Best Science Fiction Books of the Century (So Far)

Pulling together any Best of the Century list is daunting, but there’s something about a science fiction list that is especially so. Like one of its protagonists racing through space and into the unknown, the genre, its writers, and its readers have come a long way and much of its evolution happened in the last 26 years. We don’t need a time machine to remember when the world of science fiction was quite homogenous and the gates rattled at anyone who wasn’t a white, male, Asimov acolyte; when being a Black, Brown, queer, you-name-the-marginalization science fiction fan meant you had to plumb the depths to see yourself on the page.

Daunting as it may be, the wonder of curating a list of essential science fiction books published this century can be found in the immense diversity of stories, from style, subgenres, and mashups to characters and authors. The real challenge was whittling down the massive catalog of radical and poignant works the genre has gifted us these last couple of decades. Explore some of the best science fiction books of the century so far, and may you find a story that welcomes you to traverse the vast unknown with us.

1Q84

by Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel

Is it sci-fi? Fantasy? Mystery? Time travel? Dystopia? Something else entirely? It may be hard to categorize, but Haruki Murakami’s mind-bending novel 1Q84 took the entire world by storm. An international bestseller first published in Japan across three volumes from in 2009-2010, it’s set in 1984 Tokyo. (Kind of.) When Aomame steps out of her apartment and spots two moons looming in the sky above her, it’s her first clue that she’s woken up in a parallel universe that’s eerily similar to her own but with some unignorable differences. Trippy, surreal, and wildly engaging, it’s a 1000-page book that you'll wish was even longer. If you haven’t read Murakami before, this is the place to start.

- Susie Dumond

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A Guardian and a Thief

by Megha Majumdar

After finishing Majumdar’s propulsive novel set during the not-too-distant future in Kolkata, India, I walked around in a haze, in awe of its captivating prose, nuanced characters, and vivid description packed into 224 pages. Through alternating perspectives over a single week, it centers on two families trying to protect their children amid worsening conditions, including food shortages, heat, and violence. I listened and relistened to the fantastic audiobook featuring a full cast, and I eagerly await the paperback release of this Oprah’s Book Club pick and winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence because I need it on my shelves.

- Connie Pan

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A Master of Djinn

by P Djèlí Clark

In an alternative version of early 20th-century Cairo where angels and djinn exist alongside humans, it's said that a Sudanese mystic drilled a hole in the veil between the magical and non-magical worlds, then vanished without a trace. Agent Fatma el-Sha-arawi is investigating the suspicious murder of an entire brotherhood dedicated to that mystic, a case that takes her on one helluva ride. This blend of science fiction, fantasy, and mystery examines gender, class, and colonialism in such a fun steampunk setting. It’s full of twists and red herrings with a side of queer romance, and I hope P Djèlí Clark gives us even more books set in this world.

- Vanessa Diaz

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A Memory Called Empire

by Arkady Martine

This is one of those nearly 500-page books that is so engrossing that it just zooms by. It puts the "opera" in "space opera" and is wholly unique in its portrayal of pre-Colonial Aztec-meets-Byzantine culture. When Ambassador Mahit Dzmare discovers that the ambassador who came before her has died, she realizes the secrecy surrounding his death may mean she's next. She must uncover the truth, save herself, and even the independent space station she calls home from the ever-expanding Teixcalaan empire. The depiction of the vie for power within the empire is intricate and at times poetic.

- Erica Ezeifedi

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A Psalm for the Wild-Built

by Beck Chambers

Becky Chambers' insightful and soulful novella continues to haunt my heart. There is a reason this book won a Hugo Award. In this immensely thoughtful story, a tea monk trying to search for and understand their purpose meets a robot who has been left in the wild and seeks to better understand humanity's ways. This is a book that is as much a meditation as a hug, and it will hug you. I've typed "hug" three times, but the word truly encompasses this book. A Psalm will embrace you and exclaim that you have every right to simply exist, to be loved and respected, and you do, dear reader. This book reinforces that in the most beautiful way.

