Here are 75 books that The Forerunner Factor fans have personally recommended if you like
The Forerunner Factor.
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I’ve been a fan of dinosaurs and other mega-monsters ever since I watched the original Godzilla movie as a kid. It scared me half out of my wits! There’s something about big, scaly, dangerous beasts that makes for a great adventure story. Add fascinating human characters and you’ve got my full attention. I started writing my Dinosaur Wars books precisely to fill the void where there are far too few stories of this type in current literature. Challenges between human heroes and giant beasts have been part of literature from the start, featuring dragons, titans, and ocean leviathans. I see my writings as efforts to continue that tradition.
This book by Robert Heinlein is an action-packed space adventure featuring creepy insect foes in an interstellar battle with Earth. It follows Trooper Johnny Rico in an epic war story set on distant worlds.
The book features a number of combat engagements with gigantic insect-like “Arachnids” and other bug-like creatures. Meanwhile, several love affairs arise and crumble in the face of Rico’s commitment to the warrior life. While the book has been criticized as preachy and moralizing, these are foibles that I tolerated well, knowing that another action sequence would not be long in coming.
'The historians can't seem to settle whether to call this one 'The Third Space War' (or the fourth), or whether 'The First Interstellar War' fits it better. We just call it 'The Bug War'. Everything up to then and still later were 'incidents', 'patrols' or 'police actions'. However, you are just as dead if you buy the farm in an 'incident' as you are if you buy it in a declared war.'
5,000 years in the future, humanity faces total extermination. Our one defence: highly-trained soldiers who scour the metal-strewn blackness of space to hunt down a terrifying enemy: an…
I am Kurt D. Springs. If you read my back of the book bio, you’ll find I have advanced degrees in anthropology and archaeology and a focus on European prehistory. However, I’ve always been fascinated by military history. I’ve recently studied how modern warfare has changed many old paradigms. I’ve also studied modern and ancient religions, and many of the fiction works I enjoy have ESP or magic elements, especially Andre Norton’s works. I am also a fan of the HALO game universe. I like to tell people my stories are the children of Andre Norton’s Forerunner series and HALO.
Storm Over Warlock was an earlier book by Andre Norton, but part of her Forerunner series.
The human Shann Lantee works as low-ranking survey personnel on the planet Warlock when the insectoid Throg attack the base, killing everyone and leaving him with his two pet wolverines. I enjoy how he and the local aliens, known as the Wyverns, use psychic powers to turn the tables on their enemies.
I am one of those people who enjoys the underdog overcoming the odds.
Stranded on the alien world of Warlock, Shann Lantree's expedition camp has been wiped out by the Throgs, beings so alien that humans have yet to communicate with them. Lantree must quickly learn how to survive under harsh conditions while being chased by the Throgs - and how to distinguish the real from the dreamed when he meets the mysterious Wyverns.
I am Kurt D. Springs. If you read my back of the book bio, you’ll find I have advanced degrees in anthropology and archaeology and a focus on European prehistory. However, I’ve always been fascinated by military history. I’ve recently studied how modern warfare has changed many old paradigms. I’ve also studied modern and ancient religions, and many of the fiction works I enjoy have ESP or magic elements, especially Andre Norton’s works. I am also a fan of the HALO game universe. I like to tell people my stories are the children of Andre Norton’s Forerunner series and HALO.
While I found all the original trilogy stories enjoyable, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back fascinated me with the weaponry and battles at the beginning.
Luke’s Jedi training under Yoda was something that I found inspirational. Yoda’s admonition on focus, control, and belief inspired the scenes of Liam being trained. I enjoyed the final interplay between Luke and Darth Vader, ending with Luke’s realization that experience matters.
Liam was orphaned at the age of two by a group of giant carnivorous insects called the chitin. Taken in by High Councilor Marcus and his wife, Lidia, Liam was raised with their older son, Randolf in New Olympia, the last remaining city on the planet Etrusci.
I am Kurt D. Springs. If you read my back of the book bio, you’ll find I have advanced degrees in anthropology and archaeology and a focus on European prehistory. However, I’ve always been fascinated by military history. I’ve recently studied how modern warfare has changed many old paradigms. I’ve also studied modern and ancient religions, and many of the fiction works I enjoy have ESP or magic elements, especially Andre Norton’s works. I am also a fan of the HALO game universe. I like to tell people my stories are the children of Andre Norton’s Forerunner series and HALO.
