Here are 90 books that Dawn fans have personally recommended if you like
Dawn.
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I am an aficionado of the fresh start. I make it a point to celebrate all the New Yearsâthat way, I can re-up my resolutions every few weeks! Paradoxically, Iâm not great at sudden change. I like stability and working systematically. I reconcile these two sides of myself by observing other peopleâs transformations and caterpillar-to-butterfly stories on a regular basis. Whether itâs Beyonce going country or a Nigerian god turning to crime, Iâm on the ride, picking up pointers. If you are looking to make a change, I hope this list is a fun place to start gathering ideas!
Is it weird that a space opera is one of my all-time comfort reads? Because it is. The first book of the Ancillary series, itâs got aliens, intergalactic war, an all-powerful ruler whose clones reach into every corner of the system, and one lonely remnant of a ship who reinvents herself to survive and ultimately fulfill her last order.
When everything is turbulent, I like to re-read Ancillary Justice and imagine I have one-tenth of protagonist Breqâs competence in a pinch.
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 youâre 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. Thereâs 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 âanimalsâ 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 youâre 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.
Câmon, doesnât everybody need a book by a guy who explains that the Black-Billed Cuckoo is finally, finally a bird âwho appreciates measured silence such as that which characterizes the opening bars of Beethovenâs Fifth Symphonyâ?
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 âmake clearâ a birdâs 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 wonât care, because you will be having so much fun reading about the Hermit Thrushâs 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.
In 2038 a devastating pandemic sweeps across the world. Two decades later, Britain remains the epicenter for the Fornax variant, annexed by a terrified global community.
David Malik is as careful as any man to avoid contact with the virus. But when his sister tests positive as an asymptomatic carrier,âŚ
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 youâre 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. Itâs got a lot of academic jargon, and it can be tough reading.
But itâs well worth the work, because it is also one of the best explanations Iâve ever seen, anywhere, of how and why widely accepted categories like âhumanâ and âanimalâ come from a bigger story influenced by slavery and its aftermath. Jacksonâs book also has lovely and subtle case studies that will introduce you to writers and artists you wonât 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 OctaviaâŚ
Iâm a lecturer in medical humanities at the University of Leeds in England and Iâm currently writing a book about the portrayal of traumatic pregnancy in fantastic literature (science fiction, horror, fantasyâŚ). âMedical humanitiesâ 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 Iâm including on this list.
I couldnât 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 Butlerâs 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. Lilithâs refusal to succumb to this animalistic treatment confronts the legacy of breeding humans during slavery.
I find Lilith (like many of Butlerâs 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,âŚ
'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.
Iâve been a science fiction writer since I was old enough to read, and Iâve spent probably way too much of my life reading and writing and researching and thinking about aliens. Iâve worked in the aerospace industry, launching rockets to the moon and Mars and Saturn, and five of the books Iâve published have touched on alien life in one way or another. Iâve 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 andâŚ
This is a multicultural epic fantasy with a diverse cast of characters. Sickly fifteen-year-old Prince Psal, the son of warrior-king Nahas, should have been named Crown Prince of all Wheel Clan lands. But his clan disdains the disabled.
When the mysterious self-moving towers that keep humans safe from the Creator'sâŚ
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 donât 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, Torishimaâs 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 foolâs 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 oneâs 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 âneurotypicalâ, 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 âOther,â 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 âwe need to travel to the moon,â 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 stargazerâs warning is proclaimed by a fewâŚ
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 often think of the ways my life could have gone differently. Career-changing emails that were only narrowly rescued from spam folders, for example. In many parallel timelines, I doubt Iâm still doing what I do todayâwhich makes me cherish my good fortune to still be doing it. What I do is study the ways people have come to understand everything can go otherwise and that the future is, therefore, an open question and undecided matter. Of course, for ages, many have instead assumed that events can only go one way. But the following books persuasively insist history isnât dictated by destiny, but is governed by chance and (sometimes) choice.
One of my favorite living writers is Rachell Powell. She writes on animal ethics, genetic engineering, and invertebrate intelligence, among other topics.
Powellâs brilliant 2020 book can be seen as a spiritual sequel to Gouldâs aforementioned 1989 Wonderful Life. Hence, it makes sense to include both on the list. Powell takes Gouldâs experiment on âreplaying the tapeâ and updates it, given modern knowledge, while also establishing its relevance for the cutting-edge scientific field of astrobiology.
Astrobiology is the study of what we should look for when we look for signs of life beyond Earth. Itâs a burgeoning field at the frontier of human knowledge, poised to provide revelatory knowledge about our own fate and future, regardless of whether the results of the search for extraterrestrial life are positive or negative.
Assessing the role of chance in governing the course of biological evolutionâwhether here or elsewhere in the universeâis, asâŚ
Can we can use the patterns and processes of convergent evolution to make inferences about universal laws of life, on Earth and elsewhere?
In this book, Russell Powell investigates whether we can use the patterns and processes of convergent evolution to make inferences about universal laws of life, on Earth and elsewhere. Weaving together disparate philosophical and empirical threads, Powell offers the first detailed analysis of the interplay between contingency and convergence in macroevolution, as it relates to both complex life in general and cognitively complex life in particular. If the evolution of mind is not a historical accident, theâŚ
Born the half-breed, bastard son of an orc chieftain, Wrank tries to survive life in OrcHome among ignorance and spite aimed at his human heritage even as he develops a Talent for folding shadow. When life is no longer viable among the clans, he escapes into the world of humansâŚ
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 âmake the powerful care.â I maintain that âthe human genome belongs to us all. Itâs something we have in common, and so we all have the right to have a say.â I believe the pivotal question that we all need to ask is âWhat kind of world do we want to live in?â Once we have an answer to this question, we can meaningfully address the more pointed question, âWill CRISPR technology help us build that world?â
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, âIs it wrong to make a child deaf by design?â 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 âreengineering our natureâ grounded in an ethic of giftedness (i.e., a reverence for life as a gift).
He eschews the drive to mastery and insists that â[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 ourâŚ
"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 findâŚ