8 Nonfiction Books That SFF Fans Will Love

An unfortunate and outdated trope you sometimes see in SFF is the white savior: a white person who discovers and is inevitably revered by “inferior” Native peoples, who require the savior’s protection against myriad threats. Accidental Gods is a breathtaking yet respectful exploration of how certain men (always men) were, at various times and for various reasons, regarded as divine entities.

In this underwater thriller, two men are trapped in a nonfunctional submarine at the bottom of the ocean. Those on the surface must race against time—and the men’s dwindling oxygen supply—to do the impossible and bring them home safely. If you like suspenseful sci-fi tales where people are menaced by inhospitable environments, this is the nonfiction book for you. (J.R.R. Tolkien also gets a brief mention toward the end, for you LOTR fans!)

This book is so much more than just a valuable and illuminating oral history of Black Southern queer women’s experiences. Its framing device is nothing short of fantastical. The author is whisked away to Hymen, a hive-like realm inhabited by queer women, in order to immortalize their stories. Guided by the irascible Miss B., a fearless trickster, “Dr. EPJ” goes on a quest to uncover the lives of these marginalized yet resilient women.

Many sci-fi stories imagine what the world might look like decades, centuries, or even millennia from today. Kaku’s book does the same but from a scientific perspective. Extrapolating from current knowledge and technology, he paints a fascinating picture of what developments seem likely to unfold between now and the end of the 21st century. Are his predictions accurate? Only time will tell!

Space explorers are the inheritors of the grand yet deeply troubled tradition of risking it all to explore strange new worlds and expand their home country’s knowledge of the larger universe. This exciting book recounts the story of two 19th-century white Englishmen who each scrambled to be the first to find the source of the Nile. The book gives due credit to the Black African explorers without whom this great discovery would not have been possible.

Ghosts and the afterlife are a mainstay of fantasy, but just how true are these fictional depictions of the door that we must all walk through? Roach does her best to answer the unanswerable with help from experts in various fields. Even though she doesn’t find any concrete solutions, take heart: we will all find the answer to this mystery for ourselves sooner or later.

Before George Orwell became one of the 20th century’s best-known sci-fi writers, he fought and was injured in the Spanish Civil War. This was, in some ways, treated like a dress rehearsal for the violence and hateful ideologies that would be on full display in World War II.

Intertwining Orwell’s experiences with those of many others, this book examines the war that helped cement the antifascist views that Orwell would later explore so memorably in his fiction.

Finally, this memoir incorporates fantasy-like elements and frequent discussion of Japanese spiritual beliefs and practices, which is great if you enjoy SFF that takes inspiration from real-world religions. The author uses these narrative devices to explore the physical and emotional difficulties of caring for her aging parents in one country while living in another.