Recommendations from our site
“It is a book about a woman, Anna. She lives in New York. She is a war orphan, for very distressing reasons, from Kurdistan. She was raised by foster parents in America. She is very unhappy, and one day she meets an alien in Central Park. She’s the only one who can see it, and because of the particular way she is screwed up, she doesn’t conclude that she’s hallucinating, but rather that this alien is real and has a special connection to her.” Read more...
“It’s a political techno thriller with aliens – which does not make it sound nearly as horrific as it actually is. I want to tell everyone to read this book, and I want to tell everyone to go in with eyes wide open, because it is brutal. It’s also very funny! It’s not a slog to read at all. But it is a book about genocide, nuclear annihilation and other forms of civilisation-wide collapse. It is a book about making impossible moral choices.” Read more...
The Best Political Sci-Fi Books
Arkady Martine, Novelist
“At one level, this is a very fast-paced science fictional thriller about an alien invasion of Earth. But also at another level, it’s a very deeply philosophical story about the nature of sin. The primary viewpoint characters are all sinners. I don’t mean sinners in the, “Oh, we’re all sinners” way – I mean, these people are murderers and enablers of murderers, each terribly burdened by guilt in their own way. This is partly what draws them together, the shared sense of sin and guilt. And it’s also what leads to them being used as pawns by the imperial alien invaders, and the alien resistance. There are aliens on both sides of this – an alien empire and an alien resistance – and one representative of each side has come to earth, and each has picked its pawns among humans.” Read more...
The Best Science Fantasy Books
Vajra Chandrasekera, Novelist
