Find similar books by
Combine common axes
These books are ranked using the setting labels extracted for The Shape of Water.
Setting labels used: 1962, Cold War era, Baltimore, Amazon rainforest, research facility, government laboratory, 1960s America, science facility, high security lab, urban apartment building
Focused on “space program” where exact label matches exist.
This does not mean the books share the same plot, setting, quality, or difficulty. It means their setting embeddings are close.
In 1957, aging archaeologist Indiana Jones races Soviet agents for a mysterious crystal skull and the secrets it guards.
Why this is here
Setting labels: 1950s · 1957 · Cold War · atomic age · McCarthy era · United States · South America · Amazon jungle · Peru · Yucatán · Area 51 · secret warehouse · fictional archaeological world
Semantic match: ranked by setting
Distance: 0.2310
After a meteor strike makes Earth uninhabitable, a brilliant 1950s pilot fights sexism to join the space race.
Why this is here
Setting labels: 1950s · 1950s America · alternate timeline · postwar era · Cold War era · post-apocalyptic · space program · moon mission · Mars colonization · United States
Semantic match: ranked by setting
Distance: 0.2788
A secret team races to identify and contain a deadly alien microbe after a space capsule crash wipes out a town.
Why this is here
Setting labels: Arizona desert · underground lab · government facility · military base · Cold War era · late 1960s · Earth biosphere · space-age
Semantic match: ranked by setting
Distance: 0.2509
A professor is sent to a secret mountain project that turns out to hide a startling experiment in machine consciousness.
Why this is here
Setting labels: Cold War era · remote mountains · isolated compound · military zone · secret research facility · wilderness setting · high altitude
Semantic match: ranked by setting
Distance: 0.2604
In an alternate Cold War, animals lost in space may be alive, and a truth-seeker hunts for what happened.
Why this is here
Setting labels: Cold War · 1950s · 1960s · near future · alternate history · space program · Earth orbit · East Germany · West Berlin
Semantic match: ranked by setting
Distance: 0.2932
A trapped girl in a memory library and a grieving teen spy race through time to stop history from being rewritten.
Why this is here
Setting labels: 1938 Germany · 1940s postwar era · 1960s America · Cold War America · Boston · Washington, D.C. · Nuremberg · liminal space · library setting · time dimension · alternate realm
Semantic match: ranked by setting
Distance: 0.2681
An astronaut's wife relives their love story while fighting to clear his name after his spacecraft vanishes in the Space Race.
Why this is here
Setting labels: 1960s · 1968 · early 1960s · Space Race · NASA · Houston · Cape Kennedy · Washington DC · Arlington VA · United States · Moon mission · space program
Semantic match: ranked by setting
Distance: 0.2982
A Cold War command failure sends U.S. nuclear bombers toward Moscow, forcing leaders into a terrifying crisis.
Why this is here
Setting labels: Cold War · 1960s · near future 1967 · White House bunker · Pentagon war room · Strategic Air Command · Omaha · Moscow · Arctic · Bering Strait
Semantic match: ranked by setting
Distance: 0.2723
A near-future U.S. crisis after a presidential death pulls politics, AI, and biotech into a race over humanity’s next stage.
Why this is here
Setting labels: United States · Washington, D.C. · Amazon rainforest · jungle laboratory · post-nuclear war · post-civil war tension · near future · 2054 · global geopolitical setting · urban political setting
Semantic match: ranked by setting
Distance: 0.2724
A young Army nurse in the Vietnam War is pulled from brutal hospital duty into a surreal ordeal by a mysterious healing amulet.
Why this is here
Setting labels: Vietnam War · 1960s · military hospital · field hospital · China Beach · jungle · war zone · Vietnamese civilian spaces · postwar United States
Semantic match: ranked by setting
Distance: 0.2748
In 1960s NASA, a Black arcane engineer and amateur sleuth uncovers a murder-and-theft conspiracy tied to magic and the moon race.
Why this is here
Setting labels: 1960s · space race era · NASA lab · research facility · museum · arcane history museum · alternate history · mid-20th century America · public television · historical fantasy world · magic-enabled reality · Civil Rights era · moon race
Semantic match: ranked by setting
Distance: 0.2822
A prequel to Stranger Things follows Terry Ives into a secret 1969 lab experiment behind Eleven’s origins.
Why this is here
Setting labels: 1960s · late 1960s · early 1970s · Indiana · college campus · remote lab · small town
Semantic match: ranked by setting
Distance: 0.2829
