Book picks similar to
On by Adam Roberts


science-fiction
fiction
sci-fi
sf

A World Out of Time


Larry Niven - 1976
    Once he was outbound, where the Society that ruled Earth could not reach him, he headed his starship toward the galactic core, where the unimaginable energies of the Universe wrenched the fabric of time and space and promised final escape from his captors.Then he returned to an Earth eons older than the one he'd left...a planet that had had 3,000,000 years to develop perils he had never dreamed of -- perils that became nightmares that he had to escape...somehow!

Nightfall


Isaac Asimov - 1990
    The story was called "Nightfall", and many years later it has long been recognized as a classic, its author a legend. Now, the Gran Master of Science Fiction teams with Robert Silverberg, one of the field's top award-winning authors, to explore and expand an apocalyptic tale that is more spellbinding today than ever before -- Nightfall: The Novel.Imagine living on a planet with six suns that never experiences Darkness. Imagine never having seen the Stars. Then, one by one the suns start to set, gradually leading into Darkness for the first time ever. Kalgash is a world on the edge of chaos, torn between the madness of religious fanaticism and the unyielding rationalism of scientists. Lurking beneath it all is a collective, instinctual fear of the Darkness. For Kalgash knows only the perpetual light of day; to its inhabitants, a gathering twilight portends unspeakable horror. And only a handful of people on the planet are prepared to face the truth, their six suns are setting all at once for the first time in over two thousand years, signaling the end of civilization as it explodes in the awesome splendor of Nightfall.Encompassing the psychology of disaster, the tenacity of the human spirit, and, ultimately, the regenerative power of hope, Nightfall is a tale rich in character and suspense that only the unique collaboration of Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg could create.

Heart of the Comet


David Brin - 1986
    An odyssey of discovery, from a shattered society through the solar system with a handful of men and women who ride a cold, hurtling ball of ice to the shaky promise of a distant, unknowable future.

Cradle


Arthur C. Clarke - 1987
    After launch it mysteriously disappears. If it reaches civilian areas they'll be in big trouble. Carol Dawson, a journalist, is alerted by an unusual sight of whales in the Miami area & decides to write about it. Armed with equipment provided by her friend, Dr. Dale Michaels from the Miami Oceanographic Institute, she goes to investigate the rumors of a missing missile that could be behind the mysterious whale behavior. She hires the services of Nick Williams & Jefferson Troy, boat owners, so she can get to the Mexican Gulf to investigate. They find an unknown artifact. They have doubts about its nature, hoping it's part of a lost treasure. Old friends of Williams & Troy notice their discovery & want to steal it. In the story's background, the authors describe a submarine snake civilization on a planet called Canthor, & how they struggled to stay alive despite threats to their ecosystem. It's revealed that the artifact is actually a cradle that contains seeds with altered superhumans extracted from Earth millions of years ago & altered so they could live with other species--including the submarine snakes--on Earth. The spaceship that carries the cradle is manned by robots/cyborgs & has hidden itself on the ocean floor to make repairs. Dawson, Williams & Troy are asked to gather materials so the ship can be repaired & return to its mission. The ship...

The Engines of God


Jack McDevitt - 1994
    Now, as faster-than-light drive opens the stars to exploration, humans are finding other relics of the race they call the Monument-Makers - each different, and each heartbreakingly beautiful. But except for a set of footprints on Jupiter's moon Iapetus, there is no trace of the enigmatic race that has left them behind. Then a team of scientists working on a dead world discover an ominous new image of the Monument-Makers. Somehow it all fits with other lost civilizations, and possibly with Earth's own future. And distant past. But Earth itself is on the brink of ecological disaster - there is no time to search for answers. Even to a question that may hold the key to survival for the entire human race...

Containment


Christian Cantrell - 2010
    Venus, being almost the same mass as Earth, is chosen over Mars as humanity’s first permanent steppingstone into the universe.Arik Ockley is part of the first generation to be born and raised off-Earth. After a puzzling accident, Arik wakes up to find that his wife is almost three months pregnant. Since the colony’s environmental systems cannot safely support any increases in population, Arik immediately resumes his work on AP, or artificial photosynthesis, in order to save the life of his unborn child. Arik’s new and frantic research uncovers startling truths about the planet, and about the distorted reality the founders of the colony have constructed for Arik’s entire generation. Everything Arik has ever known is called into question, and he must figure out the right path for himself, his wife, and his unborn daughter.

