100 books like Myst

The late Sir Pratchett was a hero of mine. The Discworld universe is one of the most well-put-together, zany, yet relatable places. The amount of depth that he was able to achieve with a setting that others might consider a joke is astounding.

In order for a universe to connect with me, it has to have characters that I love dearly. Granny Aching and her granddaughter Tiffany are among the few literary characters that have ever brought me to tears on multiple occasions. I used to read this book to my students, and there is one scene in particular towards the end that causes me to choke up every time I read it.

It’s simple and powerful, and it speaks to me on a personal level. I lost my mom back in 2008, and the scene to which I am referring here hits on that sense of loss so well… show more.

I, like many others, love Star Wars and was sad when it was announced that the old tie-in novels were being removed from canon. In particular this story made me the most upset. For me, this was the sequel trilogy that we never got.

It captured the universe that George Lucas set up for us so well that I never once felt like Luke, Han, or Leia were anything other than the characters we had seen in the movies. I loved how it took the lore and lovingly crafted it into a new story that fits within the parameters that had already been established without retreading the same old territory or falling into glorified fanfiction.

What kind of list would this be about massive universes without mentioning the Cosmere? Brandon Sanderson is the undisputed king of worldbuilding because he is so meticulously obsessed with the details, and is so good at juggling all of them in a way that interweaves like a tapestry of crossing stories.

The fact that this story holds dozens of nods to characters from his other stories that exist within the same universe as the worlds on which this book takes place while not being confusing to someone unfamiliar with all that the Cosmere has to offer is why I want to recommend this book in particular, though.

I will freely admit that I am not a Cosmere aficionado. The task of trying to keep up on everything that Sanderson writes is entirely too daunting for me (how does the man write so much, so well, and so fast?!!). But I… show more.

So many times with tie-in novels, you have the issue of trying to predict what a fanbase wants while still trying to keep a story original. I’ve read a lot of tie-in novels that fail in this, and as a result, their stories fall flat and become hollow narratives. The Warhammer 40k universe has a long, rich, and storied history of lore. Sometimes, that lore boils down to “Space Marines are cool,” and that is as far as the depth of the worldbuilding goes. 

This book succeeds where many others do not. In this story, I got to see the effects of a universe that is dominated by war played out in the lives of these characters. Rather than a string of events between one fight to the next, I saw the toll that such an existence would have on the people who live it. It does this in a… show more.

I have listened to the audio version of this book so many times that I can almost recite it. It features nine scientific experiments readers can perform on their own to demonstrate the validity of the spiritual principles Grout teaches—mainly that what we focus on we energize and draw to us. I absolutely love this book and have been amazed by the positive outcomes that have transpired in my life when I practice gratitude and focus on what I want rather than what I fear.

This is a competent, charming account of the various mind-boggling quantum phenomena. It includes the uncertainty principle, the quantum atom, how quanta interact, the quantum vacuum, and the Standard Model. The book also ventures into the discussion of the transistor (the device behind the digital revolution) and the death of stars. Uniquely, we learn why all these results follow the basic principles of quantum physics. The authors explain these phenomena in terms of a qualitative version of Feynman's path-analysis approach to quantum physics. I hasten to emphasize that this analysis is understandable by non-scientists, and shines a nice light on why the quantum world has the unexpected properties that it does have. Cox's popular writings are widely read in the UK. Both authors are physics professors at Manchester University.

I like the main idea promoted in the book that even laws of nature (including general relativity) result from "collective effects," i.e., many-body interactions. This is supported by examples from the material nature of the vacuum of elementary particles to proteins and daily life.

The discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN (after the book was written) already greatly increased our confidence that the vacuum is not empty but a type of matter from which elementary particle properties emerge.

I also like his thoughts on the philosophy of physics from the collective-effects (or non-reductionist) perspective. He claims that for a scientific measurement or even a law to be possible, nature should allow precisely measurable quantities via collective effects.

I am recommending Alfred North Whitehead's magnum opus because, in common with a number of other philosophers, I have come to the conclusion that Whitehead is the most important philosophical cosmologist of the last four hundred years.

For the most part, American philosophy works with the assumption that the universe is meaningless. This conclusion follows from taking Newtonian science as the ultimate truth of the large-scale universe. But this depressing view of things needs to be rejected now that we have discovered quantum physics, relativity, and complexity science, all of which go beyond the view of Newtonian mechanics.

Whitehead, deeply versed in mathematical sciences, gathered up all of these new insights and presented a radically different cosmology, one rooted not in mechanical metaphors but in a keen appreciation of an ever-flowing creativity. The great benefit of studying Whitehead is the power he provides for uprooting the subconscious commitments to Newtonian… show more.

Understanding story structure, narrative drive, and world-building are incredibly helpful when running tabletop role-playing games.

As you run games you will often find that the players do not do what is expected and as the Game Master (GM) you have to adjust the story as you go. Understanding common story tropes and character arcs can help GM’s with building their world, their campaign, and adjusting the story as needed.

Hickson uses examples from literature, anime, and popular media to help illustrate the different themes explored in his series. 

Some dystopian books show futures that aren’t relatable or believable at all. The whole story is a great mix of genres – not just dystopian but also sci-fi, thriller, and it reads like a crime novel with mobsters.  The reachers themselves are telepathic/telekinetic and add a unique dimension to a story that otherwise could fit in with a non-fantasy setting. The world-building in this book is so effective exactly because it feels real. I was sucked in and sympathetic toward the reachers because you can easily put many different peoples in their place today, and the political and social aspects of the story feel frighteningly possible.