I find a lot of satisfaction and beauty in the interconnections between people and things and concepts, as these relationships are numberless and varied, and the web they make—that entangling mesh—essentially defines everything and everything we’ll ever know or be capable of knowing. Relationships between people are just as diverse and structural to the shape of humanity and our globe-straddling society as anything else we might build or accomplish.
A book for people who aspire to relationships tailor-made for their unique beliefs, goals, desires, and lifestyles. A book for people who aren’t afraid to ask, “How might we do this better?”
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Our relationships with living beings like plants and animals may influence the way we treat other sorts of life—or “life”—we encounter in the future, including the artificial life we create. It’s probably prudent to consider what those relationships should look like, now, before we begin engaging with AI or aliens lacking a clear sense of how to behave toward them.
Much ink has been spilled about the “loneliness epidemic” spreading widely in the modern world, and this book does a good job of illuminating several facets of that epidemic, addressing the distinction between our private and public selves, and questioning the means through which we attempt, with mixed results, to close our social gaps.
Josh and Ryan of The Minimalists have been doing a good job, for years, writing about the correlation between consumeristic compulsions and the spaces in our lives these acquisitions are meant to fill. This book focuses especially on several types of relationships that tend to shape our sense of satisfaction and fulfillment with life, alongside discussions of their own (at times troubled) relationships with people and possessions.
This is an immensely poetic, beautiful work of science fiction that orients around the non-standard relationship between time-traveling operatives from rival, potential futures. That relationship evolves in interesting ways, and their behaviors toward each other as they go about their opposing tasks are both fascinating and smile-inducing. Just a joy to read, and a lovely example of interpersonal dynamics stealing the spotlight from an also quite compelling universe and plot.
We’re only now beginning to understand how completely interwoven fungi are with pretty much every other living creature, and I find that interesting and humbling unto itself, but also find it to be a useful metaphor for the mega-ecosystems of which we’re a part: even relationships we can’t perceive or quantify can play vital roles to the survival and well-being of seemingly disparate elements and entities.
5,215 authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them. Browse their picks for the best books about comics, time travel, and fungus.
We think you will like Here, All Systems Red, and The Time Machine if you like this list.
From Theo's list on to alter your sense of reality.
This book has forever altered my sense of place and enhanced my understanding of time. The entire book focuses its gaze on a specific limited space (the corner of a room) then jumps through time showing the layers of moments that have occurred in that exact location, moving far into the past and future. The concept of this book has haunted me ever since I first read it and it still amazes me that Richard McGuire was able to beautifully capture it all so clearly.
From Felice's list on sci-fi you missed because they were novellas.
Who doesn’t like bad boys? None are worse than the SecUnit with a violent past who calls himself Murderbot. He is addicted to consuming digital entertainment, including Space Operas he knows from experience are bogus and he is our sly commentator on human foibles and absurdities. When he gets himself into a “Protection Racket” job for a science group on one of the Company’s colonies, he grasps what is going down faster and more realistically than all of them and goes into action. An almost indestructible conjoining of human and machine, he exhibits the worst attributes of each—to this reader’s utter delight. Wells followed up this short novel with four more, all starring Murderbot.
From Paul's list on time travel that respect the paradoxes.
This is actually not the first time travel novel – Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee and Bellamy’s Looking Backward preceded it by a few years – but it’s the first that can properly be called science fiction rather than fantasy, since Wells provides a machine to do the time travel. It respects the paradoxes in a straightforward way, by telling a story of travel to the future that doesn’t run into any mind-twisting paradoxes at all.
