Recommendations based on Vurtby Jeff Noon

* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans

  1. Hyperion

    by Dan Simmons
    Epic science-fiction story of a journey to the distant planet Hyperion.

    In the 29th century, the Hegemony of Man comprises hundreds of planets connected by farcaster portals. The Hegemony maintains an uneasy alliance with the TechnoCore , a civilisation of AIs . Modified ... (Wikipedia)

  2. Love Is a Dog from Hell

    by Charles Bukowski
    A poetic exploration of the human experience, from joy to heartache and everything in between.

    Collection of poems rising from and returning to Bukowski's personal experiences reflect people, objects, places, and events of the external world, and reflects on them, on their way out and back. ... (Goodreads)

  3. Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

    by Douglas Coupland
    A satirical look at the lives of disaffected young adults in the early 1990s.

    Andy, Dag and Claire have been handed a society priced beyond their means. Twentysomethings, brought up with divorce, Watergate and Three Mile Island, and scarred by the 80s fall-out of yuppies, ... (Goodreads)

  4. Snuff

    by Terry Pratchett
    A Discworld novel featuring a comedic murder mystery set in a world of wizards, witches, and trolls.

    Commander Vimes is persuaded by his wife and Lord Vetinari to take a family holiday back to Sybil's roots in the countryside; Willikins, Vimes's thug-turned-butler, accompanies them. As Vimes arrives ... (Wikipedia)

  5. The Moomins and the Great Flood

    by Tove Jansson
    The Moomin family searches for their missing relatives during a great flood, encountering new friends and dangers along the way.

    Moominmamma and Moomintroll are travelling through a dark and scary forest looking for Moominpappa, who has gone off adventuring with the Hattifatteners . They meet a little creature, who joins them ... (Wikipedia)

  6. Speaker for the Dead

    by Orson Scott Card
    A search for the truth about an alien species, uncovering secrets of the past.

    Now available in mass market, the revised, definitive edition of the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning classic. In this second book in the saga set 3,000 years after the terrible war, Ender Wiggin is ... (Goodreads)

  7. The Stars My Destination

    by Alfred Bester
    A man's quest for revenge in an intergalactic society, using teleportation and telepathy.

    At the time when the book is set, "jaunting"—personal teleportation—has so upset the social and economic balance that the Inner Planets are at war with the Outer Satellites. Gully Foyle of the ... (Wikipedia)

  8. A Scanner Darkly

    by Philip K. Dick
    A dystopian tale of surveillance and paranoia in a world of drug addiction.

    The protagonist is Bob Arctor, member of a household of drug users, who is also living a double life as an undercover police agent assigned to spy on Arctor's household. Arctor shields his identity ... (Wikipedia)

  9. Roadside Picnic

    by Arkady Strugatsky
    Two scientists explore a mysterious, abandoned alien landscape to uncover secrets.

    The novel is set in a post-visitation world where there are now six zones known on Earth that are full of unexplained phenomena and where strange happenings have briefly occurred, assumed to have ... (Wikipedia)

  10. The Bridge

    by Iain Banks
    A sci-fi exploration of an alien world and the human experience, with a shocking twist ending.

    The three main characters represent different elements of the protagonist. Alex (full name hinted to be Alexander Lennox, but never explicitly named), John Orr and The Barbarian are one. Alex is a ... (Wikipedia)

  11. Solaris

    by Stanisław Lem
    A psychological exploration of a distant planet, uncovering the truth behind its strange and mysterious phenomena.

    Solaris chronicles the ultimate futility of attempted communications with the extraterrestrial life inhabiting a distant alien planet named Solaris. The planet is almost completely covered with an ... (Wikipedia)

  12. Hard to Be a God

    by Arkady Strugatsky
    A group of scientists are sent to a planet stuck in the medieval era to observe and help, but find themselves struggling to maintain their humanity.

    The prologue shows a scene from Anton's childhood, in which he goes on an adventure with his friends Pashka (Paul) and Anka (Anna) and plays a game based on melodramatic recreations of events on the ... (Wikipedia)

  13. Junky

    by William S. Burroughs
    A gritty, autobiographical account of a man's descent into the underworld of addiction.

    Before his 1959 breakthrough, Naked Lunch , an unknown William S. Burroughs wrote Junky , his first novel. It is a candid eye-witness account of times and places that are now long gone, an ... (Goodreads)

  14. Wolf in White Van

    by John Darnielle
    A mysterious, psychological journey of a reclusive man, linked to a game he created.

    Sean Phillips lives with a caretaker after shooting himself in the head at age 17, causing facial disfigurement. The circumstances of the shooting are initially left ambiguous. Sean's relationship ... (Wikipedia)

  15. Chapterhouse: Dune

    by Frank Herbert
    A family's quest to restore balance to a chaotic universe, while uncovering secrets of the past.

