Recommendations based on Borneby Jeff VanderMeer

* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans

  1. Annihilation

    by Jeff VanderMeer
    A team of four women venture into a mysterious, surreal landscape in search of answers.

    A team of four women cross the border into an uninhabited area known as "Area X", an unspecified coastal location that has been closed to the public for three decades. The group consists of a ... (Wikipedia)

  2. Acceptance

    by Jeff VanderMeer
    A journey of exploration and self-discovery, as humanity faces a mysterious alien power.

    Acceptance jumps around in time and between the perspectives of several characters from the first two novels in the Southern Reach Trilogy. The Lighthouse Keeper In the years before Area X, Saul ... (Wikipedia)

  3. The Fifth Season

    by N.K. Jemisin
    A world where seismic and magical disasters ravage the land, and a woman's journey to save humanity.

    In a prologue, an extraordinarily powerful orogene discusses the sad state of the world and laments the oppression of his race. He then uses his enormous power to fracture the entire continent along ... (Wikipedia)

  4. Lincoln in the Bardo

    by George Saunders
    A spiritual exploration of death, exploring the afterlife through the eyes of President Lincoln.

    In his long-awaited first novel, American master George Saunders delivers his most original, transcendent, and moving work yet. Unfolding in a graveyard over the course of a single night, narrated by ... (Goodreads)

  5. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

    by Max Brooks
    A collection of interviews recounting tales of the zombie apocalypse.

    It has been nearly twenty years since the start of the apocalyptic worldwide pandemic known as the Zombie War, and about ten years since the war has ended in humanity's victory. The framing device ... (Wikipedia)

  6. The Stone Sky

    by N.K. Jemisin
    A climactic finale to a trilogy, featuring a powerful woman's journey to save her world from destruction.

    Following the events of, The Obelisk Gate, , the former inhabitants of Castrima-under are moving north after damage by rival comm Rennanis has compromised the mechanisms of the geode and made it ... (Wikipedia)

  7. Neuromancer

    by William Gibson
    A hacker's journey through a dystopian cyberpunk world, searching for a way to survive.

    Henry Dorsett Case is a low-level hustler in the dystopian underworld of Chiba City , Japan. Once a talented computer hacker , Case was caught stealing from his employer. As punishment for his theft, ... (Wikipedia)

  8. Universal Harvester

    by John Darnielle
    A man's investigation into an eerie videotape phenomenon, uncovering secrets of the past.

    Life in a small town takes a dark turn when mysterious footage begins appearing on VHS cassettes at the local Video Hut Jeremy works at the counter of Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa. It’s a small town—the ... (Goodreads)

  9. Snow Crash

    by Neal Stephenson
    A hacker's quest in a futuristic America dealing with a mysterious computer virus.

    Hiro Protagonist is a hacker and pizza delivery driver for the Mafia. He meets Y.T. (short for Yours Truly), a young skateboard Kourier ( courier ) who refers to herself in the third person , during ... (Wikipedia)

  10. The Three-Body Problem

    by Liu Cixin
    A science fiction novel exploring the consequences of first contact with an alien civilization.

    The story takes place in flash-forwards, flashbacks, and the present time. Below is a chronological plotline. During the Cultural Revolution , Ye Wenjie, an astrophysics graduate from Tsinghua ... (Wikipedia)

  11. The Windup Girl

    by Paolo Bacigalupi
    A dystopian future where energy scarcity and biotechnology have caused massive upheaval in society.

    Anderson Lake is an economic hitman for the AgriGen Corporation, working in Thailand. He owns a factory trying to mass-produce a revolutionary new model of kink-spring (the successor, in the absence ... (Wikipedia)

  12. All the Birds in the Sky

    by Charlie Jane Anders
    Two childhood friends, a witch and a scientist, grapple with an impending apocalypse.

    All the Birds in the Sky is set in the near-future and is about Patricia and Laurence, a witch and a techno-geek . Patricia discovers, when she is six, that she has magical abilities, like talking to ... (Wikipedia)

  13. The Lathe of Heaven

    by Ursula K. Le Guin
    An exploration of the power of dreams, with the potential to reshape reality.

    The book is set in Portland, Oregon , in the year 2002. Portland has three million inhabitants and continuous rain. It is deprived enough for the poorer inhabitants to have kwashiorkor , a protein ... (Wikipedia)

  14. The Magician's Land

    by Lev Grossman
    The final book in the Magicians trilogy, as Quentin Coldwater and his friends face their ultimate challenge in a magical world.

    After being expelled from the magical realm of Fillory, magician Quentin Coldwater returns to his alma mater , the magical college of Brakebills, as a new professor. There he is finally given a ... (Wikipedia)

  15. Neverwhere

    by Neil Gaiman
    A mysterious journey through a hidden realm of London, filled with danger and unexpected allies.

