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Recommendations based on The Machine Stopsby E.M. Forster
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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)
A Passage to India
by E.M. Forster
Exploring imperial tensions between colonial India and Britain in the early 20th century.
A young British schoolmistress, Adela Quested, and her elderly friend, Mrs. Moore, visit the fictional city of Chandrapore, British India . Adela is to decide if she wants to marry Mrs. Moore's son, ... (Wikipedia)
Howards End
by E.M. Forster
Exploration of the societal divides in early 20th century England, and the consequences of class prejudice.
Howards End is a novel by E. M. Forster about social conventions, codes of conduct and relationships in turn-of-the-century England. A strong-willed and intelligent woman refuses to allow the ... (Goodreads)
The War of the Worlds
by H.G. Wells
A Martian invasion of Earth, exploring the limits of human resilience.
The narrative opens by stating that as humans on Earth busied themselves with their own endeavours during the mid-1890s, aliens on Mars began plotting an invasion of Earth because their own resources ... (Wikipedia)
Where Angels Fear to Tread
by E.M. Forster
A young widow travels to Italy and falls in love with a local man, causing a clash between English and Italian cultures.
On a journey to Tuscany with her young friend and travelling companion Caroline Abbott, widowed Lilia Herriton falls in love with Gino, a handsome Italian man much younger than herself, and decides ... (Wikipedia)
The Time Machine
by H.G. Wells
A scientist travels through time, discovering the future of mankind.
The book's protagonist is a Victorian English scientist and gentleman inventor living in Richmond , Surrey , identified by a narrator simply as the Time Traveller . Similarly, with but one exception ... (Wikipedia)
Childhood's End
by Arthur C. Clarke
Human race is transformed by an alien presence, leading to the dawn of a new age.
The novel is divided into three parts, following a third-person omniscient narrative with no main character. , In some editions, the short first chapter is a separate prologue rather than the ... (Wikipedia)
The Illustrated Man
by Ray Bradbury
A collection of short stories about the human condition and its connection to the universe.
That The Illustrated Man has remained in print since being published in 1951 is fair testimony to the universal appeal of Ray Bradbury's work. Only his second collection (the first was Dark Carnival ... (Goodreads)
The Brothers Karamazov
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A philosophical exploration of morality, faith, and family dynamics among a group of brothers.
The Brothers Karamazov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the “wicked and sentimental” Fyodor Pavlovich ... (Goodreads)
The Plague
by Albert Camus
A small town in Algeria is struck by a deadly plague, testing the courage and faith of its citizens.
The book begins with an epigraph quoting Daniel Defoe , author of, A Journal of the Plague Year, . In the town of Oran, thousands of rats, initially unnoticed by the populace, begin to die in the ... (Wikipedia)
The Year of the Flood
by Margaret Atwood
A dystopian tale of survival as humanity faces a new plague, and two women fight against a powerful corporation.
The Year of the Flood details the events of, Oryx and Crake, from the perspective of the lower classes in the pleeblands , specifically the God's Gardeners. God's Gardeners are a religious sect that ... (Wikipedia)
Brave New World / Brave New World Revisited
by Aldous Huxley
A futuristic dystopia of a world devoid of freedom and morality.
The novel opens in the World State city of London in AF (After Ford) 632 (AD 2540 in the Gregorian calendar ), where citizens are engineered through artificial wombs and childhood indoctrination ... (Wikipedia)
A Study in Scarlet
by Arthur Conan Doyle
A masterful detective unravels a mysterious crime and its hidden motives.
In 1881, Doctor John Watson has returned to London after serving in the Second Anglo-Afghan War . He visits the Criterion Restaurant and runs into an old friend named Stamford, who had been a dresser ... (Wikipedia)
The Martian Chronicles
by Ray Bradbury
Human colonists struggle for survival on Mars, facing the challenges of a new world.
The strange and wonderful tale of man’s experiences on Mars, filled with intense images and astonishing visions. Now part of the Voyager Classics collection. The Martian Chronicles tells the story of ... (Goodreads)
Rendezvous with Rama
by Arthur C. Clarke
A mysterious alien spacecraft discovered in the Solar System, explored by a human team.
After an asteroid falls in Northeast Italy in 2077, creating a major disaster, the government of Earth sets up the Spaceguard system as an early warning of arrivals from deep space. The "Rama" of the ... (Wikipedia)
Second Foundation
by Isaac Asimov
A quest to find the mysterious force controlling the fate of the galaxy.
Part I is about The Mule 's search for the elusive Second Foundation, with the intent of destroying it. The executive council of the Second Foundation is aware of The Mule's intent and, in the words ... (Wikipedia)
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)
Melmoth
by Sarah Perry
A haunting tale of a woman cursed to wander the earth, seeking out those who have committed unforgivable sins.
“Masterful…scary and smart, working as a horror story but also a philosophical inquiry into the nature of will and love. Perry did as much in her richly praised novel The Essex Serpent, but this is a ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Man in the High Castle
by Philip K. Dick
Set in an alternate 1962, a man must confront a dark and oppressive new world order.
It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some twenty ... (Goodreads)
The Painted Veil
by W. Somerset Maugham
A married couple's journey to uncover the truth of their relationship amidst a deadly epidemic.
Maugham uses a third-person-limited point of view in this story, where Kitty Garstin is the focal character . Garstin, a pretty upper-middle class debutante, squanders her early youth amusing herself ... (Wikipedia)
The Complete Stories and Poems
by Edgar Allan Poe
A collection of dark and mysterious stories and poems, exploring the depths of the human condition.
This single volume brings together all of Poe's stories and poems, and illuminates the diverse and multifaceted genius of one of the greatest and most influential figures in American literary ... (Barnes & Noble)
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)
Doomsday Book
by Connie Willis
A time-traveling historian struggles to contain a deadly pandemic in the Middle Ages.
For Kivrin, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi ... (Goodreads)
Chess Story
by Stefan Zweig
A chess master's attempt to regain his lost skill, and the psychological battle he faces.
The narrator opens the story on a passenger liner traveling from New York to Buenos Aires. Driven to mental anguish as the result of total isolation by the Nazis , Dr B, a securities expert hiding ... (Wikipedia)
419
by Will Ferguson
A Nigerian email scam spirals into a global web of deceit, revealing the dark side of the internet and human nature.
A startlingly original tale of heartbreak and suspense A car tumbles down a snowy ravine. Accident or suicide? On the other side of the world, a young woman walks out of a sandstorm in sub-Saharan ... (Goodreads)
The Gates
by John Connolly
A horror mystery novel about a journalist investigating a dark secret in a small town.
Bursting with imagination and impossible to put down, this “wholly original” (,People,) and “refreshing” (,San Francisco Chronicle,) novel from, New York Times, bestselling author John Connolly is ... (Barnes & Noble)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
by Robert Louis Stevenson
A man's internal struggle between good and evil forces, as he attempts to reconcile his dual personalities.
Gabriel John Utterson and his cousin Richard Enfield reach the door of a large house on their weekly walk. Enfield tells Utterson that months ago, he saw a sinister-looking man named Edward Hyde ... (Wikipedia)
Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
by Cormac McCarthy
A violent and bloody western epic, exploring the depths of human depravity.
An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." ... (Barnes & Noble)
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)
Death's End
by Liu Cixin
Epic space opera of humanity's struggle to survive in a universe of cosmic forces.
The story begins during the Fall of Constantinople , describing a prostitute who gains the power of retrieving objects and cutting out human organs without penetrating their enclosures. Constantine ... (Wikipedia)
