Here are 47 books that Last Days of an Immortal fans have personally recommended if you like
Last Days of an Immortal.
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I am a compulsive reader and writer of speculative fiction, in love with the genre’s capacity to extrapolate our present social, economic and technological into horrifying/astonishing futures. That being said, I need strong writing and compelling characters to pull me into a world and make it feel lived in and real. It’s this kind of emotional realism that I seek out as a reader and try to create as an author.
Strong writing, an original premise, and compelling characters make Upgrade Soul a must-read for any speculative fiction lover. Some may find Daniels’ cinematic framing and exhaustively detailed style off-putting, but to my mind that only enhances the strong vein of body-horror that runs throughout the book.
For their 45th anniversary, Hank and Molly Nonnar decide to undergo an experimental rejuvenation procedure, but their hopes for youth are dashed when the couple is faced with the results: severely disfigured yet intellectually and physically superior duplicates of themselves. Can the original Hank and Molly coexist in the same world as their clones? In Upgrade Soul, McDuffie Award-winning creator Ezra Claytan Daniels asks probing questions about what shapes our identity-Is it the capability of our minds or the physicality of our bodies? Is a newer, better version of yourself still you? This page-turning graphic novel follows the lives of…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I am a compulsive reader and writer of speculative fiction, in love with the genre’s capacity to extrapolate our present social, economic and technological into horrifying/astonishing futures. That being said, I need strong writing and compelling characters to pull me into a world and make it feel lived in and real. It’s this kind of emotional realism that I seek out as a reader and try to create as an author.
Curveball is less compelled by plot than by setting and character. Sorese’s future is gorgeously imagined in melting black, white, and gray with electric orange highlights. Every element–from the clothing to the tech to the furniture–is thoughtfully designed and elegantly rendered. Moreover, Curveball has some of the best acting I have ever seen in *any* graphic novel. A triumph!
Curveball is a science fiction graphic novel telling the story of a waiter named Avery coping with the ending of a difficult relationship. Having spent years attempting to build something substantial with an indecisive sailor named Christophe, Avery stubbornly holds on despite the mounting evidence against him. The idea of the relationship has eclipsed its reality and in Avery's already troubled life, the allure of something dependable is a powerful force.
Curveball focuses on the duality of hope and delusion. How ignorance is integral to surviving our day to day lives but can be incredibly destructive if allowed to blossom…
I am a compulsive reader and writer of speculative fiction, in love with the genre’s capacity to extrapolate our present social, economic and technological into horrifying/astonishing futures. That being said, I need strong writing and compelling characters to pull me into a world and make it feel lived in and real. It’s this kind of emotional realism that I seek out as a reader and try to create as an author.
I always love a good near-future sci-fi book and the opening pages of this graphic novel deliver wonderful technological details in spades, including a ubiquitous “Service” pictured as floating pools of word balloons that cleverly conveys information overload. Then a sharp twist takes the story in a whole new, utterly unexpected direction I won’t ruin for you… Just read it.
In rare lucid moments you see that you are enslaved. You tell yourself that The Service is a helpful interface providing your mind with continual aid and stimulation, but you know it's a lie.
Patrick Whiteside can help you. He doesn't require much: An open mind. Determination. The ability to make sacrifices.
Let Whiteside help you.
From the pages of BRANDON GRAHAM's ISLAND comes the debut science fiction epic by MATT SHEEAN and MALACHI WARD.
Collects "ANCESTOR" from issues 3, 5, 7 and 9 of ISLAND.
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
I am a compulsive reader and writer of speculative fiction, in love with the genre’s capacity to extrapolate our present social, economic and technological into horrifying/astonishing futures. That being said, I need strong writing and compelling characters to pull me into a world and make it feel lived in and real. It’s this kind of emotional realism that I seek out as a reader and try to create as an author.
A generational ship fallen to ruin and tribalism? Sign me up! Roy spares no effort in bringing to life his vivid, action-packed book. The fun here is less the characters than the world-building and how artfully the past is revealed plot-point by plot-point like a delicious sci-fi strip-tease. Plus, Roy drew the shit out of this book.
1
author picked
Habitat
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
16, and
17.
What is this book about?
All his life, Hank Cho wanted to join the ranks of the Habsec - the rulers of the orbital habitat his people call home. But when he finds a powerful, forbidden weapon from the deep past, a single moment of violence sets his life - and the brutal society of the habitat - into upheaval. Hunted by the cannibalistic Habsec and sheltered by former enemies, Cho finds himself caught within a civil war that threatens to destroy his world.
