Here are 100 books that Lord of the World fans have personally recommended if you like
Lord of the World.
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I was always a bookworm, even reading the encyclopedia as a child. I was equally drawn to the sciences and literature and ended up getting a PhD in Chemistry. I visited Asia often for my chemistry work and gradually became interested in the philosophy and religion of Asian cultures. Today, I'm more likely to brag about what I’ve written or read about Chinese culture than I am to mention my technical patents.
I first read the Canticle forty years ago, and yet, when asked to recommend five books, this was the first one that came to mind. It threw me into an insane world, yet one that seemed only too possible.
My favorite character is Abraham, a tent-dwelling timeless man who lives through the several generations that the book follows. I am not a fan of dystopia, but this is an exception. Now that I’ve recommended it- I’m going to go read it again.
In the depths of the Utah desert, long after the Flame Deluge has scoured the earth clean, a monk of the Order of Saint Leibowitz has made a miraculous discovery: holy relics from the life of the great saint himself, including the blessed blueprint, the sacred shopping list, and the hallowed shrine of the Fallout Shelter.
In a terrifying age of darkness and decay, these artifacts could be the keys to mankind's salvation. But as the mystery at the core of this groundbreaking novel unfolds, it is the search itself—for meaning, for truth, for love—that offers hope for humanity's rebirth…
My imagination has always been captivated and fired up by reading traditional myths and fairy tales, as well science fiction. Growing up in the ’80s, I was particularly steeped in cinematic masterpieces such as Bladerunner and The Road Warrior, but I also loved reading classic sci-fi, as well as British literature, particularly the Brontes and Jane Austen. I enjoy and write speculative fiction because I believe it offers some of the best, creative ways to explore the timeless, universal truths underlying the human experience. Whether that exploration happens in subtle scenes of interpersonal interactions, or in the epic events woven in threads of dark and light across the tapestry of history, it’s all valuable and relevant.
I was really drawn into James’ dark but believable premise, concerning a depopulated Earth, and the resulting instability and hopelessness of such a societal crisis. The dreariness of her depiction of a childless world is sobering and timely. The plot is not complex, but is very absorbing and fast-paced. The fact that the novel ends on a note of hope and second chances is one of the things I especially liked about it, and makes it well worth an occasional re-read.
Told with P. D. James's trademark suspense, insightful characterization, and riveting storytelling, The Children of Men is a story of a world with no children and no future. The human race has become infertile, and the last generation to be born is now adult. Civilization itself is crumbling as suicide and despair become commonplace. Oxford historian Theodore Faron, apathetic toward a future without a future, spends most of his time reminiscing. Then he is approached by Julian, a bright, attractive woman who wants him to help get her an audience with his cousin, the powerful Warden of England. She and…
My imagination has always been captivated and fired up by reading traditional myths and fairy tales, as well science fiction. Growing up in the ’80s, I was particularly steeped in cinematic masterpieces such as Bladerunner and The Road Warrior, but I also loved reading classic sci-fi, as well as British literature, particularly the Brontes and Jane Austen. I enjoy and write speculative fiction because I believe it offers some of the best, creative ways to explore the timeless, universal truths underlying the human experience. Whether that exploration happens in subtle scenes of interpersonal interactions, or in the epic events woven in threads of dark and light across the tapestry of history, it’s all valuable and relevant.
I really loved Willis’ multilayered presentation of the narrator’s past and present. Masterfully, Willis creates a deceptively simple, haunting setting, where the common but painful event of the loss of a pet becomes a symbol for the banality of extinction itself—whether of a species or entire culture. Made me think about how, even though inevitable, loss never gets easier.
When King Priam's pregnant daughter was fleeing the sack of Troy, Stan was there. When Jesus of Nazareth was beaten and crucified, Stan was there - one crossover. He’s been a Hittite warrior, a Silk Road mercenary, a reluctant rebel in the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381, and an information peddler…
My imagination has always been captivated and fired up by reading traditional myths and fairy tales, as well science fiction. Growing up in the ’80s, I was particularly steeped in cinematic masterpieces such as Bladerunner and The Road Warrior, but I also loved reading classic sci-fi, as well as British literature, particularly the Brontes and Jane Austen. I enjoy and write speculative fiction because I believe it offers some of the best, creative ways to explore the timeless, universal truths underlying the human experience. Whether that exploration happens in subtle scenes of interpersonal interactions, or in the epic events woven in threads of dark and light across the tapestry of history, it’s all valuable and relevant.
