Parable of the Talents
Octavia E. Butler
This sequal to Parable of the Sower follows Lauren Olamina and her Earthseed community as it grows—and then is viciously assaulted.
Parable of the Sower
Octavia E. Butler
Lauren Olamina lives in a walled neighborhood in Southern California; it’s dangerous to venture beyond the walls, where there’s little work, less food, and no law.
The Sea and Summer
George Turner
Turner’s The Sea and Summer takes place in a near future Australia, where the greenhouse effect has led to eternal summers and encroaching sea level.
The Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead
The most talked-about feature of Whitehead’s novel of the underground railroad is the railroad itself: reimagined as an actual railroad, with tunnels and tracks and steam engines and crazed conductors, it makes for stunning, cinematic imagery.
The Handmaid’s Tale
Margaret Atwood
It’s a refrain of late to say that this—Margaret Atwood’s most famous book, now thirty-one years old—is suddenly relevant again.
The Fifth Season
N. K. Jemisin
The first book of “The Broken Earth” trilogy, The Fifth Season tells of a world routinely undone by huge, world ending earthquakes.
Fledgling
Octavia E. Butler
In this, Butler’s last book, she returns to the notion of symbiosis so thoroughly explored in Lilith’s Brood.
Worlds of Exile and Illusion
Ursula K. Le Guin
These three novels, Le Guin’s earliest, explore the experiences of visitors on three different planets.
Aurora
Kim Stanley Robinson
Aurora follows a generational space ship as it travels to a far away solar system in search of a planet that can be safely terraformed.
The Lathe of Heaven
Ursula K. Le Guin
This brief novel from Ursula K. Le Guin concerns a man named George Orr who has a most unwelcome ability: his dreams have the power to alter reality.
Ancillary Mercy
Ann Leckie
The conclusion of Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch series is more madcap than the preceding books, and fiercely satisfying.
Ancillary Sword
Ann Leckie
The second of Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch series follows Breq as she’s given command of a ship—her first since she was herself a ship, before the Lord of the Radch destroyed it.
Ancillary Justice
Ann Leckie
The first in Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch series introduces Breq, an AI who once inhabited a starship and many of it’s formerly-human crew.
Alias Grace
Margaret Atwood
In 1840s Toronto, a woman named Grace Marks, just shy of 16 years old, escapes with a man after one or both of them murder their employer and his housekeeper-turned-mistress.
The Girl in the Road
Monica Byrne
In a near future marked by rising sea level, two girls embark on ambitious ventures.
The Dispossessed
Ursula K. Le Guin
A planet named Urras is host to a habitable moon known as Anarres. Some seven generations ago, a group of anarchist settlers left Urras to build a colony on the moon, after which the communication between the colonists and the planet all but ceased.
The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin
A human envoy arrives on a planet known as “Winter.” His solitary mission is to welcome the people of Winter to a collection of planets, but to do so he must first find welcome himself.
The Peripheral
William Gibson
Drones, haptics, ocular implants, virtual reality, climate change, nanotechnology, celebrity: like all of Gibson’s novels, The Peripheral is a novel of the future that’s entirely about the present.
Tigerman
Nick Harkaway
Harkaway’s fiction occupies an extraordinary space between evocative sci-fi dystopia and Hollywood action-adventure—in other words, it is completely irresistible.
The Manual of Detection
Jedediah Berry
A playful novel, part Kafka, part Borges. Reminded me of Terry Gilliam’s films (in the best possible way).