Here are 88 books that Dawn fans have personally recommended if you like
Dawn.
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When I was a doctoral student in historical musicology, I went to Paris to study postwar government budgets for music, but it was really boring. So I started hanging out listening to Parisian songbirds instead. The more I learned about birdsong, the more I realized it raised some really big questions, like why biologists and musicians have completely different standards of evidence. Those questions led me to write my book, which is about what it means to sing if you’re not considered fully human, and most of my work today is about how thinking about animals can help us understand what we value in those who are different.
A friend gave me this when I was almost done writing my book.
I couldn’t figure out how to justify footnoting a science fiction novel written from the point of view of a one-thousand-year-old spaceship in my own book, which was mostly about theories of musical evolution, but I still wish I had. The spaceship-protagonist can’t tell genders apart and refers to every single character as “she,” and it loves (I mean loves) to sing.
The book tackles surprisingly relevant questions about the way power, gender, and difference circulate through a post-colonial society. It’s completely different from the kind of work I do as an academic, but I think it has something just as important to say about music, human identity, and modern science.
Once, she was the Justice of Toren -- a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy. Now, an act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with one fragile human body, unanswered questions, and a burning desire for vengeance.
When I was a doctoral student in historical musicology, I went to Paris to study postwar government budgets for music, but it was really boring. So I started hanging out listening to Parisian songbirds instead. The more I learned about birdsong, the more I realized it raised some really big questions, like why biologists and musicians have completely different standards of evidence. Those questions led me to write my book, which is about what it means to sing if you’re not considered fully human, and most of my work today is about how thinking about animals can help us understand what we value in those who are different.
For me, this was the book that changed everything!
Haraway does an amazing job of showing how the private lives and experiences of primate specialists were an important part of science. There’s even a chapter that shows how one of the dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History has a taxidermy gorilla whose painted landscape depicts the gravesite of the guy who shot him (you still see it in person today if you are in New York City). This and other stories in the book transformed my thinking about the lines separating “animals” from other Others.
Haraway's discussions of how scientists have perceived the sexual nature of female primates opens a new chapter in feminist theory, raising unsettling questions about models of the family and of heterosexuality in primate research.
When I was a doctoral student in historical musicology, I went to Paris to study postwar government budgets for music, but it was really boring. So I started hanging out listening to Parisian songbirds instead. The more I learned about birdsong, the more I realized it raised some really big questions, like why biologists and musicians have completely different standards of evidence. Those questions led me to write my book, which is about what it means to sing if you’re not considered fully human, and most of my work today is about how thinking about animals can help us understand what we value in those who are different.
C’mon, doesn’t everybody need a book by a guy who explains that the Black-Billed Cuckoo is finally, finally a bird “who appreciates measured silence such as that which characterizes the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony”?
This amazing, idiosyncratic, and beautiful book from 1904 has got pages of gorgeous colored illustrations of birds, musical scores that are a weird hybrid of actual birdsong and random additions the author thinks will “make clear” a bird’s connections to human music, and heartfelt statements like the one above extolling the musical abilities of various American birds.
True, this is not the book to address issues of gender, race, and power in the sensitive and thoughtful ways that Butler and Haraway do. But you won’t care, because you will be having so much fun reading about the Hermit Thrush’s deep connection to the Moonlight Sonata.
In this beautifully written and well-illustrated guide to birds' songs from 1904, Mathews describes 127 bird species, mostly of Eastern United States, and their songs. This fieldbook contains descriptions of the physical characteristics and habits of each, as well as detailed comments on their songs and calls. He includes musical scores of at least two songs for each species.
As an avid reader, I read a wide variety of books. Of the fiction genre mystery and suspense remain my favorite. From the classics to the gritty, a well-told mystery is a literary gem. As my mystery palette has aged—like my taste in wine—so are my demands of what makes a good mystery novel. The best mysteries for me contain more than a serpentine journey toward the hidden truth. They have intriguing characters, crisp dialogue, interesting settings, formidable foes, and of course indispensable heroes or anti-heroes. My writing goal is aimed at achieving the same level of literary penmanship of the mysteries I enjoy reading so much.
