The books on this list have inspired me to expand the horizons of my imagination and to think boldly about the future. So often, it feels like we’re stuck living with our forebears’ bad choices and our leaders’ cynical and self-serving constructions of reality. In defiance, I write books for people who have struggled to fit in, who look around at our world and imagine how things could be better, and who want to read about realistic but optimistic futures. I write alternative history and cyberpunk to highlight how our cultural, technological, and political choices affect our future and how creating change starts with imagining it.
I grew up reading every book I could borrow from the science fiction section of my local library. But somehow, I didn’t read anything by Octavia Butler until the mid-2010s. Why weren’t her books forced on me? I would have LOVED them.
This book is disturbing and uplifting, showing that near-future California is declining due to environmental pollution, political upheaval, and economic insecurity. The heroine is Lauren Olamina, a young woman with “hyper-empathy” who takes on other people’s emotions and pain. Lauren also serves as a beacon of hope with her growing “Earthseed” movement that attracts followers (and unwanted attention) as she takes to the road. A vivid world underpinned by hope in the midst of sorrow.
The extraordinary, prescient NEW YORK TIMES-bestselling novel.
'If there is one thing scarier than a dystopian novel about the future, it's one written in the past that has already begun to come true. This is what makes Parable of the Sower even more impressive than it was when first published' GLORIA STEINEM
'Unnervingly prescient and wise' YAA GYASI
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We are coming apart. We're a rope, breaking, a single strand at a time.
America is a place of chaos, where violence rules and only the rich and powerful are safe. Lauren Olamina, a young woman with the extraordinary power to…
I was hesitant to pick up this book. Previously, I had enjoyed several of Neal Stephenson’s novels while finding others a bit of a slog. I was skeptical of the premise of Seveneves (the Moon is mysteriously destroyed with disastrous consequences for Earth) because it seemed too simplistic and apocalyptic. Oh boy, was I wrong!
This book delves into the politics of hard choices, the costs of survival, and the small and large-scale tragedies that come during the unrest. The science in this book is astounding: orbital mechanics, genetic engineering, space construction, geophysics and biology, and on and on. But the humans at the heart of the story will win you over. This book stayed with me for a LONG TIME. Unforgettable.
The astounding new novel from the master of science fiction. President Barack Obama's summer reading choice and recently optioned by Ron Howard and IMAGINE to be made into a major motion picture.
What would happen if the world were ending?
When a catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb, it triggers a feverish race against the inevitable. An ambitious plan is devised to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere. But unforeseen dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain...
Five thousand years later, their progeny - seven distinct races now three…
When I finished this book, I could not stop talking about it. The reasons are myriad. The main character’s scintillating rage drives the book forward, but it’s the creatively imagined world that hooked me. We learn early in the book that some characters can cause and control the shaking of the earth, but they are themselves enslaved by the ruling class.
The mystery unfolds as we learn the deep history of the story world, even as the interpersonal stakes get raised in a series of twists and reveals. The culmination of the series and how it resolves to create one of the most memorable and emotional climaxes I’ve ever read—a fresh, inventive, and vivid secondary world fantasy.
At the end of the world, a woman must hide her secret power and find her kidnapped daughter in this "intricate and extraordinary" Hugo Award winning novel of power, oppression, and revolution. (The New York Times)
This is the way the world ends. . .for the last time.
It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester.
This book puts an inventive twist on familiar and overdone time travel tropes, and I can’t stop thinking about this book in the context of the real world and how topsy-turvy everything seems. To be fair, I didn’t understand what was happening in this book until about the two-thirds mark.
I won’t give away any spoilers, but I will say that William Gibson has imagined possible futures for humanity that are disturbing, intricately detailed, and full of glitter and grime. In addition, the settings and characters mesh well together and create compelling scenarios. Also, this book was even better on the re-read once I understood the premise. The Amazon adaptation was good, too, and it’s a crime if it isn't renewed for a second season.
The Peripheral by William Gibson is a thrilling new novel about two intertwined futures, from the bestselling author of Neuromancer
'Wild, richly satisfying . . . big-screen, popcorn-chewing thrills. What a glorious ride' Guardian
In the near future in a broken down rural America, Flynne Fisher scrapes a living as a gamer for rich players. One night, working a game set in a futuristic but puzzlingly empty London, she sees a death that's unnervingly vivid. Soon after she gets word that it isn't a game after all - the future she saw is all too real, she's the only witness…
I sometimes encounter people who haven't read this book, and it’s always shocking to me. I think I had read it five times by age twenty. For me, although I do love the characters, it’s the story world that grips me and fuels my imagination.
For one, the scale is vast. Imagine what our future might look like ten thousand years after we’ve moved into the universe. There are so many fascinating and intricately imagined layers to the story world: how trade works when the Spacing Guild has a monopoly on interstellar travel, how politics in the far future could resemble our feudal past, how storytelling and mythography could be used to influence and control vulnerable populations, and how ecological transformation and religious uprising could go hand-in-hand—a classic.
Before The Matrix, before Star Wars, before Ender's Game and Neuromancer, there was Dune: winner of the prestigious Hugo and Nebula awards, and widely considered one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written.
Melange, or 'spice', is the most valuable - and rarest - element in the universe; a drug that does everything from increasing a person's lifespan to making interstellar travel possible. And it can only be found on a single planet: the inhospitable desert world of Arrakis.
Whoever controls Arrakis controls the spice. And whoever controls the spice controls the universe.
My book is the first volume in a queer psychological science fiction saga that looks at the stigma of mental illness and the hellish distrust and alienation that goes with it. Victor Eastmore knows someone killed his grandfather, a pioneering scientist. But Victor, diagnosed with mirror resonance syndrome, has been shunned by Semiautonomous California society. Now Victor must tread the line between sanity and reclassification—a fate that all but guarantees he’ll lose his freedom.
Determined to uncover the truth about Jefferson’s murder, pansexual Victor and his trans friend Elena set out on a road trip that takes them across the American Union from Semiautonomous California through the Organized Western States to the Republic of Texas. But Elena is hiding something, and Victor’s condition worsens.
Unlike the typical tales of a flawless fighting unit, this story follows Commander Kami Trenn and her ragtag squad of mixed-race space marines.
Dog Squad fights a mysterious adversary whose presence remains shrouded in secrecy. The fate of the universe hangs in the balance, but will they be able to make enough of a difference?
Can they hope to uncover the enemy’s plans for galactic dominance before the Alliance falls? Maybe. If they can stop fighting each other.
Across the void formed by two galactic spiral arms, vast forces face each other.
The tenuous Alliance, sixty civilizations united only by fear of invasion, prepare to resist the encroachment of their as-yet unseen enemy, known only as the Creeps.
The Void has become a battleground. Three thousand light years across, and populated by a scattering of ten thousand ‘dark’ worlds, it is the Alliance’s last chance to protect their way of life. Self-destructive, robotic drones pour across the Void in ever-increasing numbers, testing the Alliance fleets to breaking point.
