The 20 Best Books Like Dark Matter (Sci-Fi Technothrillers)

Sometimes you want to read some science fiction and get lost in the action, but often, you want a little more suspense right? Sure the age of discovery with new life and civilizations is wonderful, as is the constant struggle between empires and rebellions for control of the galaxy, but sometimes it can all seem a little dry.

This is where technothrillers come in, and there is a massive market for it, with thousands of readers enjoying and devouring the unique blend of technology, as well as the ways that it messes with the lives of the people who use it. Technothrillers tend to ask the questions that most people in our world are too afraid to ask, and then they show off those consequences.

It is a mashup that works very well in a book form, and it allows the readers and authors to tap into those primal worries, fears, and thoughts of conspiracy that are starting to become increasingly real within our own world.

If you love science fiction and thrillers, or like one genre and have no experience with the other, or just want to try something new, then you will find a book on this list that meets your exact needs. It might even make you a true fan of the technothriller genre, and if you decide you love it, then there are countless books waiting for you to enjoy.

Dark Matter was written by Blake Crouch, who had previously authored the Wayward Pines trilogy, and it deals with the question everyone asks on a daily basis: “What if I had made a different choice?” The book tackles this question with the ‘many-worlds interpretation’ of quantum mechanics, which states that every time we make a choice, another version of ourselves is created in an alternate world that has made the opposite choice.

Whether you have read Dark Matter, Wayward Pines, or are just interested in the Technothriller concept, here are some of the best books that will certainly keep you hooked until the very end!

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Alone, with only the two corpses of his former crewmates for company, Ryland Grace knows one thing, he’s been asleep for a very long time. With his memories gone and his spaceship millions of miles away from the nearest human lifeform, he’s got to puzzle out where he is, who he is, and the answer to a problem that will doom all human life if left unsolved.

And he might not be as alone as he thought.

This book is certainly one if you love space, mysteries, and that dreading sense that something else is going on… give Project Hail Mary a look!

Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister

Whenever it comes to solving a murder, you often don’t witness the crime, and the suspect, as the crime is happening. However, this happens to Jen as she notices her son Todd murder a stranger in her driveway. But when she falls asleep the night after the murder, she wakes up to yesterday. Then the next night it is the day before yesterday.

With each night taking Jen further back in time, she needs to delve into her son’s life and the secrets of her family in order to prevent tomorrow’s crime from ever coming to pass. Give Wrong Place, Wrong Time a read and you will find it is the right book for you!

All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai

It can be pretty fun to see what people in the past thought the future would be like: flying cars, robot butlers, and colonies on the moon. For Tom Barren, his 2016 is exactly like that, a paradise filled with technology and utopia as far as the eye can see… and he is utterly unhappy. But when a time travel mistake sends Tom from his world into ours, he discovers that what it lacks in tech, it makes up for in happiness. Now, he needs to figure out what his future is supposed to be.

It is a unique twist on time travel, and if you are interested pick up All Our Wrong Todays today!

Sleeping Giants by Slyvain Neuvel

Rose fell through the earth one day and landed in the palm of a giant metal hand. 17 years later, she’s working with a team to try to figure out what the hand is, and why it is buried in the earth. However, more than her team is trying to learn the origins of the metal hand, and not all of them have noble intentions. It’s a race to see who will solve the puzzle first, as well as what happens when the answer is shared for all to see.

The first book in the Themis Files trilogy, Sleeping Giants, sets up a mystery and a compelling story all at once, and will have to be eager to read the next two books!

The Book Of M by Peng Shepherd

Whenever shadows start disappearing across the world, those affected by the loss of their shadows gain power beyond their wildest dreams but end up losing their memories as their power grows. Ory and Max have kept hidden from the phenomena known as “The Forgetting”, until one day Max’s shadow disappears and she disappears too, running away to protect her husband.

Now Ory must brave the new world in the aftermath of The Forgetting, discovering danger, rumors of a cure, and a cult that worships the shadowless, all while trying to find his wife before she forgets him forever.

