Saving Time

Jenny Odell

“This book is my panoramic assault on nihilism.”

My Trade Is Mystery

Carl Phillips

An invitation to get lost, and to make oneself at ease in that place of mystery.

Starfish

Peter Watts

A group of people “preadapted” to danger and stress have been recruited to run a power station at the bottom of the Pacific.

Resisting AI

Dan McQuillan

“AI presents a technological shift in the framework of society that will amplify austerity while enabling authoritarian politics.”

Elite Capture

Olúfémi O. Táíwò

A cogent argument about how the elite has coopted identity politics in order to deliver a facade of change while leaving the underlying structures of racial capitalism in place.

The Burnout Society

Byung-Chul Han

The modern day worker, argues Byung-Chul Han, is an “entrepreneur of themselves.”

Undrowned

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

“I believe in the possibility of dorsal, or stabilizing practices in our own lives.”

Strangers to Ourselves asks questions about how we name and respond to people with “unsettled” minds.

This compact and intense treatise argues that we are living through a crisis of community and attendant loss of ritual power.

The City and the City

China Miéville

Inspector Tyador Borlú serves on the Extreme Crime Squad in the city of Besźel.

Rest Is Resistance

Tricia Hersey

Tricia Hersey—aka “The Nap Bishop”—is here to tell us to rest, and I am ready to listen.

Ways of Being

James Bridle

Amid a drive for more “artificial” intelligence, James Bridle here asks what counts as intelligence, and then reframes fears about a future AI takeover into more productive—and present—ends.

Nona the Ninth

Tamsyn Muir

In the third book of the Locked Tomb series, Nona lives with her friends Camilla, Palamedes, and Pyrrha in a cramped apartment in a tall building in a city menaced by a great hulking creature in the sky.

The Gone-Away World

Nick Harkaway

A world-ending weapon that makes its targets “go away” has, perhaps predictably, gone awry and left large parts of the world uninhabitable.

Just Culture

Stanley Dekker

Drawing from safety practices in transportation and medicine, Sidney Dekker outlines how to (and how not to) create a culture of trust, learning, and accountability.

Hokuloa Road

Elizabeth Hand

Grady Kendall is biding his time in Maine, living with his mom as the pandemic swirls around them.

Nova

Samuel R. Delany

Mouse is a young cyborg stud who plays a stolen sensory syrynx—an instrument that projects sights, smells, and sounds all at once.

Women Who Run With the Wolves

Clarissa Pinkola Estés

A Jungian psychoanalyst and self-named cantadora, or keeper of stories, Clarissa Pinkola Estés here collects myths, fairy tales, fables, and many other stories old and new about the inner and outer lives of women.

The Factory

Hiroko Oyamada

Three workers reluctantly take jobs at the factory.

Craft in the Real World

Matthew Salesses

In Craft in the Real World, Matthew Salesses sets out to upend the traditional fiction writing workshop—which was established by, about, and for white male writers.