Books like 'Slingshot: Building the largest machine in human history'

Readers who enjoyed Slingshot: Building the largest machine in human history by Robert G. Williscroft also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.

contemporary  sc-fi  hard sci-fi  drama  suspense

  • Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

    Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

    Rated: 4.53 of 5 stars
    · 80 ratings
    A lone astronaut.An impossible mission.An ally he never imagined.Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and Earth itself will perish.Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time...
  • Tiamat's Wrath by James S.A. Corey

    Tiamat's Wrath by James S.A. Corey

    Rated: 4.57 of 5 stars
    · 48 ratings
    Thirteen hundred gates have opened to solar systems around the galaxy. But as humanity builds its interstellar empire in the alien ruins, the mysteries and threats grow deeper...
  • The Martian by Andy Weir

    The Martian by Andy Weir

    Rated: 4.37 of 5 stars
    · 95 ratings
    Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there...
  • The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin, Eisso Post

    The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin, Eisso Post

    Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars
    · 68 ratings
    This is the second novel in "Remembrance of Earth’s Past", the near-future trilogy written by the China's multiple-award-winning science fiction author, Cixin Liu. In The Dark Forest, Earth is reeling from the revelation of a coming alien invasion — four centuries in the future...
  • Caliban's War by James S.A. Corey

    Caliban's War by James S.A. Corey

    Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars
    · 71 ratings
    We are not alone.On Ganymede, breadbasket of the outer planets, a Martian marine watches as her platoon is slaughtered by a monstrous supersoldier. On Earth, a high-level politician struggles to prevent interplanetary war from reigniting. And on Venus, an alien protomolecule has overrun the planet, wreaking massive, mysterious changes and threatening to spread out into the solar system...
  • Persepolis Rising by James S.A. Corey

    Persepolis Rising by James S.A. Corey

    Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars
    · 53 ratings
    In the thousand-sun network of humanity's expansion, new colony worlds are struggling to find their way. Every new planet lives on a knife edge between collapse and wonder, and the crew of the aging gunship Rocinante have their hands more than full keeping the fragile peace...
  • Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

    Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

    Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars
    · 65 ratings
    It has a dark past – one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself “Murderbot”. But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more.Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A” stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue...
  • Dust by Hugh Howey

    Dust by Hugh Howey

    Rated: 4.27 of 5 stars
    · 38 ratings
    Wool  introduced the world of the silo.  Shift  told the story of its creation.  Dust  will describe its downfall. The residents of Silo 18 have a new mayor and the chance of a new beginning. But just as they regain their footing, their gravest threat emerges: Silo 1, and the men who brought Earth into ruin. But power, politics, and the survival of the human race are complex...
  • Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey

    Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey

    Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars
    · 79 ratings
    Humanity has colonized the solar system—Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond—but the stars are still out of our reach.Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, the Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted...
  • Abaddon's Gate by James S.A. Corey

    Abaddon's Gate by James S.A. Corey

    Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars
    · 71 ratings
    Abaddon's Gate is the third book in the New York Times bestselling Expanse series. For generations, the solar system - Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt - was humanity's great frontier. Until now. The alien artefact working through its program under the clouds of Venus has emerged to build a massive structure outside the orbit of Uranus: a gate that leads into a starless dark...
  • I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

    I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

    Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars
    · 76 ratings
    They 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...
  • Babylon's Ashes by James S.A. Corey

    Babylon's Ashes by James S.A. Corey

    Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars
    · 57 ratings
    The sixth book in the New York Times bestselling Expanse series. NOW A MAJOR TV SERIES A revolution brewing for generations has begun in fire. It will end in blood.The Free Navy - a violent group of Belters in black-market military ships - has crippled the Earth and begun a campaign of piracy and violence among the outer planets...
  • Freedom™ by Daniel Suarez

    Freedom™ by Daniel Suarez

    Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars
    · 40 ratings
    The propulsive, shockingly plausible sequel to New York Times bestseller Daemon, the "Greatest. Techno-thriller. Period."**William O'Brien, former director of cybersecurity and communications systems policy at the White House2009 saw one of the most inventive techno-thriller debuts in decades as Daniel Suarez introduced his terrifying and tantalizing vision of a new world order...
  • Hyperion by Dan Simmons

    Hyperion by Dan Simmons

    Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars
    · 73 ratings
    On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all...
  • Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey

    Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey

    Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars
    · 72 ratings
    The fourth novel in James S.A. Corey’s New York Times bestselling Expanse seriesThe gates have opened the way to thousands of habitable planets, and the land rush has begun. Settlers stream out from humanity's home planets in a vast, poorly controlled flood, landing on a new world...
  • Old Man's War by John Scalzi

    Old Man's War by John Scalzi

    Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars
    · 50 ratings
    John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army.The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce-- and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. To defend Earth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate...
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

    2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

    Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars
    · 74 ratings
    On the Moon, an enigma is uncovered.So great are the implications of this discovery that for the first time men are sent out deep into our solar system.But long before their destination is reached, things begin to go horribly, inexplicably wrong...One of the greatest-selling science fiction novels of our time, this classic book will grip you to the very end...
  • Artifact Space by Miles Cameron

    Artifact Space by Miles Cameron

    Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars
    · 21 ratings
    Out in the darkness of space, something is targeting the Greatships.With their vast cargo holds and a crew that could fill a city, the Greatships are the lifeblood of human occupied space, transporting an unimaginable volume - and value - of goods from City, the greatest human orbital, all the way to Tradepoint at the other, to trade for xenoglas with an unknowable alien species...
  • Contact by Carl Sagan

    Contact by Carl Sagan

    Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars
    · 44 ratings
    THE FUTURE IS HERE...IN AN ADVENTURE OF COSMIC DIMENSION. In December, 1999, a multinational team journeys out to the stars, to the most awesome encounter in human history. Who -- or what -- is out there? In Cosmos, Carl Sagan explained the universe. In CONTACT, he predicts its future -- and our own...
  • Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky

    Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky

    Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    My name is Rex. I am a good dog. Rex is also seven foot tall at the shoulder, bulletproof, bristling with heavy caliber weaponry and his voice resonates with subsonics especially designed to instill fear. With Dragon, Honey and Bees, he's part of a Multiform Assault Pack operating in the lawless anarchy of Campeche, Mexico. A genetically engineered Bioform, he's a deadly weapon in a dirty war...
  • Unparalleled by D.S. Smith

    Unparalleled by D.S. Smith

    Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    Waking up in a strange house, with no memory of how or why he is there, Stuart Milton finds his life has changed beyond recognition. His pregnant wife is missing, but his only living relative, his brother, is incapable of substantiating his claim. Lost in a world of confusion that is spiralling out of his control, Stuart finds temporary salvation in a psychiatrist assigned to his case...
    Categorized as:
    drama  suspense  adult  book  contemporary  crime  epic  fiction
  • Daemon by Daniel Suarez

    Daemon by Daniel Suarez

    Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars
    · 47 ratings
    A high-tech thriller for the wireless age that explores the unthinkable consequences of a computer program running without human control—a daemon—designed to dismantle society and bring about a new world orderTechnology controls almost everything in our modern-day world, from remote entry on our cars to access to our homes, from the flight controls of our airplanes to the movements of the entire...
  • Yellowstone Inferno by Bobby Akart

    Yellowstone Inferno by Bobby Akart

    Rated: 4.35 of 5 stars
    · 21 ratings
    Civilization exists by geologic consent, subject to change without notice.The land beneath Yellowstone's caldera is hot.Huffing and puffing. Moving, stretching and bulging.Everything has a boiling point. Yellowstone has reached the point of no return...
  • Yellowstone Hellfire by Bobby Akart

    Yellowstone Hellfire by Bobby Akart

    Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars
    · 23 ratings
    Yellowstone is controlled by nature. Its beauty is breathless and tranquil. Crystal clear streams flow. Buffalo roam freely...
  • Brass Man by Neal Asher

    Brass Man by Neal Asher

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    Ian Cormac, a legendary Earth Central Security agent, the James Bond of a wealthy future, is hunting an interstellar dragon, little knowing that, far away, his competition has resurrected an horrific killing machine named "Mr. Crane" to assist in a similar hunt, ecompassing whole star systems. Mr...
  • Winter World by A.G. Riddle

    Winter World by A.G. Riddle

    Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars
    · 27 ratings
    A new ice age... and a shocking discovery...will change humanity forever.In the near future, a new ice age has begun.Humanity stands on the brink of extinction.Desperate for answers, scientists send probes into the solar system to take readings. Near Mars, a probe spots a mysterious object drifting toward the Sun...
  • Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

    Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

    Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars
    · 42 ratings
    An all-time science fiction classic, Rendezvous with Rama is also one of Clarke's best novels--it won the Campbell, Hugo, Jupiter, and Nebula Awards. A huge, mysterious, cylindrical object appears in space, swooping in toward the sun. The citizens of the solar system send a ship to investigate before the enigmatic craft, called Rama, disappears...
  • Effacement by Hieronymus Hawkes

    Effacement by Hieronymus Hawkes

    Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars
    · 8 ratings
    When recording every aspect of your life has become the law, what happens when your connection to the world is severed? With the advent of BioNarratus’s Vitasync neurochip, serious crime has all but disappeared. Without a lifelog you can’t get a bank account, medical insurance, or a job...
  • Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

    Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

    Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars
    · 85 ratings
    An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them—for a price. Until something goes wrong. . .
  • Genome by A.G. Riddle

    Genome by A.G. Riddle

    Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars
    · 36 ratings
    A code hidden in the human genome will reveal the ultimate secret of human existence.And could hold humanity's only hope of survival.Genome concludes The Extinction Files, the two-book series that began with Pandemic. It's a race against time—and an exploration into the deepest mysteries of human existence (with a twist at the end you'll never see coming)...
  • All Systems Red by Martha Wells

    All Systems Red by Martha Wells

    Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars
    · 84 ratings
    "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 accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern...
  • Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky

    Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky

    Rated: 4.16 of 5 stars
    · 32 ratings
    The Arthur C. Clarke award-winning author of Children of Time brings us an extraordinary new space opera about humanity on the brink of extinction, and how one man's discovery will save or destroy us all.The war is over. Its heroes forgotten. Until one chance discovery . . .Idris has neither aged nor slept since they remade him in the war...
  • Kill Process by William Hertling

    Kill Process by William Hertling

    Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars
    · 14 ratings
    By day, Angie, a twenty-year veteran of the tech industry, is a data analyst at Tomo, the world's largest social networking company; by night, she exploits her database access to profile domestic abusers and kill the worst of them. She can't change her own traumatic past, but she can save other women...
    Categorized as:
    suspense  adult  ai  audiobook  book  contemporary  crime  cyberpunk
  • Pandemic by A.G. Riddle

    Pandemic by A.G. Riddle

    Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars
    · 26 ratings
    Around the world, a deadly outbreak spreads.The CDC and WHO race to stop it, but they soon learn that this pandemic hides a dark secret. It may be the start of a scientific experiment that could alter the human race forever--and reveal a shocking truth about our future.Experience the groundbreaking novel that will change everything you think you know about pandemics--and how to survive one...
  • Solaris by Stanisław Lem

    Solaris by Stanisław Lem

    Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars
    · 40 ratings
    A classic work of science fiction by renowned Polish novelist and satirist Stanislaw Lem.When Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface, he finds a painful, hitherto unconscious memory embodied in the living physical likeness of a long-dead lover...
  • Biochips by William Gibson

    Biochips by William Gibson

    Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars
    · 49 ratings
    Turner, corporate mercenary, wakes in a reconstructed body, a beautiful woman by his side. Then Hosaka Corporation reactivates him for a mission more dangerous than the one he's recovering from: Maas-Neotek's chief of R&D is defecting. Turner is the one assigned to get him out intact, along with the biochip he's perfected...
  • The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon

    The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    In the near future, disease will be a condition of the past. Most genetic defects will be removed at birth; the remaining during infancy. Unfortunately, there will be a generation left behind. For members of that missed generation, small advances will be made. Through various programs, they will be taught to get along in the world despite their differences...
  • Fear the Sky by Stephen Moss

    Fear the Sky by Stephen Moss

    Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars
    · 29 ratings
    In eleven years time, a million members of an alien race will arrive at Earth. Years before they enter orbit, their approach will be announced by the flare of a thousand flames in the sky, their ships’ huge engines burning hard to slow them from the vast speeds needed to cross interstellar space...
  • Outland by Dennis E. Taylor

    Outland by Dennis E. Taylor

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 19 ratings
    When the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts, it's up to six college students and their experimental physics project to prevent the end of civilization. When an experiment to study quantum uncertainty goes spectacularly wrong, physics student Bill Rustad and his friends find that they have accidentally created an inter-dimensional portal...
  • Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow

    Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 14 ratings
    Cory Doctorow's Attack Surface is a standalone novel set in the world of New York Times bestsellers Little Brother and Homeland.Most days, Masha Maximow was sure she'd chosen the winning side.In her day job as a counterterrorism wizard for an transnational cybersecurity firm, she made the hacks that allowed repressive regimes to spy on dissidents, and manipulate their every move...
  • Watching Trees Grow by Peter F. Hamilton

    Watching Trees Grow by Peter F. Hamilton

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 6 ratings
    Peter Hamilton brings his trademark flair for narrative sweep and epic ideas to a short novel that tells the story of an near- immortal mankind that grew from the Roman Empire. Paired with WATCHING TREES GROW is TENDELEO'S STORY the Theodore Sturgeon award-winning new Chaga short novel from the acclaimed Ian McDonald...
  • Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan

    Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan

    Rated: 3.99 of 5 stars
    · 70 ratings
    Four hundred years from now mankind is strung out across a region of interstellar space inherited from an ancient civilization discovered on Mars. The colonies are linked together by the occasional sublight colony ship voyages and hyperspatial data-casting. Human consciousness is digitally freighted between the stars and downloaded into bodies as a matter of course.But some things never change...
  • Waking Gods by Sylvain Neuvel

    Waking Gods by Sylvain Neuvel

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 45 ratings
    As a child, Rose Franklin made an astonishing discovery: a giant metallic hand, buried deep within the earth. As an adult, she’s dedicated her brilliant scientific career to solving the mystery that began that fateful day: Why was a titanic robot of unknown origin buried in pieces around the world? Years of investigation have produced intriguing answers—and even more perplexing questions...
  • Zero History by William Gibson

    Zero History by William Gibson

    Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    Hollis Henry never intended to work for global marketing magnate Hubertus Bigend again. But now she’s broke, and Bigend has just the thing to get her back in the game... Milgrim can disappear in almost any setting, and his Russian is perfectly idiomatic—so much so that he spoke it with his therapist in the secret Swiss clinic where Bigend paid for him to be cured of his addiction..
  • Reamde by Neal Stephenson

    Reamde by Neal Stephenson

    Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars
    · 35 ratings
    Four decades ago, Richard Forthrast, the black sheep of an Iowa family, fled to a wild and lonely mountainous corner of British Columbia to avoid the draft. Smuggling backpack loads of high-grade marijuana across the border into Northern Idaho, he quickly amassed an enormous and illegal fortune...
  • Singularity by Bill DeSmedt

    Singularity by Bill DeSmedt

    Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars
    · 10 ratings
    A maverick astrophysicist, a rookie secret agent, and an uncanny consultant join forces in this technological thriller to stop the capture of a submicroscopic black hole whose power will be harnessed to transform - or end - the world. More than a hundred years earlier, the most violent cosmic collision ever recorded flattened a remote area in Tunguska, Siberia...
  • Darknet by Matthew Mather

    Darknet by Matthew Mather

    Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars
    · 29 ratings
    A terrifying new breed of predator evolves...A dark secret determined to stay hidden...A prophetic and frighteningly realistic novel set in present-day New York, Darknet is the story of one man's odyssey to overcome a global menace pushing the world toward oblivion, and his incredible gamble to risk everything to save his family...
  • Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

    Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

    Rated: 3.91 of 5 stars
    · 33 ratings
    Cayce Pollard is an expensive, spookily intuitive market-research consultant. In London on a job, she is offered a secret assignment: to investigate some intriguing snippets of video that have been appearing on the Internet. An entire subculture of people is obsessed with these bits of footage, and anybody who can create that kind of brand loyalty would be a gold mine for Cayce's client...
  • Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

    Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

    Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars
    · 41 ratings
    What would happen if the world were ending?A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space...
  • Freezing Point by Grace Hamilton

    Freezing Point by Grace Hamilton

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 8 ratings
    In the dawn of a new Ice Age, families everywhere are taking to the road to escape the frigid landscape—but you can’t outrun the cold. No one could have predicted the terrifying impact of human interference in the Arctic. Shifts in the Earth's crust have led to catastrophe and now the North Pole is located in the mid-Atlantic, making much of the eastern United States an unlivable polar hellscape...
Slingshot: Building the largest machine in human history by Robert G. Williscroft
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