Book picks similar to
Landfall by John McWilliams


science-fiction
sci-fi
fiction
time-travel

Mageblood


Christopher Johns - 2020
    Gifts from the game gods for every person. The perfect magic for every user.Seth, a popular streamer, can’t wait to see what this new world has in store. It’s sure to be a blast for a guy who always plays a caster, and his friends are going to be right in the thick of it with him! The game boasts algorithms designed to read biometrics and brain patterns to find the perfect magical fit for the user—magic so personalized that no two casters will ever be the same. In fact, the game company is so sure they will always be right that you can’t remake your character.The unthinkable happened. The safeties and the guarantees failed, not just once but apparently only to them. The company has informed them that the system is infallible: there is nothing they will do. Players must use what they are given, so Seth and his team have no other choice—they need to grind it out and evolve their gifts in time to stream.Loading… Welcome to Mephisto’s Magic Online!

The Interminables


Paige Orwin - 2016
    Now a wizard's cabal is running the East Coast of the US, keeping a semblance of peace.Their most powerful agents, Edmund and Istvan -- the former a nearly immortal 1940s-era mystery man, the latter, well, a ghost -- have been assigned to hunt down an arms smuggling ring that could blow up Massachusetts.Turns out the mission's more complicated than it seemed. They discover a shadow war that's been waged since the world ended, and, even worse, they find out that their own friendship has always been more complicated than they thought. To get out of this alive, they'll need to get over their feelings, their memories, and the threat of a monstrous foe who's getting ready to commit mass murder...

Legionnaire


Jason Anspach - 2017
    And most days I don’t know if the legionnaires are putting out the flames, or fanning them into an inferno. A hostile force ambushes Victory Company during a reconnaissance-in-force deep inside enemy territory. Stranded behind enemy lines, a sergeant must lead a band of survivors against merciless insurgents on a deadly alien world somewhere along the galaxy’s edge. With no room for error, the Republic’s elite fighting force must struggle to survive under siege while waiting on a rescue that might never come. When you think you’ve surrounded the Legion... you’ve just made your last mistake.

Armada


Ernest Cline - 2015
    Dreaming that the real world could be a little more like the countless science-fiction books, movies, and videogames he’s spent his life consuming. Dreaming that one day, some fantastic, world-altering event will shatter the monotony of his humdrum existence and whisk him off on some grand space-faring adventure. But hey, there’s nothing wrong with a little escapism, right? After all, Zack tells himself, he knows the difference between fantasy and reality. He knows that here in the real world, aimless teenage gamers with anger issues don’t get chosen to save the universe. And then he sees the flying saucer. Even stranger, the alien ship he’s staring at is straight out of the videogame he plays every night, a hugely popular online flight simulator called Armada—in which gamers just happen to be protecting the earth from alien invaders. No, Zack hasn’t lost his mind. As impossible as it seems, what he’s seeing is all too real. And his skills—as well as those of millions of gamers across the world—are going to be needed to save the earth from what’s about to befall it. It’s Zack’s chance, at last, to play the hero. But even through the terror and exhilaration, he can’t help thinking back to all those science-fiction stories he grew up with, and wondering: Doesn’t something about this scenario seem a little…familiar? At once gleefully embracing and brilliantly subverting science-fiction conventions as only Ernest Cline could, Armada is a rollicking, surprising thriller, a classic coming of age adventure, and an alien invasion tale like nothing you’ve ever read before—one whose every page is infused with the pop-culture savvy that has helped make Ready Player One a phenomenon.

Elsewhere


Dean Koontz - 2020
    It’s a quiet life, until a local eccentric known as Spooky Ed shows up on their doorstep.Ed entrusts Jeffy with hiding a strange and dangerous object—something he calls “the key to everything”—and tells Jeffy that he must never use the device. But after a visit from a group of ominous men, Jeffy and Amity find themselves accidentally activating the key and discovering an extraordinary truth. The device allows them to jump between parallel planes at once familiar and bizarre, wondrous and terrifying. And Jeffy and Amity can’t help but wonder, could Michelle be just a click away?Jeffy and Amity aren’t the only ones interested in the device. A man with a dark purpose is in pursuit, determined to use its grand potential for profound evil. Unless Amity and Jeffy can outwit him, the place they call home may never be safe again.

