Here are 85 books that In the Shadow of Ares fans have personally recommended if you like
In the Shadow of Ares.
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For many people, reading has been a lifesaver for their mental health. I didn't begin reading until my 20s. But I wish I had had those windows into other realities when I was younger. Having a difficult childhood molds our adult lives, and therefore we can still be haunted by childhood memories. Reading can help us see other worlds and other people, and it can ignite our imagination. Growing up in a small fishing town in Scotland is the perfect backdrop for imagination, with coastlines lined with dark, boisterous waters and castles steeped in battles, folklore, and intrigues of the past. All this has given way to my writing.
Sci-fi has always been my favorite genre for the simple reason that every other genre can be explored under the blanket of science fiction.
End of Eternity is a fine example of this, in that it is both a love story and a thriller. Like modern-day sci-fi writers such as Andy Weir (Computer Programmer), Alister Reynolds (PhD in Astrophysics), and Liu Cixin (Computer Engineer), Asimov always leans on his scientific knowledge as a biochemist when writing.
Although End of Eternity does involve much biochemistry like some of Asimov’s other books, it does try to explain and navigate the complexities of time travel, which sometimes requires the mechanics of scientific thinking. I find time travel is always fun to read, and when there’s jealousy and love involved, it’s a recipe for a great story.
A spellbinding novel set in the universe of Isaac Asimov’s classic Galactic Empire series and Foundation series
Due to circumstances within our control . . . tomorrow will be canceled.
The Eternals, the ruling class of the Future, had the power of life and death not only over every human being but over the very centuries into which they were born. Past, Present, and Future could be created or destroyed at will.
You had to be special to become an Eternal. Andrew Harlan was special. Until he committed the one unforgivable sin—falling in love.
I like science and math. I’m better at science than math. I grew up reading books from the early pioneers of sci-fi when imagination trumped hard science. Oh, the science was around, there was just a lot more leeway to make up the physics when you needed something to work. As science advanced, authors got more into the technical and theoretical aspects of what they were writing about. I usually skim over technical writing, so when I began to write, it was natural for me to limit what I found to be superfluous to the story. The recommended books are the kind of books I like to read and write.
This was one of the first science fiction stories I remember reading on my own and it is one of the books I have reread most often.
It had everything to capture the imagination of a teenage mind. A story featuring two humans, a three-legged, two-headed alien, and a cat-warrior. Throw in a spaceship with an indestructible hull and the title structure and you have a great adventure story with minimal hard science. Even Mr. Niven got it wrong and had to correct it in later stories.
Pierson's puppeteers, strange, three-legged, two-headed aliens, have discovered an immense structure in a hitherto unexplored part of the universe. Frightened of meeting the builders of such a structure, the puppeteers set about assembling a team consisting of two humans, a puppeteer and a kzin, an alien not unlike an eight-foot-tall, red-furred cat, to explore it. The artefact is a vast circular ribbon of matter, some 180 million miles across, with a sun at its centre - the Ringworld. But the expedition goes disastrously wrong when the ship crashlands and its motley crew faces a trek across thousands of miles of…
Growing up on a small farm, my brother and I listened to crudely recorded Star Trek episodes. We didn’t have much, but our imaginations gave us infinity. Then life happened. To reclaim childhood wonders after losing myself in a long tech research career at Bell Labs, I transitioned into planetary science. Now I ‘live in space,’ but remotely, through cold machines. What will the future hold for people who actually live on other worlds, touching and smelling alien soil and solving alien challenges in their thoroughly alien lives? When I write, I dream, understand (sometimes), and strive to pass the experience on to new generations of readers and dreamers.
Realistic space settlement stories balance infinite optimism against terrifying risk. The celebrated authors of this science fiction masterpiece explore this cosmic equation without mercy. The veritable utopia of Camelot, mankind’s first interstellar settlement, is about to go very, very, very wrong. After reading this book, I stopped visiting the river behind my house and I lost sleep for weeks. It taught me that when we audaciously plan our real-world space settlements, the details really do matter. Living on another planet requires the consideration of thousands and thousands of important details… and unfortunately, the doomed settlers of Camelot have overlooked one.
