Here are 100 books that Killing Sophia fans have personally recommended if you like
Killing Sophia.
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My first true religion was being a boy alone in the woods and feeling a deep connection to nature in all its aspects. I felt a connection with all life and knew myself to be an animal—and gloried in it. Since then, I've learned how vigorously humans fight our animal nature, estranging us from ourselves and the planet. Each of these books invites us to get over ourselves and connect with all life on Earth.
I knew the film Blade Runner before I read this, the novel upon which it's based, but I was not prepared for the richer complexities of the novel.
My favorite parts of the novel, a bizarre new religion and the extinction of all but human and animal life, barely make it into the film. Even the androids, built to be slaves, are much more nuanced and complex than in the film. I loved the conclusion of the book, which affirms the beauty of life, both natural and mechanical.
As the eagerly-anticipated new film Blade Runner 2049 finally comes to the screen, rediscover the world of Blade Runner . . .
World War Terminus had left the Earth devastated. Through its ruins, bounty hunter Rick Deckard stalked, in search of the renegade replicants who were his prey. When he wasn't 'retiring' them with his laser weapon, he dreamed of owning a live animal - the ultimate status symbol in a world all but bereft of animal life.
Then Rick got his chance: the assignment to kill six Nexus-6 targets, for a huge reward. But in Deckard's world things were…
I’ve been passionate about personally and professionally lifting women up throughout my career. Today, it is how I spend my time and energy – in a way that makes a difference to those individuals and the greater world. Books have always filled my insatiable desire to continuously learn and explore mysterious, unknown worlds. As a writer, I read books to expand my understanding and push my comfort zones. I also read them so that I can share with others what I have learned in the hopes they will have a positive impact on them – a pay-it-forward of sorts. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have!
For too long emotions have been systematically suppressed at work.
In today’s highly competitive workplace where culture and leadership matters, embracing emotions is a competitive advantage for leaders and companies alike.
Maria’s book demonstrates why businesses should cultivate empathy and shares the winning traits of empathetic leaders who foster greater productivity and loyalty.
Furious customers? Missed deadlines? Failed products? The problems your business faces may stem from a single issue: lack of empathy.
Being empathetic at work means seeing the situation from another's perspective, and using that vantage point to shape your leadership style, workplace culture, and branding strategy. Pairing her knowledge as a branding expert with proven research and fascinating stories from executives, change-makers and community leaders, Maria Ross reveals exactly how empathy makes brands and organizations stronger and more successful.
Ross shows why your business needs to cultivate more empathy now, and shares the habits and traits of empathetic leaders who…
Having studied literature at university and been a closet nerd, coding at night in a dank basement room, I've always been intrigued by the interface between human and machine. Then, as a senior executive in a large multinational, I was acutely aware of the value of empathy as a leadership skill. In a world that is increasingly divided and divisive, I’ve become an empathy activist. I believe that the business world can be a force for positive change, but as a society we will need to engage in a much more meaningful and rigorous debate about the ethics involved in the opportunities offered by using artificial intelligence and robots in the workplace.
With business conditions and prospects looking so difficult, we will need to be ever more strategic in the use of our resources. In this light, Michael Ventura’s practical approach to inserting empathy into leadership and how businesses should function with a higher degree of empathy is a tremendous read. Ventura uses a host of case studies based on the work he’s done with his company, Sub Rosa. As such, the material is real life and the book is packed with a host of great and practical exercises. While it’s all about empathy in business, the book is also a good reminder of how empathy can be useful in our private lives, our intimate relationships and in society in general.
Michael Ventura, entrepreneur and CEO of award-winning strategy and design practice Sub Rosa, shares how empathy - the ability to see the world through someone else's eyes - could be what your business needs to innovate, connect, and grow.
Having built his career working with iconic brands and institutions such as Google and Nike, and also The United Nations and the Obama Administration, Michael Ventura offers entrepreneurs and executives a radical new business book and way forward.
