Exploring from

The Weight of Memories

Liu Cixin

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Similar in tone + premise

These books are ranked using the tone + premise labels extracted for The Weight of Memories. Books rank higher when they are close on every selected axis.

Tone labels used: thought-provoking, touching, dark, disturbing, terrifying, melancholy, sad, weird, shocking, bittersweet

Premise labels used: inherited memory, memory transfer, unborn child, experimental technology, medical experiment, ancestral memory, nature versus nurture, identity question

This does not mean the books share the same plot, setting, quality, or difficulty. It means their tone + premise embeddings are close.

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Before Adam

Jack London · 2006

A modern man’s recurring dreams open into a brutal prehuman past, where survival, instinct, and evolution collide.

Why this is here

Tone labels: dark · brutal · sincere · wonder-struck · reflective · tense · savage · adventurous · tragic · moving · thought-provoking

Premise labels: dream memories · genetic memory · racial memory · ancestor life · prehistoric humanity · prehuman ancestor · evolutionary past · past life · hominid survival · human origins

Reader-connected: no

Semantic match: ranked by tone + premise

Distance: 0.1670

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Perfect People

Peter James · 2011

A grieving couple turns to designer-baby science to avoid another genetic tragedy, only to face terrifying consequences.

Why this is here

Tone labels: chilling · creepy · thought-provoking · heartbreaking · tense · disturbing · uneasy · fast-paced · emotional · thrilling

Premise labels: designer babies · genetic engineering · hereditary disease · grieving parents · ethical dilemma · scientific experiment · eugenics

Reader-connected: no

Semantic match: ranked by tone + premise

Distance: 0.1815

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Tell Me an Ending

Jo Harkin · 2022

A memory-erasure company’s fallout forces strangers to decide whether forgotten pain is better left buried or restored.

Why this is here

Tone labels: thought-provoking · dark · melancholy · devastating · chilling · emotive · suspenseful · philosophical · somber · disturbing · compassionate · quiet

Premise labels: memory erasure · memory restoration · trauma recovery · identity crisis · ethical technology · corporate secrecy · memory traces · hidden pasts · moral dilemma · personal reckoning

Reader-connected: no

Semantic match: ranked by tone + premise

Distance: 0.1851

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The Unhappening of Genesis Lee

Shallee McArthur · 2014

A memory-perfect teen must stop a thief stealing lives—while her own memories begin to vanish.

Why this is here

Tone labels: tense · frightening · bittersweet · heartbreaking · thought-provoking · engaging · intense · creepy · mysterious

Premise labels: memory theft · stored memories · genetically enhanced humans · social divide · thief hunt · identity crisis

Reader-connected: no

Semantic match: ranked by tone + premise

Distance: 0.1863

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Eva

Peter Dickinson · 1988

After a crash leaves her near death, a teen wakes in a chimp body and must navigate identity, ethics, and survival.

Why this is here

Tone labels: haunting · disturbing · thought-provoking · bittersweet · bleak · unsettling · intellectual · lyrical · compulsive · philosophical · strange

Premise labels: mind transplant · body swap · animal consciousness · human-animal hybrid · experimental medicine · survival at any cost · species identity · ethical dilemma · animal exploitation · future collapse

Reader-connected: no

Semantic match: ranked by tone + premise

Distance: 0.1863

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Upgrade Soul

Ezra Claytan Daniels · 2018 · Upgrade Soul

An elderly couple enters a risky rejuvenation experiment and must face the unsettling consequences of cloning, memory, and identity.

Why this is here

Tone labels: dark · unsettling · creepy · horrifying · philosophical · thought-provoking · melancholic · tense · claustrophobic · disturbing · emotional · haunting · oddly tender

Premise labels: experimental rejuvenation · cloning · identity crisis · human experimentation · ethical dilemma · body swap · immortality quest · aging · transhumanism · medical experiment · life extension · double self

Reader-connected: no

Semantic match: ranked by tone + premise

Distance: 0.1872

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The Hidden Girl and Other Stories

Ken Liu · 2020

A linked speculative-fiction collection on memory, identity, technology, and family, spanning history, futures, and the Singularity.

Why this is here

Tone labels: thought-provoking · bleak · dark · haunting · heartbreaking · poignant · chilling · somber · wondrous · reflective · emotional · bittersweet

Premise labels: speculative futures · uploaded consciousness · posthumanism · family bonds · history and heritage · technology and society · alien contact · war and displacement · climate change · internet toxicity · art and AI · immigrant experience

Reader-connected: no

Semantic match: ranked by tone + premise

Distance: 0.1882

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Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful

Arwen Elys Dayton · 2018

Six linked futures trace how genetic engineering and body modification reshape humanity, morality, and identity.

Why this is here

Tone labels: thought-provoking · horrifying · poignant · dark · terrifying · sweet · bittersweet · hopeful · striking · unsettling · haunting · intelligent

Premise labels: genetic engineering · body modification · human enhancement · life extension · bioethics · future humanity · perfectionism · medical intervention

Reader-connected: no

Semantic match: ranked by tone + premise

Distance: 0.1888

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The House of the Scorpion

Nancy Farmer · 2002 · Matteo Alacran

A cloned boy raised as property in a drug lord’s future borderland must confront what makes him human.

Why this is here

Tone labels: dark · thought-provoking · chilling · heartwarming · inspiring · tense · disturbing · philosophical · emotional · creepy

Premise labels: clone identity · human cloning · organ donor · coming of age · human rights · dehumanization · escape

Reader-connected: no

Semantic match: ranked by tone + premise

Distance: 0.1978

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These Memories Do Not Belong to Us

Yiming Ma · 2025

In a future where memories are bought, edited, and banned, a son risks everything to share his mother’s forbidden past.

Why this is here

Tone labels: melancholic · haunting · quiet · hopeful · eerie · timely · thought-provoking · unsettling · beautiful · prescient · bittersweet

Premise labels: memory transfer · memory commodification · memory censorship · authoritarian surveillance · inherited memories · banned memories · state control · history control · truth suppression · memory as evidence · memory inheritance · resistance through remembering · illegal knowledge

Reader-connected: no

Semantic match: ranked by tone + premise

Distance: 0.1981

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The Orville: Sympathy for the Devil

Seth MacFarlane · 2022

An Orville crew investigation into a moral nightmare unfolds through a dark simulation, forcing hard questions about guilt and reality.

Why this is here

Tone labels: thought-provoking · serious · dark · heavy · sad · poignant · philosophical · moralistic · disturbing · powerful

Premise labels: moral dilemma · ethical conundrum · simulation premise · identity crisis · ideology and accountability · rehabilitation question · brainwashing · time-displaced upbringing

Reader-connected: no

Semantic match: ranked by tone + premise

Distance: 0.1994

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Turnabout

Margaret Peterson Haddix · 2012

Two elderly women reverse-age through a secret experiment, then must find a caretaker before they become too young.

Why this is here

Tone labels: thought-provoking · disturbing · bizarre · tense · uncertain · nostalgic · urgent · philosophical · haunting

Premise labels: reverse aging · anti-aging experiment · second chance · forced youth · time pressure · caretaker search · age inversion · life extension · bodily autonomy · medical experiment

Reader-connected: no

Semantic match: ranked by tone + premise

Distance: 0.2009

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