A new barbarian sci-fi adventure from SIMON ROY (Prophet, Jan's Atomic Heart, Tiger Lung). Collecting installments originally serialized in ISLAND MAGAZINE…
I was an artist as a child but graduated as a Comparative Literature Major. The aunt and uncle I stayed with in Providence summers when I was 10-12 years old lived three houses away from that of H.P. Lovecraft. My aunt would have tea with women who remembered “Poor Howard.” So my first real reading was H.P. and a host of other SF authors. I also always read foreign authors: classics and newer books. The books by the women are small but virtually perfect with unusual narrators—a disgraced, planet-colony Security Robot and a dark-skinned, young Tribal woman who finds herself facing her people’s worst enemy. Both novellas have spawned entire series by their authors.
When is the last time you laughed out loud again and again while reading sci-fi? Right! Me either. Here’s a deliciously wacky novel about a perfectly ordinary young space pilot fresh out of training and what happens on several of his more “interesting” interstellar voyages. Lem was a brilliant scientist, and the conundrums of time/space he comes up with are startling, fresh and often very twisty. For example, let’s say you end up in a space/time logjam in which you encounter your future self. Would you take your own advice?
From 'A giant of twentieth-century science fiction' (Guardian), the adventures of Pirx, a hapless everyman in outer space
'By now he fancied himself something of a rocket jockey, a space ace, whose real home was among the planets'
In a future where space travel has become routine and unremarkable, Pirx the pilot bumbles and daydreams his way through the solar system. These endearing tales follow his progress from cadet to captain. But, whether he is wrestling with a misbehaving spacesuit, feeling uncomfortable on a luxury space cruise ship or encountering a mysterious malfunctioning robot on a mission to Mars, the…
I’ve been fascinated with the future ever since I watched 2001 Space Odyssey. An amazing spaceship that could help us explore other planets! Then all that weird stuff about an A.I. gone crazy and apes banging sticks around monoliths. What the…? That curiosity smashed into a major concern at the age of fifteen on a canoe trip where I was trying to work out how to live and work closely with other humans - and failing. It turns out humans are crazy creatures. We love being together, and doing amazing things together, but that can be really hard. So leadership and the future fused into a lifelong passionate pursuit.
I absolutely loved the optimism and excitement of this book.
Justin unpacks six megatrends that will shape and affect every sector, all of which are leading to a more inclusive, equitable, and regenerative world.
I cited this book at a recent event I ran called The Future of Leadership and one of the participants asked me why I was so positive about the trends that Justin featured.
"What about all the negatives and downsides?" I answered, "we go naturally to what could go wrong, it’s actually an effort to see what might go right," as the book title indicates.
But this book is not just a Pollyanna look at the future technologies, it’s a call to action for leaders to create the future we want by first imagining it.
When I interviewed Justin for my podcast, I was struck by how much foresight and deep thinking he brings to the…
What Could Go Right invites you to ditch cynicism about the future, and build the one you want.
Instead of worst-case scenarios or Pollyanna optimism, you can envision an ideal world and be empowered to build it. The opportunity of our era is to transition to a sustainable, equitable, abundant global economy. When you rethink your mindset, understand tech and social trends, and design a future you want to live in, you can thrive by building a better future for us all.
Packed with insights, tools, and ideas for what an ideal future might look like and how to build…
A wind sorcerer. A dark spirit. An unsolved murder.
On the haunted Draakensky Windmill Estate, sketch artist Charlotte Knight arrives to live on the property, hired to illustrate the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke—a bright and lucrative opportunity to boost her struggling art career.
F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed, “there are no second acts in American lives.” But I am on my third. I started out in the theatre, then became a lawyer, and then a political philosopher. What drove each move is that I was always outraged by injustice and wanted to find a better way to fight against it. For me, reading, writing, and teaching political philosophy turned out to be that way. The books on this list provide important lessons on how certain economic policies can cause injustice while others can cure it. Each has been around for a long time, but they are as relevant today as when they were first written.
How can a society as rich as ours leave so many people behind?
Published in 1958, this book opened my eyes to the importance of economic justice—I first read it in the late 1970s when I was nineteen.
But it is still mind-blowing today, for neither the wrongheadedness of prevailing economic policy nor the solutions that are available for us to do better have changed.
John Kenneth Galbraith's international bestseller The Affluent Society is a witty, graceful and devastating attack on some of our most cherished economic myths.
As relevant today as when it was first published over forty years ago, this newly updated edition of Galbraith's classic text on the 'economics of abundance', lays bare the hazards of individual and social complacency about economic inequality.
Why worship work and productivity if many of the goods we produce are superfluous - artificial 'needs' created by high-pressure advertising? Why begrudge expenditure on vital public works while ignoring waste and extravagance in the private sector of the…
I’m a fiction and nonfiction writer originally from Rotherham, South Yorkshire but I now live and work in Glasgow. I have always loved dark books, even when I was a kid; I was firmly on the Goosebumps-Point Horror-Stephen King pipeline, and ended up in dark literary fiction. I love work that challenges the reader, makes them complicit, forces them to keep going despite everything because the writing is just so good. Here are five books I come back to time and time again.
