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Why hopepunk, and why me? Look, it’s no surprise that you can look around today and find all sorts of indicators that we are entering Heinlein’s “Crazy Years.” Imagining a dystopian or grimdark future isn’t difficult; all you have to do is read the news. But I think that we are writing the history of the future right now, by the choices we make every day. Writing stories that present that optimistic view of the future is not just the right thing to do but necessary, at least to me. As Heinlein said, “A pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun…”
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.
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.
Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there.
After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive--and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.
Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old human error are…
I tell stories for the page and the screen (and sometimes to bribe my kid to brush her teeth). The stories I tell have one thing in common – they transport the reader to another world. For me, building a new world starts with building a new character – a narrator with strong opinions and a complicated past that will shape how the reader experiences their world. We don't experience the real world objectively – no matter how hard we try, our past, our feelings, and even our bodies affect how we experience the world. That's why the worlds I build and the stories I tell are all filtered through the particular truth of a bold narrator.
Illuminae is the first book in a YA science fiction series called the Illuminae Files Trilogy.
The story is told through intersecting first-person narratives constructed from journals, letters, texts, reports, and pictures. You want to absorb all that “found footage” goodness on paper. Trust.
There’s almost no exposition in Illuminae, especially in the first few chapters. That’s the beauty of these books – the narration is so visceral and urgent that you get invested in the story long before you really understand what’s happening. Putting the pieces of the world-building together is an addictive mystery in and of itself.
I don’t recommend cracking open this book the night before anything requiring a good night’s rest and lots of focus – your mind will be in 2575 until well after you’ve finished the last page.
'Never have I read a book so wholly unique and utterly captivating.' Marie Lu
'It certainly filled the Battlestar Galactica-shaped hole in my heart.' Victoria Aveyard
The internationally bestselling first book in a high-octane trilogy
Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the worst thing she'd ever been through. That was before her planet was invaded. Now, with enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra are forced to fight their way onto one of the evacuating craft, with an enemy warship in hot pursuit.
But the warship could be the least of their problems. A deadly plague has…
Comedy and science fiction have special places in my heart. I’m fascinated with the prospect of what AI and machine learning might bring us, and I believe to laugh and enjoy life is to be healthy and content. The best humor is revealed through character relationships. I grew up watching Doctor Who, a show that presented a serious story with lighthearted moments. Douglas Adams put that same formula in his books. For ten years I honed my writing skills producing graphic novels, where you had to tell a story and inject humor onto one page. Now novel writing is my means of bringing a little joy to the world.
Guy strikes it rich, splurges on cryogenically freezing his head then gets killed crossing the street. This is a story I can get behind! Bob is now a sentient AI—no body or external senses. This is a problem until he comes up with an innovative solution. Not only is this a book full of sharp and wacky humor, there’s a fantastic undercurrent of sci-fi thought experimentation—and this really resonated with me. What would it be like to be a sentient AI? Imagine replicating yourself and dealing with your “other selves.” There are highs and lows for Bob, and great action sequences. The book is pure fun! I spent part of the summer walking and listening to the amazing audiobook, I looked forward to those walks every day.
Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street.
Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first…
Comedy and science fiction have special places in my heart. I’m fascinated with the prospect of what AI and machine learning might bring us, and I believe to laugh and enjoy life is to be healthy and content. The best humor is revealed through character relationships. I grew up watching Doctor Who, a show that presented a serious story with lighthearted moments. Douglas Adams put that same formula in his books. For ten years I honed my writing skills producing graphic novels, where you had to tell a story and inject humor onto one page. Now novel writing is my means of bringing a little joy to the world.
I’ve always considered this book to be Adams at his best. Somehow he mixes Norse mythology (with a hilarious, confused Thor and an Odin who is constantly chasing a good night’s sleep), a detective story, and unique, satisfying humor you won't find anywhere else. (Like Dirk’s refrigerator, which has become so filthy he and his cleaning lady are trying to trick one another into opening it first.) The story is so clever and fun that you’re immediately lost in it. It’s like comfort food in book form. I read this when I was traveling and away from my family while struggling with some health issues, and it was just the balm I needed.
Beloved, bumbling Detective Dirk Gently returns in this standalone novel from Douglas Adams, the legendary author of one of the most beloved science fiction novels of all time, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
When a check-in desk at London’s Heathrow Airport disappears in a ball of orange flame, the event is said to be an act of God. But which god? wonders holistic detective Dirk Gently. And how is this connected to Dirk’s battle with his cleaning lady over his filthy refrigerator…or to the murder of his latest client? Or are these events just another stretch of coincidences in…
I have chosen this area of literature because I enjoy expanding my horizons. I love to find out about stories from different cultures and different times that will open my eyes to things I would never have thought about before. The depth of the writing is important to convey the emotions felt by the characters. This is what inspires me in my writing and my book that I have chosen to highlight here is also a story of historical fiction, influenced by my experience of living in Slovakia and finding out from residents about how incredibly different life had been in their country.
Moonfleet is a fictional tale of life on the high seas. Starting out as a boy, the main character takes on a life where he constantly grows and learns through his dangerous interactions with smugglers. The book is filled with stories of different adventures and challenges and it will keep you engrossed all the way through. This is one of the best books of its kind that I have read.
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
I once had a history advisor in school whom I informed that I was studying history so I could write fiction better. I saw him cringe a bit at that. Even so, I think that history and fiction–and the mystery–go together well. I am always drawn by mystery dramas–and by the drama of real lives facing and unraveling their way through real events. Of course, that led to graduate studies in cultural and intellectual history, to many years of teaching literature, and to passionate reading of mystery novels. Sparkling fiction and strong narrative history, for me, continue to stimulate a sense of wonder at human experience and this incredible universe we live in.
