Member-only story
Where reality ends and imagination begins
Four Mind-Bending Books That Changed How I See Reality
From dismissing sci-fi as “just aliens and spaceships” to discovering it’s the most human genre of all
I used to be that reader — the one who dismissed science fiction as “just spaceships and aliens.” But 2024 changed everything. What started as a casual venture into the genre turned into an intellectual odyssey that transformed how I think about humanity, technology, and our place in the universe.
Let me take you through the books that broke down my prejudices and rebuilt my worldview, one mind-bending concept at a time.
The Three-Body Problem: When Science Meets Philosophy
“In a game, the loser always has the right to choose when to end it.”
Liu Cixin’s masterpiece wasn’t just my introduction to Chinese science fiction — it was a crash course in quantum mechanics, game theory, and the fundamental questions of existence. The story, which begins during China’s Cultural Revolution and expands into a cosmic battle for survival, forced me to grapple with concepts I’d never considered: What if the basic laws of physics weren’t constant? What would that mean for human civilization?
The genius of this book lies in how it uses hard science to explore deeply human questions. Through the lens of an alien invasion unlike any I’d encountered before, I found myself contemplating the nature of faith, the value of human progress, and our species’ place in a potentially hostile universe.
Dark Matter: The Road Not Taken
We all live day to day completely oblivious to the fact that we’re a part of a much larger and stranger reality than we can possibly imagine.
Blake Crouch’s thriller about quantum superposition reads like a love letter to the choices we make — and the ones we don’t. On the surface, it’s about a physicist who gets abducted and finds himself in a life he doesn’t recognize. But beneath the adrenaline-pumping chase scenes lies a profound meditation on identity, regret, and the paths we choose in life.
