100 books like Speculative Fiction for Dreamers

By Alex Hernandez (editor), Matthew David Goodwin (editor), Sarah Rafael Garcia (editor)

Here are 100 books that Speculative Fiction for Dreamers fans have personally recommended if you like Speculative Fiction for Dreamers. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Book cover of Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction

E.G. Condé Author Of Sordidez

From my list on Indigenous futurism.

Why am I passionate about this?

In grade school, I was taught that my ancestors in Borikén (Puerto Rico) were eradicated by the Spanish, just a few decades after Christopher Columbus “discovered” the Americas. I have since become an Anthropologist of technology, where I study how the infrastructure failures and disasters like hurricanes are reactivating a dormant Taíno identity on my ancestral archipelago. My speculative fiction is inspired by this research and my fractured family history as a descendant of the Taíno, enslaved Africans, and their colonizers from Spain. In my stories, I challenge the narrative of my own extinction, imagining alternative pasts and futures where the Taíno are flourishing and Boricuas are free from American colonial rule (Taínofuturism).

E.G.'s book list on Indigenous futurism

E.G. Condé Why did E.G. love this book?

Among the more insidious and tragic consequences of colonialism and its assimilationist policies is the eradication of indigenous conventions around gender and sexuality. In many indigenous communities, gender and sexuality do not operate in as binary as a fashion as they do in European societies.

Highlighting these historical and contemporary possibilities for what we might call queer identities (or “two-spirit” in some communities), is Joshua Whithead’s breathtaking “Indigiqueer” anthology, Love After the End. Contributors amend the provocation, the future is indigenous, to consider how the future is also queer or indigiqueer. 

Weaving between the traditional and the contemporary, the past and the future, the ancestral and the posthuman, these tales of queer joy, love, and thriving remind us of what was lost and what is still possible as we strive toward mass decolonization.

By Joshua Whitehead (editor),

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Love After the End as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Lambda Literary Award winner

This exciting and groundbreaking fiction anthology showcases a number of new and emerging 2SQ (Two-Spirit and queer Indigenous) writers from across Turtle Island. These visionary authors show how queer Indigenous communities can bloom and thrive through utopian narratives that detail the vivacity and strength of 2SQness throughout its plight in the maw of settler colonialism’s histories.

Here, readers will discover bio-engineered AI rats, transplanted trees in space, the rise of a 2SQ resistance camp, a primer on how to survive Indigiqueerly, virtual reality applications, motherships at sea, and the very bending of space-time continuums queered through…


Book cover of Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction

E.G. Condé Author Of Sordidez

From my list on Indigenous futurism.

Why am I passionate about this?

In grade school, I was taught that my ancestors in Borikén (Puerto Rico) were eradicated by the Spanish, just a few decades after Christopher Columbus “discovered” the Americas. I have since become an Anthropologist of technology, where I study how the infrastructure failures and disasters like hurricanes are reactivating a dormant Taíno identity on my ancestral archipelago. My speculative fiction is inspired by this research and my fractured family history as a descendant of the Taíno, enslaved Africans, and their colonizers from Spain. In my stories, I challenge the narrative of my own extinction, imagining alternative pasts and futures where the Taíno are flourishing and Boricuas are free from American colonial rule (Taínofuturism).

E.G.'s book list on Indigenous futurism

E.G. Condé Why did E.G. love this book?

The future is Indigenous. Time is not linear. The scientific and the spiritual are not mutually exclusive. The apocalypse can be survived.

These are some of the many provocations explored in the stories, essays, and excerpts that make up Grace Dillon’s (Anishinaabe) groundbreaking anthology, Walking the Clouds. The voices that appear in this collection lay the foundations for indigenous futurism and challenge the ongoing colonial politics of science fiction (SF) as a genre. SF tropes like alien encounters, apocalypses, and interstellar voyages are realigned with the assimilationist and genocidal histories of colonialism that inspired them.

