was a kid, my uncle once told me about seeing a UFO, a ship landing in the Varangerfjord in northern Norway. No one believed him, of course, but the way he told that story made me feel like I was right there with him.
These books pull me in because they highlight the difference between what we experience and reality. All of them left me with more questions than answers. I am a math teacher and an indie science fiction writer, and I'm still not entirely sure if that uncertainty is a good thing or a warning.
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 series will soon become a Netflix series... so get in on the ground floor while you still can' Esquire
Imagine a universe patrolled by numberless and nameless predators.
Imagine what might happen to any civilisation unwise enough to broadcast its location.
This is Cixin Liu's THREE-BODY PROBLEM TRILOGY.
Weaving a complex web of stratagem, subterfuge, philosophy and physics across light years of space and 18.9 million years of time, this tale of humanity's struggle to reach the stars is a visionary masterwork of unprecedented scale and momentum.
In this collection of nine stories, J.C. Gemmell takes readers on a quest into the future.
Tion is a dystopian civilisation built on the wreckage of a drowned Earth. Here, technology saves and oppresses, and mankind clings to survival in a place where the privileged live above the clouds, and…
I love first contact fiction. When I was a kid, my uncle once told me about seeing a UFO, a ship landing in the Varangerfjord in northern Norway. No one believed him, of course, but the way he told that story made me feel like I was right there with him.
These books pull me in because they highlight the difference between what we experience and reality. All of them left me with more questions than answers. I am a math teacher and an indie science fiction writer, and I'm still not entirely sure if that uncertainty is a good thing or a warning.
Watts says Blindsight isn’t complete without Echopraxia, and I agree. Following the same logic as #1, I’ve put Firefall on the list, which includes both.
I must admit that at first, I was unsure about Watts because vampires in serious science fiction seemed straight-up cringe to me. But in Firefall, vampires have a purpose. They show how evolution doesn’t care about self-awareness. The book is full of truly alien minds that are scary because they work without the inner life we think makes us human.
Watts uses biology the way Egan uses mathematics, and I bow to it.
Firefall is the omnibus edition of the novels Blindsight and Echopraxia.
February 13, 2082, First Contact. Sixty-two thousand objects of unknown origin plunge into Earth's atmosphere - a perfect grid of falling stars screaming across the radio spectrum as they burn. Not even ashes reach the ground. Three hundred and sixty degrees of global surveillance: something just took a snapshot.
And then... nothing.
But from deep space, whispers. Something out there talks - but not to us. Two ships, Theseus and the Crown of Thorns, are launched to discover the origin of Earth's visitation, one bound for the outer dark…
While doing a college humor column I was hoping to be the next Art Buchwald, but instead ended up first as a lawyer, then a film critic and college professor. When I finally got around to writing fiction, the blending of science fiction and comedy was a natural fit (with occasional forays into horror and fantasy). I’ve done four novels and a couple of dozen published stories to date and when readers tell me they’ve enjoyed them I answer, “If it made you laugh, I did my job.” When I came up with the mashup title of “Father of the Bride of Frankenstein” I said, “I have to write this.”
Robert Sheckley was a major influence on me as he mixed SF and humor, sometimes broadly and sometimes darkly. This “best of” collection – on which I got to offer my suggestions as to what should be included – really is the cream of the crop. I will always be grateful that I had the chance to meet him while he was still with us… and that before I could say a word, he thanked me for a blurb I did on another collection of his works. It was the perfect fanboy moment.
My 15 seasons at Grand Canyon inspired me to understand its story of revelation, which led to a fascination with the history of exploration overall. This has resulted in a series of books about explorers, places explored, and a conceptual scaffolding by which to understand it all: a geologist of the American West (Grove Karl Gilbert); Antarctica (The Ice); revisiting the Rim with better conceptual gear, How the Canyon Became Grand; and using its mission as a narrative spine, Voyager: Exploration, Space, and Third Great Age of Discovery. The grand sweep deserved a grand summary, so I’ve ended with The Great Ages of Discovery.
The current era of exploration began after World War II, announced by the International Geophysical Year. With Antarctica as a pivot, exploration moved down to the world’s ocean depths and out to interplanetary space. Space got the most attention – it was visible and had a literature that ice and abyss couldn’t match.
With vigor, clarity, and a lively tempo, This New Ocean narrates the space race in both its manned and robotic expressions, its American and Soviet versions, its technology, and its politics. Burrows is an enthusiast, but not an ideologue or a blinkered astrofuturist. A good survey and introduction, This New Ocean makes a lively read.
It was all part of man's greatest adventure--landing men on the Moon and sending a rover to Mars, finally seeing the edge of the universe and the birth of stars, and launching planetary explorers across the solar system to Neptune and beyond.
The ancient dream of breaking gravity's hold and taking to space became a reality only because of the intense cold-war rivalry between the superpowers, with towering geniuses like Wernher von Braun and Sergei Korolyov shelving dreams of space travel and instead developing rockets for ballistic missiles and space spectaculars. Now that Russian archives are open and thousands…
I have been increasingly interested in astrophysics since I was six years old. My mother hooked me on reading at five by stopping novels at critical points and urging me to continue. I’ve ever since read a broad range of books. I stumbled upon Dr. Loren Eiseley in the early 1970s and enjoyed his books immensely. As soon as a book by Dr. Carl Sagan was published, I wanted to read it. As I’ve grown older, I try not to think that ‘peak humanity’ is behind us–and books such as Sagan, Eiseley, and Rovelli offset that potentially depressing thought and provide solid encouragement.