The Book of M is a book that reminds us of the powers and weaknesses of our memories, and it is a read that you won’t forget!

The Fold by Peter Clines

Mike Erikson gets pulled away from his quiet life by a mystery only known as the ‘Albuquerque door’ a door that folds dimensions and allows people who step through the door to travel hundreds of feet in just one step. While the creators of the door state that this will allow humans to finally teleport, Mike learns that the door isn’t as safe as it seems, and there might be more to the story than the scientists are telling, and the danger of the fold might be worldwide.

The Fold draws you in and makes it difficult to stop until you hit the end, with a twist you won’t see coming!

Hell Divers by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

The first of a ten-book series, Hell Divers has humanity floating over a poisoned planet in massive airships. The Hell Divers are those who skydive to the ruins of Earth to get the supplies the aging ships need to stay in the air, but the next mission that they go on might be their last as they uncover a secret that threatens humanity’s continued existence above the planet.

Hell Divers isn’t just a fantastic book, but also the start of a 10-book series that will have your heart pounding. Just like if you were jumping out of a plane.

The First Fifteen Lives Of Harry August By Clare North

Harry August dies, but he doesn’t pass on… instead, he wakes up as a child with all the knowledge of the lives he had before. Now on his 12th life, on his deathbed, he looks up to see a young girl who tells him that she’s been searching for him, and she’s got a message to send. Now Harry needs to save his past while also fighting against a very dangerous future.

Funny and filled with science fiction and time travel, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is a fantastic book that takes you on a journey from life to life, and the lessons learned along the way.

Infinite by Jeremy Robinson

The first in a 13-book series, Infinite follows a spaceship named the Galahad and the 50 scientists and engineers who seek to colonize Earth’s nearest neighbor. And most of them are dead. When William Chanokh is killed by his friend Tom, he dies for the first time, but not the last… and the Galahad is currently on a faster-than-light trip to nowhere. Now the immortal William Chanokh goes on a journey with no end, encountering more than he ever thought possible.

With 13 books in the series, Infinite is certainly one way to describe this amazing story!

The One By John Marrs

What if love could be perfectly quantified and feelings could be boiled down to simple code? In The One, a DNA company is promising that, matching people with their soulmates and upending the entire idea of what true love is, as well as how we humans get there. With genetic matches overtaking soulmates, the story walks us through this new definition of love with five people who each have their own soulmates and their own secrets.

The One is a book that forces readers to understand just what ‘true love’ means and how far we will go to find it.

The Ice Limit By Douglas Preston

Whenever a 4,000-ton meteorite is discovered off the coast of Chile, a ship containing the world’s finest minds are sent on an expedition to bring it to the museum of a billionaire. However, the closer they get to the meteorite, the more people start to die, and the more the mystery of exactly what this find really is starts to deepen. But one thing is clear: How can the team move the meteorite, whenever they can’t even get to it?

The Ice Limit is a mystery that will stretch your mind to the limit as the powers and origins of the meteorite are revealed.

The Andromeda Strain by Micheal Crichton

When a military space probe crashes near a small Arizona town, a mysterious contagion from space escapes and kills everyone in the vicinity, save for two people. Now the U.S. government must mobilize a top-secret project that sends four biochemists into ground zero to discover what this contagion is and how to stop it before it spreads out of control.

But understanding the Andromeda Strain is harder than the top officials want to hear, and with a race to prevent a worldwide contagion from erupting, the biochemists are forced to take drastic measures to understand what has been unleashed from outer space, before it dooms the world.

The Andromeda Strain has been called the book that revitalized the science fiction genre and created technothrillers as a genre, and the best part is there is a second book in the series too if you just can’t get enough!

The Hunt For Red October by Tom Clancy

The novel that spawned the hero known as Jack Ryan, this book sees a defection of a cutting-edge submarine and its captain from the Soviet Union. It is also the book that brought techno-thriller to the mainstream, as both the Americans and the Soviet Union hunt for the Red October submarine, while CIA analyst Jack Ryan tries to prove his theory that the captain of the sub is defecting and not attacking.

