66 Books Like The Earthlings

Learning about nature and loving it through the narrative is the first step toward stewardship. If we want to grow young conservationists, the next step is translating that love into action. This book encourages kids (from five up) to put down their gadgets, get outside and discover the natural world in their own backyard. Each page includes 10 things to find in leaf litter with clever illustrations and hidden flaps that figuratively and emotionally open up a whole new minuscule world. Just like the experiments in my own books, Leaf Litter engages kinetic learners and harnesses the power of action.

My life is hard to define, but that doesn’t stop me from constantly trying. I’ve got a couple of autobiographies in progress, even though I was convinced that no one cared about the trivialities of my existence.

And then I found Lyndsay Rush. In her poetry, I saw so many of my own little details. To use an overworked cliché, I felt seen.

Through Lyndsay’s words, I realized that in so many ways, it’s not just me. It was never just me. By pointing out the minuscule details that fill our lives, she gave me permission to approve of my own. That is not a bit much. That’s just right.

I rarely read young adult books, but Pure’s cover intrigued me. That’s good because it was a fun read.

Well-developed characters and a clever setting play a large part in the book’s charm. Pure takes place after a nuclear war. There are plenty of survivors, but the radiation left behind has a secret side effect never disclosed to the public: It causes flesh to merge with objects.

For instance, the main character has a doll for a hand. Her grampa has a fan stuck in his throat. Some people are fused with the ground. A group of mothers merged with their children. Adding to this, a giant dome hosts the last “pure” humans. While Pure relies on common young adult tropes, the result feels fresh and unique.

Like Frankenstein, this is another iconic work about transformation, power and powerlessness, monstrousness and isolation.

Each time I read it, I am struck by how vivid the central image is, and how sad and stark: Gregor Samsa, who is a young salesman living with his parents and sister, wakes up one day to find that he is a giant cockroach.

Kafka is brilliant at inhabiting this bug-like man, all the details are convincing—what he likes to eat, how he moves. It is a powerful allegory about being shunned and different, and about family dynamics. I have read it many times and each time I am engrossed and filled with awe and admiration.

Deadpool is an amazing, compelling character with a stunning story. I am probably among the last people—a middle aged woman—one would think of as responding to this comic, but it’s a brilliant and thought-provoking look at bioengineering and cruelty.

Deadpool, a powerful mercenary, gets struck down by a terrible disease. Weapon X offers to cure him—but at a price. Deadpool’s immune system becomes so over-active that he develops disfiguring lesions all over his body and must wear a body suit and mask to cover his now repulsive-looking face and body.

I found this comic very smart about the costs of technology and the complex feelings that arise from being on the receiving end of a biomedical experiment.

This book is the grandfather of the modern small-town horror story–few novels before or since have developed such a sense of creeping dread and paranoia.

Aside from being impressed with Finney’s writing, the masterful way he manages mood, and the gradual deterioration of trust (which underpins the most admirable qualities of small-town life), I can trace my lineage as a horror writer back to this novel. 

Carl Sagan was that most unusual of creatures: a top scientist who was also a lyrical writer. In an era when scientists were still wary of dealing with the press – an aversion that he helped overturn – his books were particularly influential in promoting the search for extraterrestrial life, both on the planets of our own Solar System (notably Mars) and on planets of other stars. In nearly 40 short, varied essays, The Cosmic Connection outlines our links with the cosmos around us, raises the possibility that we are not alone, and discusses what we might do if an extraterrestrial contact were to be received.

Honestly, I could recommend any of Peter Cawdron’s first contact science fiction books–and there are many of them! Peter is one of the most prolific indie authors on Amazon, and I appreciate that most of his books are available on Kindle Unlimited.

The Simulacrum appealed to the side of me that craves stories with tension, drama, and a fast pace. At the same time, as a science-minded reader, I want the stories I read to be plausible. The author clearly did his research by producing a first-contact story that fits within the known laws of physics and interstellar travel.

As a bonus, this book includes an afterword with detailed explanations of the ideas, concepts, and hard science that went into the book–something I really appreciate.

Two fantastic cities are even better than one.

At the center of the story is Spearpoint, the tallest skyscraping megabuilding that you could imagine. It is so enormous that it is divided into segments from bottom to top with different levels of technology (Horsetown and Steamville at the bottom, cybertowns, and then the fantastic Celestial Levels at the top). But wait, there’s more.

Roaming the rest of the planet is the Swarm, hundreds of giant aircraft that function together as the neighborhoods of a “distributed city” much like the fleet in Battlestar Galactica. The very different cities do not play well together, and you get to choose which one you’d rather live in. I like flying, myself.

This is the real-life account of a professor who gets caught up in “The Phenomena,” a term used to describe the appearance and interaction with extraterrestrial activity and encounters.

Diana Pasulka is a professor of religious studies who is researching the similarities between encounters with angels and demons, which are very similar in description to encounters with aliens and UFOs. Professor Pasulka is blindfolded and driven by a NASA scientist to a desert in New Mexico, where she is shown a secret  “UFO crash site.”  She doesn’t believe any of it. She says the ground is covered for miles by deteriorating aluminum cans that the government placed there over fifty years ago to obscure the UFO crash site and hide it. Later, her friend, Dr. Gary Nolan, a Stanford University scientist, verifies the objects from the crash site are not from this “universe.” 

I love this book because it is… show more.