Here are 100 books that FlashForward fans have personally recommended if you like
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I am a business and technology journalist with a particular interest in mobility startups. I penned my book after purchasing an EV from startup Better Place, only to discover the company was nearly bankrupt. How did I miss that? I’m supposed to be able to do due diligence! I started writing about cars as a reporter for the Advanced Interactive Media Group. I’m a regular contributor to The Jerusalem Post and Israel21c and have also ghostwritten four business books. Before I wrote about tech, I was starting companies: My own Internet publishing startup, Neta4, raised $3.2 million in 1998. I received my B.A. in Creative Writing from Oberlin College.
I had to include this book in the list. It’s not a business book, per se—this is hard science fiction—but the Earth’s response to a far-off alien invasion leads to all kinds of business and technological innovation, from “hibernation chambers” to the development of spacecraft that can travel at close to light-speed.
I then went on to watch the Netflix series, but the book is the real deal. I’m a slow reader, which meant I spent at least a year reading through all three books—but it was so worth it!
Read the award-winning, critically acclaimed, multi-million-copy-selling science-fiction phenomenon - soon to be a Netflix Original Series from the creators of Game of Thrones.
1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China's Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind.
Four decades later, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang's investigation will lead him to a mysterious online game and immerse him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable…
Ever since reading Heir to the Empire (Timothy Zahn), I’ve been fascinated by science fiction stories with amazing characters and intriguing concepts. I love finding a new story, especially one that isn’t being talked about, and falling into that world. I still get lost in the worlds of the Deathgate Cycle and Rose of the Prophets because they introduced me to concepts and places I’d never imagined or thought to imagine before reading them. I crafted a world and characters both familiar and alien because of these influences and I’m still drawn to them when I start a new book no one is talking about, like those on this list.
From the moment I first began listening to the audiobook, I fell in love with this story. I was all in the moment Ryland Grace stumbled through answering the question “What is 2 plus 2?” The layering of the story, the threat to Earth concept, the educational presentation of very high-level scientific concepts to an audience of all ages, and the way Andy Weir made this reader feel so many emotions over a rock just keep drawing me back to it.
I literally just finished another listen less than a month ago and already want to go back to a story. I still don’t see many people talking about it. And the ending? Every story has its own perfect dismount landing, and this one nailed it.
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.
Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.
All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through…
Three events in my life have had a profound effect on the narratives created within my novels. After receiving a chemistry set for my 10th Christmas, I succeeded in causing an explosion, resulting in my extended hospitalization. While in the hospital, I had a near-death experience (NDE). During an amateur telescopic outing with a friend during our teenage years, we experienced a UFO sighting. While doing my doctoral thesis in experimental quantum physics, I began to sense a strong link between elements of quantum physics and consciousness. These events occasionally entered my thinking over the next decades. I developed a passion for writing novels to explore links between quantum physics and consciousness.
Tyson Klein, a quantum physicist at CERN, analyzes data from the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. He discovers a highly intelligent pattern in data broadcast over what he terms a “Quantum Radio.” The data has the potential to answer the deepest questions about human existence and the cosmos itself, a Theory of Everything. Because the data accurately describes history and alternate histories and projects their future outcome, he first questions whether it’s from another universe or from the future.
As he closes in on how to control the quantum radio, he finds that someone else is after it and will stop at nothing to get it. The first one to uncover its operation will control the world and probably more.
Riddle seamlessly weaves grandiose ideas in science, psychology, history, and time travel throughout the fabric of the personal relationships of several individuals who “coincidentally” enter Tyson’s life to help in…
FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF LOST IN TIME
At CERN, a scientist has just made an incredible discovery - a breakthrough that may answer the deepest questions about human existence.
But what he's found is far more dangerous than he ever imagined.
Dr. Tyson Klein is a quantum physicist who has dedicated his entire life to his research. At CERN, he analyses data generated by the Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest and most powerful particle accelerator. Now, Ty believes he's found a pattern in its output. It looks like an organised data stream, being broadcast over what…
To hide a corporation’s failure to properly service a space ship, Captain Jonas Stryker is prosecuted but saved from imprisonment by a dying man, who hires Stryker to collect asteroids for their mineral content. Stryker soon finds he must stop a shadowy corporate group called The Board, who employ space piracy, terrorism, and even weaponised asteroids to overthrow the Federation government.
