Books like 'Pyrotechnicon'
Readers who enjoyed Pyrotechnicon by Adam Browne also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
sc-fi alternate history action / adventure classics retellings
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11/22/63 by Stephen King
Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars · 79 ratingsOn November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? Stephen King’s heart-stoppingly dramatic new novel is about a man who travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination—a thousand page tour de force...Categorized as:
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Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsCryptonomicon zooms all over the world, careening conspiratorially back and forth between two time periods—World War II and the present. Our 1940s heroes are the brilliant mathematician Lawrence Waterhouse, crypt analyst extraordinaire, and gung-ho, morphine-addicted marine Bobby Shaftoe... -
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 76 ratingsThey mustn't harm a human being, they must obey human orders, and they must protect their own existence...but only so long as that doesn't violate rules one and two. With these Three Laws of Robotics, humanity embarked on a bold new era of evolution that would open up enormous possibilities - and unforeseen risks...Categorized as:
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Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 67 ratingsTed 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 Memorial Award, and the Sidewise Award for alternate history. He won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1992. Story for story, he is the most honored young writer in modern SF...Categorized as:
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Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 34 ratingsTwo young people are forced to make a stand in this thought-provoking look at racism and prejudice in an alternate society.Sephy is a Cross -- a member of the dark-skinned ruling class. Callum is a Nought -- a “colourless” member of the underclass who were once slaves to the Crosses. The two have been friends since early childhood, but that’s as far as it can go...Categorized as:
classics 21st-century action-adventure alternate-history audiobook book children coming-of-age -
Silver Stars by Michael Grant
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsShe’s fighting to survive.The summer of 1943, World War II. The Germans have been bloodied, but Germany is very far from beaten. The North African campaign was only the beginning of the long journey for Frangie, Rainy, Rio, and the millions of other Allies.Now the American army is moving on to their next target: the Italian island of Sicily...Categorized as:
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Wolf 359 by Gabriel Urbina, Zach Valenti
Rated: 4.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsLife's not easy for Doug Eiffel, the communications officer for the U.S.S. Hephaestus Research Station, currently on Day 448 of its orbit around red dwarf star Wolf 359. He's stuck on a scientific survey mission of indeterminate length, 7.8 light years from Earth...Categorized as:
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High Stakes by Delta James
Rated: 4.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA Mafia don that’s not afraid to get his hands dirty to find the truth, and the reporter that can’t resist his dark charms.Killian O’Neill controls the pulse of the vibrant horse racing world in the Finger Lakes region of New York. He also has ties to a powerful Syndicate in Ireland. Carlyn Murphy is the investigative reporter who took comfort in his arms for one night and then walked away... -
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsMore than fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale, the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women converge, with potentially explosive results.Two have grown up as part of the first generation to come of age in the new order...Categorized as:
classics 21st-century action-adventure alternate-history apocalyptic audiobook book coming-of-age -
The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 47 ratingsOne of Isaac Asimov's SF masterpieces, this stand-alone novel is a monument of the flowering of SF in the 20th century. It is widely regarded as Asimov's single best SF novel and one every SF fan should read.Andrew Harlan is an Eternal, a member of the elite of the future...Categorized as:
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Savage Mate by Delta James
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsA Small Town Grumpy Shifter RomanceThe first time she saw him he was coming out of the river... Oh! what a view.Jackson Miller (Jax) left the SEALs to return to his small hometown, Mystic River, Alaska where all the residents are shifters. He’s a grumpy bear shifter and the sheriff.Autumn Bradley was hiking with her fiancé for a birthday weekend... -
The Carnelian Crow by Colleen Gleason
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsEver since the debacle of the Chess Queen Enigma, Mina Holmes and Evaline Stoker have laid low, trying to settle back into their quiet lives as young ladies of London. But the Holmesian deductive abilities won't remain dormant for long, and when Mina receives a strange package from a winged, midnight visitor, she is catapulted into a new, dangerous adventure: the search for The Carnelian Crow...Categorized as:
