Here are 98 books that A Thousand Words for Stranger fans have personally recommended if you like
A Thousand Words for Stranger.
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I grew up in a house of books. Bookcases in almost every room. At an early age, I discovered some great ones that were usually recommended by my dad. The Odyssey. Tarzan of the Apes. Princess of Mars. It is a long, long list, and I won’t give you all my faves—but one thing about it: I was drawn to books with heroes, particularly when those heroes were clearly good. There are no shades of gray for me. I like my heroes to have honor and humility and to always strive to do the right thing.
This is an oldie but a goody. I read this as a kid and have read it since then many times as an adult, and it’s still great. The writing is dated, but the story absolutely rocks.
Our hero, John Carter, is a Civil War veteran. When he enters a mysterious cave, he is transported to Mars. A version of Mars where Mars is inhabited by all sorts of incredible beings.
Everything about this story is larger than life. The description of Mars. The warring tribes. The fight scenes. Our hero as he tackles the villains. How he saves a world in peril. In the end, our hero gets the girl (who is a beautiful princess). The dynamic between both of them over the course of the story is well worth the read alone.
Rediscover the adventure-pulp classic that gave the world its first great interplanetary romance-now featuring an introduction by Junot Diaz
In the spring of 1866, John Carter, a former Confederate captain prospecting for gold in the Arizona hills, slips into a cave and is overcome by mysterious vapors. He awakes to find himself naked, alone, and forty-eight million miles from Earth-a castaway on the dying planet Mars. Taken prisoner by the Tharks, a fierce nomadic tribe of six-limbed, olive-green giants, he wins respect as a cunning and able warrior, who by grace of Mars's weak gravity possesses the agility of a…
As a planetary scientist and college professor, I love the adventure of finding something new, the wonder of strange worlds, and the magic of mysterious discoveries that behave logically in a way that I can figure out. Unsurprisingly, that is what I like in my fiction too. I also love a story that explores the nature of the interaction between people, particularly in friendship or romance (all proper of course—I’m an old-fashioned guy). The books on this list are all touchstones in my own journey into science and life, and I hope that you can find in them the delight, wonder, insight, and motivation that I have found.
This pick reflects changes to speculative fiction that had taken place by the 2010s, including common publication by smaller publishers and frequent mashups of multiple genres. With robots (okay, so they’re called automatons), werewolves, ghosts, and a steampunk 1800s feel, the story is quite different from others in my list, but it shares the mystery, the fun adventure, and the proper romance.
Lucy Pickett comes to a dark manor house, ala Jane Eyre, and must use all her deductive skills and biological knowledge to solve a mystery and perhaps exonerate the dark and dangerous Lord Miles. In this story, I not only found those elements of mystery, discovery, and relationship that draw me in, but I also found the motivation to begin writing again myself.
When Lucy Pickett arrives at Blackwell Manor to tend to her ailing cousin, Kate, she finds more than she bargained for. A restless ghost roams the hallways, werewolves have been reported in the area, and vampires lurk across the Scottish border.
Lord Miles himself is clearly hiding a secret. He is brash and inhospitable and does not take kindly to visitors—even one as smart and attractive as Miss Pickett. He is unsettled by the mysterious deaths of his new wife, Clara, and his sister, Marie. Could Miles himself be to blame for the deaths?
As a planetary scientist and college professor, I love the adventure of finding something new, the wonder of strange worlds, and the magic of mysterious discoveries that behave logically in a way that I can figure out. Unsurprisingly, that is what I like in my fiction too. I also love a story that explores the nature of the interaction between people, particularly in friendship or romance (all proper of course—I’m an old-fashioned guy). The books on this list are all touchstones in my own journey into science and life, and I hope that you can find in them the delight, wonder, insight, and motivation that I have found.
I’ve picked this story from the 1950s because, as a teenager, it stirred my sense of wonder at time and space.
Dard Nordis must get safely to the ship that will carry him, his family, and his friends from the tyranny that has overtaken Earth to freedom among the stars. Halfway into the book, hundreds of years pass with the turn of a page, the tyranny of old Earth is just a distant memory, and Dard is in a new world far from the troubled world that he knew.
The story opened up for me the potential for a profoundly new life. It stirred my desire to discover the universe through scientific exploration. There is no romance here, but there is family, friends, and an adventure like no other!