Set in Lagrange points, space stations, the Moon and outback Australia, it is a fast-moving story with some speculative future technology. If you were interested in the NASA attempt to alter the orbit of the asteroid Dimorphos, you might…
When a trial to cover-up a corporate failure ends Captain Jonas Stryker's career, he wants revenge against The Board, a ruthless, shadowy organization with limitless funds that employs space piracy, terrorism, and even weaponised asteroids. Posing as a space miner, Stryker learns that The Board wants him killed, while a young female SCIB police agent wants retribution against him for having her career spoiled at his trial. As Stryker avoids attempts to kill him, he becomes the only chance to prevent The Board from overturning the Federation Government and imposing a Fascist-style rule. A story of greed, corruption and honour,…
I started in publishing at the Advocate magazine, twenty years ago in its heyday, then moved to Alyson Books, who first published Emma Donoghue among many others, offering a place for queer writers showcasing queer stories to find their audience. Afterwards, I became involved with Gertrude literary journal, a beloved, 25-year-old non-profit, LGBTQA journal that has now evolved to The Gertrude Conference. All the while, I read, wrote, and supported queer stories, like these gems!
James Hynes’ novel focuses on Jacob, nicknamed “Sparrow”, who’s a slave in a brothel in New Carthage at the end of the Roman Empire. Yum!
Although the book itself is too brutal for my taste, as it goes through development, perhaps they could add a thread of lightness, especially in the lives and friendships Sparrow develops with many of the “Wolves” (prostitutes). As a series, this could be a Gladiator-meets-Harlots, with a darkness and depth that would give us insight into the lowest rung of the Roman Empire, with the possibility of a dozen sub-stories to fill out as we trod through this dark time.
'A stunning work of historical imagination . . . masterful in its portrayal of love, sex and friendship' - The Observer 'Utterly engrossing, vivid and honest' - Emma Donoghue, author of Room
Meet Sparrow, a boy slave in the city of New Carthage in the twilight years of pagan Rome.
Raised in a brothel on the margins of a great empire, a boy of no known origin creates his own identity. He is Sparrow, who sings without reason and can fly from trouble. His world is a kitchen, a herb-scented garden, a loud and dangerous tavern, and the mysterious upstairs…
Since my first college course in quantum physics, I have been fascinated with this enigmatic, infinitely interesting theory. It's our most fundamental description of the universe, it's been found to be unerringly accurate, yet it's quite subtle to interpret. Even more intriguingly, "nobody really understands quantum physics" (as Richard Feynman put it). For example, the theory's central concept, the wave function, is interpreted radically differently by different physicists. I have always yearned to grasp, at least to my own satisfaction, a comprehensive understanding of this theory. Since retirement 23 years ago, I have pursued this passion nearly full-time and found some answers, leading to several technical papers and a popular book.
Unlike the other books on my list, Carroll's book focuses on quantum physics at the very high energies attained in experimental facilities such as the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland. The book was published in 2012, the year LHC scientists announced the momentous discovery of the particle whose universe-filling quantum field causes other particles to acquire a non-zero mass. One reason for my enthusiasm about this book is Carroll's view that the universe is made of "fields" such as the electromagnetic field whose vibrations (or "excitations") are particles such as the proton, electron, and atom. Carroll is an experienced science writer and a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology.
Winner of the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books
A Best Science Book of the Year for the Guardian, Financial Times, and New Scientist
It was the universe's most elusive particle, the linchpin for everything scientists dreamed up to explain how physics works. It had to be found. But projects as big as CERN's Large Hadron Collider don't happen without incredible risks - or occasional skulduggery. In the definitive account of the greatest science story of our time, acclaimed physicist Sean Carroll reveals the insights, rivalry, and wonder that fuelled the Higgs discovery, and takes us on a riveting…
As a professional, scientific researcher in astrophysics and philosopher, I have been observing many unfair situations in science: hard-working, talented scientists with bright and challenging ideas who get no attention and bureaucrats or administrators of science (I call them “astropolitics” within my field of research) who have no talent, have neither time nor interest to think about science, and however are visible as the most eminent scientists of our time.
I learned a lot from this book, especially about areas of physics far from my field of research. It also contains many anecdotes and affairs related to closer areas within astrophysics. The descriptions of string theory research and other fields within physics seem to me similar to descriptions of a mafia or a sect.
After reading this book, I was under the impression that physics is declining and that we cannot trust much of the news about fantastic discoveries nowadays.
The recently celebrated discovery of the Higgs boson has captivated the public's imagination with the promise that it can explain the origins of everything in the universe. It's no wonder that the media refers to it grandly as the "God particle." Yet behind closed doors, physicists are admitting that there is much more to this story, and even years of gunning the Large Hadron Collider and herculean number crunching may still not lead to a deep understanding of the laws of nature. In this fascinating and eye-opening account, theoretical physicist Alexander Unzicker and science writer Sheilla Jones offer a polemic.…
Don Lincoln is both a research scientist and a masterful science communicator. On the science side, he participated in the discovery of both the top quark and the Higgs boson. On the communicator side, he has written books, made hundreds of YouTube videos, and written for such visible venues as Scientific American and CNN. He has both the scientific chops and writer expertise to tell an exciting story about why the universe is the way it is.
