Artificial Things

Dreams Before the Start of Time

Anne Charnock2017

A multi-generational look at a family navigating the evolution of reproductive technology. It spans decades of social and ethical shifts.

wry → meditative, still speculative fiction

pace0·prose-1·bleak0

Star Maker

Olaf Stapledon1937

A narrator travels through space and time to observe the birth and death of civilizations across the universe.

wry → elegiac, still speculative fiction

pace+1·prose+1·bleak+1

City of Saints and Madmen

Jeff Vandermeer2001

A collection of stories, histories, and pamphlets about the city of Ambergris. It uses found documents to build a surreal urban history.

pace0·prose+1·bleak+1

Too Like the Lightning

Ada Palmer2016

In a 25th-century utopia, a convict narrates the discovery of a boy who can perform miracles. The prose uses 18th-century styles and gender terms.

wry → sardonic

pace0·prose+1·bleak+1

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

John Gray1992

A guide to heterosexual relationships that attributes communication conflicts to inherent psychological differences between men and women.

wry → earnest

pace0·prose-2·bleak-1

The Martian

Andy Weir2011

A man does arithmetic to stay alive on Mars. Problem, attempt, result, repeat.

Same wry register

pace+2·prose-2·bleak-1

Wildfire

Hannah Grace2023

Two college students who had a one-night stand discover they are working as counselors at the same summer camp.

wry → playful

pace+1·prose-2·bleak-1

All Systems Red

Martha Wells2017

A self-aware security android hacks its own governor module to watch soap operas while protecting a team of scientists on a distant planet.

Same wry register

pace+2·prose-2·bleak-1

Skin Game

Jim Butcher2014

Wizard Harry Dresden joins a team of villains to rob a vault in the Underworld. It is a fast-paced heist set in a modern fantasy Chicago.

wry → propulsive

pace+2·prose-2·bleak0

The Kaiju Preservation Society

John Scalzi2022

A food delivery driver joins a secret organization that travels to an alternate Earth to care for massive, dinosaur-like creatures.

wry → playful

pace+2·prose-2·bleak-1

News from nowhere, or, An epoch of rest, being some chapters from a utopian romance

William Morris1890

A Victorian man wakes up in the year 2102. He explores a socialist agrarian society where private property and money have been abolished.

wry → meditative, still speculative fiction

pace-1·prose0·bleak-1

Invisible Cities

Italo Calvino1972

Marco Polo describes fifty-five imaginary cities to Kublai Khan. The book is a series of short, prose-poem meditations on urban existence.

wry → meditative

pace-1·prose+1·bleak0

Beelzebub's tales to his grandson

Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff1950

An extraterrestrial being explains the history and strange behaviors of humanity to his grandson during a long space voyage.

wry → meditative

pace-1·prose+1·bleak0

The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica

John Batchelor1983

A man born in Sweden travels south as Europe collapses into war. He eventually leads a group of refugees to found a new society in Antarctica.

wry → bleak, still speculative fiction

pace0·prose0·bleak+2

The Blood of Angels

Johanna Sinisalo2011

A father grieving his son discovers a portal to another world while bees disappear globally. It explores ecological collapse and grief.

wry → elegiac, still speculative fiction

pace0·prose0·bleak+2

Where Did You Sleep Last Night

Lynn Crosbie2016

A teenager wakes up in a hospital next to a resurrected Kurt Cobain. They form a band and a codependent relationship that leads to violence.

wry → dreamlike, still speculative fiction

pace0·prose0·bleak+2