    Neverwhere is the story of Richard Mayhew and his trials and tribulations in London. At the start of the story, he is a young businessman, recently moved from Scotland and with a normal life ahead. ... (Wikipedia)

  16. The Gone World

    by Tom Sweterlitsch
    A time-traveling detective investigates a mission to prevent a global apocalypse. But the more she learns, the more she realizes the stakes are higher than she thought.

    “I promise you have never read a story like this.” —Blake Crouch,, New York Times, bestselling author of Dark Matter, Inception, meets, True Detective, in this science fiction thriller of ... (Goodreads)

  17. Uprooted

    by Naomi Novik
    A young woman's battle to save her home from a magical force, while uncovering secrets of her past.

    “Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human ... (Goodreads)

  18. Welcome to Night Vale

    by Joseph Fink
    A mysterious small town in the desert, where strange happenings are the norm.

    From the creators of the wildly popular Welcome to Night Vale podcast comes an imaginative mystery of appearances and disappearances that is also a poignant look at the ways in which we all struggle ... (Goodreads)

  19. Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

    by Carmen Maria Machado
    Collection of surreal stories exploring the complexities of gender, sexuality and identity.

    In Her Body and Other Parties , Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her ... (Goodreads)

  20. Station Eleven

    by Emily St. John Mandel
    Post-apocalyptic exploration of a world drastically changed after a pandemic.

    An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse,, Station Eleven, tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of ... (Barnes & Noble)

  21. Stories of Your Life and Others

    by Ted Chiang
    A collection of short stories exploring themes of science, technology, and humanity.

    Ted Chiang's first published story, ",Tower of Babylon," won the Nebula Award in 1990. Subsequent stories have won the Asimov's SF Magazine reader poll, a second Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon ... (Goodreads)

  22. Old Man's War

    by John Scalzi
    Elderly citizens enlist in an interstellar war to save humanity, discovering new strength and purpose.

    Old Man's War is about a soldier named John Perry and his exploits in the Colonial Defense Forces (CDF). The first-person narrative follows Perry's military career from CDF recruit to the rank of ... (Wikipedia)

  23. A Canticle for Leibowitz

    by Walter M. Miller Jr.
    A post-apocalyptic tale of a world struggling to rebuild after a devastating nuclear war.

    After 20th century civilization was destroyed by a global nuclear war , known as the "Flame Deluge", there was a violent backlash against the culture of advanced knowledge and technology that had led ... (Wikipedia)

  24. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

    by Michael Chabon
    Two cousins create a comic book superhero and find success and adventure in 1940s New York.

    The novel begins in 1939 with the arrival of 19-year-old Josef "Joe" Kavalier as a refugee in New York City , where he comes to live with his 17-year-old cousin, Sammy Klayman. With the help of his ... (Wikipedia)

  25. All Systems Red

    by Martha Wells
    Murderbot navigates a dangerous world while struggling to maintain its own autonomy.

    "As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure." In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are ... (Goodreads)

  26. The Magician King

    by Lev Grossman
    A quest to restore the magic of a fantasy world, while discovering the power of self-discovery.

    The Magician King follows two story lines, beginning at the same time as the beginning and end of The Magicians . In one, following her unsuccessful interview at Brakebills, Julia returns to ... (Wikipedia)

  27. Wolf in White Van

    by John Darnielle
    A mysterious, psychological journey of a reclusive man, linked to a game he created.

    Sean Phillips lives with a caretaker after shooting himself in the head at age 17, causing facial disfigurement. The circumstances of the shooting are initially left ambiguous. Sean's relationship ... (Wikipedia)

  28. A Closed and Common Orbit

    by Becky Chambers
    A robot's adventures in a strange new world as she discovers her true identity.

    Lovelace was once merely a ship's artificial intelligence. When she wakes up in an new body, following a total system shut-down and reboot, she has no memory of what came before. As Lovelace learns ... (Goodreads)

  29. Severance

    by Ling Ma
    A millennial office worker navigates a post-apocalyptic world plagued by a deadly virus.

    The narrative follows Candace Chen after societal collapse due to the Shen Fever pandemic and in flashbacks to her earlier life. Candace and her parents emigrate from Fuzhou , China to Salt Lake City ... (Wikipedia)

  30. Lovecraft Country

    by Matt Ruff
    A thrilling and terrifying journey through 1950s America, where a young black man and his family face supernatural horrors and racism.

    The book consists of eight interconnected stories: Atticus Turner, working in Florida after leaving the army, returns home to Chicago after receiving a mysterious letter from his estranged father, ... (Wikipedia)