Here are 100 books that Looking Backward fans have personally recommended if you like
Looking Backward.
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Since I was a young boy, I’ve been fascinated with the concept of time. I’ve spent hours studying the physics of time as a hobby, and to this day, as an adult, that fascination continues. Whenever the topic of time arises in conversation, I will be the first to contribute my understanding of this mystery that has baffled humankind since the beginning of...well, time.
I loved this book because it’s the granddaddy of time travel stories that use a machine method of transportation to the past or future. The protagonist creates a machine capable of moving through time without actually moving through space.
I easily suspended my 21st-century pragmatic understanding of time travel and was immersed in Wells's plot for a world of the future, one with a socialist propensity. For a book that would be considered a Novella, this has a ‘big story’ feeling—for me anyway.
A brilliant scientist constructs a machine, which, with the pull of a lever, propels him to the year AD 802,701.
Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition of The Time Machine features an introduction by Dr Mark Bould.
The Time Traveller finds himself in a verdant, seemingly idyllic landscape where he is greeted by the diminutive Eloi people. The Eloi are beautiful but weak and indolent, and the explorer is perplexed by…
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…
Since I was a young boy, I’ve been fascinated with the concept of time. I’ve spent hours studying the physics of time as a hobby, and to this day, as an adult, that fascination continues. Whenever the topic of time arises in conversation, I will be the first to contribute my understanding of this mystery that has baffled humankind since the beginning of...well, time.
I loved this book because the protagonist doesn’t actually time travel from the present to the past or the future. Creighton has dropped a spacecraft from earth’s future into the past and added an alien sphere on board the craft to add extra suspense to the storyline.
The protagonist, Norman Johnson, is a psychologist who must unravel the mystery of the strange sphere and the spacecraft from Earth’s future. This plot is unique in that it has a time travel motif without actual time travel.
“Crichton keeps us guessing at every turn in his best work since The Andromeda Strain.” —Los Angeles Times
“Sphere may be Crichton’s best novel, but even if it ranked only second or third, it would be a must for suspense fans.” —Miami Herald
A classic thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Crichton, Sphere is a bravura demonstration of what he does better than anyone: riveting storytelling that combines frighteningly plausible, cutting edge science and technology with pulse-pounding action and serious chills. The gripping story of a group of American scientists sent to the…
Since I was a young boy, I’ve been fascinated with the concept of time. I’ve spent hours studying the physics of time as a hobby, and to this day, as an adult, that fascination continues. Whenever the topic of time arises in conversation, I will be the first to contribute my understanding of this mystery that has baffled humankind since the beginning of...well, time.
This book did something amazing to me. I was mesmerized by Finney’s narrative of the past, which negated the method of self-hypnosis he used to bring the protagonist from the future to the past, so it no longer seemed far-fetched.
The narrative recreation of the late 19th century captivated my imagination, enabling me to feel the protagonist’s awe at seeing, feeling, and smelling the past as actual reality. Isn’t this every writer’s dream?
Si Morley is bored with his job as a commercial illustrator and his social life doesn't seem to be going anywhere. So, when he is approached by an affable ex-football star and told that he is just what the government is looking for to take part in a top-secret programme, he doesn't hesitate for too long. And so one day Si steps out of his twentieth-century, New York apartment and finds himself back in January 1882. There are no cars, no planes, no computers, no television and the word 'nuclear' appears in no dictionaries. For Si, it's very like Eden,…
The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More
by
Meredith Marple,
The coastal tourist town of Great Wharf, Maine, boasts a crime rate so low you might suspect someone’s lying.
Nevertheless, jobless empty nester Mallory Cooper has become increasingly reclusive and fearful. Careful to keep the red wine handy and loath to leave the house, Mallory misses her happier self—and so…
Since I was a young boy, I’ve been fascinated with the concept of time. I’ve spent hours studying the physics of time as a hobby, and to this day, as an adult, that fascination continues. Whenever the topic of time arises in conversation, I will be the first to contribute my understanding of this mystery that has baffled humankind since the beginning of...well, time.
Although this is a non-fiction book, I included it in my choices because it was a contributing factor in enabling me to understand time and time-travel from a scientific perspective.
I enjoyed Davies's opening historical vignettes, which introduced the theoretical and actual facts scientists have accumulated over the centuries concerning the mystery of time.