The Mighty First series follows Earth’s First Orbital Marine Division’s battles with Grozet’s Storian Empire for planet Earth.
I like how Mark Bordner handles the future military end of his stories, making them as relatable as possible for people who know present-day weapons. In The Mighty First, Episode 4: Minerva Rising, the protagonist, Minerva, receives a premonition of planetary conflict based on the breaking of the seals in Revelations.
This scene struck me as a foreshadowing of the coming conflicts and the destruction of Earth and Storia.
The Storian occupation of Earth has been broken. Even the global celebration of V-Day can bring no solace for young Minerva Corbin. Word has come down from High Command---take the war to Storia's doorstep. Earth's military forces prepare for a protracted forward deployment, a task that promises monumental challenges for the 1st Global Marine Division as they face liberating occupied worlds along the way. Minerva's desperation and anger swell, making her a force to be reckoned. Pitched battles on a biblical scale cannot stop her on her determined trek to end the costliest war of mankind's history. A timid, small-town…
I have always been fascinated by the workings of the human mind.What instincts and influences make us who we are? This Alien Shore grew out of research I was doing into atypical neurological conditions.It depicts a society that has abandoned the concept of “neurotypical”, embracing every variant of human perspective as valid and valuable. One of my main characters, Kio Masada, is autistic, and that gives him a unique perspective on computer security that others cannot provide. What might such a man accomplish, in a world where his condition is embraced and celebrated? Good science fiction challenges our definition of “Other,” and asks what it really means to be human, all in the context of an exciting story.
Years before Game of Thrones became a household name, Martin was best known for this hauntingly beautiful and deeply disturbing novella. Two telepaths, Robb and Lya, are sent to an alien planet to investigate a disturbing religious movement. The planet is home to a race called the Shkeen, and to a gelatinous parasite called the Greeshka. In middle age the Shkeen allow the Greeshka to infect them, and ten years later they visit a cave where they allow a massive specimen to consume them. Some humans living on the planet have even joined the native religion, and have allowed themselves to be infected and devoured. The administrators are desperate to know why.
Robb and Lya have an unusually close relationship, but she suffers from a sense of isolation that telepathy cannot banish. While they watch some Shkeen being devoured by the Greeshka, she can sense how isolated the Shkeen feel…
Two telepaths investigate the newly discovered world of Shkea, where every native inhabitant, and an increasing number of human colonists, worships a mysterious and deadly parasite. Winner of the 1975 Hugo Award for Best Novella.
My first toy was a plastic dinosaur, which I took to school and it bears my toothmarks on the tail. As a young teenager, I stumbled across the Dragonriders of Pern books, and my allegiance transferred to dragons. I find them fascinating, both beautiful and dangerous, and prefer books in which they have their own cultures and are strong characters in their own right. The novels I’ve recommended have great world building to draw you into the fascinating lives of dragons, and the humans who come to know them.
I love all of the Pern novels, but I’ve chosen this one because it features my favorite dragon and human characters. What I enjoy most about the Pern books is their setting in the future, when humans have settled in an alien world.
Some of the humans form a telepathic bond with a native species which look like dragons, and work with their dragons to preserve life on Pern. I would love to live on Pern and to be the rider of a gold dragon!
Let Anne McCaffrey, storyteller extraordinare and New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author, take you on a journey to a whole new world: Pern and discover not only its flora, fauna, population and cultural hierarchy, but the history of an entire civilization. If you like David Eddings, David Gemmell and Douglas Adams, you will love this.
**Finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Novel** ** Winner of the HOMer Award for Science Fiction** **Finalist for the Locus Award for Best Novel**
'Anne McCaffrey, one of the queens of science fiction, knows exactly how to give her public what it…
I am a professor of English at the University of Florida, and an author of SF/F myself; I teach it both as a creative writer, and as a scholar of both American Literature and feminist thought. This is my subject and I am passionate about it, and I’ve been teaching SF/F, American literature of the 19th and 20th centuries for thirty years, so I know my topic well.
Vonda N. McIntyre is an often over-looked science fiction and alternate history author whose prose is lush, whose imagination is daunting, and who was unfailingly generous to the fan community, and to the community of writers she knew and supported; she was also my teacher, my mentor and my friend of thirty years, and she knew how to make you laugh! Exile is back in print after being out of print, and it is a terrifyingly beautiful, thought-provoking read.
