100 books like Men Like Gods

Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood famously rocketed this book to the top of the bestseller list four years after its publication. Whatever you’ve heard about this inventive epistolary time travel romance, I promise you that it lives up to that hype. It won me over immediately with its lyrical prose, clever sci-fi conceit, and charged romantic tension between dueling protagonists.

I love dystopian fiction, but there’s something even more impressive about well-written utopian fiction. I’m even more impressed when authors remember that our various visions of utopia can be in conflict with one another and with our own individual connections and desires. Time War weaves poetry out of the multiverse and had me sobbing over two women who would rather burn down every world than lose each other.

There is a certain kind of literature that takes my breath away. In my experience, there is nothing more exhilarating than reading a book that you think is contemporary that veers, with the reader hardly noticing, into the speculative. I adore books that take the ordinary world and sprinkle it with magic and possibilities.

With this book, Matt Haig answers a question many of us contemplate: What if? What if I’d taken the other fork in the road? This book answers that question for one flawed, beautiful character, and I was enthralled with every page.  

This was the first science fiction I read that played with the idea of alternate history, and it cracked my brain wide open when I was a youngster! But I’ve recently reread it, and it still has such power.

The book shows a world in which the Axis won WWII. But it’s a multiverse book, too, because, in the novel, there is evidence that a universe exists in which the Allies won the war. Evidence that must be stamped out. The reality that Dick paints in this novel is just so compelling and depressingly real. It resonates even now and makes me think, what other paths of history could we have come down? Would they be worse or better? Or simply different? And what would it be like to know about those other worlds? 

This book is a delirious romp through time and space with a political edge, which is enough to make me love it on its own. However, versions of the main character, Jerry Cornelius, pop up in just about all of Michael Moorcock’s work, including The Dancers at the End of Time trilogy, the Elric of Melnibone books and even his Dr. Who novel.

But wait! There’s more! Moorcock gave other writers permission to use the character, so he appears in other people’s works (including one of my novels). One of the first explorers of the concept of the multiverse, Michael Moorcock brilliantly paved the way for the rest of us.

By turns uplifting, bloody strange, heartbreaking, and joyful, this story collection touches on so many things: gender relations, race, hope, the need to feel safe, and the need to feel dignity among them. There are versions of America in this series that I dread, and versions of America that I long for. This is a book we need right now: a collection of dire warnings and beautiful dreams, hopes, and fears. We’re at a crossroads in history. This book reminds us that we can take a turn into the dark or the light. And wherever we go, we’ll be taking our whole selves and all our facets along for the ride: good and bad, kind and cruel, genetic and historical.

Strap in.

The Manuels give an exhaustive but very readable history of utopian thought from the Renaissance (Thomas More) to Marxism, with backward glances to ancient Judaic and Hellenic cultures. This book explains how and why utopias have been central to Western thought, showing how the utopias of one age seem dystopian in another age (or even their own), presented in wry prose that draws readers into the story.

The key to understanding our lives is to enlarge our perspectives, and human behavior hasn’t changed much in 2000 years.

Plato gives several suggestions for maintaining stability in organized society, including guarding against the influence of Sophists, who manipulate language to manipulate their listeners, reminding me of our salesmen today.

Especially valuable is his allegory of the cave, where educators present images to an audience chained in place since early childhood. The glare of the sun awaits anyone who manages to leave the cave, and coming back in won’t be easy, but those who leave and find genuine truth need to come back and serve those still in the cave. Make the world a better place.

Everfair is one of several recent alternate histories that challenge the usual focus on the same sorts of events in the same parts of the world and the all-too-frequent disturbing obsession with “what if the bad folks had won?” questions (South in the Civil War, Axis in WWII).

Shawl imagines a different, better history for the Congo—liberated from European control and gifted with a new source of energy. Her interesting characters from many backgrounds around the globe come together to fight for their sometimes conflicting, sometimes flawed visions for a better future.

This is the visionary aspect of speculative fiction at its most powerful. 

I love Cecelia Ahern’s earlier books and this was her first YA duology. The second book is called Perfect. This society also praises beauty and perfection, but mistakes are punishable offenses with a serious consequence of being branded, literally, are Flawed. The book is chilling in so many ways, but what I loved about it is that making mistakes is an inherently ‘human’ thing to do. Older generations have been taught to avoid making mistakes at all costs, or at least never own up to them. The younger ones are learning that it’s all part of life and we should all have a little more compassion. We’re all doing the best we can with what we have.

I love this book on many levels. Utopia is always just out of reach but with the scale of time, one could argue that we’re currently living in a utopia.

Even if we don’t have flying cars, more people have opportunities and access to resources than ever before in recorded history.

This book is for optimists and pessimists alike, as the author does a great job addressing the current issues we face and outlining a future worth building. A future of Universal Basic Income (UBI) and no national borders, where opportunities are shared more equitably.

If everyone read this book I know we’d be one step closer to reaching utopia.