Book picks similar to
The Gaudy Shadows by John Brunner


science-fiction
horror
fixme-misc
might-read

Gestapo Mars


Victor Gischler - 2015
    So when he’s kept in the deep freeze for 258 years, he’s seriously pissed off.Yet his government needs him, to hunt down the enemy known as the Daughter of the Brass Dragon. The future of the galaxy-spanning Reich depends on it, so Sloan is off—screwing, swearing, and shooting his way across interstellar space.lt’s action, adventure, and disgusting gelatinous aliens as only Victor Gischler can create them.

The Pawn in the Portal


Nick Cole - 2016
    Ward, a tier-one operator turned mercenary, has just flung himself off the cargo deck of a doomed C-130. Now he’s out of the Drop Zone and evading the undead as a terrible new breed of hunter enters the Wyrd. But these new, faster predators might not be the only thing to fear in an apocalypse beset by zombies, nukes and killer A.I.’s. One of the last warriors of a collapsed government is planning on putting up some big numbers in this final, ultimate game of Survivor, until he finds a mysterious new companion... a stranger dressed in black.

The God Conspiracy


Derek P. Gilbert - 2009
    Gilbert's "The Armageddon Strain" to expose the plot -- and discovers that he's not contending with flesh and blood.

Satan's Garden


Kit Lyman - 2014
    It chronicles their experiences in parallel over the course of six years, unfolding the independent challenges they face while struggling to survive worlds apart from each other. This book club pick inspires readers to see that love, friendship, and faith can survive in spite of the most terrible circumstances.Dani and Keely imagined that life was more magical than others believed. If they had to be summed up, their one plus one would equal three. Together, they became something greater. It was twin sisters against the world. But the world had different plans. The man followed them to their secret tree house that unusually warm day in September. He only came for one, there and gone in the blink of an eye. Satan’s Garden takes you on the six-year journey of two sisters who learn what it means to survive. It’s a story of resiliency, hope, and above all, a bond that cannot be taken away. It teaches us how quickly life can change and yet how much of it we can change ourselves.

The Mind Game


Norman Spinrad - 1980
    The Movement-was it the greatest con of all time, or the last true religion? A chilling novel about the evil of cults.

Mission Zero


S.J. MacDonald - 2011
    After a PR disaster has activists and media storming the Admiralty gates, First Lord Dix Harangay sends Minnow out on a makework patrol. Inspector Mako Ireson goes with them to investigate what’s really going on. Mako has never been on a starship before. He can’t tell port from starboard, doesn’t know what the 0-G sign means at freefall hatchways, and may need to change his underwear after the launch.Nobody is expecting that the “mission zero” they've been sent on will turn into a real operation. When it does, the Minnow’s crew has to rise to the challenge and justify their skipper’s faith in them.This is the first mission of the legendary Fourth Fleet Irregulars, the unit you send for when you need a miracle.For Mako Ireson, it will be the adventure of a lifetime.

Saucer Wisdom


Rudy Rucker - 1999
    That's an odd way to begin a work of popular science . . . . but amusing.Please heed the warning from the Introduction by Bruce Sterling: "If you are examining Saucer Wisdom imagining that Rudy (or some fictional 'Frank Shook') has been actually logging a lot of on board saucer time, well, you can knock that off right now. Rudy Rucker made up the flying saucer part. There is no actual flying saucer. The saucer is not an interplanetary faster-than-light device. Its what we professional authors like to call a narrative device."I'm going to spill the beans as directly as I can here: Saucer Wisdom is a work of popular science speculation. Its a nonfiction book in which Prof. Rucker takes a few quirky grains of modern scientific fact, drops them into the colorful tide pool of his own imagination, and harvests a major swarm of abalones, jellyfish, and giant anemones."Pop-science writers didn't used to treat 'science' in this boisterous way, but there might well be a trend here, there may be a real future in this. Saucer Wisdom is a book by a well-qualified mathematician and computer scientist, a veteran pop science writer, in which 'science' is treated, not as some distant and rarefied quest for absolute knowledge, but as naturally great source material for a really long, cool rant."Rucker, in character, describes, and illustrates with delightful cartoon sketches (the way he would use chalk and a blackboard while talking science), the world of the progressively more distant future as it is transformed by computer technology, biotechnology, and human evolution. He also describes a hell of a party in Berkeley. Popular science writing will never be the same.

Synchronicity


Michaelbrent Collings - 2021
    Off the grid, out of sight of the authorities. Hoping to escape a terrifying secret; to outrun what he has seen and what he has done. Kane is an assassin who, with the help of the Machine, possesses the ability to assume the identity of anyone he wishes. He can strike without warning, and kill without mercy. Stronger than a dozen men, faster than sight itself, he can be anywhere, anytime.When Book catches Kane’s eye, he discovers the world is even more dangerous than he knew. Book must ally himself with people who, like him, know that Kane is on the verge of remaking the world in his image.But how do you know who to trust, when the man who wants you dead can be anyone he pleases? How can you fight for the ones you love......when you can’t even believe who you see?

