55 Books Like Phule's Company

I first encountered Douglas Adams when I caught The Hitchhiker’s Guide on late-night radio, and I was hooked. The novel is slightly different, with Adams giving a bit more consideration to plot and logic, but it has the same wonderful, rapid-fire dialogue style, which has seldom been replicated.

I absolutely love Arthur Dent’s ludicrous accidental odyssey, meeting characters like Zaphod Beeblebrox and the wonderfully named Slartibartfast. The Guide sits in the background, popping up to provide superbly funny explanations of the history of the universe, humanity’s obsession with money, and a lot more.

For me, the thing that sets this apart from a lot of SFF humor is its ‘Britishness’—there’s a distinct feel of the surreal comic legacy of, for example, Monty Python and The Goon Show.

Kirk and the Enterprise go up against the Klingons for the right to mine dilithium on Direidi. But the Direidians are writing their own script for this contest—a script that propels the crew of the Starship Enterprise into their strangest adventure yet! I think this was the first “serious” Star Trek novel I ran across that was all about the humor. Ford did a great job of creating situations that make the reader laugh while still respecting the characters.

Rifts happen, so you should be ready when universes collide. A policy with Stranger & Stranger can cover all of your interdimensional insurance needs. But Tom Stranger faces his greatest challenge yet. Despite being assigned the wrong—and woefully inadequate—intern, Tom must still provide quality customer service to multiple alternate Earths, all while battling tentacle monsters, legions of the damned, an evil call center in Nebraska, and his archnemesis, Jeff Conundrum. It's time to kick ass and adjust claims. This is my go-to for road trips. Tom Stranger is such a straight man, but the humor never stops.

Captain Bristol and his ship Blue 87 are taken prisoner by scientists who want to take Blue’s cognizant brain and use Bristol in regeneration experiments along with the others they have plucked from history. Outgunned, outnumbered, and definitely outdated, this unlikely gaggle of prisoners must find a way to save not only themselves, but the British Galactic Empire. I’ve read this book twice this year and it kept me laughing every time with its crazy antics. I’m dying for the sequel. (Hope they can resurrect me!)

AI has been coming for my day job for a while now, so I was honestly conflicted when I heard that the talented Megan E. O'Keefe wrote a book about a rogue machine intelligence controlling a deserted spaceship. However, the first few chapters of this spooky, thoughtful, riveting novel made me think again. After finishing… well, I don’t want to spoil it, but let’s just say the themes rang very, very true to someone on the sharp end of the AI revolution.

Storytelling like this embodies the best of science fiction: using a futuristic setting to explore the issues most relevant to the present. That’s why I’m a science fiction fan, and it’s why I adore this book.

I have enjoyed literally hundreds of hours of thrilling military SF in the series of which this book is the first novel. David Weber is one of two authors who have invented new SF sub-genres. In David’s case, the sub-genre is often called space opera. The other author is David Drake. His Hammer’s Slammers stories are now considered the first books in the ‘space marines’ sub-genre.

David Weber’s story universe is huge. I sometimes think it’s too big in the sense that he tries to weave too many sub-plots into the larger story arc. But his first book is quite moderate in this regard. I started writing my own military SF novels partly because Weber wasn’t writing new sequels fast enough to satisfy my thirst for thrilling space combat.

I was blown away by how good Victories Greater Than Death is. It reminds me of the original Star Trek with its optimism and inclusiveness. Charlie Jane Anders puts inclusiveness front and center with the sheer diversity of her characters in ethnic origin, neurodiversity, and LGBTQA+ identification. This is done brilliantly in a manner that is in your face, lighthearted, touching, and nuanced. All this is accomplished without sacrificing the yarn's sci-fi suave.

The protagonist is Tina, a teenage girl destined to transform into an alien superhero. Her story thrums with fantastical adventure while exploring questions of identity and purpose with gravitas. I explore similar themes in my writing and hope I handle them with the aplomb Charlie Jane Anders does.

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is a bold, futuristic epic that immediately sucked me in and wouldn’t let me go. Starting on the far-off world of Adrasteia, the story follows Kira across the galaxy after she mistakenly walks into an interstellar war. Paolini perfectly paints this fantastical story, leaving you desperate for more. Having read Eragon at a young age, I wasn’t expecting Paolini to write this genre, but I am so impressed by his work. While I’d recommend any of his books, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is my new favorite. His world-building is amazing and wildly entertaining!

Nothing about the Warhammer 40,000 universe says ‘funny’. The fact that it’s fans call it the ‘grimdark’ is a proud testament to this. I’ve read a lot of Warhammer books, but was surprised when I came across this series. It follows Ciaphas Cain, a Commissar who is trying to survive and find the cushiest job for himself in a universe of constant war, yet somehow, he constantly ends up being the hero.

This book really opened my eyes to the fact that you can humor even in the grittiest settings, and that just because a book is funny, it doesn’t mean it can’t be action-packed and have high stakes. Much of the humor comes from Cain’s futile attempts to avoid any sort of combat and save his own skin.

Parts of Gust Front hit home. I read this while living in the Appalachians, so seeing Cally preparing for an invasion in a remote valley in Georgia, and the subsequent fighting that takes place in and around the Appalachians, struck a nerve with me. If the worst happened, up to and including the alien invasion depicted here, would the mountains be the best place to hold out and resist? The scope of the novel covers many settings, including other familiar ones like Washington D.C., all of which ground the speculative premise of an alien invasion in a story that feels very real; something that any of us could be forced to live through.