8 Thought-Provoking Sci-Fi Books That Feel Like Black Mirror

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said is set in the US after a second Civil War, and it tells the story of Jason Taverner, a TV host whose life is turned upside down after an incident with an ex-lover. As Jason wakes up the next day, he realizes that his entire existence and identity have been wiped out from everyone’s memories and all the databases. He has no documents to identify himself with, which is rather unfortunate in the police state that the US has become.

Philip K. Dick does a fair share of world-building, and he really portrays a bleak future with social hierarchies, widespread drug use, and a totalitarian dictatorship in his 1975 novel.

Klara and the Sun is the latest novel of the amazing Kazuo Ishiguro, and it is written from the perspective of an “Artificial Friend,” an android who is designed to be a companion to lonely children. Through Klara’s eyes, we get to see the world outside and human life in a dystopian future, the life of Josie, a sick kid who chooses Klara to be her friend, and the mysterious power of the sun that heals everything.

Ishiguro is actually a Nobel laureate , so evidently, his writing tends to be more serious and literary, but it is not so different from the complex and often similarly philosophical stories of Black Mirror episodes.

This one might be a questionable pick because This Is How You Lose the Time War has a more literary and lyrical tone than your usual Black Mirror episode, but hear me out.

The story is about two agents from rival empires traveling through time and multiple universes and slowly falling in love. It's also an epistolary novel, meaning that we get beautifully written letters.

The book was wildly popular on social media a while ago, but if you missed the hype, here is your chance to tune in. If you liked San Junipero and enjoy dystopian LGBTQ love stories filled with emotions, I think you'll like this one!

The story is set in the near future where society is exposed to a contagious disease similar to the flu (believe it or not, it was actually written before COVID). The twist is that in one percent of the infected people, the virus causes “Haden’s syndrome,” meaning that the victims are fully awake but unable to move, so they become “locked in,” trapped inside their bodies. They can borrow the body of “Integrators” or use robotic avatars called “threeps.” This can often complicate things, though.

The center of the story is a murder investigation where the suspect is an Integrator, and we follow Agent Shane (who is also using a threep) and Agent Vann trying to uncover the mystery while the author also reflects on societal issues and what it means to be human.

Love Minus Eighty, as the title implies, isn't just a sci-fi but also a love story  (although not a conventional one for sure). In the world of the novel, young women are artificially preserved after their death in cryogenic tubes so that they can be woken up by potential suitors who can buy themselves some time to chat with them and later even permanently revive them.

Two of the protagonists, Rob and Winter, also talk to each other and fall in love this way, but it gets even weirder. The whole reason for Winter being there is because of an accident caused by Rob, which caused her death in the first place.

Kallocain is a real classic from the 1940s written by the Swedish Karin Boye. It's one of the “first generation” dystopian novels, together with the likes of Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World.

The story is told from the perspective of a scientist, Leo Kall, in a totalitarian world state who discovers a truth serum (he calls it Kallocain, hence the title).

At first, Kall is a law-abiding, loyal citizen who does not question the status quo, but once he sees his invention misused by the government, he starts to become hesitant. Still, it doesn't stop him from trying the serum on his wife, and later even a rival government becomes involved.

Cloud is a powerful tech company that slowly started to extend its influence to every aspect of life—and even after numerous disasters and crises, it is still thriving. This is where Paxton and Zinnia work, although their motivations are completely different.

Paxton is forced to take a security job after losing everything because of the company and is slowly becoming indoctrinated, while Zinnia is a spy who tries to infiltrate Cloud in order to reveal its darkest secrets.

Similarly to Black Mirror and many of the books mentioned here, The Warehouse is a near-future dystopia showing the corporate nightmare our world is slowly turning into.

Ted Chiang’s short story collection definitely has a similar nature to Black Mirror and that episodic feeling due to the stories’ relative brevity. The stories tend to focus on similar themes related to technology, existentialism, and ethical dilemmas. 

Binging through multiple stories of thought-provoking speculative fiction is probably the closest you can get if you're looking for books like Black Mirror. The popularity of the collection led to its adaptation into a movie called Arrival back in 2015. 

I would also recommend checking out Exhalation, another short story collection written by Ted Chiang, which has similar vibes and explores similar themes.