As a planetary scientist and college professor, I love the adventure of finding something new, the wonder of strange worlds, and the magic of mysterious discoveries that behave logically in a way that I can figure out. Unsurprisingly, that is what I like in my fiction too. I also love a story that explores the nature of the interaction between people, particularly in friendship or romance (all proper of course—I’m an old-fashioned guy). The books on this list are all touchstones in my own journey into science and life, and I hope that you can find in them the delight, wonder, insight, and motivation that I have found.
High school student Kip Morgan wins an internship at an oceanographic institute in Hawaii where he, with help of new friend Julie Scott, overcomes multiple personal and engineering challenges to solve an archaeological mystery and raise a sunken ship from the sea floor. This story from the 1970s was key in guiding me toward a life of science, and the portrayal of a realistic, mentored research experience gave me a vision for what I might do in my own journey through college and into science.
I loved the exotic location, scuba diving, and seafloor exploration, mystery, adventure, and romance!
Writing science fiction was the natural result of a lifetime of reading it for pleasure and studying whenever I could as part of my English Lit course at University. When I started writing, it was really important to me as a woman (especially a gay woman) to write female characters that weren’t just strong and likable; I wanted them to be interesting, unpalatable, and tough. Above all, not easy to dismiss. All of the women in the books I’ve listed fulfill at least some of these categories, which is the core of why these novels hold such a special place in my heart.
This was a book that really surprised me. A very no-nonsense macho family member recommended it to me on a holiday, and I remember raising my eyebrows reading the back cover and finding out it heavily featured an interspecies romance.
The minute I started reading, I got so wrapped up in the adrenaline and action that I actually went on to recommend it to my sci-fi-loving dad, who read it in a day and went on to borrow the rest of the series. The heroine, a power armor-wearing mercenary, is incredibly competent and badass but avoids falling into either Mary Sue or Damsel in Distress territory as the plot proceeds.
Additionally, while I kept going for the action-romance, the worldbuilding was surprisingly interesting and in-depth. Whenever I’m reluctantly charmed by something, I find it hard not to gush about it; it’s just such a fun experience as a reader to…
A promising young mercenary's future gets thrown into jeopardy after a fateful encounter with an alien in the start to a propulsive space opera series perfect for fans of Firefly and Killjoys.
"Devi is hands-down one of the best sci-fi heroines I've read in a long time." RT Book Reviews Devi Morris isn't your average mercenary. She has plans. Big ones. And a ton of ambition. It's a combination that's going to get her killed one day -- but not just yet.
That is, until she just gets a job on a tiny trade ship with a nasty reputation for…
First off, I have a PhD in English from Lehigh University. I’m particularly interested in seeking out literary science (and speculative) fiction, SF that has style, that is well-written, well-plotted, SF that avoids the flat characters and cliched writing to which the genre can be all too prone. Some readers find genre fiction in general off-putting, associating it with poor style. Literary genre fiction thus gets sequestered beside its less-felicitous brethren and sistren. Which is too bad. Because plenty of stylistically-adept SF exists. One just needs someone to sift through the detritus for one, prize out the pearls, and display them in fine settings for one’s perusal.
It is a truism that Science Fiction dates itself. SF stories that were written only a few years previous often fail to foresee technological innovations ̶ cell phones, GPS, gene-splicing ̶ that seem obvious and inevitable to hindsight-blessed present-day readers. Those disconcerted by such, let us call them “backwards anachronisms,” should find Quantum Thief a welcome relief for decades to come, because the novel is set so far in the future that hi-tech things like, say, cell phones seem quaint curios out of far-distant days of yore. Long-distance communications in Quantum Thief are effected by something more like telepathy (although the word is never used).
“Quantum” is the operative term in this novel, make no mistake.
Be forewarned: Quantum Thief is chock-full of coined terminology. But have no fear. You have a choice. Either use the online glossary - or you can just read for the story and absorb the…
The solar system's greatest thief is wanted for murder. To prove his innocence, he needs to pull off a heist even he thought was impossible . . .
The Quantum Thief is a dazzling hard SF novel set in the solar system of the far future - a heist novel peopled by bizarre post-humans but powered by very human motives of betrayal, revenge and jealousy. It is a stunning debut.
Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist and trickster. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his exploits are known throughout the Heterarchy - from breaking…
I’m an author of genre-bent stories and grew up with a love of dark tales. In particular, I was a fan of things that layered stories and linked their themes together, even if you didn’t necessarily notice initially. For example, the Alienfranchise is a story of human survival, but also of corporate conspiracy. When I come across books that mix stories or add interesting structural elements, it instantly draws me in, so I set out to create exactly that with my release Ailuros. But I’m not alone in experimenting like that, so I hope you find some fun, scary releases you may not have known about in my list.
