10 books like Dune

Rama is a spaceship, not a space station, but it's huge and ancient, and at first appears to be abandoned. Then the human explorers realize it's just sleeping. This is a prime example of science fiction's "sense of wonder" at the strangeness of the Universe. When I read it, at about age 14, it utterly blew me away with its combination of rock-hard science and utter weirdness. It also has the best final line ever.

What resonated with me on so many levels was the author’s use of lyrical and beautiful language in describing trees and forests: as characters. I’m an ecologist and I felt a particular kinship with the botanist Patricia Westerford, a disabled introvert who must swim against the hegemonic tide with heretical ideas. When she argues that trees communicate, learn, trade goods and services, have intelligence and society, her scientific peers ridicule her and end her university career. This story is as much her triumph over overwhelming challenges as it is about the dwindling majestic forests that must quietly endure our careless apathy as they continue to offer their gift of life-giving oxygen and medicinal aerosols for hundreds of years. 

The best-known legendary character in Britain is, of course, Arthur. I have read dozens of versions of the Arthur story, starting with Thomas Mallory’s Death of Arthur, and when all is said and done, the very best still has to be The Once and Future King by T.H. White. Here are the characters we know from the Disney film The Sword in the Stone and the musical Camelot: Wart, Merlyn, Sir Ector and Sir Kay. Replete with 14th-century knights and jousts, magic and mirth, this saga covers Arthur’s life from boyhood to kingship to betrayal and demise. Written with humor and pathos, it sparked my ongoing interest in Arthur and made me want to know more about the real man who inspired such a lasting mythology.

This delightful novel was the first book I read after moving into a new apartment. It’s about a Russian aristocrat in the 1920s who is sentenced to live the rest of his days in a small attic room in the Hotel Metropol, and how he makes a life for himself there. Just by enjoying the story so much I actually found myself being more amused by, rather than wary of, the quirks of my own new neighbors. Gentle curiosity is a powerful weapon for surviving the unknown and this book helped sharpen mine.

Founding text of the modern fantasy genre, expander of Homer's beautiful or horrific fantastic gallery; but unlike Odysseus or Christian, Tolkien's characters change, either to grow or become "better," or to spectacularly regress. This novel-type flux matches his unique gift, the modulation of style. Most good writers can find one "voice" and maintain it. But unlike the films, the books will show you Tolkien starting in a cozy-children's-story mode in the Shire, rising to the King James Bible or mythic level of Gandalf's resurrection story, or the Fields of Cormallen – and then drawing the whole vast arc of quest and war down into Sam's circle to the Grey Havens, and the six concluding so-simple monosyllables: "'Well, I'm back," he said."

This steam-age portrayal of an alien invasion grabbed my attention when I was in grade school. The author’s description of burning cities and forests painted a picture of ecological horror in my imagination. The impact of that has stayed with me, so much so that I have included the ecological consequences of war in much of what I have written.

The TV show, Game of Thrones, only followed the first book, this book, to the letter, however, in spite of this, I still prefer the book. The descriptions of the characters, their inner thoughts, their adventures, their tragedies. It’s Shakespearian in scale. If Shakespeare had the chance to know of the horror of what it takes to be an honest man like Ned Stark, he’d be inspired to write a play on this. I know my own writing has been greatly influenced by Martin. 

The clue’s in the title of this one: in Le Guin’s high-concept future (set on the moon of Anarres, though it’s effectively a stand-in for what Earth could one day be like), human beings are…free. Free from materialism, the wage system, resource hoarding, political one-upmanship, rampant industrialism and all those fantastically capitalist things that have turned our planet into a dystopian factory. The anarcho-syndicalism of Anarres may not appeal to everyone’s tastes, but The Dispossessed offers a fascinating look at how a society that puts the collective ahead of personal desires could work in practice.

I’ve been an amateur historian for as long as I can remember. The past enthralls me, especially the bits where everything goes wrong and entire societies crumble. I suppose it’s because I agree with George Santayana that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, and the idea has always held a certain fascination. As downfalls go, I figure none had a greater effect on western civilization than that of the classic Roman Empire and for me, it’s the template which explains so many historical cycles of the past and will continue to explain those of the future. Gibbon’s work is the definitive story of that era and a must-read for anyone interested in predicting what the next few centuries might bring.

Earth, published in 1990, had me dog-earing many, many pages. A sense of our responsibility to the planet is shot through the book. For me this novel was very much in the spirit of a near – but warped – future that I had so enjoyed early on in books like John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar. When I wrote to Brunner to say that his dystopian view of the future struck me as likely, he replied that he was disappointed, having written it as a warning, to minimize the risk of the future being driven off the rails by over-population. 

Earth, overall, is more optimistic. Another novel on related themes by Brin was The Postman, made into a film starring Kevin Costner. Again, I interviewed David early in 2021 for our new Green Swans Observatory—and a key theme was his inspiration by the Judaic concept of… show more.