This YA story deals with the threat of apocalyptic destruction, and shows how easily a vulnerable population can be manipulated by fear and uncertainty with only a few rumors. These themes are just as valid today as ever. I like the way DePrau’s protagonist, Nickie, is a relatable character caught in a frightening situation, but trying to make the best of it by forming bonds in her community, as they all face a terrifying future. The haunting sense of dread that permeates this simple novel has stayed with me for years.
A prequel to the modern-day classic The City of Ember. This highly acclaimed adventure series has captivated kids and teachers alike for almost fifteen years and has sold over 3.5 MILLION copies!
Nickie will grow up to be one of the first citizens of the city of Ember. But for now, she’s an eleven-year-old girl whose father was sent away on some mysterious government project.
So when the opportunity to move presents itself, Nickie seizes it. But her new town of Yonwood, North Carolina, isn’t what she’d anticipated. It’s a place full of suspicion and mistrust, where one person’s visions…
As a mother of two girls, I’ve always loved fostering their interests in multiple subjects and providing them with epic role models. Too often, women’s strength in fantasy and science fiction (my favorite genres) is shown through violence or physical action, whether they can wield a blade or hold their own in a fight. Watching my girls get excited about game design, math, and science always gives me a little thrill, and I love providing them with epic heroines who use their brains as their primary weapon. STEM heroines rock!
If there are two things I can’t get enough of, it's fantastic holiday stories and cozy fantasy/science fiction. When you combine the two? I’m sold. Liz Delton’s books have a straightforward charm to them while always involving complicated world-building that gives me a world I’d love to play in.
Her Seasons of Soldark series has four holiday or seasonal tales, and the first, the Clockwork Ice Dragon, is a cozy holiday adventure. The heroine is a determined inventor who I found equally admirable for her persistence (aka stubbornness) and frustrating for snapping to a judgment and sticking to it like a rusty bolt (also stubbornness). This only makes her more believable, though, as it is so often our greatest strengths that are also our greatest weaknesses.
An invention gone wrong. A city buried in snow. And she only has ‘til Christmas to make it right.
Aurelia Sundon has an idea for a brilliant invention that will ensure her family’s financial future. But the elite inventor’s guild has imposed a ridiculous deadline for invention applications: Christmas Day. With only four days until the deadline, Aurelia thinks she can finish it in time.
Until her old love Frederick Grandville, son of the city’s most powerful inventor, steps back into her life. With a fantastic invention of his own to enter in the competition, Frederick might just be the…
I knew in my early teens that I wasn’t straight, but back then, the thought of coming out was too scary. I waited until I was twenty-three to do so, and it was still scary even being ten years older! So I can relate to stories of women of all ages discovering their less-than-straight sexuality. It’s rarely easy, no matter how many years you’ve lived already. It still requires good support from the people who love you, and one thing in common in all of the books I’ve recommended is that family, or often found family, plays a crucial role in the newly-out woman feeling comfortable being themselves.
This one had me laughing out loud just as much as swooning over the lovely story of Caroline and her transformation once her husband dumps her in the home where ‘difficult’ women are put when they cause too much trouble for those husbands. There are elements of steampunk, social commentary, twisted humor, and a cast of secondary characters that are as varied as they are interesting. The setting, while bleak to begin with, grows on you as you read, and once all the twists and turns finally click into place, it’s a romp of a ride to the end.
A gentle Victorian tale of women’s passions and power, with a sprinkle of romance, a trifle of steampunk, and heaps and heaps of quiet revolution.
Caroline Ajax is an inconvenient woman. Unwell. Hot-tempered. Harboring a tragic secret she can’t share with another living soul. Dropped at an institution in the Surrey Hills by her husband, Thomas, her only objective is to survive, to endure, to make it back to what little there is of her life as soon as she possibly can. But it doesn’t take her long to discover there is something unusual about this house and its eclectic…
Edge of the Known World is a near-future love and adventure story about a brilliant young refugee caught in era when genetic screening tests like 23AndMe make it impossible to hide a secret identity. The novel is distributed by Simon & Schuster. It is a USA Today Bestseller and 2024…
I’m a cyclist and a cycling fan. I’ve commuted through the Surrey countryside by tricycle and explored the cycling city of Cambridge by bike. I’ve stood at the side of the road to cheer on the Olympic road race, the Tour de France and the Tour of Britain, and the World Road Cycling Championships. I kept on cycling until I was eight and a half months pregnant and was reading a biography of Beryl Burton when I went into labour. There aren’t a lot of cycling novels out there, but I’m proud of having added one to that small number.
For me, cycling has meant freedom. This book celebrates the bicycle as a tool for women’s emancipation. Microcosm Publishing has a strong track record (pun intended) in celebrating feminism, cycling, and the intersection of the two, and this is a particularly good example.