- Lyndsie Manusos

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Adaptation

by Malinda Lo

Malinda Lo has made a name for herself writing queer historical fiction and queer fairy tales. But among her catalog is Adaptation, the first in a duology about government conspiracies and aliens. Across North America, birds are hurling themselves into airplanes, causing a nationwide ground stop. Reese and her debate partner are among those stranded, and when they decide to drive back home, they become victims of a bird strike that turns their world upside down. Lo makes bold decisions in this series that still stands out in the world of YA more than a decade post-publication.

- Kelly Jensen

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All Systems Red

by Martha Wells

Whatever genre of literature I'm reading, characters are always at the forefront for me. So when I met Murderbot, I fell in love. All Systems Red is the first entry in the Murderbot Diaries, introducing us to a security android who hacked their own governor module. This allows them to, say, watch serialized TV dramas instead of kill people. While the backdrop is a grim interplanetary corporate dystopia, the writing is too funny to ever bum me out. As this series progresses and Murderbot gets their lovable, hapless humans out of more dire circumstances, I learn alongside Murderbot what it really means to be a person.

- Isabelle Popp

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All the Birds in the Sky

by Charlie Jane Anders

This has been a comfort read since I first read it almost 20 years ago. A story of two childhood friends who eventually took different paths: one went to school for witchcraft while the other pursued science. They are forever bound together by fate and the mysterious man who has followed them for years. They grow up, they make mistakes, they gain knowledge, and once again cross paths as adults in warring factions who find themselves fighting to save the world from destruction. I’ve always loved tales of science vs. magic and this is my favorite. Full disclosure: I’m friends with the author but read this long before we became friends.

- Patricia Elzie-Tuttle

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Ancillary Justice

by Ann Leckie

When one book wins the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus awards, you know it's great. This space opera asks the age-old sci-fi question: what does it mean to be human? Along the way, it deals with interstellar war and politics, gender identity, and a galaxy-spanning quest for revenge. Filled with fascinating characters and a unique take on the mind, Ancillary Justice and its sequels are absolutely some of the best of the century.

- Chris M. Arnone

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Annihilation

by Jeff Vandermeer

Sometimes, you gotta have a lot of weirdness up in your science fiction. Leave it to Jeff Vandermeer to bring the weird while still telling a compelling and great story. Annihilation and its sequels are all about an exclusion zone and those who venture into it. What made it? How does physics work inside? Why do people keep disappearing into it? Science, philosophy, action, and great character work all make Annihilation one of the best science fiction books of the century…so far.

- Chris M. Arnone

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Binti

by Nnedi Okorafor

In Binti, which won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards, Okorafor brought the culture of the Himba people of Africa into a future populated by alien technology, through the eyes of one courageous, talented young woman who leaves her home behind and encounters a dangerous species for the first time. Okorafor's novella rose to its prominence alongside a resurgence in Afro- and African-futurism, as well as the rise of Tordotcom's novella series, which has been an absolute revolution in science fiction in the past decade. The entire Binti trilogy is unexpected, daring, and pushed the genre forward.

- Leah Rachel von Essen

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Bitch Planet

by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Valentine De Landro

Bitch Planet is a comic book that does what science fiction does so, so well. It uses a wild, speculative setting to make a really important point. In this case, all the women who break laws or disobey men or are just noncompliant are sent to a prison colony. In space. The sendup of the patriarchy is epic, leading to multiple Book Rioters inking those noncompliant NCs on their bodies.

- Chris M. Arnone

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Chain Gang All-Stars

by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah blew us away with his 2018 short story collection Friday Black, making his debut novel, Chain Gang All-Stars, one of the most anticipated books of 2023. It did not disappoint. This dystopian novel and satirical rebuke of the prison-industrial complex following individuals trapped in and orbiting around Criminal Action Penal Entertainment programming was a National Book Award Finalist, a celebrity book club pick, and made it onto just about every Best Of. It's also, simply put, a damn good read that puts Adjei-Brenyah's innovative storytelling to work.

