Books like “Replay”

What to read after “Replay” by Ken Grimwood: 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”
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 First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Claire North · 2014
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Time Loop
- Philosophical
Harry August dies and is born again in the same English country house in 1919, remembering everything. Each life draws him into a hidden network of people who live their years over and over, until another of their kind begins to unravel time itself and asks him to stop it.
3
All You Need Is Kill
Hiroshi Sakurazaka · 2004
From the same world: “Time Loop”
- Time Loop
A young soldier is thrown into a war against alien Mimics and killed on his first day of battle, then wakes on the morning before, again and again. Each death teaches him something, and he must relive the same fight until he can survive long enough to find a way out.
4
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.
5
The Time Machine
H. G. Wells · 1895
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical” and “Melancholic”
An inventor builds a machine that carries him far into the future. He finds a gentle people living above ground and a sinister race below, and slowly learns what became of humanity. A short, influential tale of time travel and a dark vision of the end.
6
Earth Abides
George R. Stewart · 1949
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical” and “Melancholic”
- Philosophical
- Melancholic
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.
7
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch · 2016
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Star-Crossed Lovers
A physicist is knocked out and wakes in a version of Chicago where he never married and never had a son. To get home, he must cross a multiverse of his own choices while another version of himself hunts him.
8
Life After Life
Kate Atkinson · 2013
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical” and “Melancholic”
Ursula Todd is born in 1910 and dies, then is born again in the same English house. Over many lives she survives accidents, war and bad choices, and begins to sense that her repetitions might be leading somewhere.
9
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut · 1969
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Time Travel
Billy Pilgrim, a chaplain's assistant and prisoner of war in Dresden, becomes unstuck in time, living his life out of order among moments in the war and on another planet. His flat, looping account turns a firebombing and a life's small cruelties into a dark joke about fate.
10
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.
11
Red Mars
Kim Stanley Robinson · 1992
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
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.
12
The Fault in Our Stars
John Green · 2012
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical” and “Melancholic”
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.