Daniel “Dan” Bluford is the Director of Polar City Single Organism Research Lab Facilities. A business he helped to create. The world’s leading architect of sustainable, ecologically conscious products for energy, manufacturing, water treatment, waste management, and environmental clean-up equipment. A company whose mission statement read in part, “Better environment through industry.”
Unable to stay awake on his drive home after work, the loving husband and father stopped for coffee at a familiar coffee shop. The place was empty, aside from a lone barista. A young woman with a sacred Maori chin tattoo and an infectious smile. Shortly afterward, Dan…
Daniel "Dan" Bluford is the Director of Polar City Single Organism Research Lab Facilities. A business he helped to create. The world's leading architect of sustainable, ecologically conscious products for energy, manufacturing, water treatment, waste management, and environmental clean-up equipment. A company whose mission statement read in part, "Better environment through industry."
Unable to stay awake on his drive home after work, the loving husband and father stopped for coffee at a familiar coffee shop. The place was empty, aside from a lone barista. A young woman with a sacred Maori chin tattoo and an infectious smile.
When I was a doctoral student in historical musicology, I went to Paris to study postwar government budgets for music, but it was really boring. So I started hanging out listening to Parisian songbirds instead. The more I learned about birdsong, the more I realized it raised some really big questions, like why biologists and musicians have completely different standards of evidence. Those questions led me to write my book, which is about what it means to sing if you’re not considered fully human, and most of my work today is about how thinking about animals can help us understand what we value in those who are different.
This book is not for the faint of heart. It’s got a lot of academic jargon, and it can be tough reading.
But it’s well worth the work, because it is also one of the best explanations I’ve ever seen, anywhere, of how and why widely accepted categories like “human” and “animal” come from a bigger story influenced by slavery and its aftermath. Jackson’s book also has lovely and subtle case studies that will introduce you to writers and artists you won’t forget, like the incredible paintings of Wangechi Mutu or the sensitive creativity of writer Nalo Hopkinson.
Winner, 2021 Gloria E. Anzaldua Book Prize, given by the National Women's Studies Association
Winner, 2021 Harry Levin Prize, given by the American Comparative Literature Association
Winner, 2021 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Studies
Argues that Blackness disrupts our essential ideas of race, gender, and, ultimately, the human
Rewriting the pernicious, enduring relationship between Blackness and animality in the history of Western science and philosophy, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World breaks open the rancorous debate between Black critical theory and posthumanism. Through the cultural terrain of literature by Toni Morrison, Nalo Hopkinson, Audre Lorde, and Octavia…
I’m a lecturer in medical humanities at the University of Leeds in England and I’m currently writing a book about the portrayal of traumatic pregnancy in fantastic literature (science fiction, horror, fantasy…). ‘Medical humanities’ is a field of study that looks at medical issues using the tools of the humanities, so it encompasses things like history of medicine, bioethics, and (my specialty) literature and medicine. Thinking about literature through the lens of traumatic pregnancy has led me to some fascinating, gory, and philosophical books, some of which I’m including on this list.
I couldn’t finish this list without including one of the most famous examples of pregnancy in science fiction.
Humanity comes face-to-face with an alien species, the Oankali, who use gene editing, cloning, and mating to refresh their gene pools. The focus is on Lilith, a black woman taken hostage by the aliens who must learn about their plans for her and strategize her responses.
I really appreciate the way Butler’s work manages to speak to the legacy of slavery, particularly through a scene where the aliens create the circumstances for Lilith to breed with a human man in aid of their experiments. Lilith’s refusal to succumb to this animalistic treatment confronts the legacy of breeding humans during slavery.