- S. Zainab Williams

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Chilling Effect

by Valerie Valdes

I still remember the day a former Book Riot colleague began spreading the gospel of this book, encouraging us all to sign up for advanced copies of it with some version of "a sweary Latina plus psychic cats in space, pass it on!" That is still how I describe this romp of a book, a space opera adventure and comedic romp about a foul-mouthed captain and her crew of misfits on an intergalactic mission. The rest of the series is every bit as fun and makes me wish we had even more Latine sci-fi stories, not to mention more cats in space.

- Vanessa Diaz

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Feed

by M.T. Anderson

This YA novel is set in a near future where most Americans have feeds: brain implants allowing them to access internet databases telepathically. But feeds also allow corporations to spy and bombard users with nonstop advertisements. When hackers break the feeds of a group of teenagers, they must adjust to life without the technology. Titus falls in love with Violet, a girl trying to subvert the feed. But as their feeds start working, their relationship and lives in general begin to deteriorate. Published in 2002, this story remains prescient about the dangers of smart phones and social media.

- Alison Doherty

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Future Home of the Living God

by Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich’s eerie and poignant Future Home of the Living God achieves what the best dystopian novels seek to do: it reflects on our past to make sense of our present and fight for our future, all while making us feel deeply human in a world that seems less hospitable to humanity every day. At four months pregnant, Cedar decides to leave her adoptive parents in Minneapolis to meet her Ojibwe birth family for the first time. But as she takes this personally meaningful trip, the world around her begins to panic. Babies and fetuses seem to be devolving, and pregnant people are being apprehended under martial law while the situation develops. Cedar is forced into hiding with the family she only just met. It’s a brilliant reflection on freedom, belonging, fear, and hope.

- Susie Dumond

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Gideon the Ninth

by Tamsyn Muir

We do books, mother&%$ers! Gideon the Ninth is a queer, dark fantasy/horror/mystery, with swords, swearing, necromancy, sarcasm, and bones galore. It's like The Westing Game for grown-ups, a haunted-house, puzzle mystery set in space, where the Ninth House heir and her swordswoman must compete against other noble houses to gain immortality. Unfortunately, Gideon and Harrow are sworn enemies, so working together (in face paint, no less), is a bit of a problem. As our own world crumbles and burns, there isn't a better novel to put in your brain right now. It's a riotous, frightening, action-packed novel, with a rabid fandom like no other.

- Liberty Hardy

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Infomocracy

by Malka Older

What frightening witchcraft did Malka Older tap into to predict our age of oligarchy and corruption? Science fiction is a genre known for often unnervingly prescient tales, and we count this fast-paced and thinky sci-fi political thriller among them. Debuts don't always make a big splash but when you publish a book that both entertains and sharply points to growing rot within our political system in a year like 2016, you're bound to get attention. This book landed on so many Best Ofs and I suspect we'll be pointing back at it (all too often) in the years to come.

- S. Zainab Williams

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Interior Chinatown

by Charles Yu

Charles Yu is one of our most imaginative voices creatively writing the personal and the meaty into the science fiction genre. His debut, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, is an excellent example of this (and a must-read), but his second book, Interior Chinatown, brought Yu wider acclaim as an author with fresh takes. The novel confronting Asian onscreen representation and stereotyping through a screenplay format won the National Book Award for Fiction and earned a star-studded Hulu adaptation created by none other than Yu himself. If you're looking for humorous, thoughtful stories that expertly play with the boundaries of science fiction, pick up this book.

- S. Zainab Williams

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Leviathan Wakes

by James S.A. Corey

This epic space opera came out in 2011 by author duo James S.A. Corey and received nominations for Hugo, Locus, and Audie awards. The Expanse series as a whole won the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Series, one of the most prestigious literary prizes for the genre. Steeped in political intrigue, the story follows the tense conflicts brewing between the people living on Earth, the Moon, Mars, and in the Asteroid Belt. As Jim Holden’s ice mining crew discovers an eerie ship with a secret, a Belter detective searches for a girl whose disappearance could be connected to everything. These characters stay with you, and the TV adaptation was just as good.