The two hundred colonists on board the Geographic have spent a century in cold sleep to arrive here: Avalon, a lush, verdant planet light-years from Earth. They hope to establish a permanent colony, and Avalon seems the perfe
Growing up on a small farm, my brother and I listened to crudely recorded Star Trek episodes. We didn’t have much, but our imaginations gave us infinity. Then life happened. To reclaim childhood wonders after losing myself in a long tech research career at Bell Labs, I transitioned into planetary science. Now I ‘live in space,’ but remotely, through cold machines. What will the future hold for people who actually live on other worlds, touching and smelling alien soil and solving alien challenges in their thoroughly alien lives? When I write, I dream, understand (sometimes), and strive to pass the experience on to new generations of readers and dreamers.
On future worlds with diverse plant and animal life, how will daily struggles for survival shape the inhabitants? This book highlights some thought-provoking biology concepts such as competitive cooperation. Hesperidia can be a scary world, but one filled with beauty, wonder, and endless imagination. Humans, of course, remain the ultimate predators… or are they? Detective Ferrix Vaughn is about to find out. Good space-settlement books always require deep characters, and this series excels. Stopper, a genetically engineered wonder-dog, has become one of my favorite fictional characters. I almost cried in the sequel when… well, that’s giving too much away.
Warning! Wildlife may be dangerous. Proceed beyond this point at your own risk.
When celebrated Omicron detective Ferrix Vaughn is called in to investigate a deadly breach on Hesperidia, a protected planet full of indigenous wildlife, he doesn't know what to expect. The place used to be a tourist attraction, but the safari tours were discontinued long ago due to rampant poaching. Only a handful of researchers live there now, including Jan Corbija, the young woman who reported the breach.
The deeper Vaughn digs, the more the evidence seems to point to a recent raid on a biotech facility in…
Everyone wants to find romance. Some of us find it within the pages—or more than once. I also think romance gets a bad rap, but I for one love to fall in love repeatedly. It doesn’t matter if they’re fictional because when you read a story; you get lost in their world, as though you’re their friend, too. That is what I strive for when I write my characters. I write them as someone you could go out for a drink with and just have a good time. However, most of my characters experience life or death situations, but that just makes them stronger in the end, especially when I base them on my real-life experiences like in Tattooed Dots.
Saving Their Princess makes you question what is possible. It takes a twist on reality and gives you a new perspective. I love this book so much because it spins one of my favorite all-time classic fairytales into a modern-day twist. I got the value of friendship and love from this story. Two men that have been friends for years fall for the same woman and they give her the life she deserves.
I’m going to date myself horribly here, but…I’m an old-school fan of the guy in the grey hat. Think Kerr Avon ofBlake’s 7.The guy you could never quite predict. Or Han Solo until about halfway throughThe Empire Strikes Back. Are they going to do the right thing? Are they going to follow their heart? And it’s so satisfying when they do! Of course, it’s equally satisfying when they go right ahead and sucker punch the bad guy, ‘cuz hey—only the good guys give warnings, right?
The King of the Underworld must be a bad guy, right? And those folks up on Olympus are the good guys? Yeah…maybe rethink that a bit. There’s more to this Hades than you’ll find in dusty old mythology. He cares for his realm and its denizens, and he’s looking for a queen to share his kingdom and be his equal partner.
Held in Demeter's overprotective grip, power burns deep and seductive in Persephone. She will do whatever it takes to win her freedom and the Olympian Duel of Yule.
When Hades, King of the Underworld, swaggers into the baking competition, Persephone's competitive spirit rises to meet his challenge. The two clash over more than cookies. Until a little chaos interrupts the competition. She shouldn't trust Hades, but a fiery death with Ares doesn't appeal. An escape to the Underworld leads to a passion that burns hotter than Tartarus.
Persephone is all too aware of Olympian rules. Loving Hades comes with a…
Let’s face it – the Greek gods are a self-centered, quick-tempered, jealous, prideful, and insatiable bunch. Even the all-powerful Zeus falls victim to his overactive libido and vengeful wife! While superpowers are enticing, it’s the gods’ faults and weaknesses –their humanqualities – that make them so irresistible to me. As a writer, I love poking at my characters’ soft underbelly. Where are they vulnerable? What can they not bear to lose? Can they recognize their mistakes and grow? And this question pulled me down Cupid’s Fall rabbit hole: What if the God of Love got a dose of his own medicine?
