Top Ten Tuesday: Science Fiction Reads

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

This week’s topic is bookmarks, and while I can’t wait to see what you all use for bookmarks, the truth is, I use just about anything that’s laying around.  I do have a couple of actual book marks, somewhere, and they end up in all kinds of interesting places that usually don’t involve the pages of my book.

So instead, I’m dedicating this week’s T10T to Sci-Fi month, a post that on a SFF book blog is long overdue.  I’m going with books on my TBR, but I’ll include a few for recommended reading at the end.

Gamechanger by L.X. Beckett – I’m reading through this one now and I don’t even know how to describe it.  Set in a world following the apocalypse, where the survivors of humanity are now very careful about how resources are used and reused.  The world is a fascinating mashup of virtual reality laid over reality, and people are judged socially on how kind or eco-conscious they are.  It’s pretty weird, but I’m mostly enjoying it.

Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanderMeer – Gamechanger looks absolutely tame in comparison to VanderMeer’s new one.  Three “astronauts” are exploring the City where the Company is headquartered (the Company was first shown to readers in Borne, if you didn’t know), encountering all kinds of weird biotech.  The trouble is, they seem to be exploring it across multiple realities, and it’s confusing as all hell to follow.  Feels like a literary experiment gone horribly wrong right now.  I need a plot Jeff!

Golden Son by Pierce Brown – There’s really no excuse for me not having finished the Red Rising trilogy, never mind not being up-to-date on the series as a whole.  I loved the first book, it just took too long to get the second book in my hands.  Otherwise I’d be done with them by now.  So I’m hoping to buckle down and get them finished this month.

The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk – I read a couple chapters of this and was definitely intrigued, but got distracted by Gamechanger.  I also seem to have a running theme of cli-fi going this month, because much like that one, TFST is set in a world that has been ravaged by climate change.  Built on the old bones of San Francisco, this new city feels very utopian.  The problem?  The world outside the city is very much dystopian, scarce resources, slavery, violence, etc.. What happens when these two worlds collide?

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee – This one has been on my TBR for what feels like forever.  I think I own the whole series too, so I’m more than a little ashamed of the fact that I haven’t read it yet.  I’ve seen it compared to one of my favorites: Too Like the Lightning, in it’s complexity, and somewhat to Game of Thrones in it’s family dramas.  I think I’ve been subconsciously putting it off because I want to love it so badly.

The Menace from Farside by Ian McDonald – Can I get a happy dance?  Happy book birthday to The Menace from Farside!  It releases today and I’ll likely have it read before the end of the week.  This is an offshoot of one of my favorite SF series: Luna.

The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan – I’m listening to this now, and it’s perfect.  I was a little skeptical at first, that a film maker put his name on a book (after all, why not make it a film?) but I needn’t have been.  A plane lands at JFK full of dead passengers, and nobody understands why or how… That is, until they all get up and walk out of the morgue.  This is scary in all the right ways, with just enough science to make it feel real, and I’m absolutely eating it up.

Micro by Michael Crichton and Richard Preston – It’s highly unlikely that I’ll get to anything beyond the first seven(?!) books I mentioned (and even that feels overwhelmingly optimistic) but I want to read this one soon.  I’ve just been in the mood for some jungle fiction, and that’s something Crichton seems to do very well.  The blurb describes it as a survival horror type story where nature battles technology.  I think typing that just bumped it up the TBR.

Recommended Reading:

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal – This was one of my favorite books last year, and covered so many topics from prejudice and racism, to sexism, and mental illness.  This is about a woman who dreams of being an astronaut, and has the ability and talent to be one, but is held back at every turn, by men who think women shouldn’t do “a man’s job”.

New Moon by Ian McDonald – Described as “Game of Thrones in space,” that description isn’t too far off.  The Five Dragons of Luna, (that is, the five families that control almost everything on the moon) are warring over territory and new markets and politics.  The only thing they all agree on, is that nobody wants Earth interfering in Moon business.  This series is such a treasure for me, even if the books themselves can be difficult at times.  I wish it was getting a little more recognition in the SF realm!

The Moon and the Other by John Kessel – This is another on that I wish was more widely read.  It’s a slower paced story, not as exciting or as flashy as New Moon (above) but a novel with a little more depth, that gives plenty of food for thought.  It’s about a matriarchal colony on the moon, fighting for independence among a sea of other more traditionally run colonies (not strictly patriarchal, but certainly not matriarchal).

Are you planning on reading anything for SF month?

Leave a link to your T10T posts below so I can see what you are using for bookmarks.  It’s gotta be petter than the crumpled post-it note currently holding my page!