    The Bene Gesserit find themselves the target of the Honored Matres, whose conquest of the Old Empire is almost complete. The Matres are seeking to assimilate the technology and superhuman skills of ... (Wikipedia)

  16. Timequake

    by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
    A man is forced to relive the life he lived before, discovering the beauty of second chances.

    Vonnegut uses the premise of a timequake (or repetition of actions) in which there is no free will . The idea of determinism is explored—as it is in many of his previous works—to assert that people ... (Wikipedia)

  17. Prey

    by Michael Crichton
    A swarm of nanorobots designed to self-replicate and evolve escape from a lab, threatening humanity's existence.

    The novel is narrated by the protagonist Jack Forman, an unemployed software programmer who used to work for a company called Media Tronics but was fired and blackballed for discovering an internal ... (Wikipedia)

  18. Foundation

    by Isaac Asimov
    Exploring the possibilities of a galactic empire in a future driven by science and technology.

    For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future – to a dark age ... (Goodreads)

  19. The Trial

    by Franz Kafka
    A man is arrested and put on trial for a crime that remains unclear throughout the novel.

    On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, Josef K., the chief cashier of a bank, is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents from an unspecified agency for an unspecified crime. Josef is not ... (Wikipedia)

  20. Use of Weapons

    by Iain M. Banks
    A space opera of revenge, espionage and loyalty, woven together in a complex web of intrigue.

    The book is made up of two narrative streams, interwoven in alternating chapters. The numbers of the chapters indicate which stream they belong to: one stream is numbered forward in words (One, Two ... (Wikipedia)

  21. Bluebeard

    by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
    A woman's exploration of her husband's dark past, uncovering secrets and shocking truths.

    At the opening of the book, the narrator, Rabo Karabekian , apologizes to the arriving guests: "I promised you an autobiography, but something went wrong in the kitchen..." He describes himself as a ... (Wikipedia)

  22. The Terror

    by Dan Simmons
    A gripping survival story set during the doomed Arctic expedition of the HMS Terror.

    The story begins, in medias res, in the winter of 1847, when HMS, Terror, and HMS, Erebus, have been trapped in ice, 28 miles north-northwest of King William Island , for more than a year. The ... (Wikipedia)

  23. Feet of Clay

    by Terry Pratchett
    A mysterious death leads to the uncovering of secrets and treachery in a fantasy world.

    Twelve of the city golems, clay creatures forced to obey the written instructions placed inside their heads, decide to create a "king" golem. They fashion a golem from their own clay and place in his ... (Wikipedia)

  24. The Satanic Verses

    by Salman Rushdie
    An exploration into the clash between faith and reason, with a controversial narrative of religious satire.

    Just before dawn one winter's morning, a hijacked jetliner explodes above the English Channel. Through the falling debris, two figures, Gibreel Farishta, the biggest star in India, and Saladin ... (Goodreads)

  25. I Am Legend

    by Richard Matheson
    A man is the last survivor of a zombie-creating virus, struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.

    Robert Neville appears to be the sole survivor of a pandemic that has killed most of the human population and turned the remainder into " vampires " that largely conform to their stereotypes in ... (Wikipedia)

  26. After Dark

    by Haruki Murakami
    A night in Tokyo filled with mysterious events and surreal encounters.

    Set in metropolitan Tokyo over the course of one night, characters include Mari Asai, a 19-year-old student, who is spending the night reading in a Denny's . There she meets Takahashi Tetsuya, a ... (Wikipedia)

  27. Choke

    by Chuck Palahniuk
    A darkly humorous story of a man's journey to self-awareness through disruption and chaos.

    Choke follows Victor Mancini and his friend Denny through a few months of their lives with frequent flashbacks to the days when Victor was a child. , Victor had grown up moving from one foster home ... (Wikipedia)

  28. The Player of Games

    by Iain M. Banks
    A game-player embarks on a journey to win a tournament in a distant world, uncovering secrets along the way.

    The Culture - a humanoid/machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many great Game Players. One of the best is Jernau Morat Gurgeh, Player of Games, master of every board, computer and strategy. ... (Goodreads)

  29. Wyrd Sisters

    by Terry Pratchett
    A fantastical adventure of three witches determined to overthrow an evil tyrant.

    Wyrd Sisters features three witches : Granny Weatherwax ; Nanny Ogg , matriarch of a large tribe of Oggs and owner of the most evil cat in the world; and Magrat Garlick , the junior witch, who firmly ... (Wikipedia)

  30. We

    by Yevgeny Zamyatin
    A dystopian tale of a totalitarian state and its citizens' struggle for freedom.

    A few hundred years after the One State's conquest of the entire world, the spaceship Integral is being built in order to invade and conquer extraterrestrial planets. Meanwhile, the project's chief ... (Wikipedia)