John Scalzi is the bestselling author of Monsters of Ohio, out this week from Tor. Below, he recommends three of his favorite recent sci-fi and fantasy reads.
One of the tragic ironies of being a science fiction writer is that often you don’t have all that much time to be a science fiction reader: there are deadlines, and travel, and all the other things that conspire to keep you from reading other people’s books. Nevertheless, here are three books that I enjoyed this year in the field of science fiction and fantasy.
Disclosure: I have at one point or another blurbed all of these authors, so obviously my biases will be showing.
Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim: We often feel like we are a completely different person when we travel from home to some other place. In this fantastic debut novel, that is an actual literal thing that happens. Individuals split off into two whenever there is an international border, and clearly complications will ensue. This is a ridiculously good book for being just a first novel, and I expect that it will show up on best of the year lists and possibly also for award consideration.
A Wall is Also a Road by Annalee Newitz: One of the things that science fiction excels at is imagining alien intelligences and other modes of being, but this novel absolutely runs with this concept, since one of the major characters here just happens to be a slime mold. As they very frequently do in their fiction, Annalee Newitz does an excellent job here of getting into the headspace of an unexpected set of characters and bringing us along. It makes for great reading. Also, the cover to this book is possibly my favorite of any book this year.
Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky: A crime noir in a future city where all the major characters are cute furry woodland animals? Sure, why not? Adrian Tchaikovsky is seriously annoying (complimentary) not only because he releases so many books and so many different kinds of books, but also because almost all of them are just plain terrific. So is this one. It’s got raccoon private investigators! It’s just infuriating how good he is.