Time


Stephen Baxter - 1999
    More than a century of ecological damage, industrial and technological expansion, and unchecked population growth has left the Earth on the brink of devastation. As the world’s governments turn inward, one man dares to envision a bolder, brighter future. That man, Reid Malenfant, has a very different solution to the problems plaguing the planet: the exploration and colonization of space. Now Malenfant gambles the very existence of time on a single desperate throw of the dice. Battling national sabotage and international outcry, as apocalyptic riots sweep the globe, he builds a spacecraft and launches it into deep space. The odds are a trillion to one against him. Or are they?

Hull Zero Three


Greg Bear - 2010
    Its destination-unknown. Its purpose-a mystery. Now, one man wakes up. Ripped from a dream of a new home-a new planet and the woman he was meant to love in his arms-he finds himself wet, naked, and freezing to death. The dark halls are full of monsters but trusting other survivors he meets might be the greater danger.All he has are questions-- Who is he? Where are they going? What happened to the dream of a new life? What happened to Hull 03?All will be answered, if he can survive the ship.HULL ZERO THREE is an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride through the darkest reaches of space.

Kéthani


Eric Brown - 2008
    This is the irony faced by a group of friends whose lives are changed forever when the mysterious alien race known as the Kethani come to Earth bearing an amazing gift: immortality. These superbly crafted episodes deal with human emotions in the face of the vast consequences of the alien arrival, and show how people across the world react to this benign invasion, how ultimately we evolve as we gain the stars. 7 • Prelude: The Coming of the Kéthani • [Kéthani Stories] • (2008) • short story by Eric Brown 19 • Ferryman • [Kéthani Stories] • (1997) • short story by Eric Brown 41 • Onward Station • [Kéthani Stories] • (1998) • short story by Eric Brown 65 • The Kéthani Inheritance • [Kéthani Stories] • (2001) • novelette by Eric Brown 95 • Thursday's Child • [Kéthani Stories] • (2002) • novelette by Eric Brown 131 • The Touch of Angels • [Kéthani Stories] • (2006) • novelette by Eric Brown 169 • The Wisdom of the Dead • [Kéthani Stories] • (2003) • short story by Eric Brown 193 • A Heritage of Stars • [Kéthani Stories] • (2005) • short story by Eric Brown 215 • Matthew's Passion • [Kéthani Stories] • (2008) • short story by Tony Ballantyne and Eric Brown 245 • A Choice of Eternities • [Kéthani Stories] • (2004) • short story by Eric Brown 269 • The Farewell Party • [Kéthani Stories] • (2007) • short story by Eric Brown 293 • Coda: Diaspora • [Kéthani Stories] • (2008) • short story by Eric Brown

The Algebraist


Iain M. Banks - 2004
    Humanity has made it to the stars. Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers, will be fortunate if he makes it to the end of the year. The Nasqueron Dwellers inhabit a gas giant on the outskirts of the galaxy, in a system awaiting its wormhole connection to the rest of civilization. In the meantime, they are dismissed as decadents living in a state of highly developed barbarism, hoarding data without order, hunting their own young & fighting pointless formal wars. Seconded to a military-religious order he's barely heard of—part of the baroque hierarchy of the Mercatoria, the latest galactic hegemony— Taak has to travel again amongst the Dwellers. He is in search of a secret hidden for half a billion years. But with each day that passes a war draws closer—a war threatening to overwhelm everything & everyone he's ever known.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom


Cory Doctorow - 2003
    He's lived long enough to see the cure for death and the end of scarcity, to learn ten languages and compose three symphonies...and to realize his boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World.Disney World! The greatest artistic achievement of the long-ago twentieth century. Now in the keeping of a network of "ad-hocs" who keep the classic attractions running as they always have, enhanced with only the smallest high-tech touches.Now, though, the "ad hocs" are under attack. A new group has taken over the Hall of the Presidents, and is replacing its venerable audioanimatronics with new, immersive direct-to-brain interfaces that give guests the illusion of being Washington, Lincoln, and all the others. For Jules, this is an attack on the artistic purity of Disney World itself. Worse: it appears this new group has had Jules killed. This upsets him. (It's only his fourth death and revival, after all.) Now it's war....