retellings action-adventure alternate-history audiobook book crime fiction friendship -
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsConnie Willis' Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Doomsday Book uses time travel for a serious look at how people connect with each other. In this Hugo-winning companion to that novel, she offers a completely different kind of time travel adventure: a delightful romantic comedy that pays hilarious homage to Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat...Categorized as:
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Counteraction by M.D. Massey
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAs a hunter in post-apocalyptic central Texas, Scratch Sullivan has survived zombies, vampires, rogue militia units - heck, he even killed a werewolf with nothing more than a spear and a bad attitude. But what's a man to do when the local werewolf pack destroys his town and abducts his best girl? If you're Scratch Sullivan, you get spittin' mad - and then you get retribution... -
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Gabby's Run: Paranormal Apocalypse by M.D. Massey
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratings(WARNING: This zombie apocalypse end of the world novel from M.D. Massey is chock full of post-apocalyptic werewolves, post-apocalyptic vampires, post-apocalyptic shifters, and other things that go bump in the long dark night of a vampire apocalypse. THEM: Gabby's Run can be read as a stand-alone novel, or as an introduction to the world of THEM.. -
Replay by Ken Grimwood
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsAt forty-three Jeff Winston is tired of his low-paid, unrewarding job, tired of the long silences at the breakfast table with his wife, saddened by the thought of no children to comfort his old age. But he hopes for better things, for happiness, maybe tomorrow ...But a sudden, fatal heart attack puts paid to that...Categorized as:
classics 20th-century action-adventure alternate-history audiobook book contemporary death -
Death’s Door by April White
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsA master of the macabre and an ageless crusader cross paths in the shadows of time. “Ye who read are still among the living; but I who write shall have long since gone my way into the region of shadows.” ~ Edgar Allan PoeThe first time Alexandra “Ren” Reynolds meets Edgar Allan Poe is the night he walks into her underground bar — over 170 years after his mysterious death...Categorized as:
retellings action-adventure adult alternate-history book contemporary fiction magical-realism -
The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, Ken Liu
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 47 ratingsThe Three-Body Problem is the first chance for English-speaking readers to experience the Hugo Award-winning phenomenon from China's most beloved science fiction author, Liu Cixin.Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens...Categorized as:
classics 21st-century action-adventure adult aliens alternate-history apocalyptic audiobook -
Invasion: Zombie Apocalypse by M.D. Massey
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsTHEM Invasion: Book Zero in the Scratch Sullivan Paranormal Post-Apocalyptic Action Novel Series...Aidan "Scratch" Sullivan is a former Army Ranger and Afghanistan War vet trying to achieve some semblance of normalcy while he deals with the psychological after-effects of two combat tours in the 'Stan...Categorized as:
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The Zeppelin Deception by Colleen Gleason
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsMina Holmes and Evaline Stoker return in their final and most exciting adventure together. Will the Ankh be brought to justice? What will happen now that we know Pix’s real identity? And what about Dylan? . . -
A Girl in Time by John Birmingham, Vanessa Johansson
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 13 ratingsThe past is another country. A dangerous one. On the eve of a huge, breakout success, a poor but brilliant young game developer is pulled out of her world, and time itself, by a cowboy desperately searching for the daughter he lost two hundred years ago. Cady McCall is ready to be rich and famous. She’s sacrificed everything, putting her work ahead of family and friends... -
The Chess Queen Enigma by Colleen Gleason
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAnd then she mouthed a word at me—an unmistakable word that told me everything I needed to know. “Checkmate.”Evaline Stoker & Mina Holmes have reluctantly agreed to act as social chaperones and undercover bodyguards for Princess Lurelia of Betrovia, who has arrived in London to deliver a letter that details the secret location of an ancient chess queen that’s been missing for centuries...Categorized as:
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Tower of Babylon by Ted Chiang
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection Together with a crew of other miners and cart-pullers, Hillalum is recruited to climb the Tower of Babylon and unearth what lies beyond the vault of heaven...Categorized as:
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Front Lines by Michael Grant
