6 Best science fiction books like Bewilderment by Richard Powers

If you liked the science fiction plot in Bewilderment by Richard Powers , here is a list of 6 books like this:

Similar categories in Hernan Diaz's Trust book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• audiobook
• literary fiction
• fiction
• novels

"Where there's a ventriloquist, there's a dummy."

-Hernan Diaz, Trust

"Chaos is a vortex that spins faster with each thing it swallows."

-Hernan Diaz, Trust

"Silence between 2 is always shared. But 1 of the 2 owns it and shares it with the other."

-Hernan Diaz, Trust

"I’ve come to think one is truly married only when one is more committed to one’s vows than the person they refer to."

-Hernan Diaz, Trust

Similar categories in Claire Keegan's Small Things Like These book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• literary fiction
• fiction
• audiobook

"Always, Christmas brought out the best and the worst in people."

-Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

"for people were bound, he knew, to reveal not only themselves, but what they knew, in conversation"

-Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

"And then the nights came on and the frosts took hold again, and blades of cold slid under doors and cut the knees off those who still knelt to say the rosary."

-Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

"When he reached the yard gate and found the padlock seized with frost, he felt the strain of being alive and wished he had stayed in bed, but he made himself carry on and crossed to a neighbour’s hou…"

-Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

Similar categories in Paul Lynch's Prophet Song book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• science fiction
• audiobook

"people are entitled to some small moment of peace."

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

"the child absorbing the mother’s trauma and storing it in his body for later use,"

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

"... time is at once addition and subtraction, time adds one day to the next and always takes away from what's left..."

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

"...knowing how it is so that all boys grow up and pull away from home to unmake the world in the guise of making it, nature decrees it so."

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

Similar categories in Ann Patchett's Tom Lake book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• family
• fiction
• contemporary
• audiobook

"You can’t pretend this [Covid] isn’t happening,"

-Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

"In the summer the pear trees were fine. In the summer, all that is hideous about a pear tree is hidden by leaves and pears. But once those disguises were removed they were nothing but acres of murder…"

-Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

"Hazel, listen to me. I'm going to tell you something important, you need to be brave.' I then explained to the dog how I have told myself for so many years that my career fell apart because I wasn't …"

-Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

"It's as if someone bought all the diamonds at Tiffany's, and crushed them into dust, then spread that dust across the water so that it sifts down evenly, filtering through the shards of light that cu…"

-Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

Similar categories in Abraham Verghese's The Covenant of Water book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• literary fiction
• family
• fiction
• novels
• audiobook

Similar categories in Percival Everett's James book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• audiobook
• literary fiction
• fiction
• novels

Similar categories in Lauren Groff's Matrix book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• audiobook
• literary fiction
• fiction
• novels

"All souls are limited in the circles of their own understanding."

-Lauren Groff, Matrix

"Women in this world are vulnerable; only reputation can keep them from being crushed."

-Lauren Groff, Matrix

"Foolish creature, old Marie would say to that child. Open your hands and let your life go. It has never been yours to do with what you will."

-Lauren Groff, Matrix

"How slow the final flowering of good intentions can be, the poisonous full bloom taking place centuries beyond the scope of the original life."

-Lauren Groff, Matrix

Similar categories in Daniel Mason's North Woods book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• novels
• nature
• audiobook

Similar categories in Geraldine Brooks's Horse book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• literary fiction
• fiction
• audiobook

"I don't rightly know who was my great-grandfather, much less his father. How come you know that about a horse?"

-Geraldine Brooks, Horse

"She felt a little clandestine, as if she were ten years old again, sneaking a dead rat past her mother so she could articulate a Rattus norvegicus domestica for her bedroom display."

-Geraldine Brooks, Horse

"You have to know that bigots are unwittingly handing you an edge. By thinking you're lesser than they are, they underestimate you. Lean on that. Learn to use it, and you'll get the upper hand."

-Geraldine Brooks, Horse

Similar categories in James McBride's The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• audiobook

Similar categories in Paul Harding's This Other Eden book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• audiobook
• literary fiction
• fiction
• novels

Similar categories in Tommy Orange's Wandering Stars book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• audiobook
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary

"And in the year 1924 Indian citizenship will have been granted, even though they will mean to dissolve tribes by giving citizenship, dissolve being another word for disappearance, a kind of chemical …"

-Tommy Orange, Wandering Stars

Similar categories in Eleanor Catton's Birnam Wood book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• environment
• audiobook

"...wondering, not for the first time, when exactly she had become so technologically dependent that her first instinct in every unpredicted circumstance was to outsource her imagination to her phone."

-Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

"Not at all,’ he said. ‘I was just going to remark that being a cliche can be very useful. You ought to consider it some time.’ ’Oh yeah?’ ’Yeah,’ he said. ‘It means people underestimate you. They thi…"

-Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

"As his rhetoric and reading life matured, he grew intensely scornful of what passed at his high school for 'education' - the mania for testing; the intolerance of real dissent; and the conformist cel…"

-Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

"... his future, had either been sold or laid to waste by his parents' generation, trapping him in a perpetual adolescence that was further heightened by the infantilising unreality of the Internet as…"

-Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

Similar categories in Ann Napolitano's Hello Beautiful book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• family
• fiction
• contemporary
• audiobook

"The child inside Julia lay wide-eyed in the dark, knowing that she was Jo, but only because Sylvie was Beth."

-Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

"You and your sisters have so many reference points, such a dense history," William said. "I never get used to it."

-Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

"She was Julia's wild hair, she was the lake her husband had once been carried out of, and no matter what happened next, she was love."

-Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

"You’re depressed, not crazy. It’s not insane to be depressed in this world. It’s more sane than being happy. I never trust those upbeat individuals who grin no matter what’s going on. Those are the o…"

-Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

Similar categories in Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• audiobook

"Friendship,"

-Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

"How I will miss the horses."

-Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

"You try again. You fail better."

-Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

"There are no ghosts, but up here"

-Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Similar categories in Paul Murray's The Bee Sting book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• literary fiction
• family
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• audiobook

"It is for love. You are doing this for love."

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"We all have problems. But often instead of accepting the truth about ourselves, we cover it up. We try to make ourselves the way we think we’re expected to be."

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"Maybe every era has an atrocity woven into its fabric. Maybe every society is complicit in terrible things and only afterwards gets around to pretending they didn’t know. When the kids ask, tell them…"

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"Maybe that’s how it will go – instead of one definitive cataclysm, a series of ‘anomalies’, each time lasting longer, with the stretches of what you call normal life becoming further and further apar…"

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

Similar categories in Louise Erdrich's The Night Watchman book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• audiobook
• literary fiction
• fiction
• novels

"But every so often the government remembered about Indians and when they did they always tried to solve Indians, thought Thomas. They solve us by getting rid of us. And do they tell us when they plan…"

-Louise Erdrich, The Night Watchman

Similar categories in Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• audiobook

"A kid is a terrible thing to be, in charge of nothing."

-Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

"I can still feel in my bones how being mad was the one thing holding me together."

-Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

"Counting on Jesus to save the day is no more real than sending up the Batman signal."

-Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

"life is a wild, impetuous ride. There could be good shit up ahead, don’t rule it out."

-Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

Similar categories in Damon Galgut's The Promise book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary

"A smile quickly cut his face and then healed up."

-Damon Galgut, The Promise

"Give him a taboo and he feels the need to break it."

-Damon Galgut, The Promise

"Children still, on the verge of not being children any more."

-Damon Galgut, The Promise

"Her own voice sounds echoey, as if somebody else is speaking."

-Damon Galgut, The Promise

Similar categories in Nathan Hill's Wellness book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• family
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• audiobook

"It's an altogether manic and ceaseless conversation, a conversation that feels sometimes like falling down stairs, barely keeping upright, taken by gravity, skipping, grasping, and then somehow landi…"

-Nathan Hill, Wellness

"Behind curtains, this, he thinks, is what lovers do—they are alchemists and architects; pioneers and fabulists; they make one thing another; they invent the world around them. So he says, ‘Yes I beli…"

-Nathan Hill, Wellness

Similar categories in Jonathan Franzen's Crossroads book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• literary fiction
• family
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• audiobook

"She seemed more pitiable than murderable."

-Jonathan Franzen, Crossroads

"I’m the fat little humiliation he’s married to."

-Jonathan Franzen, Crossroads

"How like a mental illness a nation’s economy was!"

-Jonathan Franzen, Crossroads

"I think badness is the fundamental condition of humanity."

-Jonathan Franzen, Crossroads

Similar categories in Maggie Shipstead's Great Circle book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• audiobook

"Numbness is not an absence of feeling but a felt absence."

-Maggie Shipstead, Great Circle

"Abandonment stings, even when it means freedom. [Hadley Baxter]"

-Maggie Shipstead, Great Circle

"You don't just love a person, you love a vision of your life with them."

