Recommendations based on The Man Who Fell to Earthby Walter Tevis

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  1. The Queen's Gambit

    by Walter Tevis
    A young prodigy's quest to become the best chess player in the world.

    The Queen's Gambit traces chess prodigy Beth Harmon's life from her childhood in an orphanage through her struggles with tranquilizer and alcohol addiction to her triumphant rise through the ... (Wikipedia)

  2. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

    by John le Carré
    A retired spy is called back into action to uncover a mole in the British Secret Service.

    Control , chief of the Circus, suspects one of the five senior intelligence officers at the Circus to be a long-standing Soviet mole and assigns code names with the intention that should his agent ... (Wikipedia)

  3. The Many-Coloured Land

    by Julian May
    Adventure into an alternate reality, where humans and alien species fight for control.

    When a one-way time tunnel to Earth's distant past, specifically six million B.C., was discovered by folks on the Galactic Milieu, every misfit for light-years around hurried to pass through it. Each ... (Goodreads)

  4. 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)

  5. Notes from Underground

    by Fyodor Dostoevsky
    A portrait of the struggles of a troubled man, exploring his inner turmoil.

    The novel is divided into two parts. Serving as an introduction into the mind of the narrator, the first part of Notes from Underground is split into nine chapters: The narrator observes that utopian ... (Wikipedia)

  6. 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)

  7. Carmilla

    by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
    Gothic horror novella following a young woman's mysterious encounter with a female vampire.

    Le Fanu presents the story as part of the casebook of Dr. Hesselius, whose departures from medical orthodoxy rank him as the first occult detective in literature. , Laura, the teenage protagonist, ... (Wikipedia)

  8. Deliverance

    by James Dickey
    Four friends embark on a dangerous river rafting journey, facing unexpected perils.

    Narrated in the first person by Ed Gentry, a graphic artist and one of the four main characters, the novel opens with him and three friends, all middle-aged men who live in a large city in Georgia, ... (Wikipedia)

  9. The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

    by Douglas Adams
    An eccentric space adventure filled with comedic misadventures and cosmic revelations.

    At last in paperback in one complete volume, here are the five novels from Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker series. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" Seconds before the Earth is demolished for a ... (Goodreads)

  10. A Scanner Darkly

    by Philip K. Dick
    A dystopian tale of surveillance and paranoia in a world of drug addiction.

    The protagonist is Bob Arctor, member of a household of drug users, who is also living a double life as an undercover police agent assigned to spy on Arctor's household. Arctor shields his identity ... (Wikipedia)

  11. 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)

  12. 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)

  13. Planet of the Apes

    by Pierre Boulle
    Three astronauts land on a planet where apes are the dominant species and humans are primitive. A thought-provoking commentary on society and humanity.

    In a frame story , a rich couple sailing alone in space, Jinn and Phyllis, rescue and translate a manuscript from a floating bottle. , The manuscript was written by journalist Ulysse Mérou, who in ... (Wikipedia)

  14. Solaris

    by Stanisław Lem
    A psychological exploration of a distant planet, uncovering the truth behind its strange and mysterious phenomena.

    Solaris chronicles the ultimate futility of attempted communications with the extraterrestrial life inhabiting a distant alien planet named Solaris. The planet is almost completely covered with an ... (Wikipedia)

  15. Children of Time

    by Adrian Tchaikovsky
    A race of intelligent spiders battles to save their species from extinction.

    The book's plot involves a planet inhabited by evolved spiders uplifted by human scientist Avrana Kern, and their much later discovery by the last humans alive in the universe. , , , The work plays ... (Wikipedia)

  16. The Man in the High Castle

    by Philip K. Dick
    Set in an alternate 1962, a man must confront a dark and oppressive new world order.

    It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some twenty ... (Goodreads)

  17. Steppenwolf

    by Hermann Hesse
    The inner struggles of a tortured soul as he searches for redemption.

    The book is presented as a manuscript written by its protagonist , a middle-aged man named Harry Haller, who leaves it to a chance acquaintance, the nephew of his landlady. The acquaintance adds a ... (Wikipedia)

  18. Ringworld

    by Larry Niven
    A sci-fi adventure to an artificial ring-shaped world, full of unexpected challenges.

