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Recommended Reads

Sci-fi book & movie pairings you won’t want to miss

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One of the many great things about science fiction as a genre is just how many great stories fall under its wide umbrella. Sci-fi is spaceships and dystopia and the dangers of AI. It’s aliens and robots and even time travel, although, I’ll give that last one a pass. But that’s exactly what's so great about sci-fi! There’s so much to choose from that I don’t have to go anywhere near time travel to get my fix. Get ready to dive in anywhere you like—from just a little beyond the technology of today to the wildly impossible but incredibly intriguing.

Celebrate sci-fi this September with great pairings of films from Kanopy and books you can read and listen to on the Libby app. All free with your library card.


Annihilation

Movie: Annihilation
Book: Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
🎧 Audiobook

A group of scientists enter a quarantined area in order to understand its unique flora and fauna, even though previous researchers have met with tragic ends. But in addition to discovering life forms never before imagined, the members of the expedition also have secrets they're keeping from each other. The movie stars Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac, and book fans are currently rejoicing as a fourth book has been added to the original trilogy—Absolution, which comes out in Oct. 2024.

✨ Bonus book: The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

And if you like the story of Annihilation, you might also want to check out the award-winning Broken Earth trilogy by N. K. Jemisin. This is Book 1 in this cli-fi series (that’s short for climate fiction, if you’ve never run across it). It examines the fight for survival as ash blocks the sun from reaching the life on earth’s one continent, but other powerful forces are also at work. Technically, this one is fantasy instead of sci-fi, but I genuinely think VanderMeer fans are going to enjoy Jemisin a lot.


Apollo 11 - Reentry

Movie: Apollo 11

This award-winning documentary features magnificent never-before-seen footage of the Apollo 11 mission that first put a man on the moon. It’s an in-depth look at launch day from getting suited up to fixing last minute leaks, and then off to the moon and back! Personally, I marveled at the size and complexity of the equipment necessary to get a spacecraft to the launchpad, and maybe teared up a little at Neil Armstrong’s reaction to standing on the moon. I’ll never look at what it takes to get people into space quite the same again.

Book: Reentry by Eric Berge (out Sept. 24)

Apollo 11 focuses on the crowning achievement of the original space race, but there's a second race on today. Whether you love him or hate him, Elon Musk and his company, SpaceX, are at the center of it. Pulitzer-nominated journalist Berger goes behind the scenes of the company, interviewing the men and women at SpaceX as they send more payloads into orbit than the rest of the world combined.

This one isn’t out until Sept. 24, so you'll want to place your Notify Me tag in Libby today to let your library know you’re interested.

✨ Bonus books: While you wait for Reentry, you might want to try Adam Higginbotham’s book Challenger from earlier this year about one of the saddest tragedies of space exploration. Or you can go old school and check out Tom Wolfe’s classic The Right Stuff, all about the Apollo program.


Blindness

Movie: Blindness
Book: Blindness by José Saramago, translated by Giovanni Pontiero
🎧 Audiobook

A mysterious illness strikes huge swathes of people blind, but one sighted woman sneaks into quarantine with the afflicted. There she leads a small band through dangerous streets, the group’s powerful journey a moving metaphor for society today. The movie is by acclaimed Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles, and based on a novel by Nobel Prize winner, José Saramago.

✨ Bonus book: The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller

In a world stricken by a pandemic, a handful of people offer to go into a different kind of quarantine where they're given an experimental vaccine. But the vaccine is not the only thing the volunteers get in the hospital—one doctor is researching a memory treatment that allows people to relive their memories. So while the city of London descends into chaos outside the hospital windows, the past and the present blur for those within who are the hope for the future.


Metropolis

Movie: Metropolis
Book: Metropolis by Thea Von Harbou
🎧 Audiobook

Interesting fact about Harbou: She didn’t merely adapt her novel for the screen or do a novelization of her screenplay, she worked on the two simultaneously, a practice she often employed when working with her director husband, Fritz Lang. It’s a tale of haves and the exploited have-nots living in an industrialized future. The film and book are stellar examples of early sci-fi and German Expressionism.