- Megan Mabee

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Light From Uncommon Stars

by Ryka Aoki

This is an impossible book to summarize. It grapples with the darkest parts of being alive, including racism, sexism, and transphobia, while still feeling defiantly hopeful. It’s somehow simultaneously a fantasy novel about a violinist's deal with the devil, a sci-fi story about an alien running a donut shop, and a realistic coming-of-age about a trans teen runaway. This is a breathtakingly ambitious genre mashup that is also a grounded character study. It’s beautiful, heartbreaking, and entirely unique. I never thought I'd find so much insight into being human in a story about aliens and devils, and it's one I will return to again and again.

- Danika Ellis

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Never Let Me Go

by Kazuo Ishiguro

I'm semi-ashamed to admit I read this book, and Ishiguro, period, for the first time only a few years ago, finally sitting down with the Nobel Prize winner's 2005 literary dystopian novel. This book is quieter than you might expect of a work that asks such big questions about mortality, memory, and what it means to be human, but boy, does it pack a punch. If you've spent any amount of time pondering the implications of unleashing major technological innovation without thoughtful consideration of its impact (and gee, why would you?), this reading experience will really get your synapses firing. Ishiguro is a singular talent, and this book is worth every bit of the hype.

- Vanessa Diaz

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Orbital

by Samantha Harvey

Winner of the 2024 Booker Prize, Orbital tracks one day (or 16 sunrises) of the lives of six men and women on a space station. More philosophical than plot driven, it almost feels like a novella-length poem. It’s impressive for its achingly beautiful language and astounding insights, but it’s also a rare book that rises on the award circuit based on vibes only. It feels like a book that asks more questions that it answers, which given the fast-paced results-driven world we live in, seems even more critical in this day and age. It’s also appropriate for our time with the excitement over Artemis and despair over worsening climate crises.

- Elisa Shoenberger

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Oryx and Crake

by Margaret Atwood

From the author of The Handmaid's Tale, this book starts a trilogy contrasting the before and after of a post-apocalyptic future where genetic engineering and corporate greed have wiped out most of humanity. Snowman might be the last human alive surrounded by genetically engineered human-like creatures named Crakers. As the reader learns of Snowman’s past friendships and romances, the book warns of all-powerful global corporations and environmental collapse. And it’s a deep enough book thematically to be considered a pandemic bellwether, a 9/11 response, and an early example of climate change ecodystopia.

- Alison Doherty

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Pink Slime

by Fernanda Trías, translated by Heather Cleary

If a blurb says poetic, I, a poetry enthusiast, will finish it and the jacket copy. I will skim pages at random. After reading Trías’s opening at a new releases table, I bought this book before a medal adorned the cover. Longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2024, this dystopian novel follows an unnamed protagonist who cares for a young boy, her ex, and her mother as poisoned wind threatens to blow inland. This unsettling story about estrangement, hunger, memory, and time pulsates with stunning prose. The command of that first sentence, “When the fog rolled in, the port turned into a swamp.”, catapulted me forward.

- Connie Pan

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Robopocalypse

by Daniel H. Wilson

Wilson's bestselling 2011 release takes a common enough premise in sci-fi, a robot uprising, and grounds it in realistic robotics and computer science, no doubt courtesy of his Ph.D in Robotics. All it takes is a moment for technology to turn on humanity. This betrayal comes in the form of advanced AI known as Archos, which takes control of a global network of machines that regulate everything from transportation to communication. Suddenly, humans are being killed outright or sent to forced-labor camps. But there's a resistance movement that gains momentum, and one girl who may tip the scales in the Robot War.