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratings1942. World War II. The most terrible war in human history. Millions are dead; millions more are still to die. The Nazis rampage across Europe and eye far-off America.The green, untested American army is going up against the greatest fighting force ever assembled—the armed forces of Nazi Germany.But something has changed...Categorized as:
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The Many-Colored Land by Julian May
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWhen 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 sought his own brand of happiness. But none could have guessed what awaited them. Not even in a million years...Categorized as:
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The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsTepper's finest novel to date is set in a post-holocaust feminist dystopia that offers only two political alternatives: a repressive polygamist sect that is slowly self-destructing through inbreeding and the matriarchal dictatorship called Women's Country...Categorized as:
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Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsFor Kivrin, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received...Categorized as:
classics 20th-century action-adventure alternate-history apocalyptic audiobook book death -
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 46 ratings“An extraordinary real picture of human beings numbed by catastrophe but still driven by the unconquerable determination of living creatures to keep on being alive.” —The New Yorker“Alas, Babylon.” Those fateful words heralded the end...Categorized as:
classics 20th-century action-adventure alternate-history anthologies apocalyptic audiobook cold-war -
Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsStar Maker is a science fiction novel by Olaf Stapledon, published in 1937. The book describes a history of life in the universe, dwarfing in scale Stapledon's previous book, Last and First Men (1930), a history of the human species over two billion years...Categorized as:
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Kiss of the Spindle by Nancy Campbell Allen
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA steampunk Sleeping Beauty story from the author of Beauty and the Clockwork Beast.Doctor Isla Cooper is cursed. Literally. Each night, at the stroke of midnight she falls into a death-like sleep from which she cannot be awakened for six hours. To make it worse, the curse has an expiration date—after a year, it becomes permanent. And the year is almost up...Categorized as:
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Revelations by Robert Storey
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsHidden deep beneath a remote desert is our planet’s biggest secret. Sarah Morgan’s only mistake? Finding it.The world holds its breath as the colossal asteroid 2011 AG5 hurtles towards the earth. As humanity is faced with extinction, archaeologist Sarah Morgan is in a race against time to uncover a secret that has been buried for millennia: that an advanced ancestor once populated the earth...Categorized as:
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Lest Darkness Fall & Related Stories by L. Sprague de Camp, Pohl Frederik
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsRarely do books have such a great influence on a genre as Lest Darkness Fall has had on science fiction. Frequently quoted as one of the 'favorite' books of many of the masters of the field, this book by L. Sprague de Camp helped establish time-travel as a solid sub-genre of science fiction...Categorized as:
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The Mouse on the Moon by Leonard Wibberley
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe Duchy of Grand Fenwick, the world's smallest country, whose army of 20 longbow men defeated the United States in The Mouse that Roared is back again... -
Patternmaster by Octavia E. Butler
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsThe combined mind-force of a telepathic race, Patternist thoughts can destroy, heal, rule. For the strongest mind commands the entire pattern and all within. Now the son of the Patternmaster craves this ultimate power, He has murdered or enslaved every threat to his ambition--except one...Categorized as:
classics 20th-century action-adventure adult afrofuturism alternate-history apocalyptic audiobook -
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Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsSpanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places...Categorized as:
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Allegiance by Timothy Zahn
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsNever before has the incendiary mix of action, politics, and intrigue that has become Timothy Zahn’s trademark, been more evident that in this new Star Wars epic... -
The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsJanuary 1864 –General Robert E. Lee faces defeat. The Army of Northern Virginia is ragged and ill-equpped. Gettysburg has broken the back of the Confederacy and decimated its manpower.Then, Andries Rhoodie, a strange man with an unplaceable accent, approaches Lee with an extraordinary offer... -
The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThere is a secret passage through time...and it leads all the way to the end of Eternity. But the journey has a terrible cost. It alters not only the future but the "present" in which we live.A century after the publication of H. G...Categorized as:
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Beauty and the Clockwork Beast by Nancy Campbell Allen
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsJane Eyre meets Beauty and the Beast. When Lucy Pickett arrives at Blackwell Manor to tend to her ailing cousin, Kate, she finds more than she bargained for. A restless ghost roams the hallways, werewolves have been reported in the area, and vampires lurk across the Scottish border. Lord Miles himself is clearly hiding a secret...Categorized as:
retellings action-adventure alternate-history audiobook book dystopia fairy-tale female-author -
Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWhen am I? Padway asked himself after the lightning-flash knocked him down. He knew where he was--Rome. He was there to study archaeology, and even though the lightning had left him dazed, he could see the familiar Roman buildings...Categorized as:
classics 20th-century action-adventure adult alternate-history ancient-civilization book fiction -
The Spiritglass Charade by Colleen Gleason
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAfter the Affair of the Clockwork Scarab, Evaline Stoker and Mina Holmes are eager to help Princess Alix with a new case. Seventeen-year-old Willa Aston is obsessed with spiritual mediums, convinced she is speaking with her mother from beyond the grave... -
Egalia's Daughters: A Satire of the Sexes by Gerd Brantenberg
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWelcome to the land of Egalia, where gender roles are topsy-turvy as "wim" wield the power and "menwim" light the home fires...Categorized as:
classics 20th-century action-adventure adult alternate-history book coming-of-age contemporary -
The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes by Robert A. Heinlein
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe Pursuit of the Pankera is one of the most audacious experiments ever done in science fiction by the legendary author of the classic bestseller Starship Troopers. Robert A. Heinlein wrote The Number of the Beast, which was published in 1980... -
White Lotus by John Hersey
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe story follows a young Arizona girl renamed White Lotus. As she ages, she evolves from “a bewildered, terrified slave to a conscious and intelligent revolutionary.” Her orchestrated, yet simple act of standing before her captors on one leg, head bowed like a sleeping bird becomes an often repeated act of nonviolent civil disobedience, an unconventional act in the spirit of Gandhi and Dr...Categorized as:
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The Goblin Reservation by Clifford D. Simak
Rated: 3.99 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsFirst-class entertainment (The Sunday Times) from a classic SF author. En route to an interplanetary research mission, a scientist is abducted by a strange, shadowy race of aliens and taken to a previously uncharted planet, a storehouse of information that would be invaluable--even to an Earth so advanced that time travel allows goblins, dinosaurs, even Shakespeare to coexist...Categorized as:
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On the Beach by Nevil Shute
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsAfter the war is over, a radioactive cloud begins to sweep southwards on the winds, gradually poisoning everything in its path. An American submarine captain is among the survivors left sheltering in Australia, preparing with the locals for the inevitable. Despite his memories of his wife, he becomes close to a young woman struggling to accept the harsh realities of their situation...Categorized as:
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Limbo by Dima Zales, Anna Zaires
Rated: 3.91 of 5 stars · 11 ratingsYesterday, I learned all of Oasis’s secrets—or so I thought. As a new danger arises, the long-awaited Birth Day celebration turns into a nightmare, and this time, there may be no escape.In Oasis, nothing is what it seems...Categorized as:
classics action-adventure alternate-history audiobook book coming-of-age cyberpunk dystopia -
Time and Again by Jack Finney
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsOne of the most beloved tales of our time!Science fiction, mystery, a passionate love story, and a detailed history of Old New York blend together in Jack Finney's spellbinding story of a young man enlisted in a secret government experiment...Categorized as:
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Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint by Jay Williams, Raymond Abrashkin
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsWhen Danny Dunn tips over the mysterious jar of glistening liquid, he has no way of knowing that he will involve himself, his friend Joe, and Professor Bullfinch in a wild flight between planets...Categorized as:
classics action-adventure alternate-history book children children-books family fiction -
Exploits & Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician: A Neo-Scientific Novel by Alfred Jarry
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsAlfred Jarry is best known as the author of the proto-Dada play "Ubu Roi," but this anarchic novel of absurdist philosophy is widely regarded as the central work to his oeuvre. Refused for publication in the author's lifetime, "Exploits and Opinion of Dr. Faustroll" recounts the adventures of the inventor of "Pataphysics . . . the science of imaginary solutions...Categorized as:
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