The best fantasy/sci-fi books about saving, ending, and starting worlds, personal powers and soul redemption

Why am I passionate about this?

Mark Landau has an MA in Linguistics and is an ordained Interfaith Minister and Spiritual Counselor. He has written eight books on meditation, healing, evolution, politics, sex, fantasy and saving our world, one musical play, and many songs, poems, and essays. After devoting a lifetime to healing and awakening himself, others, and the world utilizing therapy, meditation, energy, and bodywork, 12-step programs, Rebirthing, Shamanic Journey, Soul Retrieval, DNA Activation, and esoteric Hindu, Vedic, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Hawaiian and Native-American practices, he began developing his own meditations and healing modalities. He does individual healing sessions utilizing six modalities, teaches three new, evolution-boosting meditations for our times and lives in Santa Fe. 


I wrote...

The Miracle Revolution

By Mark Landau,

Book cover of The Miracle Revolution

What is my book about?

Meet Eva Dunn, gorgeous, brilliant, drawing to her the ultimate team, meant to transform the world. The Miracle Revolution is an erotic, spiritual, healing, adventure, save-the-world, sci-fi, fantasy novel that will shock and delight you. Fifty Shades of Grey meets Lord of the Rings meets Wonder Woman meets The Rapture. Beware, it's genre-bending, boundary-breaking, mostly nonviolent, and contains sporadic super-kink, graphic super-sex, and some deep, true, special, precious, honest-to-God wisdom.

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Stranger in a Strange Land

Mark Landau Why did I love this book?

It’s been many decades since I read this book but it will always stay with me. Storyline, details, many things fade. But at the time, it had a profound effect on me. I definitely related to Valentine Michael Smith, the protagonist human raised by Martians who had never seen another member of his species. And I’ll never forget the scene where he’s coaxed into a bath by his lovely, human guide. On Mars, water was rare and precious and powerful ceremonies were conducted around very spare amounts of it. So, for him, entering a tub full of water was an overwhelming, pinnacle experience. And, of course, I related to his special powers that far exceeded those of his brethren and his destiny to bring about transformations far beyond their conception. And I love the word ‘grok’ which Heinlein coined for this book and which, to some degree, has entered the English lexicon. It’s a Hugo Award-winning masterpiece classic, in my book, perhaps the best.

By Robert A. Heinlein,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked Stranger in a Strange Land as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The original uncut edition of STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Hugo Award winner Robert A Heinlein - one of the most beloved, celebrated science-fiction novels of all time. Epic, ambitious and entertaining, STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND caused controversy and uproar when it was first published and is still topical and challenging today.

Twenty-five years ago, the first manned mission to Mars was lost, and all hands presumed dead. But someone survived...

Born on the doomed spaceship and raised by the Martians who saved his life, Valentine Michael Smith has never seen a human being until the day a…


Book cover of Childhood's End

Mark Landau Why did I love this book?

Yet again, I read this book in adolescence, though I saw the TV movie version much more recently. The end of the world and the human race as we know it, the role of the most powerful children in bringing about the complete transformation of the entire world, the subtle, powerful connections that some of these children forged, the more than quirky, telling form of the mysterious benevolent or not so benevolent alien Overlords, hidden to all but one for so long, it all got me to the core. Another masterpiece classic.

By Arthur C. Clarke,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked Childhood's End as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Arthur C. Clarke's classic in which he ponders humanity's future and possible evolution

When the silent spacecraft arrived and took the light from the world, no one knew what to expect. But, although the Overlords kept themselves hidden from man, they had come to unite a warring world and to offer an end to poverty and crime. When they finally showed themselves it was a shock, but one that humankind could now cope with, and an era of peace, prosperity and endless leisure began.

But the children of this utopia dream strange dreams of distant suns and alien planets, and…


Book cover of More Than Human

Mark Landau Why did I love this book?

The third and last of my adolescent favorites, this Hugo, Nebula, and International Fantasy Award winner gave me a core component not only of my own book but, in a way, of my life—a pod or team or unit of uniquely talented individuals who, when united, become, yes, the whole which is far more than the sum of the parts, in a way, a symbiotic entity of its own that becomes a single, super-power juggernaut of beings trying to discover who and what they are and just what earth-changing things they are meant to bring about. Beautifully written, compelling, and endearing, it dove deep into the center of the heart and soul of my very existence.

By Theodore Sturgeon,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked More Than Human as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this genre-bending novel—among the first to have launched sci-fi into the arena of literature—one of the great imaginers of the twentieth century tells a story as mind-blowing as any controlled substance and as affecting as a glimpse into a stranger's soul. 

