100 books like A Clockwork Orange

I consider myself a very spiritual person and I believe that it is a person’s responsibility to question what it means to be spiritual in order to better understand one’s own faith.

As I am, Philip K. Dick was obviously obsessed with wanting spiritual answers. Valis is very entertaining, but it also made me question all that I believe in a way that expanded and made my spirituality stronger.

A classic must-read for anyone who is satiated by oxygen. I love the psychology of the main character. His decline after committing an atrocity is notable for its detail. The concern shown for him by his friends and family, who do not know the truth, feels natural and warranted in spite of the reader's knowledge.

Is it possible to feel empathy for someone who commits such an act? In a strange way, I found myself questioning my own biases on the topics of crime and punishment after reading this classic. 

In this book, the lines between science and sorcery are indistinguishably and deliberately blurred, crafting a narrative that has evolved into a timeless masterpiece.

Set in a distant future, the universe is ruled over by feudalistic dukes and barons who wage interstellar wars for planets and resources. Here, psychoactive substances grant visions of the future, and colossal sandworms are revered as divine entities. But what truly captured my imagination was the portrayal of the technological as the magical. The Bene Gesserit, a secretive sisterhood often likened to witches, uses multigenerational genetic engineering to bring about prophesies and wield supernatural mind-controlling abilities. 

This seamless fusion of advanced bioengineering with elements of the mystical not only makes the universe of this book feel magical but also tangibly real, resulting in a novel that is both intricate and immersive. 

I read this book relatively recently, not at school or when I was in my twenties, but when I was in my late thirties. I had heard of the novel, and the concept of burning books was all-too familiar as I studied a module on Holocaust literature at university. However, the premise of Ray Bradbury’s novel, written in 1953, was so simple yet so powerful.

It echoes with our own reality today, as although books are not being burned, we are seeing the art of writing itself being "burned" or minimized by tools such as AI or social media. The virtual burning of honest reportage or poetry for opinionated views and algorithms is one symptom of today’s fast-paced society. 

There were some great quotes in Fahrenheit 451, too; the one that really stuck out was, “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies… A child or a book or a… show more.

First published in 1959, Naked Lunch was shocking then, and it still retains its power today. Both in content and structure, Naked Lunch is powerful and wholly original.  In effect, it becomes more than a work of fiction, it becomes an experience. Burroughs invented a technique called the “cut-up method,” where he cut up his coherent storyline into paragraphs, scenes, and even sentences, then reordered them both randomly and editorially. The disorder thematically represents the chaos of existence and the universe, and it also disrupts the reader. Like the book or not, it shakes you into realizing that there are possibilities beyond the conventional.

Burrough’s language is honed to a razor’s edge, and I find that many of the sentences in Naked Lunch burn like fire. The meaning of the title as Burroughs explains it is to bare the naked truth of reality on the end of a fork. From… show more.

The late American master sci-fi author Philip K. Dick, or just PKD, wrote 44 novels and some 121 short stories. Even if you have never read one of them, you’ve seen the many movies and TV Series based on them.

This novella was the inspiration for Ridley Scott’s classic movie Blade Runner (the original). Like the movie, it portrays sci-fi as the mirror opposite of the bright Star Trekian sci-fi. Here we get cyberpunk (or tech-noir)—ubiquitous neon lights barely illuminate the dark shadows of this future world.

Mankind has been forced off-world, but those who remain on Earth collect any living creature. Those who can’t afford them can buy them from companies who create animals so realistic they are indistinguishable from the real thing–horses, birds, cats, and…sheep. But these companies can build humans, too. Earth bans these “replicants,” and our protagonist, Rick Deckard, is a bounty hunter commissioned to hunt… show more.

My take on a future society in which a shadowy group conducts mass surveillance and is experimenting on turning a musician into a serial killer. 'I see no butterfly wings in the Rorschach test, but a mountain of bones.' So says Dale Helix, who is convinced he is being abducted by a shadowy group of rulers called The Assembly. The novel is set in a dystopian city, and is an exploration of totalitarianism, paranoia, and social engineering in a society where it is impossible to gauge the truth. The aim of the programme is to study the link between serial killers and dictators in order to clone the ideal dictator. And the Assembly is engineering a new gender. Is Dale insane or is his paranoia a key to a hidden truth? This is a novel about surveillance totalitarianism.

I first read Slaughterhouse-Five as a callow college student, concluding with the certainty of youth that this was a brilliant but weird amalgam of dark humor and sci-fi wrapped inside an autobiographical anti-war screed. However, my real ‘duh’ moment came after rereading the book decades later.

The opening line, “Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time” – tells you everything you need to know: It’s about PTSD, written from the inside looking out. Like Billy Pilgrim, I could see myself time-jumping and being abducted by aliens to escape the trauma of war. Interestingly, the term “PTSD,” the acronym for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, had not entered our lexicon when Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse Five in the 1960s. Poignant and personal, it's still a brilliant amalgam of dark humor and sci-fi. 

As a mother, I could relate to June Osborne’s feelings of panic and rage when her family was pursued and her child ripped from her arms. Someone taking or hurting my kids would be my worst nightmare. I am definitely a protective Mama bear and no enemy could stop me from doing whatever I had to – to rescue my child. That is one of the main reasons this book resonated with me.

The rest of the storyline is not too far fetched these days, with politics as they are. In a world where a few rich have so much power, and the many are basically wage slaves, an apocalyptic world is not hard to imagine.

It was hard to read of the torment her captors put June through, but that had to happen to show the strength of a woman surviving everything they had thrown at her, and never… show more.

Humans are always curious about what the future will look like. They are also concerned about the state impinging on their privacy and interfering with their lives. George Orwell masterfully combined these two human impulses in his classic novel. He wrote the book in 1949 to present his view of the future.

I read this book when I was in my mid-20s. I found it an interesting read, especially since many of his predictions did not come true. I was curious to know how past generations viewed our generation.