- Erica Ezeifedi

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Seveneves

by Neal Stephenson

Before the publication of this generations-spanning, apocalyptic science fiction bestseller, readers knew Neal Stephenson for sci-fi classics including Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash. But I was floored when Seveneves landed on President Barack Obama's summer reading list when it published about a decade ago. Obama read Stephenson? I suppose it shouldn't have surprised me that this hard science fiction page-turner featuring a heady brew of politics, survival, genetics, and more would captivate everyone from the casual reader to the biggest U.S. political leader of our times.

- S. Zainab Williams

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Six Wakes

by Mur Lafferty

Nominated for the 2018 Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick for Best Book, Six Wakes opens with six crew members waking up to find themselves in the air with their previous bodies and blood floating around them. The spaceship is going haywire and they have no memory as to what happened before they woke up in their new cloned bodies. The book manages to  seamlessly combine philosophical contemplation about the ethics of cloning with a closed circle murder mystery in space. It’s, in my opinion, one of the best space murder mysteries.

- Elisa Shoenberger

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Some Desperate Glory

by Emily Tesh

This is one of those books that lingers with you long after the final page. It achieves things I truly never thought a single book could, creating worlds within worlds within the span of 400-odd pages. It's somehow both epic and personal, exploring the ways in which propaganda and insular extremist thought can warp perspective, something I think we could all do with thinking a little more about in this day and age.

- Rachel Brittain

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Sorrowland

by Rivers Solomon

Man, books by Solomon will take you through there with their analysis, and challenging, of the status quo as it pertains to race, gender, class, and queerness. In Sorrowland, we see Vern, who escapes from the religious compound where she grew up. She's seven months pregnant and only has the woods to run to. It's in the woods where she not only gives birth to twins, but also undergoes a transformation that comes with unnatural strength and many questions. But Vern is being hunted, and to escape her pursuers and what's haunting her, she'll have to venture past the woods, and into America's violent past.

- Erica Ezeifedi

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Station Eleven

by Emily St. John Mandel

Set in the before and after of a flu pandemic that kills over 99% of the world’s population, this literary science fiction novel jumps from character to character, weaving a masterful web of connection that isn’t fully apparent until the last page. These strands include a traveling Shakespeare troupe, a midwestern airport full of survivors who haven’t left in decades, a violent cult, and more. Instead of just focusing on the gritty reality of survival, this novel is groundbreaking for exploring the influence of art in dark times and how culture is preserved and passed down.

- Alison Doherty

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Stories of Your Life and Others

by Ted Chiang

I wonder how many fans of the film Arrival know that that big, devastating story was adapted from a novella? Ted Chiang is a powerhouse, his short fiction winning award after award, so how do you choose just one title to represent his incredible body of work? You try to grab as much of it as you can in the collection that includes "Story of Your Life," which introduced his fiction to a bigger, broader audience poised to experience an unforgettable first contact story translated for the screen. Stories of Your Life and Others is, simply put, one of the best collections of all time.

- S. Zainab Williams

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The Calculating Stars

by Mary Robinette Kowal

Do you know how hard it is to write historical science fiction? Not only does the author have to capture the verisimilitude of the time and place but change it as they overlay the science-fictional aspects. Mary Robinette Kowal does it so well with her Lady Astronauts series that starts here. The space race is accelerated when a meteor strikes the U.S. East Coast, but the racism, misogyny, and politics of the day are still at play even as humanity fights to find survival among the stars.

- Chris M. Arnone

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The City & the City

by China Miéville

China Miéville is a household name in the world of science fiction for a reason. Miéville's intellectually stimulating weird fiction is determined to traverse uncharted territory, as we see in his multi-award-winning work, The City & the City. This is a detective novel where investigations charter the realms of two otherworldly cities and the mysterious liminal space between. It's also a book that illustrates a wild and intriguing imagination as well as a massive level of skilled storytelling at work. The idea of anyone trying to capture a Miéville on screen confounds me, but the BBC did adapt this one for television.