In About Time: Einstein's Unfinished Revolution Paul Davies confronts the puzzles and paradoxes of time that have bemused the world's greatest thinkers throughout the ages.
When Albert Einstein formulated his theory of relativity it brought about a revolution in our understanding of time, yet also presented a new set of mysteries. Einstein's time can be warped, leading to bizarre possibilities such as black holes and time travel, while making a nonsense of our perception of a 'now' or a division of time into past, present and future.
In About Time Paul Davies tackles the tough questions about time, including the…
I love our planet. That’s the long and short of it. I have stretched belly-down upon the earth and hugged this whole world as if it is an extension of myself, or I am an extension of it. We are one, as I think we all are, with this world that is our home. After receiving my Master's in Nature Study and Environmental Education, I taught grade school for many years, spending as much time outside with the students as I could. At the same time, I have been writing stories and loving nature, loving our world, and working on stewardship. Eco-fantasy is a genre that just seems natural to this mission.
In this book by Starhawk, I picture backyard gardens, food for all, streams that wash through what used to be modern city of San Francisco, a place where meeting the needs of all the people is the responsibility of everyone.
This book has so much story to tell. It is a woman-centered book that imagines the violence of an imposing army turning on itself, a book in which the people of San Francisco stand true to themselves, even inviting opposing soldiers to join them and eat food in a nurturing environment.
I love the women in this book, especially Maya and her granddaughter Madrone. Madrone is a healer who offers to treat the opposing General. People caring for people and their environment is what I love about life.
An epic tale of freedom and slavery, love and war, and the potential futures of humankind tells of a twenty-first century California clan caught between two clashing worlds, one based on tolerance, the other on repression.
Declaration of the Four Sacred Things
The earth is a living, conscious being. In company with cultures of many different times and places, we name these things as sacred: air, fire, water, and earth.
Whether we see them as the breath, energy, blood, and body of the Mother, or as the blessed gifts of a Creator, or as symbols of the interconnected systems that…
I have a weird imagination and care deeply about being kind in all areas of life. I think people, in general, need to be kinder to one another and to the earth. I find humanity to be too anthropocentric and dismissive of the intelligence of other creatures. The incredible complexity and interconnectedness of nature fascinate me, and I constantly look for connections between two seemingly disparate systems. Writing my book allowed me to put insects at the focal point of planetary control. It was an incredibly fun story to write.
I love how Huxley depicts a utopic community in a sea of unrestrained capitalism. This book got me thinking about solutions to problems I didn’t know existed. It got me to rethink how I view family structures, community, responsible drug use, and meditation. I appreciate how he centered the conflict around his ideal world versus the world imposed on his ideals by reality.
For over a hundred years the Pacific island of Pala has been the scene of a unique experiment in civilisation. Its inhabitants live in a society where western science has been brought together with Eastern philosophy to create a paradise on earth. When cynical journalist, Will Farnaby, arrives to research potential oil reserves on Pala, he quickly falls in love with the way of life on the island. Soon the need to complete his mission becomes an intolerable burden and he must make a difficult choice.
In counterpoint to Brave New World and Ape and Essence, in Island Huxley gives…
Don’t mess with the hothead—or he might just mess with you. Slater Ibáñez is only interested in two kinds of guys: the ones he wants to punch, and the ones he sleeps with. Things get interesting when they start to overlap. A freelance investigator, Slater trolls the dark side of…
As a child, my family and I would make scary movies to watch at our own annual family film festival. Horror has always been a passion of mine. The way horror can evoke emotions in you that you can’t otherwise access is a special kind of high. As a horror movie/game/book aficionado, I’ve tried to weave elements of horror into my stories. My favorite types of scary stories are the ones that would stand on their own, even if the ghosts were taken away. I am so passionate about horror with heart, which can be hard to find in a world of slasher movies and true crime.
I typically like to read original fiction rather than a video game story adapted into a book, but this book was the exception. I love it when a story focuses on social issues and the way they affect ordinary people. Even though the world and location of Bioshock are fantastical, the self-serving and corrupt capitalistic society hits too close to home.
Seeing the worst of humanity and the way things quickly devolve into chaos and anarchy when society's basic needs are ignored in favor of profit absolutely terrified me. And while, yes, there are definitely traditionally scary things in this story, the scariest thing about it is the lack of human compassion the residents of Rapture have for each other.