Walking the Clouds is a powerful intervention and a must-read for anyone seeking an introduction to indigenous futurisms and decolonial fiction. 

By Grace Dillon (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Walking the Clouds as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?


In this first-ever anthology of Indigenous science fiction Grace Dillon collects some of the finest examples of the craft with contributions by Native American, First Nations, Aboriginal Australian, and New Zealand Maori authors. The collection includes seminal authors such as Gerald Vizenor, historically important contributions often categorized as "magical realism" by authors like Leslie Marmon Silko and Sherman Alexie, and authors more recognizable to science fiction fans like William Sanders and Stephen Graham Jones. Dillon's engaging introduction situates the pieces in the larger context of science fiction and its conventions.

Organized by sub-genre, the book starts with Native slipstream, stories…


Book cover of Weird Fishes

E.G. Condé Author Of Sordidez

From my list on Indigenous futurism.

Why am I passionate about this?

In grade school, I was taught that my ancestors in Borikén (Puerto Rico) were eradicated by the Spanish, just a few decades after Christopher Columbus “discovered” the Americas. I have since become an Anthropologist of technology, where I study how the infrastructure failures and disasters like hurricanes are reactivating a dormant Taíno identity on my ancestral archipelago. My speculative fiction is inspired by this research and my fractured family history as a descendant of the Taíno, enslaved Africans, and their colonizers from Spain. In my stories, I challenge the narrative of my own extinction, imagining alternative pasts and futures where the Taíno are flourishing and Boricuas are free from American colonial rule (Taínofuturism).

E.G.'s book list on Indigenous futurism

E.G. Condé Why did E.G. love this book?

I can think of no other book that so exquisitely inhabits the tension between indigenous knowledge traditions and science than Rae Mariz’s (Indigenous Pacific) marvelous clifi novella, Weird Fishes.

Inspired by marine science and the storytelling traditions of Hawai'i, Mariz’s world is a feast of bubbling colors and more-than-human senses that inspire an extraordinary empathy for all the wondrous beings with whom we share this planet. Weird Fishes reads like a parable and an aquatic mystery, a magnificently crafted voyage that leads the novella’s cephalopod scientist protagonist (Ceph) to the startling discovery that humanity is behind the growing disruptions to marine ecology.

How do we thrive together? Or does the survival one society hinge on the extermination of the other? Is co-existence possible for beings with such radically different natures and senses? These are the questions that will linger in your gills well after the last pages are turned.

By Rae Mariz,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Weird Fishes as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

AN UNDERWATER TALE OF FRIENDSHIP AGAINST MONSTROUS ODDS
When Ceph, a squid-like scientist, discovers proof of the ocean’s slowing currents, she makes the dangerous ascent from her deep-sea civilization to the uncharted surface above. Out of her depths and helpless in her symbiotic mech suit, Ceph relies on Iliokai, a seal-folk storyteller, who sings the state of the sea and has seen evidence of clogged currents as she surfs the time gyres throughout the lonely blue. Navigating the perils of their damaged ocean environment, and seemingly insurmountable cultural differences, Ceph and Iliokai realize that the activities of terrestrial beings are…


Book cover of Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection

E.G. Condé Author Of Sordidez

From my list on Indigenous futurism.

Why am I passionate about this?

In grade school, I was taught that my ancestors in Borikén (Puerto Rico) were eradicated by the Spanish, just a few decades after Christopher Columbus “discovered” the Americas. I have since become an Anthropologist of technology, where I study how the infrastructure failures and disasters like hurricanes are reactivating a dormant Taíno identity on my ancestral archipelago. My speculative fiction is inspired by this research and my fractured family history as a descendant of the Taíno, enslaved Africans, and their colonizers from Spain. In my stories, I challenge the narrative of my own extinction, imagining alternative pasts and futures where the Taíno are flourishing and Boricuas are free from American colonial rule (Taínofuturism).