History comes alive in this mysterious story of a prohibition finagler and his underground operation.
I enjoyed how Bob Batchelor gives us the dirt on this smuggler of the prohibition years: his business, his secrets, his cronies, and his enemies. This is a stunningly sharp narrative that reads like a novel.
Flannery O’Connor once said that all fiction is ultimately about the “mystery of personality.” I agree. In fact, I have always suspected that all good novels, genre-based or otherwise, are secretly mystery novels, if only in the psychological sense. Conversely, many so-called genre novels have just as much depth, insight, and realism as any literary work. I have read a lot of genre and literary fiction in my time, and I have long been fascinated by works that blur the line between the two. My favorite kind of book is one that feels like a genre novel (that is, it has a great plot) but also has the depth and vividness of a literary novel.
This is my favorite novel. I read it every year or so, and each time, I feel like it makes my own writing better.
Set in the latter years of the Vietnam War, it tells the story of two friends—Converse, a war-traumatized journalist, and Hicks, a world-weary, cynical marine—who smuggle three kilos of heroin back to Berkeley, California.
I love the realism of this book, but it might be too brutal were it not tempered by how intelligent and sympathetic the main characters are, even when doing terrible things. The book feels exactly like a crime/adventure novel, exploring the dark underbelly of the counterculture in the 1970s. It’s also an amazingly complex and philosophical novel about the balance between morality and ego.
In Saigon during the last stages of the Vietnam War, a small-time journalist named John Converse thinks he'll find action - and profit - by getting involved in a big-time drug deal. But back in the States, things go horribly wrong. His courier disappears, probably with his wife, and a corrupt Fed wants Converse to find him the drugs, or else.
Dog Soldiers is a frightening, powerful, intense novel that perfectly captures the underground mood of the United States in the 1970s, when amateur drug dealers and hippies encountered the violent world of cops on the make and professional killers.…
I grew up on the coast of South Carolina, where many of the Golden Age pirates were welcomed as business associates and charming guests by some of the most influential people of the day. They are, to this day, considered local heroes. I read everything I could lay hands on about them, fiction and histories, and I knew my first book would have to be about the pirate I always pretended I could be, if I’d only been born two hundred years ago.
This one’s a little different – pirates sail the clouds instead of the ocean. In a world where Haiti won its freedom at a devastating cost, a young Black woman wants to earn a place on an airship, but can’t seem to find any way to prove her worth to the sky pirates she longs to join. Until she learns about a weapon called the Black God’s Drums, that someone plans to use to wipe New Orleans off the map. Add in the whispers of an orisha with its own agenda and a possible romantic attraction to the peg-legged Captain Ann-Marie, and you’ve got everything a pirate might want.
In an alternate New Orleans caught in the tangle of the American Civil War, the wall-scaling girl named Creeper yearns to escape the streets for the air - in particular, by earning a spot on-board the airship Midnight Robber. Creeper plans to earn Captain Ann-Marie's trust with information she discovers about a Haitian scientist and a mysterious weapon he calls The Black God's Drums.
But Creeper also has a secret herself: Oya, the African orisha of the wind and storms, speaks inside her head, and may have her own ulterior motivations.
I love being by the water. Most of my vacations are spent at tropical destinations. There’s something pretty amazing about reading a book at the water’s edge, near a palm tree, with the breeze and the salty smell of the wonderful warm air as pelicans swoop across the surface.
I love being in Key West with the main character. There are palm trees swaying and boats on the water as the character dives in, searching for treasure. I also liked the dark, seedy graveyard scenes and urban legends the island people tell.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Wrecker needs to deal with smugglers, grave robbers, and pooping iguanas—just as soon as he finishes Zoom school. Welcome to another wild adventure in Carl Hiaasen's Florida!
Valdez Jones VIII calls himself Wrecker because his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather salvaged shipwrecks for a living.
So is it destiny, irony, or just bad luck when Wrecker comes across a speedboat that has run hard aground on a sand flat? The men in the boat don't want Wrecker to call for help—in fact, they'll pay him to forget he ever saw them.
Why hopepunk, and why me? Look, it’s no surprise that you can look around today and find all sorts of indicators that we are entering Heinlein’s “Crazy Years.” Imagining a dystopian or grimdark future isn’t difficult; all you have to do is read the news. But I think that we are writing the history of the future right now, by the choices we make every day. Writing stories that present that optimistic view of the future is not just the right thing to do but necessary, at least to me. As Heinlein said, “A pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun…”
I couldn’t let this one pass by, not least because it helped solidify my name for the lunar colony in my books.
Once again, Andy Weir examines the themes of humanity as related to personal choice and responsibility in the face of a larger whole. Jazz navigates the perils thrown at her with humor, good will, and a healthy dose of self-preservation. Again, there’s a reason I think that Weir defines hopepunk for the modern author.
The bestselling author of The Martian returns with an irresistible new near-future thriller—a heist story set on the moon.
Jasmine Bashara never signed up to be a hero. She just wanted to get rich.
Not crazy, eccentric-billionaire rich, like many of the visitors to her hometown of Artemis, humanity’s first and only lunar colony. Just rich enough to move out of her coffin-sized apartment and eat something better than flavored algae. Rich enough to pay off a debt she’s owed for a long time.
So when a chance at a huge score finally comes her way, Jazz can’t say no.…
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