Empathy is not about being nice. It's not about pity or sympathy either. It's about understanding - your consumers, your colleagues, and yourself…
My favorite books are a mix of classics, scientific, and recent thrills. They are relatable, underdog personal stories of survival and how we fit into our world, which I think match well withAfter Mind. Many years ago, after reading the adapted screenplay for Blade Runner from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, I fell in love with the idea of living a lot longer than humans are supposed to. Since then, I’ve worked in movie marketing, engineering design, and construction. Basically, I think humans need more time for all our dreams. I hope you enjoy these books for our road ahead. We’re on a lifelong journey and there’s a long way to go.
How to Create a Mindis a fascinating non-fiction book that explores the intricacies of the human brain and the potential for creating artificial intelligence. It does an excellent job of weaving together scientific research, personal anecdotes, and philosophical musings. Powerful computers are essential to solving human longevity. So, I ask what if those computers need to be partly human themselves? I wish we could simply feed this book into an AI, let it know this is the blueprint to how our human minds work, then set it free to do its best creation. Make us into a human-computer that can live past our expectations. Whether fictional or real, this is a survival story that will leave even non-sci-fi fans with a lot to consider.
The bold futurist and bestselling author of The Singularity is Nearer explores the limitless potential of reverse-engineering the human brain
Ray Kurzweil is arguably today's most influential-and often controversial-futurist. In How to Create a Mind, Kurzweil presents a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilization-reverse engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines.
Kurzweil discusses how the brain functions, how the mind emerges from the brain, and the implications of vastly increasing the powers of our intelligence in addressing the world's problems. He thoughtfully examines emotional…
I make music. I write books. I’m drawn to scenarios in which people make music or books or art collaboratively, often spontaneously. I enjoy making music with kids because of how they can be creative spontaneously. Sometimes adults pretend to be creative in a way that a child might relate to, but a child can generally sniff out a pretender. And a pretend pretender can be unpleasant company for children and adults alike. These books were written by adults who know their inner child. Wonder, play and a tangential regard for social norms are their baseline to share the stories they’ve chosen to share.
Every now and then you learn as much from a 40-page picture book as you do from 300 pages of text. This was my experience with Lunch From Home.
The author of this book has equal footing in the cookbook-as-memoir realm as the picture book realm, and this book meets at the intersection of those two worlds. It tells the story of four children (who would go on to become professional chefs) who each experience “lunch box moments,” wherein their non-sandwich lunches receive scrunched noses from their classmates.
I have since learned that this experience is commonplace within immigrant communities. Reading this book with my kids increased all our capacities for empathy and understanding, and in just 40 pages – many of which have no text! This book is a master class in delivering a uniquely human insight simply and effectively.
In a classroom of sandwiches, four students stand out with their homemade, culturally-specific lunches. But before they can dig in and enjoy their favourite foods, their lunches are spoiled by scrunched noses and disgusted reactions from their sandwich-eating classmates.
Follow each of the four students as they learn to cope with their first "lunch box moments" in this picture book that encourages empathy and inspires all readers to stand up for their food! Inspired by the "lunch box moments" of four acclaimed chefs, Ray Garcia, Preeti Mistry, Mina Park, and Niki Russ Federman, this heartwarming story reminds us all that…
I’ve experienced good organisations and less so in my working life. Likewise, I've experienced the good and less so of leadership. In leading teams and organisations during my career, I, too, have been an example of both, so I’m passionate about helping leaders grow their capability to ‘avoid the less so’ and lead well, with humanity and greater consciousness, to create workplaces where people flourish and organisations that contribute positively to the future of our world.
Like many people, I discovered Brené Brown through her eponymous TED talk on Vulnerability; that compelling insight is showcased here, too. I love the way this book takes us to the heart of what it means to lead with courage. Too often, we confuse bravado (behaviours) with bravery when it comes to leadership.
Brown’s version of courage and daring are very different and really resonate, embracing vulnerability as a key strength, coupled with empathy and integrity to breed a culture where people speak up, conversations are robust, and mistakes are welcomed as learning opportunities.
What really works for me is the storytelling and personal anecdotes, backed up by research, creating a practical and inspiring read.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Brené Brown has taught us what it means to dare greatly, rise strong, and brave the wilderness. Now, based on new research conducted with leaders, change makers, and culture shifters, she’s showing us how to put those ideas into practice so we can step up and lead.
Don’t miss the five-part HBO Max docuseries Brené Brown: Atlas of the Heart!
