Books like Foundation, according to Reddit

The read-alike list

Ranked by co-mention strength — how often each book shares a thread with Foundation, normalized so ubiquitous books don't dominate.

#1

Dune

Frank Herbert

A duke's son survives his family's betrayal on a desert planet and becomes the prophet who leads its people to war.

411 shared threads · mixed

#2

Hyperion

Dan Simmons

Seven pilgrims journey toward a monster that grants one wish and kills everyone else, and each tells the story of why they came.

373 shared threads · mixed

#3

Ender's Game

Orson Scott Card

A six-year-old is drafted into a war academy that trains him to command a fleet, and he doesn't find out what he actually did until it's over.

224 shared threads · praised

#4

The Three-Body Problem

Liu Cixin

A Chinese radio astronomer's decades-old reply to an alien signal puts Earth on a collision course with an invasion fleet centuries out.

221 shared threads · panned

#5

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams

Earth gets demolished for a hyperspace bypass minutes after a man's house is demolished for a road, and his best friend turns out to be an alien with a towel.

142 shared threads · praised

#6

The Left Hand of Darkness

Ursula K. Le Guin

An envoy is sent alone to a planet where everyone is genderless most of the month, and he has to unlearn who he assumes is in charge.

200 shared threads · praised

#7

The Dispossessed

Ursula K. Le Guin

A physicist from an anarchist moon colony travels to the wealthy world that exiled his people, carrying a theory that could reunite them or arm their enemies.

187 shared threads · mixed

#8

Children of Time

Adrian Tchaikovsky

A terraforming experiment goes wrong, a nanovirus lands on spiders instead of monkeys, and evolution builds a civilization nobody planned for.

266 shared threads · praised

#9

The Martian

Andy Weir

A botanist gets left for dead on Mars and has to grow food on a planet that wants him gone, one duct-taped fix at a time.

187 shared threads · mixed

#10

Neuromancer

William Gibson

A burned-out hacker banned from cyberspace takes one last job to breach the AI that might already own a piece of him.

183 shared threads · praised

#11

Snow Crash

Neal Stephenson

A pizza-delivery samurai and a skateboard courier chase a mind-hacking virus through a franchised, corporate America.

165 shared threads · mixed

#12

The Lord of the Rings

J. R. R. Tolkien

A gardener, a burglar's heir, and seven others walk a piece of jewelry to a volcano because destroying it is the only way to stop a war.

122 shared threads · mixed

The overlap, in numbers

Where each pairing actually shows up. Click through for the full Reddit verdict on each book.

1. #1 Dune by Frank Herbert — 411 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
2. #2 Hyperion by Dan Simmons — 373 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
3. #3 Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card — 224 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
4. #4 The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin — 221 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
5. #5 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams — 142 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
6. #6 The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin — 200 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
7. #7 The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin — 187 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
8. #8 Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky — 266 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
9. #9 The Martian by Andy Weir — 187 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
10. #10 Neuromancer by William Gibson — 183 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
11. #11 Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson — 165 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
12. #12 The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien — 122 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF