67 Books Like The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy

Here’s another great resource for the armchair novelist.

This military handbook has all the information a character might need to survive in many different terrains. From shelter to food, wound dressing to vehicle maintenance, it covers a vast array of subjects and even has sections on urban survival and terrorism added to the later editions.

It’s a great reference for designing characters who understand the challenges of survival, as well as ignorant ones who don’t have a clue, and is full of wonderful setting details and story ideas to inspire a writer. 

How do you write violent scenes in a compelling way when you have no personal experience in that arena?   

Drawing on a lifetime of experience with violent individuals and institutions, Miller explores the concept of how violence works: not only the act itself but how human beings respond to it. The text covers many different weapons and situations, all with an eye toward providing the kind of information that will help make a writer’s violent scenes ring true.

It’s a dark read, to be sure, but a fascinating one, and its value can’t be overstated, especially to those of us whose most physically stressful experience is struggling to get the lid off a can of coffee creamer.

Poisoning is a complicated business. Your character needs to know what poisons are available, along with their toxicity, method of administration, reaction time, symptoms, and treatment.

This book offers all that information and more in language that you don’t need a chemistry degree to understand. From classic poisons to common household substances, natural venoms to street drugs, and pesticides to medical compounds, this book offers detailed information on all facets of the art of chemical assassination.   

Need some monsters to inspire you? A bizarre creature from primitive folklore, perhaps, or a quirky gatekeeper from the 13th level of hell?

Though the market abounds with books on the subject, this is my favorite. Bane presents nearly 3,000 descriptions of supernatural creatures from the “real world” (no gaming monsters), drawn from a stunningly diverse array of time periods and cultures as well as biblical tradition. Each entry details the name, appearance, powers, and proclivities of a given entity, as well as instructions for how to deal with it. Source material is noted so you can follow up on your own,  and an index and bibliography are provided.

While there are many books on the market that feature lists of monsters, this is a serious research book with a wealth of well-organized inspiration for writers of fantasy, horror, and supernatural fiction.

Honestly, I couldn’t put this book down. I read Rogue Elements during a summer vacation on a lovely North Sea island and I had to force myself to have a break and go out for some bicycling and beach fun.

John Jackson Miller just had me hooked with his tale of dashing (but also sad and often drunken) ex-Starfleet officer Cristóbal Rios – introduced in Star Trek: Picard – living through a hilarious adventure while at the same time trying to find a new purpose in life after being cashiered out of his career because of some fishy diplomatic affair.

Grumpy gangsters, a dangerous woman, strange new crew members, and the hunt for a secret treasure keep Rios on the run throughout the whole novel. 

This nonfiction book takes a hard look at humanity’s various attempts to craft a universal language that might, just might, let us one day communicate with extraterrestrials.

What symbols could we use? What encoding? How would we start, and once we’ve started, what would we talk about?

These aren’t easy questions, and we probably still don’t have all the right answers, but I loved the way Oberhaus walked us through the work that has already been done and the directions that future work might take.

I always wanted to know what happened after the episode "The Corbomite Maneuver," which ended with a young crew member sent off to the mysterious First Federation—never to be heard from again in the shows. I always enjoy Christopher L. Bennett’s meticulous sci-fi world-building, and in his hands, the First Federation is revealed to be a suitably fascinating, if isolated, society.

I loved the sense of vastness achieved by getting beyond the United Federation of Planets. I also enjoy when a story takes full advantage of the continuity of the franchise, and The Face of the Unknown smoothly sets up elements of the often overlooked Animated Series of the 1970s as well as Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Philip Coppens is not afraid to take on even the weirdest of niches within the already weird realm of ufology and paleoarchaeology. He does so with an even keel and an unlimited curiosity. He doesn’t simply parrot what everyone around is saying, but he does examine their claims to see if they hold water. Like in most other aspects of life, there are grains of truth and bald-faced lies. Coppens attempts to separate the wheat from the chaff.

This is, in my humble view, the best science fiction novel ever written. I have read it no less than ten times so far and intend to keep rereading it. What nowadays seems incredible is that it was written back in 1961, when most science fiction was still in its age of innocence, full of naïve assumptions about extraterrestrials and their malevolent ambitions.

It will be many years before the first ideas of benevolent aliens appear and even more before we fully realize Lem's wisdom from Solaris: there isn't going to be any First Contact because Others are neither bad nor good, but indifferent, as it is the planetary intelligent ocean on Solaris. We aren't still mature enough even for contacts with ourselves, let alone Others.

So you want to find aliens. But where to begin? Digging up microbial neighbors on Mars? Encountering big-brained, tentacled beings in flying saucers? Searching for far-flung habitable exoplanets?

This compilation of essays from astrobiologists, AI experts, psychologists, planetary geologists, and NASA scientists (plus more!) gives the alien-hunter a well-rounded, thoughtful start for their search.

Some of the essays will leave you laughing out loud; others will remind you how much we still have to learn about the universe. I came away feeling both smarter and smaller, and I enjoyed every minute of it.