Books like Planet of the Apes — picked by fans

I first read Orwell’s dystopian nightmare as a teenager and have gone back to it several times since.

Apparently, it is such a brilliant description of life under totalitarianism that, during the communist era, some Eastern Europeans refused to believe that an inhabitant of a democratic country could have written such a book. 

Even today, I find the book very relevant, as Orwell develops themes of truth, propaganda, doublethink, and the misuse of language that you can find in Homage to Catalonia, written a decade earlier. And the ubiquitous and intrusive telescreen has a parallel in our age of surveillance capitalism and the way the Chinese authorities are using information technology to cement their rule.

This is a book that I never hesitate to go back to because it sums up perfectly a society that wants to find you guilty because of who you are.

As the protagonist searches for the rationale behind his arrest, it is a never-ending spider’s web designed to obscure the answers. The point is that at any moment, your personality, your character, your heartfelt beliefs can be the thing that you are guilty of, even if you have done nothing wrong.

The Trial is the abstraction of totalitarian systems. Freedoms that we think we have can be taken away at a moment’s notice, with no rhyme or reason.

This book is a magnum opus of ideology wrapped in an industrial and political thriller.

At its core, it is about a society collapsing when the people who create its wealth, inventions, and infrastructure begin to withdraw their talent when they come to realize their contributions are not valued. When well-drawn characters who are captains of industry speak, they express confident idealisms that are meant to keep the engine of the world running.

Meanwhile, others are constantly asking, "Who is John Galt?" as a form of hopeless expression. Anyone who uses the phrase and tries to explain what it means comes up with their own theory of its significance and who John Galt might be, but in reality, no one knows the source of the question or who he is. Yet, they continue to ask as if it is a meaningless question.

I found this a fun and brilliant story. I actually read it to my three nieces when they were 5, 7, and 11. It was great hearing their opinions on the story.  It’s one of those books that can be understood on different levels. 

In the simplest form, it is exactly what is written on the pages—a story about some farm animals who take over the farm. However, there are many layers to this simple tale. 

I love being able to re-read a book and understand it on a different level each time. To me, that is excellent writing, especially when combined with a fun and entertaining tale.

This is another book that stuck with me for many years.

What would happen if animals suddenly had increased intelligence and the power of speech? They would need to start a society from scratch. How would they accomplish this?

This unique premise just fascinated me, and I think it is a very underrated classic science fiction novel.

This is one of the least-known books by science fiction writer Orson Scott Card, but it’s my favorite. In a dying future, scientists are sent back to the past to initially transcribe history and later to change it when they discover that possibility.

Time travel books can either be an interesting intellectual exercise or a jumble of logical impossibilities. This is the former, but it is also a great historical description of the discovery of the New World, including all of the wonders and atrocities.

It confronts the disturbing roots of European and American slavery as well as the barbarism of Native American cultures. It is a well-written, exciting, emotional experience full of fascinating personalities, high adventure, historical narratives, and serious questions about morality.

Philip K Dick is the king of dual reality, and although Time Out of Joint may not be as well-known as some of his other stories, it is one of his early masterpieces that paints the picture of ordinariness until reality begins to tip towards a far darker truth, which, as Jack Nicholson once famously said, "You can’t handle the truth!"

What I love about this book, and probably almost all his others, is that Dick is warning anyone who is prepared to listen that there are people out there who can destroy the world, and then pretend it didn’t happen. A sobering thought, bigger than simulation theory, because there are people out there extinguishing the world and pretending it isn’t them that’s doing it! Now who could that be?

As a teenager I was struggling to understand the absurdities of life, and then I read Nausea, and found what I was looking for.

This is Sartre’s existential philosophy through fiction. It makes it readable and understandable to the layman and is a compelling psychological study of a breakdown brought on by the absurdity of life. It serves as a panacea when feeling overwhelmed by the fruitlessness of existence, from the absurdity of mortality to the solution to finding a sense of purpose.

It gets into the guts of the mental trauma of questioning anything and everything. Fortunately, there is a way out, and Nausea points the way.

This is the first issue of an excellent YA comic book series. I really do enjoy scifi that features apes or any kind of simian life (yes, I love the Planet of the Apes series), so this book got my attention with the cover. The main characters are all space monkeys or simian astronauts that have landed their spacecraft on an alien world. One unfortunate monkey is the chosen explorer while the others watch his progress from the relative safety of the spaceship. The story is tense and surprising. The art is very skilled and I truly look forward to the next issue of the series which is expected to be released soon.

This book tells how three unlikely women–Jane Goodall, Diane Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas–broke scientific ground with their study of the wild chimpanzee, the mountain gorilla, and the orangutan. In every case, a deep emotional involvement with the animals opened the door to insights that male-dominated “objective” methods of research had minimized or overlooked. “Each woman’s first few months in the field were marked by despair, as the study subjects either could not be located or fled at first sight. The women could not make it work–not by extra stealth, not by better equipment, not by new techniques. One can manipulate an experiment to hasten it, but one cannot force or hurry a revelation.”