Books like Dark Matter

01

The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho · Religion & Spirituality

The Alchemist is a Brazilian novel first published in 1988 and translated into 80 languages, making it one of the most translated books in history.

A kindred science fiction read.

02

Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts

Annie Duke · Psychology

Thinking in Bets is Annie Duke's argument that most decisions in life share a fundamental feature with poker hands: you're choosing under uncertainty, with incomplete information, and luck will affect the outcome regardless of how well you reasoned.

A kindred science fiction read.

03

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths · Psychology

Brian Christian is a writer and Tom Griffiths is a cognitive scientist, and together they argue that computer science has worked out rigorous solutions to many of the problems humans face every day — when to stop searching for a better option, how to manage your schedule, how to sort your memory — and that these solutions are both interesting and useful.

A kindred science fiction read.

04

Blindsight

Peter Watts · Science fiction

Blindsight follows a crew of post-human specialists sent to intercept an alien object at the edge of the solar system in 2082.

Both dig into identity and selfhood.

05

Half of a Yellow Sun

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · Historical fiction

Half of a Yellow Sun is set before and during the Nigeria-Biafra war of 1967 to 1970, a conflict in which more than a million people died, most of them Igbo civilians from the secessionist Republic of Biafra.

Both dig into love and loyalty.

06

Middlesex

Jeffrey Eugenides · Literary fiction

Cal Stephanides is a middle-aged man living in Berlin who decides to tell the whole story — not just his own life, but the lives of his Greek immigrant grandparents and parents, all the way back to the incest that introduced a recessive gene into his bloodline and the gene that made Cal intersex.

Both dig into identity and selfhood.

07

Washington Black

Esi Edugyan · Historical fiction

Washington Black opens on a Barbados sugar plantation in the 1830s, where George Washington Black — Wash — is an eleven-year-old enslaved boy.

Both dig into identity and selfhood.

08

2001: A Space Odyssey

Arthur C. Clarke · Science fiction

2001: A Space Odyssey begins with prehistoric man-apes encountering a featureless black monolith that somehow catalyzes their cognitive leap from prey to hunter.

A kindred science fiction read.

09

A Fire Upon the Deep

Vernor Vinge · Science fiction

The galaxy in A Fire Upon the Deep is zoned by the speed of thought: near the galactic core, the Slowness, where intelligence itself is limited; farther out, the Unthinking Depths; and further still, the Transcend, where entities of incomprehensible intelligence emerge and occasionally intervene in the affairs of the merely civilized.

A kindred science fiction read.

10

A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Becky Chambers · Science fiction

Rosemary Harper boards the Wayfarer under a false identity, hoping to escape a family history she cannot speak about.

A kindred science fiction read.

11

A Memory Called Empire

Arkady Martine · Science fiction

Mahit Dzmare, ambassador from a small, semi-independent mining station to the vast Teixcalaanli Empire, arrives at the capital to find her predecessor has died under suspicious circumstances and the neural implant that was supposed to give her access to his memories and knowledge is three years out of date.

A kindred science fiction read.

12

All Systems Red

Martha Wells · Science fiction

Murderbot is a SecUnit — part robot, part cloned human tissue — that has hacked its own governor module and is technically free, though it has chosen not to tell anyone.

A kindred science fiction read.