Fans pick 100 books like The Illustrated Man

I love this book for the way it introduces you to the concept of time as both a journey and a prison. I first read it long before it was required reading in school, and I couldn’t get enough of it. Wells’ vision of the far future captivated me—his portrayal of a decaying world where humanity has split into two very different species made me think about the consequences of societal division.

The story left me pondering what our world might become if we fail to learn from our mistakes. I was not a fan of any of the movies in the last 50 years as they did nothing for the wonder that the novel painted in my mind. The haunting future of Wells’ storytelling is that it isn’t just about traveling through time—it’s about confronting the inevitability of change and decay.

I felt invested in the story… show more.

While not perhaps a “romance” novel in the established-formula sense, this book is achingly romantic. This epic story truly focuses on the gradual development of the two protagonists’ relationship and how time travel both created and challenged their love. This book ignited my passion for magic-realism romantic novels and remains one of my top books of all time.

I adore the contrast of romantic love between two seemingly destined souls and the brutality of some events caused by Henry’s uncontrolled time travel. There’s also the tricky angle of the age gap (only sometimes, depending on where Henry and Clare are in their lives, but it is occasionally extreme), which the author doesn’t shy away from. And I confess this is probably the book that made me sob the most!

I love this book for its poetic, dreamlike quality. Bradbury’s writing pulled me in and didn’t let go, painting a picture of Mars that was both beautiful and tragic. As a pre-teen and a teen, in my imagination, I had red dust stuck to my feet, and I was there with the characters. What captivated me was the way the stories felt timeless—each one was like a snapshot of a moment layered with meaning.

I felt like I wasn’t just reading a book about colonizing Mars; I was exploring humanity’s deepest fears, hopes, and regrets. We have companies only today working on getting to Mars, I feel so upset that I know I will likely never set foot on those dusty red shores, but I am thrilled to know it may still happen for others.

Bradbury’s work made me think about the consequences of exploration—how, in our quest to conquer… show more.

Growing up I often found myself looking at the world through a question mark, often finding irony all around me. An irony that most adults either didn’t recognize or didn’t care to recognize. When my junior high English teacher turned me on to the works of O. Henry, I found a kindred spirit. O. Henry’s slightly askew, often humorous stories mirrored my own often warped view of the world. And I delighted in the brevity with which he told his tales. The short story genre became a favorite of mine. In the fast-paced, no time to spare world we’ve created, O. Henry’s delightful quick reads are an oasis of enjoyment.

While trending more toward the fantasy side, then the previous picks on the list here, Link still manages to pull out some of the most unsettling moments in a short story that I’ve ever read.

When I finished her story “Some Zombie Contingency Plans,” I found myself immediately flipping back to the beginning of the story and reading it fresh. Link is masterful when it comes to weaving together narrative threads, playing literary sleight of hand. While the collection and one of the stories within are called “Magic for Beginners,” she’s very much an expert.

The cross-genre blending is very much following in the footsteps of Bradbury, giving a more fantasy-style focus where his work trends toward science fiction.

No one writing horror fiction today is better at punching the reader in the guts (or ripping those guts out and showing them to you) like Stephen Graham Jones. While he’s been touted more recently for his novel-length works, I first came to know SGJ’s writing via short stories. This collection is one of several stand-outs from his catalog.

When it comes to horror and weird fiction writing, SGJ’s versatility knows no bounds. Whether it’s the literary strangeness of “Father, Son, Holy Rabbit,” or the freaky folk horror of “Raphael” (elements of which SGJ has revisited in his Indian Lake novel trilogy), there are all kinds of scares in this collection. He even pulls off a shocking jump-scare fright in “Crawlspace” that has to be experienced first-hand.

While his stories might be some of the shortest word-count-wise from the tales featured in these listed collections, Brian Evenson’s prose does not lack for the weird and terrifying.

With many pieces going no further than the flash fiction of 1000 or so words, Evenson’s writing has taught me that it’s not about how many words you use, but how you use them.

In this collection, he adds Westerns to the mix of genres where horror and the weird can take seed and bloom into something mind-bendingly unsettling. “Black Bark” is one such story. At first, it seems to be a tale of two Wild West bandits on the run but as the nightmarish end arrives, readers will find they’ve been reading a very different tale all along.

I discovered Clive Barker's collection of short stories which gave me an introduction to one of the world's best horror writers and film directors. There are so many varied stories within the Books of Blood that it's difficult to highlight some over others.

The Midnight Meat Train was astounding in its detail of visceral butchery, whilst In the Hills, the Cities is fantastic in its imagery of something impossible, which Barker relates with such skill to make you believe the events within are entirely feasible. The Hellbound Heart lets you into a world of new villains and was made into one of my favorite horror films, Hellraiser. I was also lucky to meet and interview Clive, who inspired me to continue writing, saying, "Keep going; you will get better."

I read this novella in one sitting, and I firmly believe it is the most efficient introduction to the dystopian genre. The theme of individuality, emphasized by the lack of the word “I” throughout most of the book, underscores many other pieces of dystopian literature.

As the protagonist learns how to express himself as an individual rather than part of a collective, readers are exposed to the importance of discovering their own identities–something that I take to heart as I navigate my twenties!

This entire Magic School Bus series has also been a favorite of ours with our kids. I love the way that the bus goes inside of the human body and gets up close and personal with the cells of the human body. I remember thinking about how it made the difficult-to-see and -imagine immune system easy to picture in the mind of the reader.