10 books like Perelandra

When writing anything fantasy or fairy-tale-like, it’s hard to avoid the influence of Tolkien. He’s certainly an influence on me in world-building (as is Dune, Star Wars, and a host of others), but the main thing I think I’ve retained from multiple read-throughs of The Trilogy is the focus on maps. I loved looking at the maps that came with the books and imagined where the characters were in relation to everything else. They are integral to the story; even the film/TV adaptations rely heavily on them. As I’ve written more books, the map/geographical aspect of where the different terrain and resident societies are in relation to each other in my world of Aponna has taken a larger part in the storytelling. I hope to publish future books with beautiful, illustrated maps that show trails and paths of the characters, etc.

Doris Lessing is one of the genuinely great authors of the 20th century. A true visionary, she moved effortlessly between naturalistic writing and her own unique variety of science fiction/fantasy—the latter written with such conviction that it seems completely real (while her naturalistic writing is so vivid is to seem almost more than real). In this book, a middle-aged woman looks out of her window at a civilization that is rapidly falling apart. As the woman retreats into her own inner world, a strange girl comes to live with her, bringing an animal called Hugo that is somewhere in between a dog and a cat. It’s a spell-binding piece of world-building and a reminder that everything that seems permanent will one day crumble.

A tropical forest in Africa is the epicentre of a bizarre and very troubling phenomenon. Through a sort of “leak” in space-time, everything is slowly turning to crystal, and this “disease” will eventually seep out into the rest of the world. An English doctor goes on an Apocalypse Now-style journey into the forest to try and understand. Ballard’s sci-fi classic is as weird and thought-provoking as always, and the forest itself is a palpable presence throughout. 

I’ve always been fascinated by surrealism and expressionism—and The Unconsoled takes those dreamlike images and expresses them in a fascinating and disorienting story. Reading this novel makes you feel like you’re trapped in a terrifying and anxious nightmare—and I mean that in the best possible way. The novel uses dream logic: characters appear out of thin air and morph into other characters. The setting is a strange labyrinth in some nameless European city. If you like David Lynch movies, you’ll dig this. If you’re looking for a linear narrative, stay away!

Set among the dilapidated Anglo-Irish gentry in rural Ireland as they sink slowly into decline, what makes this book strange and unique among country house novels is the way it deals with its narrator. The daughter of a landowner in a big run-down house, in a social world dominated by horses and hunting, she sees what’s going on around her but fails to understand it, hemmed in by rules of behaviour that make many things simply impossible to name. We see that her brother is gay, for instance, but she never spots it, even when she walks in on her brother and his boyfriend in a state of undress, and she never finds her own way out of this strange doomed world. 

This book is darkly funny, tinged with gothic, and completely merciless.  No less a writer than Hilary Mantel has said she wishes she’d written this novel.

To anyone who has seen the movie, I implore you to read/listen to the book because it provides such a nice contrast to the film. Jurassic Park was the first film I remember seeing and it’s been a part of my life for nearly 25 years. The book, while having the same plot beats as the film, has much more of a horror vibe that paints the dinosaurs as terrifying creatures. Such detail is given to how they move, smell, and sound that it really immerses the reader and makes you fear them. What’s also great is that neither the movie nor the book is better than the other; they both excel in different areas to provide unique experiences.

If Lewis’ Till We Have Faces is a deeply buried metaphor for religious experience, The Man Who Was Thursday requires an excavator to unearth. Both books explain their metaphors in the final pages, but Thursday does this much less clearly. Unless you’re pretty familiar with Christianity, you’re probably gonna miss it. But what a wonderful surprise to get to the end of this strange story and realize that Chesterton was sneakily describing the sneakiness of God’s beauty, just like Lewis did.

The second book of the original Shannara series follows a young man tasked with escorting a young woman to her destiny to forestall a demonic invasion. But a menacing evil stalks them: a seemingly invincible demon assassin. Can he unlock the magic secrets of the mystical Elfstones before he and his companions are destroyed and the world with them? Like many of Brooks’ novels, this one features superb world-building, white-knuckled tension, jaw-dropping action, and a bittersweet romance in a single package. The magic and environment of the book captured me in seconds and I wished Shannara was real. I re-read it from time to time and it is one of my all-time favorites.

Probably the least popular book in Lewis’ famous “science fiction” trilogy, this is actually one of my favorite novels in the world. But it does make demands on the reader. I’m listing it as a fantasy novel here, although it’s formally classed as science fiction. That’s because Lewis made a conscious effort to link this story up with his friend Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Merlin’s wizardry in THS is of the same order as Gandalf’s. The revenge of nature at the end of THS comes by way of the revenge of the Ents at Isengard. What makes THS difficult is that Lewis set about portraying evil in something like its full banality and dullness. That makes the first part of the book a slog for most readers. But everything comes together, unforgettably, in the second part.

C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite people. He was of the British generation who endured Nazi air raids and was the first-ever to halt the advance of Hitler’s army. Narnia! Inklings! Noted by Tolkien as a critical supporter of Middle-Earth’s creation!

Out of the Silent Planet fascinated me as a work of history as much as sci-fi. Through Lewis’ eyes, we get a glimpse of humanity’s circa 1930s grasp of interplanetary physics, cosmic radiation, and aerospace medicine. At the risk of exposing my chronocentric arrogance, it was much more detailed and accurate than I expected. At times, it seems one of the antagonists is meant to represent scientific endeavors as a whole. If so, Lewis has contributed to a culture that has made my past and present jobs as a biology teacher and physician assistant much more difficult. However, do I detect a well-placed jab at Britain’s history of… show more.