62 books like Gnomon

This book presents perhaps the most prescient and today-relevant sci-fi premise ever: how could technology evolve without thinking machines?

After reading this book, I finally understood that my thinking does not have to be constrained by the "scientific consensus" of the day. The book presents a future so radically different from what most futurists are envisioning that it not only freed my thinking about science and futurism...it freed my mind of all constraints.

Even further, it beckoned me to explore the limits of my own human potential.

Murakami is a magical realist genius, and this book is him at his mystifying, dream-like best. Expect otherworldly portals, sexually voracious ghosts, woodlands afflicted by mysterious fainting episodes, and, of course, an entire cast of talking cats.

What amazes me about Murakami’s writing is his ability to transfuse the mundane with the truly magical and to avoid all whimsy–even when writing about something as inherently whimsical as talking cats.

Banks is a freak of nature: he wrote sci-fi of the pinkest blood as well as prize-winning literary fare; all it took to indulge this duality was the use of a spare initial. The Business is one of the subtler interlopers: a minimalist, monochrome cover and a tale of corporate greed. Banks dials what could have been a staid techno-thriller up to 11 with killer prose, a razor-sharp protagonist, and outrageous flirting with the edges of possibility: magnates who get their jollies beaching cruise liners, hollowed-out mountain lairs, revving supercars to the destruction around the Swiss mountains. This is a novel that pops with the wit and flair of a writer at the height of his powers and determined to have a blast.

In my head, there’s a high I’m chasing, and it’s the high I got when I finally finished David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, the high of one synapse in my head connecting with one another in a bright feverish spark as I volley from one page to the next, one character to the next, one era to the next.

If I had to summarise what the book even is, I’d say it’s reincarnation and samsara in the hands of Mitchell’s trademark ventriloquism, arranged into this wonderfully nested set of Russian doll narratives. It sounds very smart and full of grand ideas about the nature of human suffering, and it is! But it is also deeply romantic and about the peculiar destiny that can tie one human soul to another all throughout eternity.

Years before Game of Thrones became a household name, Martin was best known for this hauntingly beautiful and deeply disturbing novella. Two telepaths, Robb and Lya, are sent to an alien planet to investigate a disturbing religious movement. The planet is home to a race called the Shkeen, and to a gelatinous parasite called the Greeshka. In middle age the Shkeen allow the Greeshka to infect them, and ten years later they visit a cave where they allow a massive specimen to consume them. Some humans living on the planet have even joined the native religion, and have allowed themselves to be infected and devoured. The administrators are desperate to know why.

Robb and Lya have an unusually close relationship, but she suffers from a sense of isolation that telepathy cannot banish. While they watch some Shkeen being devoured by the Greeshka, she can sense how isolated the Shkeen feel… show more.

This book carried a concept of shared thought that enchanted me. Colonists find themselves marooned on a planet of simple technologies. At a certain season, a flower sends pollen through the air that causes special connective telepathy and healing powers. They form a society based on royal families but there’s a group that melds minds which is beautifully depicted. This series raised in me a fascination with the idea of closeness of mind and connection. Amid the challenges of a primitive society blended with increasing amounts of outer, technologically advanced influence as their planet is eventually discovered, the mind is shown to still be the most powerful. 

Vonda N. McIntyre is an often over-looked science fiction and alternate history author whose prose is lush, whose imagination is daunting, and who was unfailingly generous to the fan community, and to the community of writers she knew and supported; she was also my teacher, my mentor and my friend of thirty years, and she knew how to make you laugh! Exile is back in print after being out of print, and it is a terrifyingly beautiful, thought-provoking read.

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.

While his dense prose may not be for everyone, the sheer imagination of The Night Land has captured a small but dedicated fanbase that exists to this day.

Published in 1912, this dark tale of a grieving 17th-century widower who experiences a vision millions of years to a future where the sun has been extinguished, plunging the earth into perpetual darkness. The last remnants of humanity lives within an armored pyramid that’s under constant assault by nightmarish shadow creatures, intent on exterminating them.

Within this bleak unforgiving world, the narrator learns his beloved may also be alive, but she is trapped in another lost city and he sets out to find her. The potent mix of romance and doom serves as a compelling epic, if one has both the patience and dedication to read through it all.

It’s not often that I rave about a Stephen King novel, but I really loved this one.

It's long, but it does keep you interested. And you almost believe it could happen. The fact that it is about missing and mentally mistreated children lends a contemporary and a futuristic feel to the tale. 

Fans will love it, and it will bring a few more to the fold. Recommended.