I find Lilith (like many of Butler’s other characters) a driven character who deals with outlandish situations and the potential invasion of her own body with a pragmatic determination that invites me,…
'One of the most significant literary artists of the twentieth century' JUNOT DIAZ
'Octavia Butler was playing out our very real possibilities as humans. I think she can help each of us to do the same' GLORIA STEINEM
One woman is called upon to reconstruct humanity in this hopeful, thought-provoking novel by the bestselling, award-winning author. For readers of Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison and Ursula K. Le Guin.
When Lilith lyapo wakes in a small white room with no doors or windows, she remembers a devastating war, and a husband and child long lost to her.
I’ve been a science fiction writer since I was old enough to read, and I’ve spent probably way too much of my life reading and writing and researching and thinking about aliens. I’ve worked in the aerospace industry, launching rockets to the moon and Mars and Saturn, and five of the books I’ve published have touched on alien life in one way or another. I’ve worked as a contributing editor for WIRED magazine and the science and technology correspondent for the SyFy channel, and I hold patents in seven countries, including 31 issued U.S. patents.
Sterling burst onto the SF scene with a crash and clatter when I was in high school, and this book, while perhaps not his very best work, is certainly his most creative.
I loved the fact that the aliens were investors rather than conquerors and also the fact that human beings were diverging along so many different vectors that we were rapidly becoming alien to one another.
THE FUTURE OF MANKIND CAN TAKE ONE OF TWO DIRECTIONS...
The Mechanists are ancient aristocrats, their lives prosthetically extended with advanced technology. The Shapers are genetically altered revolutionaries, their skills the result of psychotechnic training and artificial conditioning.
Both factions are fighting to control the Schismatrix of humankind.
The Shapers are losing the battle, but Abelard Lindsay--a failed and exiled Shaper diplomat--isn't giving up. Across the galaxy, Lindsay moves from world to world, building empires, struggling for his cause--but more often fighting for his life.
He is a rebel and a rogue, a pirate and a politician, a soldier and…
I read widely and in many genres, so coming up with a thematic list was a difficult task. However, in working on my forthcoming novel Dead Ends, in which a quiet neighborhood descends into paranoia and insanity driven by fear, politics, and technology, I sought out novels that engaged with conspiratorial thinking and violence. I admire writers who don’t hold back and fully engage with their characters and material, particularly if it means going to dark, imaginative and strange places in their work. Please keep an eye out for Dead Ends, coming from Flame Tree Press in 2023.
An absolute achievement of imagination, Torishima’s collection of novellas and novelettes is set in a future in which humans, machines, and alien life are as intertwined as the stories themselves. Attempting to sum up the various horrifying, chaotic and enigmatic worlds of this book is a fool’s errand; its breadth is staggering and can only be read to be understood. Even then, you will likely be left with more questions than answers. Sisyphean stretches itself to the breaking point and then challenges the reader to keep going, to open one’s mind to a torrid future populated by creatures who retain their humanity, but little else. Thankfully, Torishima offers his own illustrations to help you along.
Even after the world and humanity itself have been rendered nearly unrecognizable by genetic engineering, a day in the office can feel...Sisyphean.
The company stands atop a tiny deck supported by huge iron columns a hundred meters high. The boss there is its president-a large creature of unstable, shifting form once called "human." The world of his dedicated worker contains only the deck and the sea of mud surrounding it, and and the worker's daily routine is anything but peaceful. A mosaic novel of extreme science and high weirdness, Sisyphean will change the way you see existence itself.
I have always been fascinated by the workings of the human mind.What instincts and influences make us who we are? This Alien Shore grew out of research I was doing into atypical neurological conditions.It depicts a society that has abandoned the concept of “neurotypical”, embracing every variant of human perspective as valid and valuable. One of my main characters, Kio Masada, is autistic, and that gives him a unique perspective on computer security that others cannot provide. What might such a man accomplish, in a world where his condition is embraced and celebrated? Good science fiction challenges our definition of “Other,” and asks what it really means to be human, all in the context of an exciting story.