Secondborn


Amy A. Bartol - 2017
    Secondborns are the property of the government. Thirdborns are not tolerated. Long live the Fates Republic.On Transition Day, the second child in every family is taken by the government and forced into servitude. Roselle St. Sismode’s eighteenth birthday arrives with harsh realizations: she’s to become a soldier for the Fate of Swords military arm of the Republic during the bloodiest rebellion in history, and her elite firstborn mother is happy to see her go.Televised since her early childhood, Roselle’s privileged upbringing has earned her the resentment of her secondborn peers. Now her decision to spare an enemy on the battlefield marks her as a traitor to the state.But Roselle finds an ally—and more—in fellow secondborn conscript Hawthorne Trugrave. As the consequences of her actions ripple throughout the Fates Republic, can Roselle create a destiny of her own? Or will her Fate override everything she fights for—even love?

Immortality, Inc.


Robert Sheckley - 1959
    Yes, that seemed normal enough---but what was this talk about "death trauma"?Thus was Thomas Blaine introduced to the year 2110, where science had discovered the technique of transferring a man's consciousness from one body to another. Where a man's mind could be snatched from the past, when his body was at the point of death, and brought forward into a "host body" in this fantastic future world. But that was only a small part of it. For the future had proved the reality of life after death, and discovered worlds beyond or simultaneous with our own---worlds where, through scientific techniques, a man could live again, in another body, when he died here. And in the process, the reality of ghosts, poltergeists, and zombies was also established. What did it all mean? How had this discovery of what they called the "hereafter" shaped the world of 2110? Thomas Blaine found himself living in a future where the discoveries and techniques imagined by people of his time, while having come about, were completely overwhelmed by discoveries no one had ever dreamed of.

Skynoise


Ernie Lindsey - 2014
     And now, in the present day, tremendous, undulating wails are being heard in the sky all over the world, with no apparent earthly origin. To Helen Weils, bestselling author and respected academic, history is a realm of observable facts, each one carefully weighed and inspected. So when she encounters Chip Sledd, a conspiracy theorist who insists there’s an unimaginable connection between the disappearance of the colonists in 1587 and the strange noises in the sky, she's quick to dismiss his theories as the irrational ramblings of a lunatic. But when black-suited agents begin pursuing her and Chip, Helen soon realizes that the past is a lot more flexible than she ever thought possible -- and seeking the truth sometimes means accepting the strangest theory of them all.

Written In Stone


David Rhodes - 2014
    Trying to survive from day to day in a world of dinosaurs he devises a plan to change his fate. As he begins to write messages in the soft mud of a nearby stream, he can only hope they will be found by someone who can stop his time travel. Professor Ron Fontana and Professor Ray Taggit, scientists with opposing views, each discover the fossilized messages. While attempting to save Charles, Professor Fontana, his daughter Lauren and their friend Danny are forced to join Taggit and his group of mercenaries. Taggit does not intend to rescue Charles Dawson, but to force Dawson to travel back in time to gather samples for Taggit's fame and fortune. As the two groups jump through time they find they must work together to make it back alive as this fast-paced thriller climaxes at the very moment the age of dinosaurs is ending.