-Maggie Shipstead, Great Circle

"We must bend in the wind sometimes.... So much is beyond our control. [Mrs. Fahey]"

-Maggie Shipstead, Great Circle

Similar categories in Lauren Groff's The Vaster Wilds book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• nature
• audiobook

"For what is a girl but a vessel made to hold the desires of men."

-Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds

"O put the memory away, girl, she told herself sternly. For the sorrow could eat you entire."

-Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds

"And humans were not made to be always alone; humans survive only in the company of other humans."

-Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds

"Against the resistance of other minds, one's thoughts are pulled out of their comfortable shapes, and true thinking begins."

-Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds

Similar categories in Jennifer Egan's The Candy House book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• science fiction
• novels
• audiobook

"A new remote and unfamiliar place can make the prior remote and unfamiliar place seem like home."

-Jennifer Egan, The Candy House

"Mysteries that are destroyed by measurement were never truly mysterious; only our ignorance made them seem so."

-Jennifer Egan, The Candy House

"Nothing is free! Only children expect otherwise even as myths and fairy tales warn us: Rumpelstiltskin, King Midas, Handsel and Gretel. Never trust a candy house! It was only a matter of time before …"

-Jennifer Egan, The Candy House

Similar categories in Richard Powers's Bewilderment book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• science fiction
• family
• novels
• environment
• nature
• audiobook

"Someday we'll learn again how to train on this living place, and holding still will be like flying."

-Richard Powers, Bewilderment

"Life is something we need to stop correcting. My boy was a pocket universe I could never hope to fathom."

-Richard Powers, Bewilderment

"He wanted drama and showdown and righteous calls for justice from concerned citizens. Instead, he got America."

-Richard Powers, Bewilderment

"Apparently God had made life on one planet only, and only one country of that planet's dominant species needed to manage it."

-Richard Powers, Bewilderment

Similar categories in Emily St. John Mandel's Sea of Tranquility book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• science fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• audiobook

"It seems like it’s been fairly well contained,"

-Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

"You should have told me my cat was a time traveler."

-Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

"There's a low-level, specific pain and having to accept that putting up with you requires a certain generosity of spirit in your loved ones."

-Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

"What if one were to dissolve into the wilderness like salt into water. He wants to go home. For the first time, Edwin begins to worry about his sanity."

-Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

Similar categories in Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• science fiction
• audiobook

Similar categories in Louise Erdrich's The Sentence book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• audiobook

"I'd taken a pink eraser to my childhood and blurred the pain."

-Louise Erdrich, The Sentence

"A newborn baby has a powerful effect on character. But so does a toddler. A child. A preteen. A teenager. A mother changes with every stage. Some stages are within a mother's skill set. Some stages a…"

-Louise Erdrich, The Sentence

Similar categories in Celeste Ng's Our Missing Hearts book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• science fiction
• audiobook

"Succulents would grow anew from a broken-off leaf, pushing roots out into the air, then down into the soil: a piece of its own body, transformed into its child."

-Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts

"Evidence of his mother, out there, elsewhere, so worried about somebody else's children though she'd left her own behind. The irony of it leached into his veins."

-Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts

"Why did I tell you so many stories? Because I wanted the world to make sense to you. I wanted to make sense of the world, for you. I wanted the world to make sense."

-Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts

"And we need their generosity to keep this place open. Or, just as likely, someone got nervous and got rid of it preemptively. Us public libraries--a lot of us just can't take the risk."

-Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts

Similar categories in Percival Everett's The Trees book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• literary fiction
• fiction
• audiobook

"Unknown Male is a name,"

-Percival Everett, The Trees

"Goddamnit, I hate murder more than just about anything,"

-Percival Everett, The Trees

"You should know I consider police shootings to be lynchings"

-Percival Everett, The Trees

"People should know, understand that not all Thursdays are the same."

-Percival Everett, The Trees

Similar categories in Elizabeth Strout's Oh William! book and Richard Powers's Bewilderment

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• family
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• audiobook

"I am not invisible no matter how deeply I feel that I am."

-Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

"Mensen zijn eenzaam, dat wil ik hier maar mee zeggen. Veel mensen kunnen niet tegen degenen die ze goed kennen zeggen wat ze misschien wel zouden willen zeggen."

-Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

"Er was iets aan haar wat ten diepste -bijna wezenlijk- in harmonie was met zichzelf, zoals iemand is, denk ik, wanneer allebei zijn ouders van hem hebben gehouden."

-Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

"Verdriet is zoiets- o, het is zoiets éénzaams; dat is het beangstigende ervan, denk ik. Het is alsof je langs de glaswand van een heel hoog gebouw naar beneden glijdt terwijl niemand je ziet."

-Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!