The Light at the End


John Skipp - 1986
    The newspapers scream out headlines that spark terror across the city. Ten murders on the New York City subway. Ten grisly crimes that defy all reason -- no pattern, no m.o., no leads for police to pursue. The press dubs the fiend the "Subway Psycho"; the NYPD desperately seeks their quarry before the city erupts in mass hysteria. But they won't find what they're looking for.Because they all think that the killer is human.Only a few know the true story -- a story the papers will never print. It is a tale of abject terror and death written in grit and steel... and blood. The tale of a man who vanished into the bowels of the urban earth one night, taken by a creature of unholy evil, then left as a babe abandoned on the doorstep of Hell. Now he is back, driven by twin demons of rage and retribution.He is unstoppable. And we are all his prey... unless a ragtag band of misfit souls will dare to descend into a world of manmade darkness, where the real and unreal alike dwell in endless shadow. A place where humanity has been left behind, and the horrifying truth will dawn as a madman's chilling vendetta comes to light...Filled with gripping drama and harrowing doomsday dread, The Light at the End is the book that ushered in a bold new view of humankind's most ancient and ruthless evil; a mesmerizing novel from two acknowledged masters of spellbinding suspense.

Dance of the Dwarfs


Geoffrey Household - 1968
    It's a remote place, isolated from the world, and home to a group of half-Indian cattlemen.Dawnay is puzzled by the cattlemen's apparent fear of the dark. Until he learns of the elusive dwarfs who are supposed to dance among the trees by moonlight. His scientific brain urges him to confront the unknown, but Dawnay has entered a realm of nightmare, one that science cannot explain...

The Shadow


James Patterson - 2021
    Then Khan ambushes the couple, who have the slimmest chance of survival ... in the uncertain future.A century and a half later, Lamont awakens in a world both unknown and disturbingly familiar. The first person he meets is Maddy Gomes, a teenager with her own mysterious secrets, including a more than passing familiarity with the legend of the Shadow.Most disturbing, Khan's power continues to be felt over the city and its people. No one in this new world understands the dangers of stopping him better than Lamont Cranston. He also knows he's the only one who stands a chance. The Shadow must prove that he's not only a super crime-fighter, but an icon.

Muse


Michael Cecilione - 1998
    A handsome author strikes up a conversation with an actress in a bookshop in Manhattan, and she knows this is the start of something that will change her life forever.

Galaxies


Barry N. Malzberg - 1975
    Malzberg . . . In a genre that, with one hand, claimed to be the ultimate storehouse of innovation, and with the other, leveled strict rules for writing and codes of narrative conduct onto its authors, Malzberg stuck out like a forked tongue, composing works of bona fide literature that dwarfed the efforts of his contemporaries and established him as one of science fiction's most dynamic enfant terribles. Originally published in 1975, GALAXIES is a masterwork of the Malzberg canon, which includes over fifty novels and collections. Metafictional, absurdist and sardonic, the book mounts a concerted attack against the market forces that prescribed SF of the 1970s and continue to prescribe it today. At the same time, the book tells a story of technology and cyborgs, of bureaucracy and tachyons, of love and hate and sadness . . . Despite his deviant literary antics, Malzberg could not be ignored by the SF community. In 1973, he won the first annual John W. Campbell Memorial Award, which is presented to the best SF novel of the year by a distinguished committee of SF experts, authors and critics. Thereafter he received nominations for the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick Awards, among others. Nonetheless his writing has not received the attention it so profoundly deserves. GALAXIES is among the works listed in acclaimed SF editor David Pringle's SCIENCE FICTION: THE 100 BEST NOVELS, published in 1985. With an introduction by Jack Dann, this special paperback edition ushers Malzberg's genius into the twenty-first century.

The Impossible Man


J.G. Ballard - 1966
    A collection of nine short stories including:The Drowned GiantThe Reptile EnclosureThe Delta At SunsetStorm-Bird, Storm-DreamerThe Screen GameThe Day Of ForeverTime Of PassageThe Gioconda Of The Twilight NoonThe Impossible Man

The Rig


Roger Levy - 2018
    On the windswept world of Bleak, a string of murders lead a writer to a story with unbelievable ramifications. One man survives the vicious attacks, but is left with a morbid fascination with death; the perfect candidate for the perilous job of working on a rig.Welcome to the System. Here the concept of a god has been abandoned, and a new faith pervades: AfterLife, a social media platform that allows subscribers a chance at resurrection, based on the votes of other users.So many Lives, forever interlinked, and one structure at the centre of it all: The Rig.