Turn off the TV and Read: Battlestar Galactica

Turn off the TV and Read was an idea we came up with to combine our love of television and reading. Each time we’ll take a different show and recommend a few books that are similar. This week I’m going with one of my favorite science fiction shows ever, Battlestar Galactica (2004 Series).

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The Cylons were created by Man
They rebelled
They evolved
There are many copies
And they have a plan

The series begins 40 years after the end of what's known as the Cylon War. This war began when humanity, who live in a group of habitable planets called the Twelve Colonies, created machines to make life easier for them: the Cylons. Programmed to be sentient, they were employed to do things from labour to fighting wars. However, the Cylons eventually grew to hate their masters, revolting, thus beginning the Cylon War. The conflict ended when the Cylons agreed to leave the Colonies to make a home on another planet. No one had seen or heard from the Cylons in 40 years until they launched a successful assault on the Colonies that effectively killed all but a few thousand who fled their destroyed homes to seek out the legendary world known as Earth. However, they are constantly being followed by the Cylons. To make matters worse, in the time isolated from humanity, the Cylons had developed themselves to appear human. There are 12 specific models, but each has several copies. They took human form in order to become closer to God, and base their actions on the belief that humanity was a mistake, and that they were themselves created by God (not the Gods that the people of the Colonies worship) to take humanity's rightful place. Led by the battlestar Galactica, the fleet of surviving ships have to evade attacks both from outside as well as inside, both Cylon and even human. A few of these humanoid Cylons act as infiltrators to destroy the remainder of humanity, some copies not even aware of their Cylon identity. In order to keep chaos from taking over, the fleet tries to uphold the laws that they were bound to before the attacks, but with their extreme situation in mind, certain rules must be bent. Tough decisions must be made that both allow the people their rights and freedom, but also ensure the survival of the human race. From TVRage.com

A few books that remind me of this show are:

Partials By Dan Wells

The human race is all but extinct after a war with Partials--engineered organic beings identical to humans--has decimated the population. Reduced to only tens of thousands by RM, a weaponized virus to which only a fraction of humanity is immune, the survivors in North America have huddled together on Long Island while the Partials have mysteriously retreated. The threat of the Partials is still imminent, but, worse, no baby has been born immune to RM in more than a decade. Our time is running out.

Kira, a sixteen-year-old medic-in-training, is on the front lines of this battle, seeing RM ravage the community while mandatory pregnancy laws have pushed what's left of humanity to the brink of civil war, and she's not content to stand by and watch. But as she makes a desperate decision to save the last of her race, she will find that the survival of humans and Partials alike rests in her attempts to uncover the connections between them--connections that humanity has forgotten, or perhaps never even knew were there.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep by Philip K. Dick

A final, apocalyptic, world war has killed millions, driving entire species into extinction and sending the majority of mankind off-planet. Those who remain, venerate all remaining examples of life, and owning an animal of your own is both a symbol of status and a necessity. For those who can't afford an authentic animal, companies build incredibly realistic simulacrae: horses, birds, cats, sheep . . . even humans.

Revolution 19 by Gregg Rossenblum

Twenty years ago, the robots designed to fight our wars abandoned the battlefields. Then they turned their weapons on us. Only a few escaped the robot revolution of 2071. Kevin, Nick, and Cass are lucky —they live with their parents in a secret human community in the woods. Then their village is detected and wiped out. Hopeful that other survivors have been captured by bots, the teens risk everything to save the only people they have left in the world—by infiltrating a city controlled by their greatest enemies. (To be published on January 8th, 2013)

What are some books that remind you of Battlestar Galactica? And more importantly has any one ever let slip a "What the Frak" and have no one get it?