While more literary than horror, the concept of a man with no memories being pursued by a shark made of words has plenty of creepiness to it! Here, the author uses different typographical sizes and structures to create pictures, and these tie into the themes of the book. It’s a straightforward read with a unique edge that helps make language more visual, and that makes it thoroughly compelling.
Eric Sanderson wakes up in a place he doesn't recognise, unable to remember who he is. All he has left are journal entries recalling Clio, a perfect love now gone. As he begins to piece his memories back together, Eric finds that he is being hunted by a creature that moves in language, that swims through the currents of human interaction.
With the help of his cynical cat Ian, Eric must search for the Ludovician, the force that is threatening his life, and Dr Trey Fidorus, the only man who knows the truth.
I am a professor of English at the University of Florida, and an author of SF/F myself; I teach it both as a creative writer, and as a scholar of both American Literature and feminist thought. This is my subject and I am passionate about it, and I’ve been teaching SF/F, American literature of the 19th and 20th centuries for thirty years, so I know my topic well.
Vonda N. McIntyre is an often over-looked science fiction and alternate history author whose prose is lush, whose imagination is daunting, and who was unfailingly generous to the fan community, and to the community of writers she knew and supported; she was also my teacher, my mentor and my friend of thirty years, and she knew how to make you laugh! Exile is back in print after being out of print, and it is a terrifyingly beautiful, thought-provoking read.
The Exile Waiting was the first novel by the Hugo and Nebula award-winning novelist Vonda N McIntyre, published in 1975. It introduces the world that McIntyre later made famous with her multi-award-winning Dreamsnake: a post-apocalyptic world in which Center, an enclosed domed city, is run by slave-owning families who control the planet's resources, and exile the dissidents.
It is an ordinary day. A transport arrives from off-world, piloted by two pseudosibs, a powerfully intelligent threat to Center's dominant families. A girl is punished for being in the wrong room under the gaze of the wrong person. A visiting stranger defends…
This set of books helped to form my character and my sense of possibility. I think the same passion for these stories and ideas has led me to study the unconscious and dreams. I also am passionate about the earth and caring for nature; the Elven magic deepened my sense of its sacredness while stretching my mind into the fun of creating magical realms. I think it’s a moral code but also a playful way of thinking and being. Other ways I’ve continued from these works, coupled with my love of language, is an extensive study of the Ancient Futhark, the runes, which have magical power in Tolkien’s Middle Earth.
This book carried a concept of shared thought that enchanted me. Colonists find themselves marooned on a planet of simple technologies. At a certain season, a flower sends pollen through the air that causes special connective telepathy and healing powers. They form a society based on royal families but there’s a group that melds minds which is beautifully depicted. This series raised in me a fascination with the idea of closeness of mind and connection. Amid the challenges of a primitive society blended with increasing amounts of outer, technologically advanced influence as their planet is eventually discovered, the mind is shown to still be the most powerful.
After being rejected in school, because I had to move with my family again and again, I never had really friends and knew how being left alone and rejected felt. So I put my nose into books and developed a love for writing. Since I didn’t know what to do with them, I left them alone when I married. After being diagnosed with cancer later in my life, I couldn’t go back to work, I remembered my love to write and read so I started to write short stories again. I want to help young people going through similar rejections and bullying, to lift them up, and take the negativity out of their minds.
I love reading sci-fi YA books and this book was really talking to me. Peaceful contact or not?
Reading this book by the author – her first– it reminded me of the much-loved movie Avatar, which I also love.
Like in the movie, when Captain Melissa and her crew finally arrived at the new planet, to contact the people living there, they looked peaceful. They find out, that they are telepathic, not only the people, the plants, and animals as well.
After the people of the planet perform a play, they find out, what was really going on there. Not everything you see can be trusted when you look behind the scenes. From the outside, it was all peaceful, but when you touch the plants, they speak to you.
As the crew sets foot on a new world, human aggression meets the peaceful nature of an advanced race.
Captain Melissa Shakeworth leads her crew to a new world to make first contact with a tranquil, nonviolent, advanced race of beings.
As she tries to maintain control over her unpredictable crew in a world that is peaceful, she struggles to stay respectful and honorable as things quickly spin out of control.
One crew member’s volatility and aggressiveness goes too far, endangering his life and the safety of the crew and the entire mission.
Interested in
telepathy,
romantic love,
and
friendships?
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