Books like “Dark Matter”

What to read after “Dark Matter” by Blake Crouch: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
The End of Eternity
Isaac Asimov · 1955
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Star-Crossed Lovers
Andrew Harlan works for Eternity, an organization that lives outside time and edits human history for what it believes is the greater good. His work is upended when he falls in love with a woman from his own past.
2
The Space Between Worlds
Micaiah Johnson · 2020
Same genre: “Science fiction”
- Parallel Worlds
- Survival
Cara earns her living travelling to parallel worlds where her other selves have died. When a traversal goes wrong, she is thrown into a revolution in the wasteland and uncovers a secret about the multiverse that threatens the powerful people who rely on her.
3
Speaker for the Dead
Orson Scott Card · 1986
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
Years after the war against the Formics, Andrew Wiggin travels as a Speaker for the Dead, revealing the truth of the departed. On the colony world Lusitania he is drawn into the fate of a human family and the alien Pequeninos, whose customs hide a terrible secret.
4
Replay
Ken Grimwood · 1986
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Star-Crossed Lovers
Jeff Winston dies in 1988 and wakes in 1963 in his eighteen-year-old body, with every memory of the years ahead intact. He lives that span over and over, each replay starting later, and slowly realises he is not the only one caught in the loop.
5
Red Mars
Kim Stanley Robinson · 1992
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Survival
The first hundred colonists arrive on Mars in 2026 to build a new world, a mission split between those who want to preserve the planet and those who want to change it. Over decades their disagreements grow into open conflict with Earth.
6
The Fault in Our Stars
John Green · 2012
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Star-Crossed Lovers
Hazel Grace, a teenager with terminal cancer, meets Augustus Waters at a support group. Their cautious romance grows through shared wit and a planned trip to Amsterdam, while both confront what they can and cannot control.
7
Childhood's End
Arthur C. Clarke · 1953
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
Giant alien ships appear above Earth's cities and impose a peaceful rule under the Overlords. Decades of calm and progress pass, but humanity's golden age hides a purpose no one can guess until the Overlords finally reveal themselves.
8
The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin · 1969
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Survival
An envoy from a galactic federation lands on the frozen world of Gethen to invite its nations into an alliance. Its people have no fixed gender, and as he crosses the ice with a disgraced politician, he learns how much of his own culture he took for granted.
9
The Forever War
Joe Haldeman · 1974
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Star-Crossed Lovers
A conscripted soldier fights an interstellar war against the Taurans, an alien enemy he barely understands. Relativity means each tour sends him centuries into the future, where the society he left behind has changed beyond recognition and the war has no clear end.
10
Foundation
Isaac Asimov · 1951
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
As the Galactic Empire begins to decay, mathematician Hari Seldon foresees thirty thousand years of chaos. To shorten the coming dark age he gathers scholars on the remote world Terminus, where the Foundation must survive plots, warlords and its own predictions.
11
Earth Abides
George R. Stewart · 1949
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Survival
A plague kills nearly everyone on Earth. An ecologist emerges from the mountains to find empty cities and a few survivors, and spends the rest of his life watching a new, smaller society take shape without the old world's machinery.
12
Contact
Carl Sagan · 1985
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
A radio astronomer detects a signal from a star system twenty-six light years away, and the message it carries turns out to be a set of instructions for a machine. As governments and faiths argue over its meaning, she must decide what she will risk to make the journey.