It is perhaps unfair to pick this book, as it is one I wrote, but it really is an unparalled book on the subject of the Large Hadron Collider (or LHC), currently the most powerful particle accelerator on the planet. The book contains some physics and technical information on the LHC and the detectors arrayed around it. It tells the stories of the startup, including the catastrophic damage that took two years to repair, and the accelerator’s triumphant return to operations. It tells insider tales of the assembly of the detectors and also gives an insider’s view of the discovery of the Higgs boson. No other book gives the reader such an intimate window seat to see how this amazing technical leviathan came into being.
An insider's history of the world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider: why it was built, how it works, and the importance of what it has revealed.
Since 2008 scientists have conducted experiments in a hyperenergized, 17-mile supercollider beneath the border of France and Switzerland. The Large Hadron Collider (or what scientists call "the LHC") is one of the wonders of the modern world-a highly sophisticated scientific instrument designed to re-create in miniature the conditions of the universe as they existed in the microseconds following the big bang. Among many notable LHC discoveries, one led to the 2013 Nobel…
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.
This book and the others, including The Globe, Darwin’s Watch, and Judgement Day, are wonderful in their mix of fantasy – Pratchett’s Discworld Wizards mixing it up in their quest to understand the “Round World” they accidentally created – and real science introduced and explained by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. The fantasy and the science are seamlessly interwoven in a way that make some complex subjects not just understandable but very readable. Like the explanation of exploring particle physics in the Large Hadron Collider by comparing it to a race that has never seen a piano, cannot see the piano, and try to determine its function and properties by hitting it and eventually pushing it out of a window five stories up and then naming the sounds it makes on hitting the ground…
When a wizardly experiment goes adrift, the wizards of Unseen University find themselves with a pocket universe on their hands: Roundworld, where neither magic nor common sense seems to stand a chance against logic. The Universe, of course, is our own. And Roundworld is Earth. As the wizards watch their accidental creation grow, we follow the story of our universe from the primal singularity of the Big Bang to the Internet and beyond. Through this original Terry Pratchett story (with intervening chapters from Cohen and Stewart) we discover how puny and insignificant individual lives are against a cosmic backdrop of…
John Gribbin has a Ph.D. in Astrophysics and is best known as an author of science books. But he has a not-so-secret passion for science fiction. He is the award-winning author of more than a hundred popular books about science, ranging from quantum mysteries to cosmology, and from evolution to earthquakes. He has also produced a double-handful of science fiction books. He specialises in writing factual books about the kind of science that sounds like fiction (including time travel), and fictional books based on scientific fact (including climate change). His recent book Six Impossible Things was short-listed for the prestigious Royal Society prize, but he is equally proud of Not Fade Away, his biography of Buddy Holly.
This might seem a bit off-message because Pohl dropped out of college before finishing his science degree. But he did work as a weather forecaster in the US Navy. And I can’t resist including this book, because it deals with the area of science closest to my heart – many worlds, or parallel universes. The existence of these other worlds next door to our own is the best scientific explanation of the mysteries of quantum physics, such as the famous puzzle of Schrödinger’s Cat, and Pohl wraps it all up in entertaining fashion with a story of what happens when those worlds interact. The fact that Pohl includes a version of myself (actually, several versions of me) in the story has no bearing on my choosing it. I repaid the compliment by including him as a character in my story “Untanglement”, included in my anthology Don’t Look Back' ;-).
A brilliant novel of alternate universes by an award-winning science fiction master
A breakthrough in quantum physics has shattered the boundaries between alternate worlds. History is in chaos as billions of possible futures collide. As a conquering army mounts an invasion of neighboring realities, a handful of men and women from a dozen different timelines risk their lives to safeguard an infinity of worlds.
Blending thrilling suspense with brilliant scientific speculation, Frederik Pohl’s The Coming of the Quantum Cats is a triumph of the imagination by a Hugo and Nebula–winning master of science fiction.
I am totally fascinated by the quest of how Nature does it. In particular, I love the fact that humans managed to enters the strange world of atoms and photons by just using their brute intellectual force and imagination. This world obeys precise rules, but very different ones from those we get used to since childhood. For example, the laws that govern the microscopic world allow for indeterminacy and randomness. Moreover, some random events may manifest themselves at several locations at once, leading to the phenomenon of quantum non-locality. I am very fortunate that I could spend all my professional time on such fascinating conceptual questions, combined with highly timely new technologies.
This book tells the fascinating story of the people and events behind the turbulent changes in attitudes to quantum theory in the second half of the 20th century. Science is sometimes quite abstract. But it is made by very concrete persons whose characters shape the various scientific communities.
This book tells the fascinating story of the people and events behind the turbulent changes in attitudes to quantum theory in the second half of the 20th century. The huge success of quantum mechanics as a predictive theory has been accompanied, from the very beginning, by doubts and controversy about its foundations and interpretation. This book looks in detail at how research on foundations evolved after WWII, when it was revived, until the mid 1990s, when most of this research merged into the technological promise of quantum information. It is the story of the quantum dissidents, the scientists who brought…