- S. Zainab Williams

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The Dream Hotel

by Laila Lalami

It can’t be easy to pull off a successful literary dystopian novel that treads the same ground as a still regularly referenced, and banned classic: 1984, all while in the midst of the U.S. becoming the boiling frog apologue. But if you’ve ever read one of Lalami’s works, you’d bet she could pull it off. And you’d be correct. The Dream Hotel shows how the constant gathering/selling of our personal information can be used against us, especially by an authoritarian government. It’s a chilling read, which becomes chilling AF as we fight for democracy and against “tech bros.”

- Jamie Canaves

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The Fifth Season

by N. K. Jemisin

This is quintessential dystopian climate fiction and it’s the first of the epic Broken Earth trilogy. The bar is set astronomically high with the first book and it is sustained through the two that follow. This Hugo Award-winning novel takes place at the end of the world, where a woman with a terrifying power she must keep hidden at all costs searches for her abducted daughter. Jemisin’s world-building is unmatched and her intricate character design is mindblowing. A total page-turner, this book is full of surprises that immerse readers deeper into the story at every opportunity.

- Patricia Elzie-Tuttle

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The First State of Being

by Erin Entrada Kelly

Michael's a little anxious about the calendar flipping from 1999 to 2000, among other things. But when he and his neighbor Gibby run into a boy who claims to have time-traveled to this year so he could visit a mall, they are bound and determined to help make this dream come true. Erin Entrada Kelly is a master of middle grade fiction, and this big-hearted, highly decorated novel showcases everything sci-fi is: deeply, meaningfully human. It's a brilliant (and funny!) story of friendship, mental health, social class, and, yes, American mall culture of the 1990s.

- Kelly Jensen

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The Hunger Games

by Suzanne Collins

Collins likely didn't know she would set off a global phenomenon with the first entry into The Hunger Games series, but over a decade after the book's publication, the series continues to not only satisfy long-time fans but also invites new readers into a dystopian world that eerily feels more realistic than fictional. The YA series has sold hundreds of millions of copies, spawning not only a popular film series but also a slate of illustrated editions. References to the series abound and have translated from the page into real-world grassroots activism against authoritarianism worldwide.

- Kelly Jensen

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The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

by Becky Chambers

You can't talk about the best sci-fi of the century without talking about cozy sci-fi, and you can't talk about cozy sci-fi without talking about Becky Chambers. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet was her first novel, and it's safe to say it made an impression on the genre. It's the first book in the Wayfarers series, which won a Hugo Award for best series. In some ways, it's a familiar story: a ragtag crew on a spaceship sets out on a perilous mission. What sets it apart, though, is the queer representation and the relatively low stakes, this cozy take on sci-fi was rare when it came out in 2014, but has now grown into a beloved subgenre.

- Danika Ellis

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The Marrow Thieves

by Cherie Dimaline

Cherie Dimaline shifted the landscape of the dystopian story. Her bestselling, award-winning YA novel hearkens to the nightmare of residential schools that worked to tear apart Indigenous families and cultures through a survival story following a group of Indigenous elders and youth in North America. Dimaline, a member of the Métis Nation of Ontario, drives home the impact exploitation and oppression continue to have on generations of Native Americans, and how white colonizers treated them not as human beings but as resources. This book is as poignant a read for adults as it is for young readers.

- S. Zainab Williams

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The Martian

by Andy Weir

What Andy Weir does well, he does really well, and what he does well is sci-fi castaway stories. (The recent success of Hail Mary is just added proof.) It’s a rare writer who can make hard science fun and relatively easy to read. Weir does both. The Martian's popularity and far-reaching appeal are testaments to a book that makes growing potatoes seem cool.

- Rachel Brittain

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The Memory Police

by Yoko Ogawa, Stephen Snyder

An International Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, Ogawa’s eerie literary thriller begins with items being slowly disappeared by the titular Memory Police. Bells, stamps, perfume. Maps, birds, and roses. After each erasure, people on the unidentified island have zero recollection of them. And yet, a novelist’s mother remembered and hid disappeared objects in cabinet drawers. As things worsen, fast, the writer, her editor, and a retired watchman team up in the hope of preserving memories. Exploring creativity, grief, longing, and surveillance, this haunting saga, which won the 2020 American Book Award, felt impossible to put down.

