96 books like Toys

I loved this book because it was so gripping. It made me long to be a writer. Although it was written over a hundred years ago, the dark story spoke directly to me.

I read it at the darkest time in my life. I was fourteen, and my alcoholic father had become a terrifying force in our home, just like Dr. Moreau, who rules his island with vicious power. I had never dreamed that a crazed leader could break an entire population, but the idea seems shockingly prescient now.

The book made me realize that I, too, could escape from the trap around me, just like the book’s hero, and learn to use my imagination to tell stories.

This story and its questions of eugenics and our place in society really horrified me, not because it was unbelievable, but precisely because it was far too real. The genetic superiority/inferiority, coupled with social indoctrination into our “advanced” society, made me meditate a great deal on what it means to be human.

What are humans without societal pressures? The way Huxley looked at the costs of freedom was really compelling. And in so many ways, he accurately predicted the destructive side of the social microscope that we all live in today under social media.

When I read Michael Crichton’s Next, my first thought was that we’re entering a dangerous time with our ability to manipulate the genomes of many different species.

The central message is about the possible negative ramifications of manipulating the DNA of humans and other animal species and even the creation of transspecies. Crichton leads us through diverse stories of corporate greed to the life and death struggles of others just wanting a cure for cancer.

Crichton does a masterful job of tying the different agendas into a compelling, interwoven narrative. 

Michio Kaku’s Visions inspired me to write my first novel focusing on artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and Androids.

Kaku interviewed one hundred and fifty peers in the scientific community to predict what the future might be like. Genetic Elites will roam the earth as well as Humanoid Robots, where Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing lead the way to seemingly impossible breakthroughs.

Kaku’s Visions is fast becoming our reality.

This is the one book that explains why humans have become poor at understanding the passage of time and how we can change fast to plan for a shared future.

“Living in the age we do, we have never before had such leverage to shape the trajectory of the future, with so little collective recognition of that fact,” writes Richard Fisher. 

If you’re into philosophy, this is the book for you! It explores the big questions about the origins of life and human consciousness, and what is it to be human and what makes a soul. Set in a distant future, on an island republic brutally policed to keep out survivors from the ruined world beyond its shores, Anaximander is put through a grueling examination to get into The Academy. I loved how it pushed my brain and went in places I wasn’t expecting. 

Many assert that “science is outpacing ethics.”

In my book I argue that this claim is false and disingenuous. Consider this one example. Forty years ago, Glover anticipated the myriad ways in which genetic and neuro technologies might “change the central framework of human life.”

In this prescient book, Glover anticipates the use of genetic engineering and advocates caution as well as gradualness. Avoiding the risk of irreversible disaster is a priority. Glover outlines the drawbacks of centralized decision-making as well as the problems with piecemeal, short-term decision-making.

He enjoins us to reflect on what sort of people there should be and what sort of future we should try to bring about. My own work focuses on what kind of world we want to live in and, as such, we are kindred spirits.

This book left me questioning what it truly means to be human. From the moment Logan Ramsay was infected with a mysterious virus, I was captivated by Crouch’s exploration of genetic enhancement. As Logan's abilities expanded—making him smarter, stronger, and more detached—I was both fascinated and horrified.

The tension between his new capabilities and the erosion of his emotional connections made the ethical dilemmas even more poignant. Crouch’s vision of a world on the brink of extinction, with genetic upgrades as both a salvation and a curse, felt disturbingly real. This isn’t just a techno-thriller; it’s a profound examination of what we might sacrifice in the relentless pursuit of progress.

A planet in its equivalent of the stone age is passing through a galactic debris field. An alien stargazer realizes that sooner or later some object will strike the planet and destroy it. The only hope of survival his species has is to leave the planet before that happens. But the concept is a mere abstraction to his people, the equivalent of a Neanderthal saying “we need to travel to the moon,” and the task is further complicated by the fact that their technology is biological in nature, focused on the manipulation of living tissue. It is hard to imagine how such technology could ever produce a spaceship. 

The novel--structured as a series of novellas-- follows the development of a fascinating alien species from its primitive roots to an age of high technology, each chapter focusing on a different time period. Always the stargazer’s warning is proclaimed by a few… show more.

This work of fiction highlights the potential dangers of genetic engineering.

It invites the reader to imagine a world in which it is possible to genetically modify early-stage human embryos, making changes that will determine the life-trajectory of the newborn.

In this world, Dr. Saul Kramer, a geneticist, and the head of a successful IVF clinic, uses CRISPR technology not to correct disease-causing genes in unhealthy embryos, but rather to insert a gene for a fatal genetic disease into healthy embryos.

Children born of these genetically modified embryos die in the first year of life. Notably, this is not a whodunnit, but a morality tale framed around the question of whether Dr. Kramer is a murderer.