I first picked this up in a bookshop in Bangalore, knowing nothing about it or the (now very famous) author.
I was unprepared for a novel that managed to evoke the lush and intense vibrancy of South Pacific Islands, the depravity of a real-life Nobel Prize winner who was accused of heinous crimes, and the heartbreak of losing someone to dementia – all at the same time.
This is an uncomfortable but unputdownable novel, and one that affected me so deeply I now have a tattoo of it; on my thumb is the symbol carved into wood to signal that the ’people in the trees’ live there, in memory of my beloved grandmother.
A thrilling anthropological adventure story with a profound and tragic vision of what happens when cultures collide—from the bestselling author of National Book Award–nominated modern classic, A Little Life
“Provokes discussions about science, morality and our obsession with youth.” —Chicago Tribune
It is 1950 when Norton Perina, a young doctor, embarks on an expedition to a remote Micronesian island in search of a rumored lost tribe. There he encounters a strange group of forest dwellers who appear to have attained a form of immortality that preserves the body but not the mind. Perina uncovers their secret and returns with it…
I write fantasy novels, specifically ones in the sub-genre of magical realism. It’s been a passion since my early days. When I was a professional playwright, before I turned to novel writing, I had the extraordinary opportunity to work with Ray Bradbury in adapting one of his novels for the stage. It was an immersion in that delicious blend of the uncanny and the tender. After experiencing a number of losses, I found that this genre—along with the marriage of magic, the supernatural, and hope—best expressed my discoveries and beliefs about life. The novels I write are ones that I would want to read. The novels I recommend are ones I wish I’d written!
I love the way the magic moves through this novel in quiet, intimate ways.
It’s never flashy, nor is the magic there only for the sake of excitement. It whispers a twisted love. It’s dreadful and beautiful, both to Addie LaRue and to the reader. Because of it, Addie changes. Addie lives in our world, in historical times and today, and the magic exists in our world.
One of the things I love about literary fantasy is that the main characters have true emotional arcs. We’re drawn into their experiences because we care about them. The questions they ask themselves are ones we all ask: Who do I want to be? What makes life meaningful? What do we owe the people we love?
"For someone damned to be forgettable, Addie LaRue is a most delightfully unforgettable character, and her story is the most joyous evocation of unlikely immortality." -Neil Gaiman
A Sunday Times-bestselling, award-nominated genre-defying tour-de-force of Faustian bargains, for fans of The Time Traveler's Wife and Life After Life, and The Sudden Appearance of Hope.
When Addie La Rue makes a pact with the devil, she is convinced she's found a loophole-immortality in exchange for her soul. But the devil takes away her place in the world, cursing her to be forgotten by everyone.
The epic saga continues. Jarnland is in a frenzy of excitement. After the eccentric demise of Old King Wyllard, his co-Majesty, young Queen Esmeralda, announces a Royal Tournament to celebrate the return of our heroes from their perilous quest. The Main Event will be a duel between the legendary warrior…
Vampires are the coolest monsters. Change my mind. Actually, forget it – you can’t change my mind. Because I’m right. I have always – I mean always – loved vampires. Reading about them, watching them – all the things. The first time I read Interview with a Vampire changed me forever as a human. There’s something so universally appealing about these immortal bloodsuckers. Maybe it’s because they stay forever young. Or maybe it’s because they look like humans, therefore, they can often hide (or lurk) in plain sight. As an author of my own monster stories, I find them inspiring. So, here’s a list of my recent favs that you can sink your own teeth into.
Did I mention how much I love vampires? I grew up reading The Vampire Diaries, so I am all about a good (fictional) love triangle. Add vampires to that love triangle? Yes please! Cue Alys Arden’s The Casquette Girls series. Like my first two recs, this is also set in New Orleans, except unlike the others, this book is set in more modern times, specifically right after Hurricane Katrina. Since the author is from the area, the setting feels all the more authentic, and she doesn’t shy away from describing the devastation and rebuilding efforts; these are woven into the narrative. The writing itself is beautiful, but the characters are the star here. This series has quickly climbed to my favorites list.
After the storm of the century rips apart New Orleans, sixteen-year-old Adele Le Moyne and her father are among the first to return. Adele wants nothing more than to resume her normal life, but with the silent city resembling a war zone, a parish-wide curfew, and mysterious new faces lurking in the abandoned French Quarter, normal needs a new definition.
Strange events-even for New Orleans-lead Adele to an attic that has been sealed for three hundred years. The chaos she accidentally unleashes threatens not only her but also everyone she knows.
Caught in a hurricane of myths and monsters, Adele…
