Here are 100 books that Retrotopia fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m a lifelong typewriter lover. That passion has taken me down some deep and wonderful rabbit holes, including critiques of digital tech. I’m just as hooked on tech as the average person today, and of course, it has real benefits, but I’m painfully aware of how my addiction damages my attention, privacy, and self-reliance. The books I’ve picked help me articulate the problems, imagine just how bad things can get, and see alternatives. In my day job as a philosophy professor, I think about topics like memory, time, and technology, and specialize in controversial thinker Martin Heidegger (I own his typewriter!).
I devoured this book in a day, and it has kept me thinking for years. Say you can buy a stuffed animal equipped with a camera, and an anonymous user somewhere on the planet can see through that camera, move the toy, and make a rudimentary noise. What could possibly go wrong?
I was fascinated by the range of stories Schweblin imagines: fun, sweet, silly, and absolutely awful. Why can’t people in Silicon Valley think outside the box like this before they release the latest gadget that’s supposed to make our lives better?
A visionary novel about our interconnected world, about the collision of horror and humanity, from the Man Booker-shortlisted master of the spine-tingling tale
A Guardian & Observer Best Fiction Book of 2020 * A Sunday Times Best Science Fiction Book of the Year * The Times Best Science Fiction Books of the Year * NPR Best Books of the Year
World Literature Today's 75 Notable Translations of 2020 * Ebook Travel Guides Best 5 Books of 2020 * A New York Times Notable Book of 2020
They're not pets. Not ghosts or robots. These are kentukis, and…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I’m a lifelong typewriter lover. That passion has taken me down some deep and wonderful rabbit holes, including critiques of digital tech. I’m just as hooked on tech as the average person today, and of course, it has real benefits, but I’m painfully aware of how my addiction damages my attention, privacy, and self-reliance. The books I’ve picked help me articulate the problems, imagine just how bad things can get, and see alternatives. In my day job as a philosophy professor, I think about topics like memory, time, and technology, and specialize in controversial thinker Martin Heidegger (I own his typewriter!).
I’ve tried my hand at street poetry with a typewriter and been surprised by the hugs and tears my little efforts sometimes provoke. This book shows me why: people are hungry for someone to listen and care. And something about a mechanical intermediary promotes attention, while digital tech pushes us apart.
I was absorbed by Sonia-Wallace’s stories and jealous of his chance to be Amtrak’s writer-in-residence, typing poems on a train across America.
It might surprise you who’s a fan of poetry — when it meets them where they are.
Before he became an award-winning writer and poet, Brian Sonia-Wallace set up a typewriter on the street with a sign that said “Poetry Store” and discovered something surprising: all over America, people want poems. An amateur busker at first, Brian asked countless strangers, “What do you need a poem about?” To his surprise, passersby opened up to share their deepest yearnings, loves, and heartbreaks. Hundreds of them. Then thousands. Around the nation, Brian’s poetry crusade drew countless converts from all walks of life.
I’m a lifelong typewriter lover. That passion has taken me down some deep and wonderful rabbit holes, including critiques of digital tech. I’m just as hooked on tech as the average person today, and of course, it has real benefits, but I’m painfully aware of how my addiction damages my attention, privacy, and self-reliance. The books I’ve picked help me articulate the problems, imagine just how bad things can get, and see alternatives. In my day job as a philosophy professor, I think about topics like memory, time, and technology, and specialize in controversial thinker Martin Heidegger (I own his typewriter!).
Birkerts’ essays make me beautifully sad and newly defiant. Like me, he’s an analog native living in a digital world who has felt his ability to concentrate on the written word erode over the years.
But boy, can he write: “Imagination, the one feature that connects us with the deeper sources and possibilities of being, thins out every time another digital prosthesis appears and puts another thin layer of sheathing between ourselves and the essential givens of our existence, making it just that much harder for us to grasp ourselves as part of an ancient continuum.” To the typewriter, I go!