The Hunt For Red October is the book that launched both Tom Clancy and Jack Ryan into the spotlight, so if you like this book, then there is plenty more where that came from!

Deception Point By Dan Brown

Set amid both the hunt for alien life as well as the political landscape of an upcoming U.S Presidential Election, Deception Point sees the discovery of a meteorite that could contain proof of alien life, and also damage the campaign of one of the runners in the election. With various people using the meteorite to jockey for political power, the research team investigating the meteorite finds that there is much more to their discovery than meets the eye.

Deception Point is an exciting political thriller that will leave you guessing until the very end, and will have you wondering just who and what you can trust.

Daemon and Freedom By Daniel Suarez

This two-part novel sees a Daemon (a computer program designed to run in the background autonomously), starting to change the world after its programmer passed away from cancer. With the world divided by those who seek freedom from the Daemon’s influence and those who benefit from the new world order, various groups attempt to control the program and avoid being controlled, only to be thrown into a game for the fate of the old world and control of the new.

Daemon and Freedom are both two interesting novels that tell one story of a game that goes too far, and what happens when the world becomes a piece to be played, and a prize to be won. 

Night Probe By Clive Cussler

With the near future of the world overwhelmed by the scarcity of oil, and the United States desperate to overcome both a financial crisis and a resource crisis, a large tap of rich oil is discovered in the waters of Quebec, forcing politics and national relations to the forefront as the protagonist Dirk Pitt works to discover a treaty that has been lost to history.

With science fiction, secret history, and a spy thriller that will leave you guessing until the very end, Night Probe is a book that you won’t be able to put down until the last page!

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Whenever you combine the stories of cryptography with the tales referencing H.P. Lovecraft, you get Cryptonomicon. This technothriller takes a team of codebreakers and marines during World War 2 who are attempting to misdirect the Germans about the Allies’ cracking of the Enigma code. While Japanese forces build a bunker in the Philippines for an unknown purpose.

Those past plot threads collide in 1997, when the descendants of those two original missions attempt to build a data haven for themselves, only to discover that past grudges and secrets won’t stay buried. If you love a time-bending tale with more twists than you know what to do with, then Cryptonomicon is the right book for you!

Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves By Matthew Reilly

Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves is the next book dealing with protagonist Shane Schofield. When an irregular force called the Army of Thieves captures an old Soviet-era weapons installation and seeks to unleash a weapon that could burn up the atmosphere of the Earth. When Shane Schofield is recruited to stop them, he not only needs to work with a new team and old friends but also confront the consequences of his past choices to save the world.

Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves is an epic technothriller that will make you not only want to keep reading but might also make you look at the rest of the books in the series too!

Lost In Time by A G Riddle

This book details a father and a daughter, and the murder of a mother that sees the father convicted. But instead of the father going to prison for the murder, he is sent into the past to the prehistoric era, and the daughter isn’t having it. Adeline Anderson sets out on an impossible task to try to get her father back, but learning the history behind the murder of her mother reveals far more questions than answers.

Lost In Time will get the readers lost in time as they explore the past, present, and future of a crime that will change everything about a family.

Elsewhere by Dean Koontz

Another father and daughter tale comes to us in Elsewhere where a father named Jeffy is trying to keep a normal post-divorce life for his daughter Amity. Until someone shows up at their doorstep and gives them a device called “the key to everything” and warns the pair not to use it. However, when enemies come to the doorstep, they find themselves using the key and jumping between parallel worlds. Now they find themselves wondering if one of these parallel worlds can lead to Michelle, while their own world is threatened by someone who seeks the key for evil.

Elsewhere is a book that will make you think about where you would go and what you would do to find real happiness, and how sometimes it is closer than we think. 

Final Thoughts

Hopefully at least one of the books on this list has caught your interest, and you might find yourself diving deep into the technothriller genre! Take a look and see if you can find your next big novel to read!

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