E.G.'s book list on Indigenous futurism

E.G. Condé Why did E.G. love this book?

Not all indigenous languages have a corresponding alphabet or writing system. For example, many North American indigenous languages are now represented in a Romanized alphabet, but traditionally these languages were spoken and the stories they contained were transmitted by oral tradition.

In the case of my Taino ancestors, stories were also told with pictographs or petroglyphs. I conclude my list of indigenous futurist books with stories that are told graphically, in the form of Moonshot, a collection of comics edited, written, and illustrated by indigenous storytellers and artists.

Edited by Elizabeth LaPensée (Anishinaabe & Métis) and Michael Sheyahshe (Oklahoma Caddo Nation), the imagery is striking, conjuring colorful mythoscapes and slipstream futures with indigenous people at the forefront, redefining science and technology along the way. One story features a protagonist in a wheelchair, raising questions about ableism in SF and the possibility for “Crip” Futures and Indigenous Futurism to be…

By Hope Nicholson (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Moonshot as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

MOONSHOT: The Indigenous Comics Collection brings together dozens of creators from North America to contribute comic book stories showcasing the rich heritage and identity of indigenous storytelling. From traditional stories to exciting new visions of the future, this collection presents some of the finest comic book and graphic novel work on the continent.


Book cover of Required Reading: Why Our American Classics Matter Now

Marc Egnal Author Of A Mirror for History: How Novels and Art Reflect the Evolution of Middle-Class America

From my list on American intellectual history.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up in Philadelphia, with school and family visits to landmarks like Independence Hall and Betsy Ross’s house, I’ve long been interested in American history. That led me, eventually, to graduate school and my profession as a historian. At the same time, I have greatly enjoyed reading American novelists, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Willa Cather, and James Baldwin, as well as the works of thinkers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and W.E.B. DuBois. The sweet spot combining those two interests has been American intellectual history.

Marc's book list on American intellectual history

Marc Egnal Why did Marc love this book?

This book showed me how engaging, intellectual history can be written. It’s never enough to present information. If you respect your readers, as Delbanco does, keep them entertained. These twelve essays mix the personal, literary, and social in a lively and often surprising, frothy brew. I also like the way Delbanco makes the distant past relevant for today’s world.

Individual sentences are a delight. You’ll leave the book knowing much more about the life, times, and work of writers like Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edith Wharton, and Richard Wright.

By Andrew Delbanco,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Required Reading as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Essays discuss nineteenth and twentieth century American literature, from Henry Adams to Zora Neale Hurston


Book cover of The Hero And the Blues

David Nicholson Author Of The Garretts of Columbia: A Black South Carolina Family from Slavery to the Dawn of Integration

From my list on race in America.

Why am I passionate about this?

Though I was born in the U.S., I didn’t wind up living here full-time till I was almost 10. The result? I have always been curious about what it means to be an American. In one way or another, the books on my list explore that question. More than that, all (well, nearly all) insist that black history is inextricably intertwined with American history and that American culture is a mulatto culture, a fusion of black and white. After years of making my living as a journalist, editor, and book reviewer, I left newspapers to write fiction and non-fiction, exploring these and other questions.

David's book list on race in America

David Nicholson Why did David love this book?

James Alan McPherson, a writer I’d long admired and my teacher at the University of Iowa, introduced me to The Hero and the Blues. Murray and Ralph Ellison were friends and intellectual sparring partners who worked out their ideas in conversation, and in letters to one another, so it’s not surprising that many of the same ideas occur in their work.

Here, Murray argues that the hallmark of great artists, Shakespeare, Duke Ellington, and Thomas Mann, is their ability to improvise; that is, to take what they’ve learned through formal study and come up with something new. More than that, Murray writes convincingly, the blues has been essential in affirming the humanity of black Americans despite challenges complicated by the particularities of our situation.

As with Ellison, I keep coming back to Murray, again and again, for inspiration and affirmation.


