This summer, we’re offering reading recommendations for people to enjoy wherever and whenever they travel. This is the second in a series of posts from our in-house staff and editors. You can also find recommendations from previous years in our full compiled list. Enjoy

I am a voracious consumer of audiobooks. As a father of three young children, my eyelids often feel heavy, but my ears always delight in a well-told story. In honor of my three kids, here are three novels that both entertained me and prompted deep reflection.

I Who Have Never Known Men

BY JACQUELINE HARPMAN

Imagine you were imprisoned for as long as you could remember, then suddenly released, only to find that there was no society remaining other than your fellow escaped prisoners. If you had access to enough food to last the rest of your natural life, along with adequate shelter, what would you do with decades of time? What do you need for your life to be worth living?

In this account, the only remaining people are women, so having children is off the table. That means that their future is entirely limited to their own lifespans. Do you need the prospect of future generations in order to live a satisfying present? Also, how many people do you need in your group in order to satisfy basic human social needs?

How might the situation play out if all the remaining people were men instead of women? Are the basic existential needs the same or different for an entirely female versus entirely male remnant population? This is such a fascinating thought experiment. The story gives much to ponder, and I consider it as both a great philosophical and literary achievement.

Upgrade

BY BLAKE CROUCH

Blake Crouch is no one-hit wonder. I first encountered his work with Dark Matter, a sci-fi novel inspired by the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Next, I listened to his Wayward Pines trilogy, which proved to be equally captivating. So my expectations were high when I came to his newest novel, Upgrade.

The premise here is that a scientist develops a technology that vastly enhances human capabilities, both mental and physical. Imagine Albert Einstein fused with Jason Bourne. Someone with this kind of “upgrade” could outthink and outperform everyone on earth, giving them the potential to be a real-life superhero or supervillain.

In this story, the innovator of this technology decided to “upgrade” her adult children, without their consent, in order to “give them a better life,” I presume. With these newfound powers, both children felt an immense responsibility to put them to use, but to a completely different end. The daughter thought that to make the world better and lift humanity out of its self-destructive tendencies, everyone ought to be upgraded. The son, on the other hand, thought that these powers would actually accelerate humanity’s demise, and he did everything he could to stop his sister and prevent the technology from spreading.

Who judged the situation the most astutely? I think it comes down to what you view the primary problem of humanity to be. Is it ignorance and short-sightedness? If so, perhaps upgrading would be a good choice. But if the problem is primarily ethical– a failure to love and respect others– then upgrading might magnify the harm we perpetuate.

It’s a good question to ponder. What kind of technological enhancements might make humanity collectively better off, and which ones might only serve selfish ends in the hands of the few?

Alein Clay

BY ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY

I enjoyed how this story explored what a completely different biology could look like on another planet. Certainly, we have symbiotic relationships on Earth, but what if symbionts could reshuffle dynamically in response to changing circumstances, as we do with our technology, plugging in different peripheral devices as needed?

In a sense, humans do this already with the tools that we’ve invented. But on Kiln, the reshuffling is on a biological level, something like the metamorphosis that we see in caterpillars, slime molds, and a few other species, but at ultra-high speeds.

Once humans make contact with these creatures, what would happen if this alien biology were to interact with our bodies? Would it lead to madness and death, or a new kind of being?