A planet in its equivalent of the stone age is passing through a galactic debris field. An alien stargazer realizes that sooner or later some object will strike the planet and destroy it. The only hope of survival his species has is to leave the planet before that happens. But the concept is a mere abstraction to his people, the equivalent of a Neanderthal saying “we need to travel to the moon,” and the task is further complicated by the fact that their technology is biological in nature, focused on the manipulation of living tissue. It is hard to imagine how such technology could ever produce a spaceship.
The novel--structured as a series of novellas-- follows the development of a fascinating alien species from its primitive roots to an age of high technology, each chapter focusing on a different time period. Always the stargazer’s warning is proclaimed by a few…
Traces the development over milennia of a civilization of an unusual alien species, whose sense of humor, resourceful adaptibility, and metalworking skills are the strengths and the hope of their society
I'm a philosopher with a specialization in bioethics. My work is at the intersection of policy and practice. It is grounded in a deep commitment to public education, engagement, and empowerment, as well as a strong desire to “make the powerful care.” I maintain that “the human genome belongs to us all. It’s something we have in common, and so we all have the right to have a say.” I believe the pivotal question that we all need to ask is “What kind of world do we want to live in?” Once we have an answer to this question, we can meaningfully address the more pointed question, “Will CRISPR technology help us build that world?”
Somewhat paradoxically, this treatise against genetic enhancement starts with the case of a deaf couple who want to have a deaf child.
This is a case I often discuss in exploring the difference between disease, disability, and diversity. Following on from this case description, Sandel asks, “Is it wrong to make a child deaf by design?” And what if the desired trait was not deafness but height, athletic prowess, health, or intelligence, and the aim was to gain a competitive advantage?
Would your answer be the same? In the pages that follow, Sandel builds a case against “reengineering our nature” grounded in an ethic of giftedness (i.e., a reverence for life as a gift).
He eschews the drive to mastery and insists that “[t]o appreciate children as gifts is to accept them as they come, not as objects of our design, or products of our will, or instruments of our…
"Sandel explores a paramount question of our era: how to extend the power and promise of biomedical science to overcome debility without compromising our humanity. His arguments are acute and penetrating, melding sound logic with compassion." -Jerome Groopman, author of How Doctors Think
Breakthroughs in genetics present us with a promise and a predicament. The promise is that we will soon be able to treat and prevent a host of debilitating diseases. The predicament is that our newfound genetic knowledge may enable us to manipulate our nature-to enhance our genetic traits and those of our children. Although most people find…
Ever since middle school, when our teacher promised that we would have
flying cars in our lifetimes, I’ve had a keen interest in scientific
and technological breakthroughs. And now, with the advancements in
Artificial Intelligence and genetic engineering, my interest has only
grown. I love technology, but my concern is that with the acceleration
of AI, science is outpacing common sense. Are we creating our
replacements? I hope you read my new novel: Crystal and the
Underlings: the future of humanity, and discover what could happen
when AI takes over!
When I read Michael Crichton’s Next, my first thought was that we’re entering a dangerous time with our ability to manipulate the genomes of many different species.
The central message is about the possible negative ramifications of manipulating the DNA of humans and other animal species and even the creation of transspecies. Crichton leads us through diverse stories of corporate greed to the life and death struggles of others just wanting a cure for cancer.
Crichton does a masterful job of tying the different agendas into a compelling, interwoven narrative.
The Number One international bestselling author of Jurassic Park, Congo and Sphere blends fact and fiction to create a near-future where genetic engineering opens up a whole new world of terrifying, page-turning possibilities...
Is a loved one missing body parts? Are blondes becoming extinct? Has a human already cross-bred with a monkey?
We live in a GENETIC WORLD. Fast, frightening - and potentially VERY lucrative. There are designer pets; a genetic cure for drug addiction; a booming market in eggs and sperm. But is there also a talking ape in Borneo? Has a 'master' gene for controlling others been found?…