- Connie Pan

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The Mimicking of Known Successes

by Malka Ann Older

This multi-award-nominated sapphic, Holmes-esque mystery manages to create a gaseous world that feels lived in. A man goes missing on a Jupiter colony, and Investigator Mossa tracks clues all the way back to the university where her ex-girlfriend, Pleiti, researches how to return to Earth. Together, the two investigate the disappearance, which leads them to larger questions concerning humanity's place on Earth, and their place with each other.

- Erica Ezeifedi

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The Space Between Worlds

by Micaiah Johnson

Plenty of sci-fi novels deal with space or near futures or advanced technology. Few of them take a swing at parallel worlds, and even fewer do it with such aplomb as The Space Between Worlds. This book isn’t just about paradoxes and alternate realities, but about classism, xenophobia, and queerness. The book is so well-imagined, really thinking through the repercussions of its world and technologies, plus Cara is an incredible main character.

- Chris M. Arnone

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The Underground Railroad

by Colson Whitehead

Attempting to squirrel this literary behemoth into any one genre or category is a pointless exercise, but when an esteemed writer of speculative fiction the likes of Colson Whitehead gives us a Pulitzer Prize-winning book reimagining the underground railroad as an actual rail system around which to frame a visceral story of enslavement, escape, and one harrowing race to freedom, it deserves a place on every Best Of list it brushes up against.

- S. Zainab Williams

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The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On

by Franny Choi

A look at the cheery pink cover with the sobering title trailing down to the page’s middle yanks my heart in multiple directions. That feeling continues throughout the book flush with asteroids, community, bombs, love, ghosts, reef, and surreal skies. The poignant third poetry collection from Choi, author of the forthcoming nonfiction debut We Radiant Things, examines historical, ongoing, and imminent disasters. Heart-wrenching and bursting with hope, lines writhe with emotions. How compassion and despair coexist in the last sentences of “Doom”: “We knew the end was coming here. We knew it, / and like idiots, like perfect idiots, we stayed.”

- Connie Pan

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This Is How You Lose the Time War

by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

This lyrical, lush love story between two secret agents battling through time upended expectations for what would sell in the genre. The novella had already been an award winner and cult classic when a tweet from "bigolas dickolas" turned it into a belated New York Times bestseller. It was short but dense, full of intensely sensuous imagery, and consisted only of cunningly hidden letters, with little high-stakes action to be found. It proved once again that readers contain multitudes, and helped reinforce a hope that smaller, unusual texts could succeed in a social media age.

- Leah Rachel von Essen

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Whalefall

by Daniel Kraus

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be sucked inside a sperm whale with only one hour of oxygen in your tank? That's the premise of Kraus's work of hard sci-fi which layers on the premise a moving exploration of grief and loss. This is the kind of unpredictable survival story that will keep you flipping pages, as well as marveling at the skill Kraus has to move seamlessly between and among genres and moods in his work. The research that went into being as accurate as possible is evident, making the story even more unforgettable.

- Kelly Jensen

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Who Fears Death

by Nnedi Okorafor

Nnedi Okorafor is an author that I believe every sci-fi fan should read. She’s a leader and visionary in the Africanfuturism genre, and she’s unafraid of breaking traditional storytelling rules. Who Fears Death is the first book written in a world that, in the fifteen years since it was published, Okorafor has built out in a variety of prequels, sequels, and novellas. It takes place in a future Africa reshaped by war, nuclear destruction, and genocide. Onyesonwu’s mother gave her a name that means “Who fears death?” in her ancestors’ ancient language. When she falls into the care of a shaman, Onyesonwu learns she’s destined to save her people, but doing so will lead to her death.

- Susie Dumond

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