Trenchant, expansive essays on the cultural consequences of ongoing, all-permeating technological innovation
In 1994, Sven Birkerts published The Gutenberg Elegies, his celebrated rallying cry to resist the oncoming digital advances, especially those that might affect the way we read literature and experience art―the very cultural activities that make us human. After two decades of rampant change, Birkerts has allowed a degree of everyday digital technology into his life. He refuses to use a smartphone, but communicates via e-mail and spends some time reading online. In Changing the Subject, he examines the changes that he observes in himself and others―the distraction…
This book is an elegiac meditation on the will to survive. Tor, a beluga whaler, and his wife, Astrid, a botanist specializing in Arctic flora, are stranded during the dark season of 1937-38 at his remote whaling station in the Svalbard archipelago when they misjudge ice conditions and fail to…
I’m a lifelong typewriter lover. That passion has taken me down some deep and wonderful rabbit holes, including critiques of digital tech. I’m just as hooked on tech as the average person today, and of course, it has real benefits, but I’m painfully aware of how my addiction damages my attention, privacy, and self-reliance. The books I’ve picked help me articulate the problems, imagine just how bad things can get, and see alternatives. In my day job as a philosophy professor, I think about topics like memory, time, and technology, and specialize in controversial thinker Martin Heidegger (I own his typewriter!).
Sometimes, I’m in the mood for dystopias and want to imagine where the trends that Birkerts describes may take us. So I was pleasingly horrified by Shteyngart’s story of a near future where books are smelly embarrassments, people’s credit ratings are displayed on signs as they walk by, and Internet deprivation is grounds for suicide.
Oh, and I won’t be signing up for high-tech life extension procedures after seeing where that goes …
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A deliciously dark tale of America’s dysfunctional coming years—and the timeless and tender feelings that just might bring us back from the brink.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times • The Washington Post • The Boston Globe • San Francisco Chronicle • The Seattle Times • O: The Oprah Magazine • Maureen Corrigan, NPR • Salon • Slate • Minneapolis Star Tribune • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Kansas City Star • Charlotte Observer • The Globe and Mail • Vancouver Sun • Montreal Gazette • Kirkus…
I am an author and avid reader of romance, especially those full of conflict in a world heavy with magic, shifters, vampires, and others. My dad was a great storyteller and sparked my interest in the paranormal. When I was a kid, he’d tell me stories about growing up in the mountains of Puerto Rico. The evil that lived there. My imagination took it from there. I wish I would’ve written down those stories. I can’t get him to talk about them anymore. It might be the reason why The Nine: Zane had started out as a contemporary romance story until Zane took over with all his paranormal drama.
I have always loved fictional works that explore deep truths of humanity and existence. As a teen struggling to understand my purpose and beliefs, I grew fond of dystopian books with subtle, hope-filled messages pointing to God as our salvation amid chaos. I loved the genre so much that I began writing a Christian dystopian novel of my own and self-published it at 19, weaving pieces of my testimony throughout the main character's inner journey. For me, a book is only as good as its characters, no matter how gripping the plot is. So, the books on this list contain some of the genre's most authentic, intricately written souls.
As a fast-paced sci-fi dystopian book about the end times, Unbound took me by surprise. The main character is amusingly real in his unbelief in God and skepticism about the prophecies from the book of Revelation, telling things as they are and unable to comprehend the intense visions he experiences.
The storyline is compelling, and I could not help but continually compare it to the biblical prophesies because they were so eerily parallel and realistically portrayed. This book had my heart racing and made me want to read the next in the series as soon as I finished it.
"The Da Vinci Code meets Hunger Games meets Left Behind...An imagining epic." Hugh Hewitt, New York Times Bestseller
Elijah Goldsmith has nightmares he needs to ignore. Why would a rich kid from Manhattan dream three straight nights about a dragon and the destruction of St. Peter's Basilica? He's never even been to Rome.
It's bad timing, too. He's graduating soon and applying to be a spy in the International Security Agency. That's where he meets Naomi. She's the kind of girl who makes boys like Elijah want to share their secrets. Were they brought together to learn what his secrets…
Tina Edwards loved her childhood and creating fairy houses, a passion shared with her father, a world-renowned architect. But at nine years old, she found him dead at his desk and is haunted by this memory. Tina's mother abruptly moved away, leaving Tina with feelings of abandonment and suspicion.
I’ve been fascinated with the macabre since childhood and have always been drawn to the darker sides of humanity. In nearly every story, the villain is my favorite character, and I’m most intrigued with their motives. From The Magic Tree House to Artemis Fowl to The Hunger Games to The Purge, I’ve consumed as much sci-fi, dystopian, thriller fiction as possible my entire life. I’ve written several thriller novels and dystopian books and have worked with Bradley Fuller, the producer of The Purge and A Quiet Place, on the possible movie adaptation of my debut novel. If you also like dystopian thrillers, feel free to check out my recommendations!
I love this book because it’s a classic and engaging sci-fi thriller with an original twist that kept me on my toes, a remarkable main character, and a compelling supporting cast. The dystopian element kept me hooked throughout, and the masterful storytelling often made me forget I was reading.
