Unearthly Neighbors

Visitors

Orson Scott Card2014

Time-travelers split up to prevent Earth from destroying their colony planet. One travels across his world while his double heads for Earth.

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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.

meditative → sardonic, still science fiction

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Nova Express

William S. Burroughs1964

An experimental narrative uses the cut-up technique to depict a war between intergalactic criminals and the police. It is a collage of imagery.

meditative → sardonic, still science fiction

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Rakesfall

Vajra Chandrasekera2024

Two souls reincarnate across centuries of Sri Lankan history and a distant future. The narrative shifts through different bodies and realities.

meditative → dreamlike

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The Stainless Steel Rat

Harry Harrison1961

A futuristic con man is caught by the Special Corps and forced to use his criminal skills to catch other lawbreakers.

meditative → playful, still science fiction

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The Last Question

Isaac Asimov2007

A short story told in seven vignettes spanning billions of years. Humanity asks a supercomputer if the heat death of the universe can be avoided.

Same meditative register, still science fiction

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Wallbanger

Alice Clayton2012

Caroline is kept awake by her neighbor's loud sexual encounters. She confronts him, leading to a relationship built on banter and frustration.

meditative → playful

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Logan's run

William F. Nolan1967

In a future where everyone is executed at age 21, an enforcer becomes a fugitive. He attempts to reach a rumored sanctuary.

meditative → tense, still science fiction

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Influx

Daniel Suarez2014

A physicist invents a gravity-reflecting device and is imprisoned by a secret agency that suppresses technology. He plots a high-tech escape.

meditative → propulsive, still science fiction

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Star Wars Episode VII - The Force Awakens

Alan Dean Foster2001

A scavenger and a defecting soldier join the fight against a new galactic power. They search for a missing hero from the previous generation.

meditative → propulsive, still science fiction

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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.

Same meditative register

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Looking Backward, 2000-1887

Edward Bellamy1888

A man falls into a hypnotic sleep in 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000 to find the United States transformed into a socialist utopia.

meditative → earnest, still science fiction

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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.

meditative → playful

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Hellspark

Janet Kagan1988

A linguist travels to a new planet to investigate a murder. She must determine if the local species is sentient while navigating a conspiracy.

meditative → tense, still science fiction

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The Running Man

Richard Bachman

A man enters a deadly reality show to fund medical care for his daughter. He must survive thirty days while the entire world hunts him for money.

meditative → propulsive, still science fiction

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Strangers

Gardner Dozois1978

An artist living among the alien Cian on a distant planet falls in love with a local woman and attempts to navigate their incompatible biology.

meditative → elegiac, still science fiction

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