After
The Technicolor Time Machine
Harry Harrison1967
- pace
- prose
- structure
- bleakness
5 of 6 directions open — nothing to recover from
More like it
- pace0prose-1bleak0
Year zero
Reid, Robert2012
Aliens discover that Earth's music is the best in the galaxy and they owe humanity trillions in copyright fines.
Same playful register, still satire
pace0·prose-1·bleak0
- pace0prose+1bleak0
Spondulix: A Romance of Hoboken
Paul Di Filippo2003
A sandwich shop owner in Hoboken deals with a local currency scheme and strange occurrences. It is a satirical look at urban life.
Same playful register, still satire
pace0·prose+1·bleak0
- pace0prose0bleak+1
The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack
Mark Hodder2010
Explorer Richard Burton and poet Algernon Swinburne investigate a supernatural attacker in a steampunk 1860s London. Time travel alters history.
Same playful register, still time travel
pace0·prose0·bleak+1
- pace0prose0bleak0
Spaceland
Rudy Rucker2002
A tech worker is contacted by a four-dimensional being. He struggles to comprehend 4D geometry while his life is upended by the new perspective.
Same playful register, still satire
pace0·prose0·bleak0
1 more ↓ ↑
- pace0prose0bleak0
The Company
Tom Holt2008
A man takes a job at a firm where the employees are immortal and the CEO is the devil. It is a workplace satire about corporate bureaucracy.
Same playful register, still satire
pace0·prose0·bleak0
Denser prose
- pace-1prose+2bleak+3
Naked Lunch: The Restored Text
William S. Burroughs
A series of nonlinear vignettes follow a drug addict's hallucinations and travels. The prose is fragmented and satirical.
playful → sardonic, still satire
pace-1·prose+2·bleak+3
- pace-2prose+2bleak+2
Dhalgren
Samuel R. Delany1975
An amnesiac wanderer enters Bellona, a city cut off from the world where time and geography shift. He joins a gang and writes poetry.
playful → dreamlike
pace-2·prose+2·bleak+2
3 more ↓ ↑
- pace-1prose+2bleak+2
Radiance
Catherynne M. Valente2015
A documentary filmmaker disappears on Venus in an alternate 1980s solar system. The story is told through scripts, interviews, and letters.
playful → dreamlike
pace-1·prose+2·bleak+2
- pace-1prose+2bleak+2
Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace1996
A sprawling narrative centered on a tennis academy, a halfway house, and a lethal film. The text includes hundreds of pages of detailed endnotes.
playful → sardonic, still satire
pace-1·prose+2·bleak+2
- pace-1prose+2bleak+2
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.
playful → dreamlike
pace-1·prose+2·bleak+2
Faster
playful → sardonic, still satire
- pace+1prose-1bleak+1
Get Jiro!
Anthony Bourdain2012
In a future Los Angeles, master chefs rule as warlords. A sushi chef who kills rude customers is caught between two warring food factions.
pace+1·prose-1·bleak+1
- pace+1prose0bleak+1
Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits
David Wong2015
A young woman inherits her estranged father's criminal empire in a lawless future city. She must survive assassins using high-tech gadgets.
pace+1·prose0·bleak+1
3 more ↓ ↑
- pace+1prose+1bleak+1
Slaughtermatic
Steve Aylett1998
A bank heist goes wrong when a time-traveling version of the protagonist appears in the vault. Reality and virtual simulations begin to blur.
pace+1·prose+1·bleak+1
- pace+1prose-1bleak0
The Martian
Andy Weir2011
A man does arithmetic to stay alive on Mars. Problem, attempt, result, repeat.
playful → wry
pace+1·prose-1·bleak0
- pace+1prose-1bleak0
Ready Player One
Ernest Cline2008
A teenager in a dystopian future hunts for a digital easter egg inside a massive simulation. The quest relies on 1980s pop culture trivia.
playful → propulsive
pace+1·prose-1·bleak0
Slower
- pace-2prose+2bleak+2
Dhalgren
Samuel R. Delany1975
An amnesiac wanderer enters Bellona, a city cut off from the world where time and geography shift. He joins a gang and writes poetry.
playful → dreamlike
pace-2·prose+2·bleak+2
- pace-2prose+2bleak+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.
playful → meditative
pace-2·prose+2·bleak+1
3 more ↓ ↑
- pace-2prose+2bleak+1
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.
playful → meditative
pace-2·prose+2·bleak+1
- pace-2prose+2bleak+2
The Pale King
David Foster Wallace2011
An unfinished, experimental novel about the mundane daily operations of an IRS processing center in 1985 Illinois.
playful → sardonic, still satire
pace-2·prose+2·bleak+2
- pace-2prose+2bleak0
Gödel, Escher, Bach
Douglas R. Hofstadter1979
An exploration of how cognition emerges from hidden neurological patterns. It uses math, art, and music to explain self-referential systems.
Same playful register
pace-2·prose+2·bleak0
Heavier
- pace0prose+2bleak+3
A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess1962
A teenage gang leader is imprisoned and subjected to state-mandated psychological conditioning. The story is told in a slang called Nadsat.
playful → sardonic, still satire
pace0·prose+2·bleak+3
- pace0prose0bleak+3
The Stepford Wives
Ira Levin1972
A photographer moves to a suburb where the wives are unnervingly submissive. She investigates whether the local men are replacing them with robots.
playful → tense, still satire
pace0·prose0·bleak+3
3 more ↓ ↑
- pace0prose0bleak+3
Cat's Cradle
Kurt Vonnegut1963
A writer researches the creator of the atomic bomb and discovers a substance that freezes all water. He joins an island cult.
playful → sardonic, still satire
pace0·prose0·bleak+3
- pace0prose+1bleak+3
Chain-Gang All-Stars
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah2023
Prisoners in a private American penal system fight to the death in televised matches for a chance at freedom.
playful → bleak, still satire
pace0·prose+1·bleak+3
- pace-1prose+1bleak+3
This Is the Way the World Ends
James Morrow1986
A man buys a suit to survive a nuclear war and is put on trial by the ghosts of people who will never be born. It is a satire of nuclear policy.
playful → sardonic, still satire
pace-1·prose+1·bleak+3