Is there any family more dysfunctional than the Greek gods? In this modern-day saga, author Stacey Swann skillfully reimagines our favorite gods as regular people caught up in the very human drama of lust, jealousy, secrets, and even murder. The author slyly crafts multiple myth-inspired vignettes, then fits them together like puzzle pieces. The central conflict is a clever spin on Aphrodite’s affair with her ho-hum hubby Hephaestus’s fiery brother Ares (the unholy union that created Cupid!). What I love most about Swann’s storytelling is her snappy dialogue – these characters don’t pull any punches! Even though we don’t really want to root for them, we can’t help ourselves. Why? Maybe they remind us of ourselves.
A Good Morning America Book Club Pick! • A bighearted novel with technicolor characters, plenty of Texas swagger, and a powder keg of a plot in which marriages struggle, rivalries flare, and secrets explode, all with a clever wink toward classical mythology.
For fans of Madeline Miller's Circe: "The Iliad meets Friday Night Lights in this muscular, captivating debut" (Oprah Daily).
The Briscoe family is once again the talk of their small town when March returns to East Texas two years after he was caught having an affair with his brother's wife. His mother, June, hardly welcomes him back with…
I read every science fiction novel I could get when I was a kid. My worldview was shaped by Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and other SF novelists. I want my readers to feel that same “sense of wonder.” I was fortunate to have been exposed to these big ideas early on because they got me interested in artificial intelligence, space colonization, and Big Science – resulting in my computer science work at NASA-Ames Research Center in the 1980s. My fiction and computer games also draw on these concepts, including my hard SF novels: The Forge of Mars, The Digital Dead (sequel to The Forge of Mars), and Prometheus Road, among others.
What if you have an established culture on Mars in 2171 that wants to be independently governed? What if Mars develops a powerful new technology linking human brains to the most advanced AI ever built, giving them almost magical powers of teleportation? I like this book because it’s another great example of how to make advanced technologies and social developments believable through a small number of character perspectives. Arthur C. Clarke said that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and I appreciate how this novel was able to accomplish that. As a social scientist, I also appreciate the political aspects of this world as shown through the female lead, who starts as a young student protestor for Martian independence and evolves into a seasoned politician.
She is a daughter of one of Mars's oldest, most conservative Binding Multiples--the extended family syndicates that colonized the red planet. But Casseia Majumdar has a dream of an independent Mars, born in the student protests of 2171. During those brief days of idealism she forged bonds of friendship and hatred that set the stage for an astonishing war or revolution on Mars.
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…
I’m proud to be Irish, from a long heritage of storytellers and poets. Science fiction grabbed me from the first Asimov books I found, and I see the genre as an exploration of possibilities. I volunteer at SF Cons, including Dublin’s Worldcon in 2019. My profession is tree surgery, with an early apprenticeship in demolition, all of which has brought me to interesting places. I also love horses and became a national standard showjumper. I’ve qualified in multimedia journalism and ecology. My novels explore the past, present, and future. I write crime, science fiction, romance, and YA stories, including the Irish Lockdown series about young people during the Pandemic.
In this future, humanity needs to terraform Mars to provide a second home to a swelling population. The Mars Trilogy follows a group of scientists and astronauts, who gain extended lifetimes through a scientific breakthrough; this device enables us to follow the same characters through more than one normal active career span.
My favourite book is Green Mars, because as a tree surgeon, I am fascinated by the methods shown of planting miniature trees and other plants, adapted from Nordic and mountainous shrubs. The people are experimenting with frontier lifestyles using available materials, and experimenting on adapting humans to the planet. Big business and inter-planetary politics keep raising their heads, as in any colonisation effort. And a few holdout scientists are saying that Mars is beautiful, precious, and unique, and we should study the red planet as it is, not terraform it.
The first 100 scientists and engineers landed on Mars in 2027, their task to "terraform" the planet, creating an atmosphere, warming the environment, building human habitats, freeing the water trapped in underground aquifiers and seeding the new landscape. This book tells their story.
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