78 Books Like The Breakthrough Effect

This was a book club choice, and as soon as I finished it, I bought the other two books in the trilogy. I literally couldn’t put them down! Another post-apocalypse for this list, this time, the story is told through the memories of Jimmy/Snowman. But make no mistake, the novel is about Crake, a brilliant, lonely, and terrifying young man.

As Jimmy tries to recover his past, shadowed by the gentle, green-skinned ‘children of Crake,’ he recalls the events leading up to the end of humanity. This is very much a mystery, so I must be careful what I reveal, but if you are all about misguided genius and hubris, you will adore this novel. Needless to say, with an author like Atwood, the writing is superb. 

This book didn’t just fascinate me; it shattered my understanding of utopia. Cronin’s Prospera seemed idyllic, but as I read, a gnawing unease grew. Like the protagonist, Proctor, I found myself grappling with the realization that perfection might come at a devastating cost.

The unraveling of Prospera’s facade forced me to reflect on the illusions we cling to in our own society. Cronin’s exploration of memory, loss, and the price of paradise stuck with me, making me ponder the lies we tell ourselves.

This book blindsided me with its explosive blend of ancient mysteries and cutting-edge science. I was captivated by how Riddle wove together seemingly disparate elements—a structure in Antarctica, autism research in Jakarta—into a thrilling quest that challenges everything I thought I knew about human origins.

The ethical implications of these discoveries drove me to research and question long-held beliefs. This thriller didn’t just keep me up all night reading; it left me eager for the sequel.

This book left me questioning what it truly means to be human. From the moment Logan Ramsay was infected with a mysterious virus, I was captivated by Crouch’s exploration of genetic enhancement. As Logan's abilities expanded—making him smarter, stronger, and more detached—I was both fascinated and horrified.

The tension between his new capabilities and the erosion of his emotional connections made the ethical dilemmas even more poignant. Crouch’s vision of a world on the brink of extinction, with genetic upgrades as both a salvation and a curse, felt disturbingly real. This isn’t just a techno-thriller; it’s a profound examination of what we might sacrifice in the relentless pursuit of progress.

I specifically recall the scene in which a mind-uploaded character is being subjected to interesting psychological experiments, such as having his neural processing slowed, sped up, and even completely halted without feeling any awareness of those changes.

This book is a fascinating philosophical deep dive into the relationship between functionalism and consciousness. The other thing I was personally drawn to was the story’s use of cellular automata and artificial life since these areas of computer science have been passions of mine even longer than mind uploading.

I fondly remember the first time I encountered Author C Clarke. I had read science fiction before and considered it my favorite genre. But I had never been whisked away to the stars and into the minds of intelligent machines as I was reading this book.

Clarke envisioned a future where human technology has usurped human curiosity. The ability of our machine creations to satiate our needs and wants—a time when our creations far outstripped our human capacity. I didn't know it then. But I know now that his concepts were real. It is only now in the twenty-first century that the future he prophesied is emergent. Even though we may not see exactly the same technology Clarke envisioned, we can see his ideas applied to us in the way intelligent machines shape our destiny.    

Clarke's re-write of his novel Beyond the Fall of Night delivers the classic hero Alvin.… show more.

This book has two concepts that have stuck in my memory for years: the uplifted space-faring squid and the end-of-universe-scouring of astronomical bodies into perfectly smooth spheres. How many stories take the notion of the future to its logical extreme by showing the cosmos literally withering away countless eons downstream?

This book directly shows such a far-flung world, an endgame to which almost no science fiction story ventures. Mind uploading occurs in the novel in the far future of humanity, less so in much of the novel’s storyline in the near future, but I included it in this list because the book itself is fantastic and Baxter genuinely leans into a future in which mind uploading is an inevitable and expected outcome.

I fell in love with Stross’s book based on a single line: “The wreckage of an incredible meal is scattered across the tables around her.” I never forgot that evocative sentence and the vivid imagery it inspired. This book directly invokes the biggest concepts in cosmological futurism, like Matrioshka brains: star-powered computerized uber-brains.

This book has it all. I enjoyed the space-themed perspective on the singularity, which is less focused on the happenings on Earth and more on a space-faring civilization as the full scope of the singularity comes to pass. I particularly appreciated the utilization of a laser sail to transport an uploaded crew in a spaceship far too small for conventional humans, a concept that only works in the context of mind uploading.

This book takes the tired and worn trope surrounding mankind’s search for the fountain of youth, twists it violently, and asks, “What if this were viable, although exorbitantly expensive, tech?” I loved not only this fresh, original angle, but Morgan’s thoughtful treatment of it.

With immersive world-building and a gritty protagonist, Altered Carbon dragged me through a truly surprising and original murder mystery that kept me guessing through the final reveal – though it wasn’t the murder plot that kept me hanging on.

Morgan’s not-particularly-likeable protagonist not only darkened the story, he pressured me to revisit difficult moral questions and to reconsider them from his perspective. He pulled me into the story, shook my moral compass, and then made me believe that perspective was standard in his world.

Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel, was not, he said, “a book about what is, but a book about what could be.” Further, “it is mostly about managers and engineers” and more precisely, about automation and what American society could become if machines took over work, and labor, as we have known it, was made redundant. His imagined city of Illium was socially and physically split between the managers and engineers of its industrial plant and the former workers had been displaced by automation and now led meaningless lives of busy work provided by the government. The engineer Paul Proteus becomes disaffected and joins in a revolution being plotted against the new order. They succeed, but soon realize that the people of Illium were “already eager to recreate the same old nightmare.” The logic of the machine continued its sway.

I like that you have to watch Vonnegut carefully.… show more.