The Time Store


Andrew Clark - 2014
     Greenwich, London. A borough steeped in history. Home of the Royal Observatory, Cutty Sark, Old Royal Naval College and the PRIME MERIDIAN. Also home to the Bradbeers, a family of Time Travellers. If you’re lucky, the Bradbeers will help you live your dreams or recapture lost time. Walk with dinosaurs or presidents, become a Wild West cowboy or a Roman legionnaire, resolve your past or lay your ghosts to rest. Tragedy-ridden John Brewer is given the chance to put his life back on the road to recovery – to venture back in time and bury his nightmares. But when he gives his dying wife a kiss goodbye he is not to know that he’ll rip apart the very fabric of his own true time… and also that of Dan Bradbeer. Many will meet the Bradbeers as they search for answers. But for those who dare to cross them, rule number one will not apply.

The Spaceship Next Door


Gene Doucette - 2015
    It never opened its doors, and for all that time, the townspeople have wondered why the ship landed there, and what—or who—could be inside. Then one day a government operative—posing as a journalist—arrives in town, asking questions. He discovers sixteen-year-old Annie Collins, one of the ship’s closest neighbors and a local fixture known throughout the town, who has some of the answers. As a matter of fact, Annie Collins might be the most important person on the planet. She just doesn’t know it.

Einstein's Secret


Irving Belateche - 2014
    He suddenly stirs, asks his assistant for paper and pen, then scribbles something down. Minutes later, he dies. History tells us that Einstein jotted down equations that night. But struggling scholar Jacob Morgan believes that history is wrong. He’s convinced that Einstein wrote a deathbed confession that night—a secret that the great scientist didn’t want to take to his grave. Jacob has spent his entire adult life obsessively hunting down that secret—with nothing to show for it but the scorn of his colleagues and the tattered remnants of a once-promising teaching career. But now, thanks to a lucky break, Jacob has a chance to get his life back on track. His appointment as an adjunct professor at the University of Virginia is a fresh start, and he’s vowed to end his pursuit of Einstein’s secret. Until history chooses this moment to deliver him one more clue. A clue that leads him to an impossible and unbelievable discovery: Time travel. And so begins the last leg of Jacob’s desperate quest, one where history is not only changeable—it’s changing. All by itself. And if Jacob doesn’t rescue Einstein’s secret, everything that he’s ever known will disappear forever.

Century Rain


Alastair Reynolds - 2004
    Archaeologist Verity Auger specializes in the exploration of its surviving landscape. Now, her expertise is required for a far greater purpose.Something astonishing has been discovered at the far end of a wormhole: mid-twentieth century Earth, preserved like a fly in amber. Somewhere on this alternate planet is a device capable of destroying both worlds at either end of the wormhole. And Verity must find the device, and the man who plans to activate it, before it is too late—for the past and the future of two worlds…

Will Save the Galaxy for Food


Yahtzee Croshaw - 2017
    With the invention of Quantum Teleportation, space heroes aren't needed anymore. When one particularly unlucky ex-adventurer masquerades as famous pilot and hate figure Jacques McKeown, he's sucked into an ever-deepening corporate and political intrigue. Between space pirates, adorable deadly creatures, and a missing fortune in royalties, saving the universe was never this difficult!From the creator of Mogworld and Jam!Benjamin Richard "Yahtzee" Croshaw is a British-Australian comedic writer, video game journalist, author, and video game developer. He is perhaps best known for his acerbic video game review series, Zero Punctuation, for The Escapist.

Dogs of War


Adrian Tchaikovsky - 2017
    I am a good dog. Rex is also seven foot tall at the shoulder, bulletproof, bristling with heavy calibre weaponry and his voice resonates with subsonics especially designed to instil fear. With Dragon, Honey and Bees, he's part of a Multiform Assault Pack operating in the lawless anarchy of Campeche, south-eastern Mexico. Rex is a genetically engineered Bioform, a deadly weapon in a dirty war. He has the intelligence to carry out his orders and feedback implants to reward him when he does. All he wants to be is a Good Dog. And to do that he must do exactly what Master says and Master says he's got to kill a lot of enemies. But who, exactly, are the enemies? What happens when Master is tried as a war criminal? What rights does the Geneva Convention grant weapons? Do Rex and his fellow Bioforms even have a right to exist? And what happens when Rex slips his leash?