For me, this book melded many ideas I had as I grew up on humanity’s place in the Universe. Dr. Sagan’s writing just pulled many of my ideas and understanding into one strong framework.
As with many of the books I recommend, Sagan's writing showed me that I can do science and still remain grounded without my ego expanding faster than the universe!
“Fascinating . . . memorable . . . revealing . . . perhaps the best of Carl Sagan’s books.”—The Washington Post Book World (front page review)
In Cosmos, the late astronomer Carl Sagan cast his gaze over the magnificent mystery of the Universe and made it accessible to millions of people around the world. Now in this stunning sequel, Carl Sagan completes his revolutionary journey through space and time.
Future generations will look back on our epoch as the time when the human race finally broke into a radically new frontier—space. In Pale Blue Dot, Sagan traces the spellbinding history…
I’m primarily a science fiction writer and reader, but mystery is my first literary love, and I was the editor-in-chief of the mystery magazine, Plan B. So, I doubly love it when a mystery story takes place in a science fictional world. In my own work, certain themes keep showing up even when I don’t intend them to because I love them as much as I love a juicy mystery: using technology to change our bodies and environments, the struggle that wealth and corporate greed create, how we can learn to understand someone who is radically different from ourselves. These five books hit all those marks for me.
I’ve always wondered about those amateur detectives who just happen to be nearby when murder occurs, especially the sixth or seventh time. Surely they are secretly serial killers, or they’re really, really unlucky. It’s the latter for Mallory Viridian, so when the possibility arises she flees Earth to a space station inhabited only by aliens to escape. I love truly alien aliens, and there are plenty of those on board, with strange customs and otherworldly motives for the ever-increasing number of murders. I also really loved how this book delves into the question of why murder seems to follow Mallory around, and the resolution is satisfying and delightfully science fictional.
Amateur detective Mallory Viridian’s talent for solving murders ruined her life on Earth and drove her to live on an alien space station, but her problems still follow her in this witty, self-aware novel that puts a speculative spin on murder mysteries, from the Hugo-nominated author of Six Wakes.
From idyllic small towns to claustrophobic urban landscapes, Mallory Viridian is constantly embroiled in murder cases that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery novel, being surrounded by death doesn’t make you a charming amateur detective, it makes you a suspect and a social pariah.…
I am a part-time professional pianist and full-time professional digital media designer who has recently turned my creative sensibilities toward writing vibrant, fun fiction. I am inspired by world-building adventures, bedtime stories, and being a parent. Stories that bring families together is something I have always enjoyed, and I’d like to put more of that out into the world. I like unpredictable twists, unnecessary footnotes, and breaking the fourth wall (as long as it isn’t load-bearing).
Many are familiar with the hugely popular Chocolate Factory book and the films made about it. But I remember reading this lesser-known sequel in 4th grade, and then dressing up like Willy Wonka to do a book report presentation about it for class. I even included a “magic trick” with the hat. I liked that it furthered the original character’s adventures and got even sillier with the Vermicious Knid aliens, aging pills, and taking elevators into space. It stretches kids’ brains imaginatively and takes the story in the least predictable directions, which is something I strive to achieve in my writing.
A splendiferous new hardback of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, part of a collection of truly delumptious classic Roald Dahl titles with stylish jackets over surprise printed colour cases, and exquisite endpaper designs. WHOOSH! Inside the Great Glass Elevator, Willy Wonka, Charlie Bucket and his family are cruising a thousand feet above the chocolate factory. They can see the whole world below them, but they're not alone. The American Space Hotel has just launched. Lurking inside are the Vernicious Knids - the most brutal, vindictive murderous beasts in the universe. So grab your gizzard! Hold your hats! Only Charlie…
As a long-term advocate of space colonization I’ve always been drawn to Mars, not by adventure stories but by the idea that ordinary people may someday live there. So this was the theme of my first novel. I wrote it before we had gone to the moon, though it wasn't published until 1970, after my better-known book Enchantress from the Stars. When in 2006 I revised it for republication, little about Mars needed changing; mainly I removed outdated sexist assumptions and wording. Yet the book still hasn’t reached its intended audience because though meant for girls who aren’t already space enthusiasts, its publishers persisted in labeling it science fiction rather than Young Adult romance.
Buzz Aldrin, best known for having been one of the first two astronauts to walk on the moon, has been active throughout the time since then in promoting an expanded space program. In this book he goes into detail—but not too much detail for non-technical readers—about how space activity can help to preserve Earth, in addition to describing various proposals for returning to the moon and reaching Mars, He believes explorers should go there to stay permanently and build a base rather than return to Earth between trips. The book, published in 2013, was overoptimistic in suggesting that as early as 2020 selected astronauts could be asked to commit to spending the rest of their lives on Mars, but I’m sure that when opportunity arises there will be volunteers.
Can astronauts reach Mars by 2035? Absolutely, says Buzz Aldrin, one of the first men to walk on the moon. Celebrated astronaut, brilliant engineer, bestselling author, Aldrin believes it is not only possibly but vital to America's future to keep pushing the space frontier outward for the sake of exploration, science, development, commerce, and security. What we need, he argues, is a commitment by the U.S. President as rousing as JFK's promise to reach the moon by the end of the 1960s-an audacious, inspiring goal-and a unified vision for space exploration. In Mission to Mars, Aldrin plots that trajectory, stressing…
