Here are 100 books that Dayworld fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve loved all kinds of science fiction since I was a child, and always enjoy discovering new worlds, and the frisson of danger that inevitably accompanies the discovery. After a successful career in science and engineering, spanning more than three decades, I left the corporate world to make stringed instruments and to write fiction and non-fiction. My two novels are An Accident of Birth, and the space opera, Galactic Alliance: Betrayal, and I’ve written a non-fiction reference book Brass and Glass: Optical Instruments and Their Makers. I live in Kent, England with my wife, Margo, and our cat.
When great science fiction strives for scientific credibility, and hits the nail on the head, you end up with a story like this. A hundred people arrive on Mars as the first colonisers, to begin the process of terraforming it for human habitation. The natural environment presents its own dangers, from low atmospheric pressure and unbreathable atmosphere to low gravity and destructive sandstorms. But the challenges don’t stop there. Not everyone has the same vision of the future Martian world, and the resulting conflicts threaten the whole project. The first book of a trilogy, this epic novel is a must-read for anyone who plans to make a new life on Mars.
The first novel in Kim Stanley Robinson's massively successful and lavishly praised Mars trilogy. 'The ultimate in future history' Daily Mail
Mars - the barren, forbidding planet that epitomises mankind's dreams of space conquest.
From the first pioneers who looked back at Earth and saw a small blue star, to the first colonists - hand-picked scientists with the skills necessary to create life from cold desert - Red Mars is the story of a new genesis.
It is also the story of how Man must struggle against his own self-destructive mechanisms to achieve his dreams: before he even sets foot…
There were 3.7 billion people on Earth when I was born. By November 2022, there will be 8 billion. I am fascinated and terrified by this growth. I love stories that address this issue head-on, be it colonisation of other planets, compulsory euthanasia, or uploading consciousness into machines. When I started writing, I didn’t realise how I was bringing these themes together—I was writing a book I’d love to read. Now I can see those influences, and I am grateful for the authors who have shaped my thinking and my work.
Coyote is a habitable moon orbiting Bear, a gas giant forty light years away. Earth’s first interstellar ship is hijacked by a group of engineers and scientists, usurping the post-US government loyalists who intend to make Coyote their home.
This book speaks to the aspirational me, the part that wants to evolve beyond Earth and build a new future, a better future, but inevitably the hubris of modern man threatens to destroy paradise. It’s a conceptually magnificent colonisation book built on plausible science, yet its success lies in the characters’ need to work together to conquer a seemingly benign world. I frequently revisit Coyote because it’s a great story, brilliantly told, and it makes me gaze at the stars.
Coyote marks a dramatic new turn in the career of Allen Steele, Hugo Award-winning author of Chronospace. Epic in scope, passionate in its conviction, and set against a backdrop of plausible events, it tells the brilliant story of Earth’s first interstellar colonists—and the mysterious planet that becomes their home…
I am a lifelong fan of all things post-apocalyptic. Books, movies, television, games – I have enjoyed all of it. I knew I wanted to write post-apocalyptic fiction before I was ten years old. I had to wait almost three decades before life gave me the opportunity to do it. I’ve always been fascinated by the many different ways people can survive these kinds of catastrophes. As dark and visceral as the genre can sometimes be, I will always look for the elements of hope.
This book embodies many of my favorite features of post-apocalyptic fiction—everything from rogue AI and hazardous underground encounters to trekking across devastated hellscapes. The concept of “Sanctuary” and its mythical connotations made a significant impression on me. The idea that there was a safe place, regardless of how bad things got, appealed to my sense of fairness in the universe and reinforced the idea that there is always hope.
The bestselling dystopian novel that inspired the 1970s science-fiction classic starring Michael York, Jenny Agutter, and Richard Jordan.
In 2116, it is against the law to live beyond the age of twenty-one years. When the crystal flower in the palm of your hand turns from red to black, you have reached your Lastday and you must report to a Sleepshop for processing. But the human will to survive is strong—stronger than any mere law.
Logan 3 is a Sandman, an enforcer who hunts down those Runners who refuse to accept Deep Sleep. The day before Logan’s palmflower shifts to black,…
There were 3.7 billion people on Earth when I was born. By November 2022, there will be 8 billion. I am fascinated and terrified by this growth. I love stories that address this issue head-on, be it colonisation of other planets, compulsory euthanasia, or uploading consciousness into machines. When I started writing, I didn’t realise how I was bringing these themes together—I was writing a book I’d love to read. Now I can see those influences, and I am grateful for the authors who have shaped my thinking and my work.