There's Lone, the simpleton who can hear other people's thoughts and make a man blow his brains out just by looking at him. There's Janie, who moves things without touching them, and there are the teleporting twins, who can travel ten feet or ten miles. There's Baby, who invented an antigravity engine while still in the cradle, and…


Book cover of Ender's Game

Mark Landau Why did I love this book?

Ender’s Game came out in 1985 and I found and read it not long after that, so it’s much more recent to me. And I guess I’d say that OSC is my favorite fantasy/sci-fi author of all time. I love books about devastatingly brilliant children and Ender, AKA Andrew Wiggin, is definitely one. And I love books where children hold the balance and fate of the world in their grasp, especially when they don’t know that they do. And the giddy, zero-gravity war games the children have to engage in, got me thoroughly engaged right in there with them. Though smaller and weaker than almost all those chosen to train with him, Ender must overcome all the odds and all of them combined to win through to humanity’s salvation. And I fell in love with his beloved sister, Valentine, and felt antagonistic towards his older brother, Peter, right there along with him. Card has a gift of creating vivid, realistic people and worlds with an immediacy perhaps unparalleled in the genre.

By Orson Scott Card,

Why should I read it?

15 authors picked Ender's Game as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 12, 13, 14, and 15.

What is this book about?

Orson Scott Card's science fiction classic Ender's Game is the winner of the 1985 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1986 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut―young Ender is the Wiggin drafted…


Book cover of Speaker for the Dead

Mark Landau Why did I love this book?

And since Speaker for the Dead, number 2 in OSC’s Ender series and another Nebula and Hugo Award winner, is my favorite of all his books, I must include it as well. After the great, terrible war, Ender disappears and many years pass. A mysterious figure, the Speaker for the Dead, arises to reveal the souls and redeem those who have passed on. I very much related to someone who really could grok the life of one recently deceased and speak to the survivors in a way that clarified, resolved, revealed, and redeemed the deceased’s entire existence for them. And the whole new, recently discovered world with a new intelligent race of beings again pulled me and the Speaker right into it. More than with any other author, I felt I was right there living and experiencing what the characters were. And, of course, the dynamic question of what right a more ‘advanced’ people has to withhold and dispense knowledge and information to a ‘less advanced’, intelligent race at their sole discretion thoroughly engaged me in rooting for breakthroughs and freedoms for the oppressed underdogs.

By Orson Scott Card,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Speaker for the Dead as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'There aren't too many recent sf novels we can confidently call truly moral works, but Speaker for the Dead is one. It's a completely gripping story.' - The Toronto Star

'Achieves and delivers more than almost anything else within the science fiction genre, Ender's Game is a contemporary classic' - New York Times on Ender's Game

A FALLEN HERO - HAUNTED BY HIS PAST, BUT CAN HE CHANGE THE FUTURE?

Ender Wiggin was once considered a great military leader, a saviour for mankind.
But now history judges his destruction of an alien race as monstrous rather than heroic.

In the…


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What You Do To Me: A Novel

By Rochelle B. Weinstein,

Book cover of What You Do To Me: A Novel

Rochelle B. Weinstein Author Of When We Let Go

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Not only am I the author of seven women’s fiction novels, I’m a voracious reader who believes she was raised by Judy Blume and Sidney Sheldon. In our broken home, reading was an escape, a salve for the wound, a place where I felt heard and understood. My novels touch on deep emotions—real and relatable. If I don’t capture that feeling when I’m reading through my drafts, I dig deeper. And that’s the thing about a great book, that gut punch, that slide under my skin, I get you. There’s no better read than the one that pulls the heartstrings and gives you all the feels.    

Rochelle's book list on tugging on every one of your heartstrings

What is my book about?

What You Do To Me follows Rolling Stone reporter Cecilia James on the hunt to find the muse behind a famous love song, all while managing an estranged relationship with her father and boyfriend Pete.

Inspired by Hey There Deliah, the dual timeline stretches across the sunny beaches of 1970s Miami with star-crossed lovers Eddie and Sara, to the glittery music industry of 1990s LA. For music lovers and fans of that first, unforgettable love, What You Do To Me is the story of a love song with equal parts heart and harmony.

What You Do To Me: A Novel

By Rochelle B. Weinstein,

What is this book about?

From the bestselling author of This Is Not How It Ends comes a moving novel of two unfinished love stories and the music and lyrics that bring them together.

Journalist Cecilia James is a sucker for a love song. So when she stumbles across a clue to the identity of the muse for one of rock’s greatest, she devotes herself to uncovering the truth, even as her own relationship is falling apart.

While writing an article for Rolling Stone, Cecilia works to reveal the mystery that has intrigued fans and discovers a classic tale of two soulmates separated by fate and circumstance. Rock…


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