Vox

The First Sister

Linden A. Lewis2020

A voiceless priestess on a spaceship and a soldier infiltrating a rebel group navigate a solar system divided by war and social castes.

pace0·prose0·bleak0

Star Maker

Olaf Stapledon1937

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

tense → elegiac, still speculative fiction

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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.

tense → dreamlike

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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.

tense → sardonic

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The Da Vinci Code

Dan Brown2003

A symbologist and a cryptologist flee the police while solving puzzles hidden in art. They search for a secret regarding the Holy Grail.

tense → propulsive

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Fifty Shades of Grey

E.L. James2000

A college student enters a sexual contract with a wealthy businessman. The story focuses on their power dynamics and BDSM encounters.

tense → earnest

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The Martian

Andy Weir2011

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

tense → wry

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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.

tense → propulsive

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Red Rising

Pierce Brown2014

A laborer on Mars discovers his caste is being lied to and undergoes surgery to infiltrate the ruling elite. He joins a brutal war games academy.

tense → propulsive, still dystopian

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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.

tense → wry

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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.

tense → meditative

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Translated Accounts

James Kelman2001

Anonymous witnesses describe life under a military regime. The prose uses broken, bureaucratic syntax to mimic a literal translation.

tense → bleak, still dystopian

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The Other Valley

Scott Alexander Howard2024

A girl lives in a valley flanked by identical valleys that are twenty years in the past and future. She must decide whether to intervene in time.

tense → elegiac, still dystopian

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The Testament of Jessie Lamb

Jane Rogers2011

A teenager decides to volunteer for a medical program that will end her life to save humanity from a biological catastrophe.

tense → earnest, still dystopian

pace-1·prose0·bleak+1

Watchmen

Alan Moore1986

Retired masked vigilantes investigate the murder of a former teammate. The story takes place in an alternate 1985 on the brink of nuclear war.

tense → bleak, still dystopian

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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.

tense → sardonic, still dystopian

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