✨ Bonus book: R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) by Karel Capek, translated by Claudia Novack-Jones

Have you ever wondered where the word “robot” comes from? Well, the answer is Capek’s 1920 play R.U.R. A Czech author and journalist, Capek opposed the rise of communism and the Soviet Union, and displayed his beliefs in this tale of the powerful attempting to manipulate other lives to their own ends. The lengthy introduction to this Penguin Classics edition is also very much worth the read.


Battle Royale

Movie: Battle Royale
Book: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
🎧 Audiobook

In a dystopian world, teens are forced to battle each other in a sick game where only one of them can survive.


The Boys from Brazil

Movie: The Boys from Brazil
Book:
The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin
🎧 Audiobook

The film has one of the all-time greatest casts—Nazi hunter Laurence Olivier is after Gregory Peck as Joseph Mengle, and they're joined by a who’s who of magnificent actors, including James Mason, Denholm Elliott, Rosemary Harris, and Uta Hagen. The sci-fi twist to this thriller is that Mengle is tied to a group of young boys who've recently been adopted around the world, but who all look the same. Who are these boys from Brazil? Well, if you don’t already know, I'm not spoiling the story.

✨ Bonus book: The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

Another alternative history featuring the dangers of continuing Nazism in the world is Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. This frightening vision asks: What if Germany and Japan had won WWII? In America, slavery is once again legal and those with Jewish ancestry are in hiding. But there's more happening with the characters at the center of this novel, and it all seems to relate, somehow, to a reclusive author. It’s easy to see how this chilling novel picked up a Hugo Award.


Earth to Echo - The Thirteenth Circle

Movie: Earth to Echo

Three young friends in Nevada are faced with having to leave their homes, thanks to a new highway. But before the fateful day, their phones go a bit wonky, which leads them out into the desert. There they find a crashed alien who is injured and just wants to go home. Will they be able to help this little fellow they name Echo? And what about their homes? This one is a heartwarming choice for your next family film night.

Book: The Thirteenth Circle by MarcyKate Connolly and Kathryn Holmes
🎧 Audiobook

Dani is an excellent student and as practical as they come. When she has to work with town oddball, Cat, on a competitive science project, Dani is appalled that Cat has already committed them to studying the town’s famous crop circles, which Cat is positive are made by aliens. But what will happen when it turns out Cat is right? This middle grade sci-fi mystery will be a delight for the whole family, so you might want to check out the audiobook.


Escape from New York - Red Rising

Movie: Escape from New York

OK, I’ll admit it. I just watched Escape from New York for the first time, even though I’m a Gen Xer. Let me tell you, that if you want to get some 80s aesthetic in your sci-fi, this movie is going to be so up your alley. The year is 1997, and crime has become so rampant that Manhattan is turned into a giant, open air prison. But when the President’s airplane goes down over the island, the decision is made to send in Snake Plissken, war hero and criminal, played perfectly by Kurt Russell, to rescue the leader of the free world.

Book: Red Rising by Pierce Brown
🎧 Audiobook

I’m not sure there's anything else quite like Escape from New York, but if you’re looking for social commentary about an imprisoned underclass, Brown’s Red Rising series might be for you. In the colonization of Mars, the Reds toil away underground in order to make the planet more comfortable for the elite Golds. But after his wife is executed, Darrow joins the Red uprising, and nothing will be the same again. The original trilogy was a huge hit, and Brown has continued examining this world, most recently in Light Bringer with more to come.


*Access may vary by library & region.

Ready to read, watch, or both? Put that library card to use and fly to other worlds this September and beyond. 🪐

RELATED READ: 8 action-packed film & book pairings

Published Sep 20, 2023

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About the Author

Shelia Mawdsley did everything from answering questions at the Reference Desk to tech training to running a classic lit book club in her 17 years in public libraries. Now she helps other public libraries make the most of their OverDrive collections. In her spare time, she’s either writing or reading, usually with an opera playing in the background. If you ever run into her, ask Shelia about #WITMonth.

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