Books like 'Understand'
Readers who enjoyed Understand by Ted Chiang also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical sc-fi psychological 20th century hard sci-fi near-future
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Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 68 ratingsFoundation and Empire tells the incredible story of a new breed of man who create a new force for galactic government. Thus, the Foundation hurtles into conflict with the decadent, decrepit First Empire. In this struggle for power amid the chaos of the stars, man stands at the threshold of a new, enlightened life which could easily be put aside for the old forces of barbarism... -
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 49 ratingsFor twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future -- to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years... -
Understand by Ted Chiang
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsLeon is a former coma victim, who has gone experimental medical treatment to repair the massive trauma his brain received after he was trapped under ice for more than an hour. He’s regained consciousness, found he has all of his faculties back and a whole lot more. Originally published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in 1991.Approx... -
Gateway by Frederik Pohl
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 47 ratingsRich or dead. Those were the choices Gateway offered. Gateway opened on all the wealth of the Universe & on reaches of unimaginable horror. The humans who rode the alien Heechee spacecraft stored on the planetoid couldn't know whether the trip would make them millionaires or corpses... -
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More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsThere's Lone, the simpleton who can hear other people's thoughts and make a man blow his brains out just by looking at him. There's Janie, who moves things without touching them, and there are the teleporting twins, who can travel ten feet or ten miles... -
Tau Zero by Poul Anderson
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe epic voyage of the spacecraft Leonora Christine will take her and her fifty-strong crew to a planet some thirty light-years distant. But, because the ship will accelerate to close to the speed of light, for those on board subjective time will slow and the journey will be of only a few years' duration.Then a buffeting by an interstellar dustcloud changes everything... -
Freeware by Rudy Rucker
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsRudy Rucker has seen the future. . .and it is extreme.The Godfather of cyberpunk--a mad scientist bravely meddling in the outrageous and heretical--Rucker created Bopper Robots, who rebelled against human society in his award-winning classic "Software... -
Revolt in 2100 by Robert A. Heinlein
Rated: 3.74 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsIt wasn't the communists who got us after all...You can read about its beginnings in Heinlein's immortal STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND: At the height of America's secular decadence came Nehemiah Scudder, bearing the rod and the wrath of the Lord for those who opposed him, and the promise of earthly happiness and heavenly bliss for those who followed him..Categorized as:
20th-century action-adventure alternate-history anthologies audiobook classics dystopia fiction -
I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein
Rated: 3.66 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsJohann Sebastian Bach Smith is immensely rich; and very old. His mind is still keen, so he has surgeons transplant his brain into a new body; the body of his gorgeous, recently deceased secretary, Eunice. But Eunice hasn't completely vacated her body..Categorized as:
20th-century action-adventure adult alternate-history audiobook book classics cyberpunk -
Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys
Rated: 3.51 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsRogue Moon is a short sf novel by Algis Budrys, published in 1960. It was a 1961 Hugo Award nominee, losing to Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz. A novella-length version of the story was included in the anthology The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume 2, edited by Ben Bova.Before 1969, every science fiction writer wrote his or her own version of the first Moon landing...
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