It is not only gripping but thought-provoking, with commentary on societal issues, much like YA dystopian novels from my childhood. What’s most frightening about this book is that it's easy to see that this sort of thing could happen today.
"Echoes of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest reverberate through this cinematic tale...readers looking for an adrenaline-inducing resistance plot will find this worth their time." --Publishers Weekly
From award-winning author J. Michael Straczynski, The Glass Box is a hard-hitting, fast-paced sci-fi novel about the choices we make and the ramifications we face.
Riley Diaz was born to fight back.
When she's incarcerated under the authority of a shadowy new defense act, Riley is sent to one of a growing number of American Renewal Centers (ARCs)--institutions modeled after psychiatric facilities--for mandatory reeducation.
I have always loved fictional works that explore deep truths of humanity and existence. As a teen struggling to understand my purpose and beliefs, I grew fond of dystopian books with subtle, hope-filled messages pointing to God as our salvation amid chaos. I loved the genre so much that I began writing a Christian dystopian novel of my own and self-published it at 19, weaving pieces of my testimony throughout the main character's inner journey. For me, a book is only as good as its characters, no matter how gripping the plot is. So, the books on this list contain some of the genre's most authentic, intricately written souls.
A Time to Die is a gritty dystopian book with many unexpected twists and a unique, intricate world that transported me right into it from the first chapter. I loved how genuine and transparent the main character is in her approach to every new circumstance and her newfound relationship with God.
Each chapter is fast-paced, intense, and almost always ends on a cliffhanger. It is one of the most thrilling, raw survival stories I have read, and I recommend it to anyone looking for a book that will keep them engaged and begging for more when it is over.
Parvin Blackwater believes she has wasted her life. At only seventeen, she has one year left according to the Clock by her bedside. In a last-ditch effort to make a difference, she tries to rescue Radicals from the government's crooked justice system.
But when the authorities find out about her illegal activity, they cast her through the Wall -- her people's death sentence. What she finds on the other side about the world, about eternity, and about herself changes Parvin forever and might just save her people. But her…
I’ve spent a lifetime reading horror, I was probably in third grade when I stumbled across a battered collection of short stories by Saki in the adult section of the library—where I wasn’t supposed to be. I snuck the book back to the children’s section, started reading, and I was hooked. Then it was Edgar Allan Poe, and from Poe until now, it’s been every horror novel or short story I could find. The best of them have never left me. And they make up my list, The Most Terrifying Novels You Can’t Escape From.
When I think of the ultimate, inescapable trap, I think of Harlan Ellison’s I Have No MouthandI Must Scream.
To me, the terror is not only unbearable, it’s unchangeable. Of all these worlds, this may be the one most devoid of hope. With no possibility of relief and no chance of escape. There is, in fact, no place to escape to.
And like every book on this list, I don’t have to reread I have No Mouth and I Must Scream, because it’s always with me. In the best and most terrifying way.
A Harrowing dystopian short story by Harlan Ellison, I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream, is set in a post-apocalyptic world where a sentient supercomputer, AM, has destroyed humanity except for five people it keeps alive to torture for the rest of their lives. As AM manipulates the characters' deepest fears and desires, they are held captive in an underground complex and subjected to interminable psychological and physical torture. The narrative is told by one of the captives, Ted, and deals with themes of despair, dehumanization, and the terrifying effects of technological power going unchecked. The story by Ellison…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I've been writing for 20 years, and the more I learn about the craft, the less interested I am in big, bombastic thrillers about the end of the world. Now I'm more impressed by books that do a lot with a little. Some talented writers can spin a gripping story out of nothing more than two people in a room (Stephen King's Misery is one of my all-time faves). The domestic noir genre lends itself to this kind of minimalism. Sure, serial killers are scary, but not as scary as the thought that your spouse might not be who they seem.
Christine has a brain injury, which causes her memories to degrade every time she sleeps. She wakes up every morning as a blank slate, and her devoted husband explains who she is and then helps her get through the day. Unbeknownst to him, she starts keeping a journal—and soon realizes that his story about how she was injured is a little different each time.
I'm never in the mood for a thriller with a big twist in the penultimate chapter. I always want one with a big twist at the end of every chapter, and this book absolutely delivers. Is the husband a good guy or a bad guy? I changed my mind a dozen times over the course of this book, expertly manipulated by the author. I read the whole thing aloud to my wife on a long drive, and the time went by in a blink.