Even if the book didn’t have the terrifying Splicers climbing on the ceilings or the precariously built city at the bottom of the ocean, its unflinching look at the negative…
After barely surviving a plane crash, a man discovers an undersea city called Rapture, a failed utopia created by Jack Ryan, a man who looked to embrace a world surrounding the objectivist ideals of Ayn Rand. Power and greed have run amok and the city has succumbed to civil war and the only question is who really deserves to survive this maniacal debacle of science gone mad.
When I was a teenager, I thought we could create a perfect world—or if not quite perfect, at least much, much better than the one we are currently destroying. Actually, I still think it’s possible, just a lot harder and a lot more dangerous than I originally thought. I’ve been interested in all the efforts to imagine and create utopias, which sometimes produce hells instead of heavens, ever since. I have evolved (I think it’s progress) from being a high school Maoist to something more mature while watching China’s attempts to improve the lives of its citizens with respect and sympathy.
The Manuels give an exhaustive but very readable history of utopian thought from the Renaissance (Thomas More) to Marxism, with backward glances to ancient Judaic and Hellenic cultures. This book explains how and why utopias have been central to Western thought, showing how the utopias of one age seem dystopian in another age (or even their own), presented in wry prose that draws readers into the story.
This masterly study has a grand sweep. It ranges over centuries, with a long look backward over several millennia. Yet the history it unfolds is primarily the story of individuals: thinkers and dreamers who envisaged an ideal social order and described it persuasively, leaving a mark on their own and later times.
The roster of utopians includes men of all stripes in different countries and eras--figures as disparate as More and Fourier, the Marquis de Sade and Edward Bellamy, Rousseau and Marx. Fascinating character studies of the major figures are among the delights of the book.
Understanding the world is important for everyone. For me, it takes the form of analyzing colorful images and artifacts in the built environment. In the broad traditions of the global northwest, color is regarded as deceptive and unreliable. For centuries now, and throughout disparate media and technical systems, color has had to maintain this secondary, subordinate status as “other,” linked to falsity, manipulation, and deceit or, to quote David Batchelor, “some ‘foreign’ body". In my work, I argue that we have all inherited this tradition in the global northwest, fetishizing color as both excessive and yet indispensable in its capacity to retroactively confirm the sanctity of what it is not.
Once again, some of our most profound insights into contemporary culture derive from a deep understanding of history. For example, why is there a fundamental distrust of surfaces and shiny “bling”?
In The Republic, and in “Book X” in particular, Plato outlines a theory of images, truth, deception, and appearances that we continue to relive in everyday life.
Long regarded as the most accurate rendering of Plato's Republic that has yet been published, this widely acclaimed work is the first strictly literal translation of a timeless classic. In addition to the annotated text, there is also a rich and valuable essay,as well as indices,which will better enable the reader to approach the heart of Plato's intention. This new edition includes a new introduction by acclaimed critic Adam Kirsch, setting the work in its intellectual context for a new generation of readers.
When I was a teenager, I thought we could create a perfect world—or if not quite perfect, at least much, much better than the one we are currently destroying. Actually, I still think it’s possible, just a lot harder and a lot more dangerous than I originally thought. I’ve been interested in all the efforts to imagine and create utopias, which sometimes produce hells instead of heavens, ever since. I have evolved (I think it’s progress) from being a high school Maoist to something more mature while watching China’s attempts to improve the lives of its citizens with respect and sympathy.
This is modern China’s only full-fledged utopia (mostly written about 1900)—explaining how humanity gradually evolves to get rid of the “boundaries” dividing us by nation, class, race, and gender. It may take thousands of years, but history will create a truly democratic and equal society. Children will be raised in public nurseries, couples, including homosexuals, will enter into one-year (renewable) contracts. In thousands of years, the boundaries separating the species and even the gods will dissolve as well.
This volume translates one of the major works of modern Chinese philosophy and in so doing makes a major contribution to the study of comparative philosophy. The volume contains an extensive introduction structured as follows:
1. Biographical Sketch of K'ang Yu-wei 2. Ta T'ung Shu: The Book 3. A General Discussion of the One-World Philosophy of K'ang Yu-wei