The Exile Waiting was the first novel by the Hugo and Nebula award-winning novelist Vonda N McIntyre, published in 1975. It introduces the world that McIntyre later made famous with her multi-award-winning Dreamsnake: a post-apocalyptic world in which Center, an enclosed domed city, is run by slave-owning families who control the planet's resources, and exile the dissidents.
It is an ordinary day. A transport arrives from off-world, piloted by two pseudosibs, a powerfully intelligent threat to Center's dominant families. A girl is punished for being in the wrong room under the gaze of the wrong person. A visiting stranger defends…
The Multiverse had been my deepest passion of interest for a long time. Experiencing crossover stories in various mediums, both official and fan-made, especially fan-made. To see how two different worlds would meet. I spent hours reading fanfictions involving crossovers, as well as conjuring up my own. I considered the multiverse as a grand bedrock to create any story, hence why I wrote The Mariverse, followed by The Mariverse: Guardians, to create my own bedrock for my writing career.
For those who don’t want to read a novel length but want to experience worlds beyond worlds, this book I would recommend, a neat short story where the protagonist uses the multiverse as a form of self-discovery, experiences he would never have in his own life and considers to a change of character.
Might not be a full-blown adventure, but a calmer mundane life experience, relatable while simplifying the multiverse without any complexities.
When writing fantasy and science fiction, I enjoy writing about strong female characters and strong female leads. I also like exploring fundamental questions such as what it means to be human. I grew up reading all the science fiction and fantasy I could get my hands on, and that vast landscape of stories has influenced my writing in many ways. I love to explore the limits of consciousness and darkness. I hope the books on this list inspire you and make you think. They have all influenced me in one way or another and made me a better writer.
From the strong female protagonist—who is telepathic and a poet—to the use of language as a kind of mind weapon, to the non-traditional exploration of sexuality, I found this novel to be original and interesting. It also explores the nature of perception, which is something I have always been interested in. Samuel is a genius, and I very much enjoy the way he writes.
The Nebula Award Winner: “By looking at a typical space opera adventure from a different angle, Delany . . . give[s] us a weird, welcoming book” (Tor.com).
At twenty-six, Rydra Wong is the most popular poet in the five settled galaxies. Almost telepathically perceptive, she has written poems that capture the mood of mankind after two decades of savage war. Since the invasion, Earth has endured famine, plague, and cannibalism—but its greatest catastrophe will be Babel-17.
Sabotage threatens to undermine the war effort, and the military calls in Rydra. Random attacks lay waste to warships, weapons factories, and munitions dumps,…
I've always been fascinated by experiences that exist on the border of the ordinary. Growing up, my grandmother would tell us, in serious tones, of the fairies and ghosts she had encountered—how closely the natural and the “supernatural” are linked. In my twenties, I would read a lot about shamanism and the kinds of extraordinary experiences they would actively seek. Later, noticing similarities between those experiences and the spontaneous experiences of ordinary people, my interest continued to grow. Near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, but especially crisis apparitions—these experiences spoke strongly to me about how little we still know of the nature of the mind and how much there is yet to discover!
This one is a real hidden gem for someone like me who is so interested in spontaneous accounts of ESP. Eason offers dozens of extraordinary and fascinating accounts of telepathy, precognition, and clairvoyance collected from truly the most “ordinary people.” Concentrating her efforts on quiet housing estates, spooky suburbs, and their anonymous residents, this work shines in its compelling ordinariness.
The accounts, though, are anything but, and I love how the links are made between the stories collected and some of the oldest tales. Something that really came out for me in this work, too, is just how common the strangest experiences are and how the fact we don't share them is really why it can sometimes feel like the opposite is true. Can't recommend enough!
Fascinating psychic happenings and ordinary grass-roots experience, this book relates true stories of phantoms, poltergeists and spirit guides reliably reported from modern terraced homes and shopping streets. Telepathy, near-death experiences and out-of-body journeys are examined. Dedicated ghost hunters welcoming a fresh slant on their favourite topic will be intrigued by this book. But millions of suburb-dwellers everywhere will also be intrigued by the prospect of psychic events among the ordinary semis and settees. This title is an ideal blend of New Age spirituality and suburban common sense.
