Books like “Solaris”

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

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1
Childhood's End
Arthur C. Clarke · 1953
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- First Contact
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.
2
The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin · 1969
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- First Contact
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.
3
Rendezvous with Rama
Arthur C. Clarke · 1973
Same genre: “Science fiction”
- Space Ship
- First Contact
A giant cylinder enters the solar system, and a small expedition is sent to meet it. Inside they find a sealed alien world of cities, seas and machines, with no sign of its makers and systems that are beginning to wake.
4
Speaker for the Dead
Orson Scott Card · 1986
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- First Contact
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
Blindsight
Peter Watts · 2006
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
A crew is sent to the edge of the solar system to meet an alien intelligence that has been watching Earth. Led by a man who has rewired his own brain, they discover that the visitor's mind works nothing like their own.
6
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut · 1969
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
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.
7
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.
8
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Philip K. Dick · 1968
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
In a dust-choked future, a bounty hunter is paid to retire androids that have escaped to Earth and passed as human. As he tracks them down he starts to question what makes a life real, and whether he can trust his own memories.
9
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Walter M. Miller Jr. · 1959
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
After a nuclear war, monks in a desert abbey preserve the few books that survive, including a blueprint signed by a martyred engineer. Across centuries they copy, guard and argue over the relics while civilisation slowly rebuilds and then repeats its old mistakes.
10
Children of Time
Adrian Tchaikovsky · 2015
Same genre: “Science fiction”
- Space Ship
- First Contact
After humanity's fall, a terraforming experiment leaves a world where evolved spiders build a growing civilisation. A last ark ship of humans arrives above the planet, setting the two species on a collision course across centuries of war, memory and first contact.
11
Anthem
Ayn Rand · 1938
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
In a future run by the collective, the word I has no meaning and all work is done for the good of all. Equality 7-2521 breaks the rules by doing forbidden research and falling in love, then flees a society that cannot allow an individual to exist.
12
Earth Abides
George R. Stewart · 1949
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
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.