    On planet Earth in 2850 AD , Louis Gridley Wu is celebrating his 200th birthday. Despite his age, Louis is in perfect physical condition due to the longevity drug boosterspice . He meets Nessus , a ... (Wikipedia)

  19. Chess Story

    by Stefan Zweig
    A chess master's attempt to regain his lost skill, and the psychological battle he faces.

    The narrator opens the story on a passenger liner traveling from New York to Buenos Aires. Driven to mental anguish as the result of total isolation by the Nazis , Dr B, a securities expert hiding ... (Wikipedia)

  20. V for Vendetta

    by Alan Moore
    A dystopian future, where a mysterious vigilante fights for freedom and justice.

    On Guy Fawkes Night in London in 1997, a young girl goes to see her boss after curfew when she is sexually attacked by three men who are actually members of the state secret police , called "The ... (Wikipedia)

  21. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories

    by Franz Kafka
    A collection of surreal stories exploring the depths of the human condition.

    Virtually unknown during his lifetime, Franz Kafka is now one of the world’s most widely read and discussed authors. His nightmarish novels and short stories have come to symbolize modern man’s ... (Goodreads)

  22. The Death of Bunny Munro

    by Nick Cave
    Bunny Munro, a sex-addicted salesman, takes his young son on a road trip after his wife's suicide. Darkly humorous and disturbing.

    Set adrift by his wife's sudden death and struggling to keep a grip on reality, Bunny Munro does the only thing he can think of - with his young son in tow, he hits the road. An epic chronicle of one ... (Goodreads)

  23. I Am Legend

    by Richard Matheson
    A man is the last survivor of a zombie-creating virus, struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.

    Robert Neville appears to be the sole survivor of a pandemic that has killed most of the human population and turned the remainder into " vampires " that largely conform to their stereotypes in ... (Wikipedia)

  24. Orlando

    by Virginia Woolf
    A fantastical journey through history and gender, exploring the complexities of identity.

    The eponymous hero is born as a male nobleman in England during the reign of Elizabeth I . He undergoes a mysterious change of sex at the age of about 30 and lives on for more than 300 years into ... (Wikipedia)

  25. Asleep

    by Banana Yoshimoto
    A young woman's journey of grief and recovery after the death of her mother.

    Banana Yoshimoto has a magical ability to animate the lives of her young characters, and here she spins the stories of three women, all bewitched into a spiritual sleep. One, mourning a lost lover, ... (Goodreads)

  26. The Day of the Triffids

    by John Wyndham
    A post-apocalyptic world overrun by carnivorous plants, exploring themes of survival and morality.

    In 1951 John Wyndham published his novel The Day of the Triffids to moderate acclaim. Fifty-two years later, this horrifying story is a science fiction classic, touted by The Times (London) as having ... (Goodreads)

  27. Paradise Lost

    by John Milton
    Epic poem of the Fall of Man, exploring the depths of human nature and the consequences of sin.

    John Milton's Paradise Lost is one of the greatest epic poems in the English language. It tells the story of the Fall of Man, a tale of immense drama and excitement, of rebellion and treachery, of ... (Goodreads)

  28. The Forever War

    by Joe Haldeman
    A soldier's story of the horror of war and its consequences in the far future.

    The monumental Hugo and Nebula award winning SF classic— Featuring a new introduction by John Scalzi,The Earth's leaders have drawn a line in the interstellar sand—despite the fact that the fierce ... (Barnes & Noble)

  29. The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories

    by Susanna Clarke
    A collection of enchanting tales of faerie, folklore and romance.

    Following the enormous success of 2004 bestseller and critics' favorite "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell", Susanna Clarke delivers a delicious collection of ten stories set in the same fairy-crossed ... (Goodreads)

  30. To Say Nothing of the Dog

    by Connie Willis
    Time-traveling historian visits Victorian England in search of an artifact, amidst a comedy of errors.

    Ned Henry is a time traveler in 1940 studying Coventry Cathedral after the Coventry Blitz of World War II . He is specifically searching for the location of the "Bishop's bird stump ", a MacGuffin ... (Wikipedia)