Science & Tech Books
This shelf mixes two related things: fiction that treats scientific ideas as its actual subject, and nonfiction from writers observing the natural world before most of today's scientific vocabulary existed. That means you'll find Mary Shelley's Frankenstein — a novel that's as much about the ethics of unchecked experimentation as it is a horror story — alongside Henry David Thoreau's Walden, a two-year experiment in self-sufficient living, and Gilbert White's The Natural History of Selborne, one of the earliest and most influential works of English nature writing. None of it is technical in the modern sense, but all of it comes from the same instinct: watching closely, testing an idea, and writing down exactly what happened.
Where to start
Frankenstein; or, the modern prometheus
Equal parts horror novel and ethics case study on the limits of scientific ambition.
Where to start
Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience
Thoreau's account of two years living alone by a pond, testing how little a person actually needs.
Where to start
The Natural History of Selborne
A quiet, closely observed record of one English village's wildlife — a founding text of nature writing.
22 books total in this collection, free to read with synchronized LibriVox audio.
Frankenstein; or, the modern prometheus
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
The Prince
Niccolò Machiavelli
Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience
Henry David Thoreau
The war of the worlds
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea
Jules Verne
The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Time Machine
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes
Anthem
Ayn Rand
The First Men in the Moon
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
The Chessmen of Mars
Edgar Rice Burroughs
The iron heel
Jack London
The Cavalry General
Xenophon
History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science
John William Draper
Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of Its Causes
Charles Babbage
The Mysterious Island
Jules Verne
Autobiography and Selected Essays
Thomas Henry Huxley
A Voyage to Arcturus
David Lindsay
ABC's of Science
Charles A. (Charles Alexander) Oliver
Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space
Jules Verne
When the World Shook Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot
H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard
The Natural History of Selborne
Gilbert White