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BLOOMBERG
Leadership is not about titles, status, and wielding power. A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and…
I started watching animals as soon as I could walk. That eventually led to a PhD in animal behavior and a career in animal protection. I now focus my energies on writing books that seek to improve our understanding of, and most importantly our relations with, other animals. I've written four previous books:Pleasurable Kingdom, Second Nature, The Exultant Ark, and What a Fish Knows (a New York Times best-seller now available in fifteen languages). I live in Belleville, Ontario where I enjoy biking, baking, birding, Bach, and trying to understand the neighborhood squirrels.
Yes, it’s a bit dated, but it was a bold, pioneering book for its day. Barber doesn’t shrink from describing birds as they are: intelligent, flexible, emotional animals with lives and personalities.
My science fiction and fantasy writing is concerned with the values I was exposed to growing up. As a lifelong Quaker, I have struggled—often unsuccessfully—to live out Quakerism’s non-conformist, almost utopian commitment to equality, simplicity, peace, and community. Not only have I tried to bear witness to those values in my writing, but those ideals led me to my career as an instructor at a community college, one of America’s great socioeconomic leveling institutions. My background as a speculative fiction writer has also made me into a teacher of science fiction and fantasy literature at my college, where I read and came to love the books I recommend here.
Haunting and beautiful, it gave me a new perspective on what science fiction can accomplish: Ishiguro’s book is subtle, humane, and deeply concerned with the troubles of the real world.
This story of Klara, an “artificial friend” purchased to keep a sick little girl company, takes up questions of eugenics, artificial intelligence, and, ultimately, what it means to be a human being.
Along the way, the book explores the gulf between economic and social classes with as much care and compassion as Charles Dickens or Thomas Hardy—Klara and the Sun is some of the most inspiring science fiction I have ever read.
*The #1 Sunday Times Bestseller* *Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021* *A Barack Obama Summer Reading Pick*
'A delicate, haunting story' The Washington Post 'This is a novel for fans of Never Let Me Go . . . tender, touching and true.' The Times
'The Sun always has ways to reach us.'
From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges…
I’ve published eleven classic-style space opera novels, a novella, and many short stories. Before becoming a writer, I spent twenty years in US Air Force in space operations; even though my books are light on science, I really was a rocket scientist! Plus, I’ve read science fiction since I was barely a teen, starting with Heinlein and McCaffery, and am always looking for my next favorite author!
Ruby hates robots and artificial intelligence. She desperately wants to join an expedition to the outer reaches of the solar system, where humans do the work, rather than computers. But she’s still too young and needs to finish her degree. Determined to make her own fate, she sets off to join, but of course, she’s abducted by space-faring robots with some very strange flaws…
A really fun book, with robots that are all too human, and an endearing main character.
What would you do if you were kidnapped by alien robots?
Ruby Palmer finds herself on an entire planet surrounded by the things she hates the most: robots. Besides taking everything she says way too literally, the robots have problems of their own. A myriad of technical glitches are, on the cosmological scale, quickly destroying them. Ruby has the programming knowledge and skills that matter to them, but can she overcome her fears and find it within herself to help? Her survival, along with the survival of all of humanity and robot kind, depends on it.
I’ve always firmly believed that, being an all-encompassing genre, speculative fiction represents nearly everything I love about writing and storytelling. I’m therefore very proud to have established myself in that world over the past several years and hope to positively impact others in the way I’ve been positively impacted by the sorts of works I’ve mentioned here.
As a lifelong lover and reader of science fiction, I’m always impressed when I come across a modern book and series that feels fresh or novel to me. That’s precisely what I got from The Murderbot Diaries at a time when I really needed it, which has made it one of my go-to sci-fi recommendations in recent years, particularly as someone who appreciates a bit of tasteful humor and snark in my futuristic adventures through space.
All Systems Red by Martha Wells begins The Murderbot Diaries, a new science fiction action and adventure series that tackles questions of the ethics of sentient robotics. It appeals to fans of Westworld, Ex Machina, Ann Leckie's Imperial Raadch series, or lain M. Banks' Culture novels. The main character is a deadly security droid that has bucked its restrictive programming and is balanced between contemplative self discovery and an idle instinct to kill all humans. In a corporate dominated s pa cef a ring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by…
