What to read after “The Martian Chronicles” by Ray Bradbury: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.
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.
John Carter, a former Confederate soldier, wakes on Mars and finds a dying world of red deserts, warring tribes and thin air. Taken in by the green Martians, he learns their customs and their languages, and sets out to protect Dejah Thoris, a princess of the red Martians.
Port and Kit Moresby travel from New York to North Africa with their friend Tunner, hoping the trip will mend their marriage. As they move deeper into the Sahara, the heat, illness and emptiness of the landscape strip away the habits that held them together, and each of them drifts toward a different kind of loss.
After a flu wipes out most of humanity, a travelling theatre troupe moves between the small settlements that remain, performing Shakespeare. The story follows survivors across decades and asks what of civilization is worth carrying forward.
On the desert planet Arrakis, young Paul Atreides survives the destruction of his family and is taken in by the Fremen. As he learns their ways and the spice trade that powers an empire, he becomes the centre of a prophecy, a rebellion and a war for control of the known universe.
Expelled from prep school and drifting through New York before going home, teenager Holden Caulfield narrates a few days of restless encounters. He rails against adults he calls phonies while quietly grieving a brother and his own place in the world.
Janie Crawford tells her friend the story of her life: three marriages, a long search for love and independence, and the storm that changes everything. Set in the Black towns and farms of Florida, the novel follows her from a silent girl to a woman who speaks for herself.
In 1950s New York, five young women take jobs at a publishing house and expect hard work to give them the lives they want. Caroline, April, Gregg, Barbara, and Mary Agnes navigate demanding bosses, office affairs, and the narrow choices open to women. Their friendships hold them together as romance and ambition pull them in different directions.
A millennial office worker in New York keeps showing up to her publishing job as a fever turns people into repetitive, wandering shells. Her account of the collapse moves between satire of work and the quiet end of the world.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Zafira is the Hunter, a young woman who disguises herself as a man to enter the cursed Arz and bring food to her starving people. Nasir is the Prince of Death, sent by his father to kill her. Both are drawn into a desert quest for an artifact that could restore magic, and neither expects what they find.
An aging astronomer stays behind at a remote Arctic research station after the world loses contact with everyone else. Far above, the crew of a returning space mission hears nothing from Earth. Their two stories move toward each other across the ice and the dark.
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.
Strange objects fall into the deepest oceans, and soon ships vanish and coastal towns are attacked by something unseen. A radio journalist and his wife follow the escalating crisis as humanity struggles to understand an enemy that never shows itself.
Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger, follows the man in black across a vast, dying desert. His pursuit leads him through ruined towns and old memories, and forces him to weigh his obsession with the Dark Tower against the life of a boy he meets on the road.
Doctor Adoulla Makhslood is the last real ghul hunter in the desert city of Dhamsawaat, and he wants only to retire. When a series of murders points to a powerful supernatural enemy, he takes up his sword again with his young apprentice and a fierce tribeswoman, and the three pursue the danger beyond the city walls.
Esther Greenwood wins a magazine internship in New York, but the city and the pressure of her bright future leave her feeling hollow. Back home, her mind begins to slip and she is drawn toward a darkness she cannot name, even as she tries to recover.
Shasta has grown up poor in Calormen and dreams of escape. When he meets a talking horse who longs for Narnia, the two flee north together, joined by a runaway noble girl and her horse. Their road lies across a burning desert, with pursuers close behind and a secret about Shasta's past waiting at the end.
Cylinders fall from Mars onto the English countryside, and the machines inside prove ruthlessly hostile. A student watches the invasion spread toward London as orderly Victorian society collapses around him.
A young woman in colonial Korea, Sunja, leaves home for Japan with a husband she barely knows and raises a family that lives as outsiders for generations. Through war and poverty, the household holds on to its dignity and its secrets.
Kathy, Tommy and Ruth grow up together at an English boarding school where the children are treated as special and kept apart from the world. As adults they learn what they were made for, and try to hold on to love and dignity in a life they cannot choose. A quiet, sad speculative novel.
What should I read after “The Martian Chronicles”?
Start with “Earth Abides”, “A Princess of Mars”, “The Sheltering Sky”: they are the closest to “The Martian Chronicles” in tropes and mood. Under each book in the list you will see what exactly it has in common.
How are similar books chosen?
We compare tropes (for “The Martian Chronicles” these are Desert World, First Contact, Apocalypse), genre, plot, era and tone. It is not “readers also bought”; it is similarity in the content itself.
Are there recent books in this list?
Yes. Among the newer ones are “Station Eleven”, “Severance”, “We Hunt the Flame”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