Brain Wave


Poul Anderson - 1954
    It is also a novel about equality and what happens when the hierarchical structures by which we arrange our daily lives disappear.

Light


M. John Harrison - 2002
    John Harrison’s dangerously illuminating new novel, three quantum outlaws face a universe of their own creation, a universe where you make up the rules as you go along and break them just as fast, where there’s only one thing more mysterious than darkness.In contemporary London, Michael Kearney is a serial killer on the run from the entity that drives him to kill. He is seeking escape in a future that doesn’t yet exist—a quantum world that he and his physicist partner hope to access through a breach of time and space itself. In this future, Seria Mau Genlicher has already sacrificed her body to merge into the systems of her starship, the White Cat. But the “inhuman” K-ship captain has gone rogue, pirating the galaxy while playing cat and mouse with the authorities who made her what she is. In this future, Ed Chianese, a drifter and adventurer, has ridden dynaflow ships, run old alien mazes, surfed stellar envelopes. He “went deep”—and lived to tell about it. Once crazy for life, he’s now just a twink on New Venusport, addicted to the bizarre alternate realities found in the tanks—and in debt to all the wrong people.Haunting them all through this maze of menace and mystery is the shadowy presence of the Shrander—and three enigmatic clues left on the barren surface of an asteroid under an ocean of light known as the Kefahuchi Tract: a deserted spaceship, a pair of bone dice, and a human skeleton.

The Watchers at the Well: Echoes of the Well of Souls; Shadow of the Well of Souls; Gods of the Well of Souls


Jack L. Chalker - 1994
    The fascination with cosmic mysteries that had led her to become an astronomer in the first place, and a glimmer of professional ambition, still existed somewhere deep inside. But opportunity wasn't exactly pounding down her door.Then it came blazing out of the sky: a huge meteor that crashed in the remote Amazon jungle.It was the scoop of the century for the CNN team covering the event. They wanted an expert with them on the scene, and Lori's boss picked her for the assignment. Only it turned out to be an even more incredibly story than anyone bargained for.The meteor was no ordinary hunk of rock. It held a gateway through space that led to the Well World—a world originally created by a vanished race for a complex, long-term experiment...research now possibly tainted.Lori and the news team weren't the only new variables on the Well World. But their presence was more disruptive because they inadvertently got involved with a centuries-old woman named Mavra Chang, whose association with an even more ancient fellow named Nathan Brazil—the guardian of the Well—had reached a critical point. It was up to Nathan to restart the universe when things went awry. The question was, what had gone awry this time? And did the universe really have to end again to put it right?If either Mavra or Nathan had known about the alien entity that had arranged for the meteor to land on Earth—the first phase of its plan to disrupt the Well World—they'd have had a least one of the answers to those disturbing questions...

Quicker Than the Eye


Ray Bradbury - 1996
    A true master tells all, revealing the strange secret of growing young and mad; opening a Witch Door that links two intolerant centuries; joining an ancient couple in their wild assassination games; celebrating life and dreams in the unique voice that has favored him across six decades and has enchanted millions of readers the world over.Contains: Unterderseaboat Doktor -- Zaharoff/Richter Mark V -- Remember Sascha? -- Another Fine Mess -- The Electrocution -- Hopscotch -- The Finnegan -- That Woman on the Lawn -- The Very Gentle Murders -- Quicker Than the Eye -- Dorian in Excelsis -- No News, or What Killed the Dog? -- The Witch Door -- The Ghost in the Machine -- At the End of the Ninth Year -- Bug -- Once More, Legato -- Exchange -- Free Dirt -- Last Rites -- The Other Highway -- Make Haste to Live: An Afterword