100 books like Hot Moon

After I quit my law firm and was trying to decide what (if anything) I wanted to write, I read Kushiel’s Dart. This book convinced me that whatever stories I wanted to tell, no matter how extreme, I could tell them within science fiction/fantasy. And it really puts the “alternate” in alternate history.

During the Roman Empire, angels came to earth and mated with mortals in the area of modern France, again producing a race like the biblical Nephilim, only sexier, and with one commandment: “Love as thou wilt.” In this Europe that never knew a dark age, the angels’ descendants pursue love, power, and intrigue, and at the center of their plots is Phèdre, a courtesan spy fighting to save her land from betrayal.

Shocking and wonderful stuff! 

Tim Powers is best known for his secret histories. Unlike alternate history, a secret history doesn’t change the publicly known facts of the past; instead, it tells a story hidden beneath those facts that may change their meaning.

Powers takes a strict approach to secret history that I admire and try to follow when I can: all the known historical details (who was where and when and what they were doing) must remain the same. His marvelous novel Declare applies this rule to the Kim Philby spy case. Powerful beings that have been dwelling among us provide the hidden motivations for espionage and treason from WWII into the Cold War.

Declare is fun both for its spycraft and occult details. 

Everfair is one of several recent alternate histories that challenge the usual focus on the same sorts of events in the same parts of the world and the all-too-frequent disturbing obsession with “what if the bad folks had won?” questions (South in the Civil War, Axis in WWII).

Shawl imagines a different, better history for the Congo—liberated from European control and gifted with a new source of energy. Her interesting characters from many backgrounds around the globe come together to fight for their sometimes conflicting, sometimes flawed visions for a better future.

This is the visionary aspect of speculative fiction at its most powerful. 

Robinson’s book is alternate history on the boldest scale, covering hundreds of years after a very dramatic change indeed: around the year 1400, 99% of Europeans have been killed by a double whammy of plagues, leaving the rest of the world’s story to go on without them.

Such a saga in other hands might be too far removed from the human, character-driven level to be enjoyable, but Robinson has a clever solution to that problem—reincarnation. The main characters are reborn again and again, for the most part lacking memories of their past lives, but identifiable by the initial letter/sound of their names (e.g., there’s a “K” character).

An emotionally moving view of humans struggling to meet the challenges of their times to build a better world. 

Andy Weir has. In my opinion, come to define hopepunk: pushing towards a goal through difficulties, even if the goal doesn’t personally benefit the character.

His depiction of the plight of Mark Watney, the impacts Watney’s plight have on a global scale, and the hard science behind it all combine to create a compelling story. The sacrifices his crewmates and NASA officials make to push his rescue forward exemplify the “community over self” attitude common in hopepunk.

For the oldest kids, I find this whole Worst-Case Scenario series to be so excellent! This one was developed with an expert consultant on Martian exploration, so it takes kids through the real choices they would have to make if they traveled to Mars. There is nothing like being in the driver’s seat, making life or death choices, to help someone really learn about a subject. This book will have them so stepped in Mars as they read, their fingertips will be covered in red dust! Well, almost!

When you study the long arc of history you begin to suspect that apocalypses aren't just inevitable, they're common. And so is survival, which is a really heartening thought. Human beings are crazily adaptable, and our ability to come together in communities (ideally, when we're at our best, which granted isn't always and is hard to see sometimes) will aid our survival. Annalee Newitz tells us how this is has happened before, and how it can happen again.

Writing as Richard Bachman, this quite short story (for King) is set in a future where once a year, young people are invited to take part in the ‘Long Walk.’ The premise is simple; you walk until you can’t walk any further. Keep above a certain speed limit or, after a couple of warnings, the soldiers who trail the walkers will shoot you dead. The winner is the one who survives. It sounds stupid, but, my God, when I first read it, I felt as if I had been on the walk with the characters you get to know. Horrifying simply because of the skill of King’s writing in describing the feelings of utter exhaustion and terror along the way. Human horror at its peak.

This book is tense! Jess is alone in the Canadian wilderness, still injured from the car accident that killed her mom, and now her dad has been murdered and his cabin burned down. Jess must figure out how to survive in the cold with no shelter and no way out when nobody knows where she is. This is part survival story and part thriller. Jess is driven by her desire to survive as much as her desire for revenge. The survival aspect here is enough to keep you reading, but I also loved trying to piece together the mystery of why her dad was killed. 

A little levity may be required as we watch the world crumble around us. Anne Washburn’s play reads as a multi-generational game of telephone. Beginning shortly after the apocalypse, with television now obsolete, people gather round a campfire and begin retelling what they remember from random episodes of The Simpsons. In the second act, the retelling has evolved into an oral tradition far from the original. By the third act, we’re eighty years removed from the apocalypse, and the story has become its own bizarre and surreal performance. I read Mr. Burns and saw the play in person years ago, but I still think about it and laugh. It might also somehow be a fairly accurate depiction of our post-apocalyptic world.