Any novels by the master of speculative science fiction and techno-fiction, Neal Stephenson. With books as thick as textbooks and nearly as dense, Stephenson has a way with big ideas that span space and time and reality. He is by far one of my favourite authors—and, trivia for you—if you were to ask me which book tops my list of all books by all authors, I would undoubtedly tell you that I have read Anathem at least twenty time, so beat that!

Any variety of books by the king of horror, Mr. King. I read my first King fiction way back in elementary school, much younger than I likely should have, in the form of a short story from one of his collections. The story was Children of the Corn, and I too entered something that day and never left.

A kind of surrealist-slash-parallel realism story of a world without the internet but inhabited by a society fascinated by little robot pets called “cures” which stand in as kind of a metaphor for social media, technology and addiction, the story is told through the eyes of the mentally ill Belt who owns the worlds oldest cure.

As far as hard science fiction goes, the story of Bob Johansson’s journey from twenty-first century tech bro to sentient and sarcastic Von Neumann probe populating and defending the known universe through his technical prowess and Trekkie knowledge leans into the lighter side of fictional fare.

A classic of Russian literature deep in the philosophical confusion of family relationships.

A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery to rival George Orwell’s—1Q84 is a tremendous feeat of imagiantion from one of our most revered contemporary writers.