By Albert Murray,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Hero And the Blues as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this visionary book, Murray takes an audacious new look at black music and, in the process, succeeds in changing the way one reads literature. Murray's subject is the previously unacknowledged kinship between fiction and the blues. Both, he argues, are virtuoso performances that impart information, wisdom, and moral guidance to their audiences; both place a high value on improvisation; and both fiction and the blues create a delicate balance between the holy and the obscene, essential human values and cosmic absurdity. 
Encompassing artists from Ernest Hemingway to Duke Ellington, and from Thomas Mann to Richard Wright, The Hero and…


Book cover of Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies

Jonathan Rose Author Of A Companion to the History of the Book

From my list on the history of books.

Why am I passionate about this?

Books—broadly defined as any kind of written or printed document—are the primary means by which civilizations are constructed, memories are preserved, ideas are communicated, wealth is distributed, and power is exercised. To understand any human society, you must read its books. And as Winston Churchill said, “Books last forever.” The physical structures of civilizations eventually crumble into ruins, but the books they leave behind are immortal.

Jonathan's book list on the history of books

Jonathan Rose Why did Jonathan love this book?

More than a century before Oprah, emancipated African Americans organized their own book clubs. They studied mainly the Western classics but also emerging black writers.

While Booker T. Washington emphasized vocational training, more militant black leaders demanded the right to read the same authors taught in elite white academies: One of their syllabuses included Milton, Spenser, Homer, Aeschylus, Longfellow, Dryden, Pope, Browning, Pindar and Sappho. Those poets, said one reader, inspired the "hope [that] the great American epic of the joys and sorrows of our blood and kindred, of those who have gone before us[,] would one day be written."

And that's exactly what happened. A young Ralph Ellison read everything in the segregated branch of the Oklahoma City library; Malcolm X was profoundly affected by Paradise Lost; and Toni Morrison minored in classics at Howard University.

By Elizabeth McHenry,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Forgotten Readers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Over the past decade the popularity of black writers including E. Lynn Harris and Terry McMillan has been hailed as an indication that an active African American reading public has come into being. Yet this is not a new trend; there is a vibrant history of African American literacy, literary associations, and book clubs. Forgotten Readers reveals that neglected past, looking at the reading practices of free blacks in the antebellum north and among African Americans following the Civil War. It places the black upper and middle classes within American literary history, illustrating how they used reading and literary conversation…


Book cover of Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the World through Stories

Justin Jaron Lewis Author Of Imagining Holiness: Classic Hasidic Tales in Modern Times

From my list on people telling each other stories.

Why am I passionate about this?

Nearly forty years ago, as a young poet, I started going to a storytelling circle in Toronto, thinking it would be a good venue to recite my poems. What I heard there awakened something in me. When I was a child, my parents read me wonder tales, and I soon began to read them on my own. Now I was hearing these stories, the way they were heard for millennia before anyone wrote them down. Today, I am a storyteller, I am married, and I am a professor who teaches a course on storytelling and writes about stories – all because of those weekly gatherings years ago and the storytellers there.

Justin's book list on people telling each other stories

Justin Jaron Lewis Why did Justin love this book?

This is a book about stories of the land I live on.

My home is in Winnipeg, on the edge of the flatland called “the Prairies” in Canada and “the Great Plains” in the United States. But the land doesn’t care about the Canada-US border. And that border is nothing but an imposition on the older nations whose territory I live in: the Red River Métis, and the Anishinaabeg.

These Indigenous Peoples have ancient living traditions of oral storytelling, and this book, by Anishinaabeg scholars, celebrates their stories’ spiritual, practical, and political power.

A teaching shared by storyteller Kathleen Delores Westcott tells us “the story is a living being. It’s alive.” That teaching has helped me to understand how stories attract us, get inside us, change, and move across boundaries. 