I have given copies of the Galactic Milieu Trilogy as gifts more than any other book. This is the bravest near-future sci-fi series I have ever read. Intervention, published in 1987, follows events from 1945 through to 2013 when the five races of the Galactic Milieu embrace humanity. I love the merger of historical events with future possibilities in a story centred around a dynasty of ‘operant’ human beings.
As a teenager, I was fascinated by stories of telepathy, etc., but I found most books that dealt with ‘higher mind powers’ were in the fantasy or horror market. But this series is perfect sci-fi, technically plausible while politically powerful—and again, with a large, diverse cast.
For 60,000 years, the worlds of the Galactic Milieu have observed Earth, waiting for humanity to evolve sufficiently to join them. Now, humanity is almost ready for Intervention. Across the world, children with unusual mental powers are being born, known as operants. One such is Rogi Remillard, humble book dealer. Helped by an entity he labels the family ghost, Rogi will inadvertently steer his family - and so all mankind - into the future.
Rogi's journey starts with his nephew Denis, as he guides his strong metapsychic abilities. The young man's irresponsible father certainly isn't interested, focusing instead on his…
Reading has been a passion of mine since I first learned how. Consuming books like a ravenous wolf, I explored worlds beyond my own imagining with a simple purchase of a bound novel (or lending from a library.) It gave me the one thing I couldn’t do in real life – escape from reality. In many ways, I’m only sane because I was able to remove myself from the horrific events of my upbringing. It put my feet in two camps – that of science fiction and of horror. I like to think of what could be and bring my readers to that alternate reality to delight or terrify depending on the genre.
P.R. Adams paints a horrifying picture of earth after the complete and total collapse of humanity. The future is brutal, violent, and demands everything of the survivors to make it out alive. This tale pits a group of scientific survivors of a suspended animation experiment against the most brutal tribe forged from the fires of humanity’s destruction. It’s a graphic and nail-biting adventure from beginning to end.
Earth is dying, and humanity's only hope of survival will be somewhere among the stars. When Reggie Lee agrees to test Frontierza’s advanced hibernation technology in a month-long cryogenic sleep, he believes it will be a huge benefit to his career.
He couldn’t be more wrong.
The world he wakes to is nothing like he expects. It's a world where life is cheap, where the definition of human has changed, and only the strong survive. Does he have what it takes to make it in this new world, or will he become just another skeleton lost in the wastes?
Pick…
My great interests have been ships and space travel, and if one takes time to consider the similarities the parallels stand out. Ships, especially submarines, travel in a medium and through an environment that is hostile to human life. In space travel, the ‘ship’ becomes the only habitat in which we can survive for any extended period, leaving it without a space suit is a fatal move. I cannot claim to be an expert in closed environments, but it's a subject that has fascinated me throughout my life. Every ‘biosphere’ is unique and incredibly complex and depends on the symbiosis of an enormous number of living creatures right down to bacteria and even viruses.
Heinlein created a fascinating story of an engineer double-crossed by his partner and his girlfriend. Like all Heinlein’s stories there are several twists in the tale along the way, a lot of wry humour, some well thought-out ‘science’, and the light relief is provided by the hero’s cat who accompanies him on a journey that involves cryogenics, time travel and ultimately a double-double cross that sees the hero come out on top.
I could have picked any of Heinlein’s books, they are all very well thought out, and all follow believable twists to the science of the day. In a sense his work is timeless and still very readable. The Door into Summer is one of the first of his books I read, and I was hooked.
A popular and enduring time travel tale by one of science fiction's all-time greats
When Dan Davis is crossed in love and stabbed in the back by his business associates, the immediate future doesn't look too bright for him and Pete, his independent-minded tomcat. Suddenly, the lure of suspended animation, the Long Sleep, becomes irresistible and Dan wakes up 30 years later in the 21st century, a time very much to his liking.
The discovery that the robot household appliances he invented have been mass produced is no surprise, but the realization that, far from having been stolen from him,…
As intense as the Cold War was, I have always found myself looking toward the future. Nuclear annihilation was a real possibility in my youth. Even so, I have always been curious about the next threat beyond our current crisis would be. Beyond nuclear, biological, and chemical threats, I see that we now face possible dangers from rogue AI and climate change. If that’s not enough, let’s remember that conventional weapons are getting more powerful with the passing of each decade. That’s why the storyteller in me loves this stuff so much.
I particularly enjoy the way the author has blended apocalyptic imagery with epic space battles. As much as I enjoyed the origin story of Buck Rogers, I really was taken by the idea of a world recovering from atomic horror. It’s an action-adventure story that made me feel good about humanity’s future.
The groundbreaking novella that gave rise to science fiction’s original space hero, Buck Rogers.
