58 books like On Earth As It Is On Television

I love the fact that no one actually knows who or what Beegu is, though she is instantly adorable and engaging and the reader feels empathy immediately for her.

It is a very gentle, quiet story about missing home but which had a big impact on me, nevertheless, and the children I’ve read it with seem to understand her sadness.

I think Alexis Deacon’s beautiful paintings have an ethereal, timeless feeling, perfect for the story which could be set in the past, present, or future.

Isaac Asimov rarely wrote about aliens, but this Hugo and Nebula award-winning novel contains an astounding thought experiment, not only imagining a truly alien species but placing them in a different universe with different physical laws from our own.

I first read this novel as a teenager and was blown away by Asimov’s ability to make me understand and care about the fate of such vastly different alien creatures that possessed three distinct sexes and derived their life energy from photosynthesis.

The fact that the novel inextricably links the fate of these creatures with the fate of our own universe gave me a greater appreciation of how truly diverse life can be. A fact–along with the lessons I learned from the other novels listed here–that continues to inform my own writing on aliens and alien cultures. 

I’m also a personal friend of Jim C. Hines, but we became friends because I was a fan of his work. 

This book is the first of a trilogy (which is different than a never-ending series) and takes a new, different, and funny spin on the zombie apocalypse.

Earth was hit by a plague that zombie-fied those humans it didn’t kill. Then the aliens came and cured some humans, who had to join their space fleet. Mostly as janitors and other menial laborers. Marion “Mops” Adamopoulos goes from head janitor to captain of the Earth Mercenary Corps Ship Pufferfish.  She can barely fly the ship, but now must fight it.

Definitely a case where an ordinary person gets put in an extraordinary situation.

Every nerd’s dream is to one day be swept away into adventure, and in this book it actually happens for Zack Lightman. Video game mechanics are used as the basis for interstellar combat, and the main protagonist gets to use his epic skills to save the world. How can any self-respecting gamer hate that?

It’s written by the author of Ready Player One, but instead of that, I chose this because this is much more singularly inspired by gaming. You learn that video games were specifically created in order to prepare humanity for a potential threat, and the better you are at gaming the better humanity’s chances are at winning. I know I’ve had that fantasy at least dozens of times growing up. It’s epic, funny, and has great music. What’s not to love?

When I first read this novel at age 15, I knew upon finishing that I wanted to be a science fiction writer. The strangeness of the tale enchanted me. And, by dint of that spell, my mind opened to the author’s philosophical insights about identity, cultural dreaming, and sexuality. Set on a far-future Earth where humanity is a mythical memory, the narrator assumes an identity based on Orpheus – and so, lost love and music play witching roles. Meaning is elusive, and that's part of the book's charm. Meaning in this story is also allusive, and the many legendary and literary references in the telling wander far from their origins and lead us to unexpected associations with our own time and lives.

In this novel, human beings have been nearly wiped out and scattered throughout the galaxy when a drug derived from our unusual binary brains becomes the most sought-after recreational narcotic in the universe. 

One human woman and her ragtag crew might be able to save the human race—so long as she can keep straight which reality is real: the one where she plays the hero, or the one where she’s the victim.

A wild, neo-pulp ride through a world like Star Wars crossed with the underground ZAP! Comix, the ending will punch you in the gut and remind you why we flee to fictional worlds.

This novel, about the discovery of an alien probe hidden within an Earth orbit-crossing asteroid and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence it provokes, is the first volume of a long, six-volume epic, the Galactic Center series, that is regarded by most critics as a landmark work. You can read this novel on its own or you can go from there with the rest of the series; in any case, it’s hard SF at its thought-provoking best.

Mass Effect was a very big sci-fi series for me growing up, the technology of which continues to influence my novels to this day. This novel serves as a prequel to the first game in the Mass Effect series, covering an event that was only briefly mentioned within the game itself, where Captain David Anderson works alongside the Spectre Saren, a Turian who despises humanity and believes them to be growing too quickly. Saren’s behavior and beliefs lead to him committing atrocities and then blaming Anderson to sabotage the whole reason why they were asked to team up in the first place, setting the stage for the first game.

This was the first major alien arrival novel I read. I recall being awestruck by Arthur C. Clarke’s masterful mixing of incisive storytelling and a deep sense of grandeur.

The Overlords are hugely memorable, but it was the exploration of human identity that had the biggest effect on me. The story endures as a classic for a very good reason.

This was the first 1950s “contactee” book I read while researching my book. And it’s a fun one.

Contactees were a group of people in the fifties and sixties claiming to have been in contact with aliens—usually Venusians. Fry gives his account of stumbling upon a flying saucer in New Mexico in 1950 and flying to New York and back in 30 minutes. He flew alone, guided remotely from an alien far above.

In his conversations with the extraterrestrial being, he learned that they were visiting our planet to warn us about the dangers of the atomic age and the possible destruction of earth. It’s entertaining, and regardless of your beliefs, the alien makes a fair point.