By Jill Doerfler (editor), Niigaanwew James Sinclair (editor), Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark (editor)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Centering Anishinaabeg Studies as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

For the Anishinaabeg people, who span a vast geographic region from the Great Lakes to the Plains and beyond, stories are vessels of knowledge. They are bagijiganan, offerings of the possibilities within Anishinaabeg life. Existing along a broad narrative spectrum, from aadizookaanag (traditional or sacred narratives) to dibaajimowinan (histories and news) - as well as everything in between - storytelling is one of the central practices and methods of individual and community existence. Stories create and understand, survive and endure, revitalize and persist. They honour the past, recognise the present, and provide visions of the future.

In remembering, (re)making, and…


Book cover of When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II

Janine Barchas Author Of The Lost Books of Jane Austen

From my list on books, for readers who like the smell of paper.

Why am I passionate about this?

I vividly recall learning about public libraries as a kid: if I signed up for a library card I could take ANY of these books home to read?! From the first, I loved books as physical objects on library shelves—savoring their covers and carefully reading their spines as clues to the stories within. I ended up as a professor of literature who does not just study the words, or texts, of novels (my specialty), but how stories are made into books and circulate in the culture. Everything from graphic design to price can influence our interpretation of a story, even before we read the first word...

Janine's book list on books, for readers who like the smell of paper

Janine Barchas Why did Janine love this book?

I love the grit and heroism of this story about the history of the humble Armed Services Editions. My own university holds one of the largest collections of these small wartime reprints that were sized to fit into the pocket of a GI’s uniform.

So, I initially reached for this book out of duty but then relished it for its compelling historical facts and vividly bookish humanity.

By Molly Guptill Manning,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked When Books Went to War as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. While the Nazis were burning hundreds of millions of books across Europe, America printed and shipped 140 million books to its troops. The "heartwarming" story of how an army of librarians and publishers lifted spirits and built a new democratic audience of readers is as inspiring today as it was then (New York Times).

When America entered World War II in 1941, we faced an enemy that had banned and burned 100 million books. Outraged librarians launched a campaign to send free books to American troops and gathered 20 million hardcover donations.

In 1943, the War…


Book cover of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

G. Wayne Miller Author Of Unfit to Print: A Modern Media Satire

From my list on an important moment or time in history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been passionate about journalism since I was a teenager, when I became the co-editor of my high school newspaper. My career as a full-time journalist began decades ago, at a small family-owned newspaper in Berkshire County, Mass., and continued through staff writer positions at The Cape Cod Times, Providence Journal and now at OceanStateStories.org, the new non-profit news outlet based at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center in Newport, R.I., that I co-founded and now direct. So I have the long and inside view of American journalism!

G.'s book list on an important moment or time in history

G. Wayne Miller Why did G. love this book?

This landmark book by the Iranian-American writer Azar Afisi is an account of the oppression of the Islamic Revolution in her native Iran and an ode to the liberating power of literature and truth.

In her book, Nafisi recounts the experiences of a group of students she worked with as a professor of English at the University of Tehran. She was dismissed from that professorship in 1981 for refusing to cover her hair and 16 years later, emigrated to America, where she teaches, writes, and is an internationally respected voice for press and personal freedoms.

By Azar Nafisi,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Reading Lolita in Tehran as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When Azar Nafisi was fired from Tehran University (where she was teaching English literature) because she refused to wear a veil, she gathered a group of her female students and resumed her classes at home, privately and discreetly. There, a group of young women discussed, argued about and communed with Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Henry James, Nabokov and others in the canon of English writers. The surreal picture of reading "Lolita", weighing the sexuality of Jane Austen or the American authenticity of Gatsby in the severe aftermath of Iran's Islamic Revolution was not lost on either Nafisi or her students. The…


Book cover of Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction
Book cover of Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction
Book cover of Weird Fishes

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,355

readers submitted
so far, will you?

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in surrealism, magic-supernatural, and the supernatural?

Surrealism 110 books
Magic-Supernatural 665 books
The Supernatural 372 books