In 1927, World War I veteran Anthony Rogers is working for the American Radioactive Gas Corporation investigating strange phenomena in an abandoned coal mine when suddenly there’s a cave-in. Trapped in the mine and surrounded by radioactive gas, Rogers falls into a state of suspended animation . . . for nearly five hundred years.
Waking in the year 2419, he first saves the beautiful Wilma Deering from attack and then discovers what has befallen his country: The United States has descended into chaos after Asian powers…
I’ve always loved to dip into speculative worlds as a way of gaining a new perspective on conundrums in the real world. In the real world, so many of us are plagued by concerns or frustrations having to do with connection and commitment, and those concerns transcend whatever place or moment we’re living in. So, by dropping those concerns into a surreal setting, I get another way to tussle with them.
As a writer who’s interested in what comes next—after climate change, after fascism—I love how Diane Cook uses broad brush strokes to show us the future, without going into too much history or detail.
Instead of hyper-focusing on what the future holds for us, Cook directs our attention to one small, outlier community that’s doing weird things. This is a great technique: she paints a picture of a future world by painting a picture of a fringe group that’s trying desperately to be different from the main one.
A mother-daughter drama drives the plot forward, and we learn about the rules and ruminations of the fringe group as the characters sort out their power struggles.
I’ve been hooked on science fiction since I saw Westworld in its first run in 1973, at age 7 (it’s the first movie I saw in a theatre). I started drawing my own sci-fi comics at age 11, when the first Star Wars came out, and kept it up through adolescence. Eventually, my love of sci-fi led me to a passion for philosophy, which I majored in in college. And the philosophy I learned has since informed my later choices in sci-fi reading, and even more my sci-fi writing and illustration. The books I talk about below are very dear to my heart—I’m sure you won’t regret checking them out.
Written in 1966, Make Room! Make Room! was the basis for the 1973 film Soylent Green—it’s one of those great books that (like The Exorcist) was totally overshadowed by its equally great film version. It’s set in 1999, in a grossly overpopulated and polluted world in which people are scrambling for ever-diminishing resources. It mainly follows the life of NYC detective Andy Rusch and his elderly roommate Sol—who has finagled a bicycle-powered generator to run the TV and refrigerator in their small apartment. Rusch falls in love with Shirl, the young mistress of a rich man whose murder Rusch is investigating, but Shirl dumps him when she realizes she has better options with the rich rather than the poor.
Make Room! Make Room! is a cautionary tale about unchecked population, and it’s driven not so much by plot as by what Harry Harrison had on his mind: pollution,…
A gangster is murdered during a blistering Manhattan heat wave. City cop Andy Rusch is under pressure solve the crime and captivated by the victim's beautiful girlfriend. But it is difficult to catch a killer, let alone get the girl, in crazy streets crammed full of people. The planet's population has exploded. The 35 million inhabitants of New York City run their TVs off pedal power, riot for water, loot and trample for lentil 'steaks' and are controlled by sinister barbed wire dropped from the sky.
Written in 1966 and set in 1999, Make Room! Make Room! is a witty…
My interest in this topic began after my father died when I was a young teenager and I was left looking for answers, explanations, and meanings. My dad was an architect and had written a book on Jeremy Bentham’s panoptican and prison architecture published before the French philosopher Michel Foucault’s famous Discipline and Punish. A small collection of Foucault’s books stood prominently on my father’s bookshelves and I really wanted to understand them. At university I studied all of Foucault’s works and many authors inspired by him. These are the best books that explain how we have developed philosophical and psychological theories to understand ourselves in the contemporary world.
The brilliant Rewriting the Soul was published in the mid-1990s when the diagnosis of multiple personality disorder was booming, particularly in the USA. The text reflects these times in its focus on the sciences of memory from the late 19th century. Hacking links discussions on memory, trauma, and consciousness in the study of multiple personalities in the 1980s and relates these to earlier discussions on ‘double consciousness’ in the 19th century. He argues that contemporary liberal societies have become obsessed with individual memory and how to analyse and assess it. Hacking skilfully weaves together historical and philosophical perspectives to explore case studies in depth. He questions how and why facts about our memories have become so important in contemporary culture, and how psychiatry has always struggled with interpreting the meaning of memory for its subjects. We are left with a deeper understanding of how a diagnosis ascribed to so many…
Twenty-five years ago one could list by name the tiny number of multiple personalities recorded in the history of Western medicine, but today hundreds of people receive treatment for dissociative disorders in every sizable town in North America. Clinicians, backed by a grassroots movement of patients and therapists, find child sexual abuse to be the primary cause of the illness, while critics accuse the "MPD" community of fostering false memories of childhood trauma. Here the distinguished philosopher Ian Hacking uses the MPD epidemic and its links with the contemporary concept of child abuse to scrutinize today's moral and political climate,…
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