Books like Oryx and Crake

01

Homage to Catalonia

George Orwell · Memoir

Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's firsthand account of fighting in the Spanish Civil War, which he joined in late 1936 as a volunteer with the POUM militia — a Trotskyist revolutionary organization that was later suppressed by the Soviet-backed Stalinist wing of the Republican forces.

A kindred science fiction read.

02

Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

Suzanne Simard · Science

Suzanne Simard is the forest ecologist who discovered that trees communicate and share resources through underground mycorrhizal fungal networks — the research that gave rise to the concept of the "mother tree" and, at several removes, Peter Wohlleben's popular writing on the subject.

A kindred science fiction read.

03

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming

David Wallace-Wells · Science

The Uninhabitable Earth is David Wallace-Wells's catalog of what climate change will do to human civilization if carbon emissions continue on or near their current trajectory.

A kindred science fiction read.

04

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Yuval Noah Harari · History

Homo Deus picks up where Sapiens left off, but turns to face the other direction.

A kindred science fiction read.

05

Neuromancer

William Gibson · Science fiction

Case is a washed-up computer hacker living in the sprawl of near-future Chiba City, Japan.

Both dig into corporate power.

06

The Year of the Flood

Margaret Atwood · Science fiction

The Year of the Flood is the second book in Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy, set in the same near-future corporate dystopia as Oryx and Crake (2003) but following different survivors.

Both dig into environmental collapse.

07

Fast Food Nation

Eric Schlosser · Science

Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation is one of the most consequential pieces of American investigative journalism of the early twenty-first century.

Both dig into corporate power.

08

Goliath

Matt Stoller · Economics

Goliath is Matt Stoller's history of monopoly power in America, arguing that the concentration of corporate power in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is not a novel development but a return to a pattern that Americans once recognized as a fundamental threat to democratic governance — and successfully resisted through antitrust law.

Both dig into corporate power.

09

Great Expectations

Charles Dickens · Classics

Great Expectations follows Pip, an orphan boy on the Kent marshes who is yanked from modest obscurity into the orbit of wealth and social aspiration when an anonymous benefactor funds his move to London.

Both dig into love and obsession.

10

Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business

Fredric Dannen · Business

Hit Men is Fredric Dannen's investigative account of the major record labels from the 1950s through the late 1980s, with particular focus on the network of independent promoters who controlled radio airplay through a system of payments that amounted to a legalized — and sometimes illegal — form of payola.

Both dig into corporate power.

11

Love in the Time of Cholera

Gabriel García Márquez · Literary fiction

Love in the Time of Cholera begins with the death of Dr.

Both dig into love and obsession.

12

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Junot Díaz · Literary fiction

Oscar Wao is an overweight Dominican American nerd from New Jersey who wants nothing more than to find love and write fantasy novels.

Both dig into love and obsession.