Set in a universe that seems to be just a jump away from our own, about a century and a half ago, it’s insightful on matters of class and wealth, too. I particularly enjoyed all the little details of fashion. I found myself rooting hard for the heroine in her struggle to ride a bike, not just competitively, but at all. And I was charmed by a love story I wasn’t expecting.
Emmeline Escot knows that she was born to ride in Seren’s cutthroat velocipede races. The only problem: She’s female in a world where women lead tightly laced lives. Emmeline watches her twin brother gain success as a professional racing jockey while her own life grows increasingly narrow. Ever more stifled by rules, corsets, and her upcoming marriage of convenience to a brusque stranger, Emmy rebelswith stunning consequences. Can her dream to race survive scandal, scrutiny, and heartbreak?
My PhD work was in developmental robotics, which is about how a robot could wake up and learn about the world the way a human child does. The robot in my thesis work does this by building models, and, more generally, society as a whole advances when science builds ever better causal models about how the world works. The books in this collection are about what could happen when we are 5, 10, and 100 years ahead in the causal model-building process, and they look at what happens when those models are built by robots instead of humans.
I love how this book conveys the wonder of discovery as they travel the universe. You can skip over some of the early math passages without missing anything. The book is about a civilization of software agents, and the description of how their understanding of physics advances is great.
If you like this one, check out Permutation City by Egen, which explores what it is like to live forever in a simulation. You live for so long that you can load passions for hobbies into your brain to pass the time. A character has an intense desire for woodwork and all the materials a woodworker would dream of.
A quantum Brave New World from the boldest and most wildly speculative writer of his generation. "Greg Egan is perhaps the most important SF writer in the world."-Science Fiction Weekly "One of the very best "-Locus. "Science fiction with an emphasis on science."-New York Times Book Review
Since the Introdus in the twenty-first century, humanity has reconfigured itself drastically. Most chose immortality, joining the polises to become conscious software. Others opted for gleisners: disposable, renewable robotic bodies that remain in contact with the physical world of force and friction. Many of these have left the solar system forever in fusion-drive…
Some of my earliest memories are of sitting with my mom or dad while they read me stories like The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter or Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White. These memories, along with many great teachers who got me excited about stories, are what helped me develop a love of reading and writing. I love stories with animal characters in them, whether they’re the main characters, or simply there in a supporting role.
Readers who like cat protagonists, steampunk, or both, will love Calico Cogg, the main protagonist of this story. I liked the spunky little cat from the moment I met her, and did not want to put this story down. Clever Calico Cogg began life as an ordinary cat but after she was saved from the streets of Ticswyk, a city in an exciting steampunk world, by Lionel Cogg, a kindly inventor, he enhances her with implants that make her stronger and more agile than a regular cat. I found her talents as impressive as her audience did at the beginning of the book. What can Calico Cogg not do, right? But then, when her beloved human Lionel is kidnapped, Calico's skills are put to the ultimate test! Even with her enhanced skills, it’s a race against time if she’s going to rescue her human! I was on the edge of…
Calico Cogg is a cat like no other. Rescued from the streets of Ticswyk by esteemed inventor Lionel Cogg, she has been fitted with implants to enhance her natural feline abilities. When Lionel is kidnapped, Cali must put her skills to the test to free him. Dark schemes are in the works—a plague of tiny clockwork spiders are wreaking havoc on the city’s inhabitants. Only Cali, with help from her trusted mouse friend Emmit, can get to the bottom of it all. With a criminal mastermind planning a major heist, Cali must race against time to unravel his plot before…
Pete is content living a simple life in the remote Montana town of Sleeping Grass, driving the local garbage truck with his pot-bellied pig Pearl and wondering about what could've been. Elderly widow Wilma is busy meddling in Pete's life to try and make up for past wrongs that he…
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!
Diana Smythe is a survivor, and she’ll do almost anything to keep her dream of flying to the stars alive. But she won’t betray her friends, or give into bullies, which gets her into ever-deeper trouble. Good thing she’s super smart!
Star Compass is an excellent combination of steampunk and sci-fi. Anthea is a wonderful writer, her characters strong but flawed, and her worldbuilding amazing, combining Victorian mores with modern space flight.
Steampunk meets Space Opera in this captivating tale of adventure and romance from USA Today bestseller Anthea Sharp.
Diana Smythe was a child of the nobility… once. Now the streetrat known as Diver, she spends her days picking pockets, and her nights gazing at the galaxy overhead, dreaming of the day she’ll escape Earth for a brighter future among the stars.
Derek Byrne polices the grimy streets around the Southampton Spaceport, trying to keep the gangs in line and the gutters clear of riffraff. When his path crosses Diana’s, he sees beyond her masculine disguise and catches a glimpse of…
