Books by Aliya Whiteley
Aliya Whiteley is the author of seven books of speculative fiction, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlisted Skyward Inn and The Loosening Skin, and also The Beauty, which was shortlisted for both a Shirley Jackson award and the Otherwise Award. She lives in Sussex with her husband and daughter. She has written over one hundred published short stories that have appeared in Interzone, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Black Static, Strange Horizons, The Dark, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and The Guardian, as well as in anthologies such as Unsung Stories’ 2084 and Lonely Planet’s Better than Fiction.
“Whiteley’s new book Three Eight One is a fun literary experiment in which every short segment is exactly 381 words long. It’s a fantasy adventure set three centuries in the future, as a young woman—a curator of an internet archive—is drawn into a mysterious quest. Constraints breed creativity.” Read more...
Popular Fiction Highlights of Spring 2024
Cal Flyn, Five Books Editor
“I think the judges were responding to the platonic romance at the inn between a human, Jem, and a Qitan, Isley. It seems we invaded the Qitans’ planet when we discovered it, looking to exploit them, except they more or less willingly surrendered. The inn is in ‘the Protectorate,’ an anti-technological enclave in Devon, where Isley is the only permitted alien. It feels a little like the fundamentalist settlement in Wyndham’s The Chrysalids: a puritanical, pastoral utopia-dystopia, which wants to stop the clock. This enclave is threatened by the arrival of another Qitan and a plague. There’s no escape from pandemics!” Read more...
The Best Science Fiction of 2022: The Arthur C. Clarke Award Shortlist
Andrew M. Butler, Film Critics & Scholar
“Aliya is one of those writers that writers recommend to each other. That’s the easiest way to put it. In this book, humans shed their skin, like snakes, and you shed other parts of yourself as well. What an amazing concept. Fantastically written as well.” Read more...
The Best Sci Fi Books of 2019: The Arthur C Clarke Award Shortlist
Tom Hunter, Journalist
Interviews with Aliya Whiteley
The Best Sci-Fi Horror Books, recommended by Aliya Whiteley
Some books frighten and thrill us in equal measure. If that sounds good to you, you will love novelist Aliya Whiteley’s recommendations: five outstanding sci-fi horror books that, like the original Frankenstein, use dread and disgust to raise fascinating questions about science and what it means to be human.
Interviews where books by Aliya Whiteley were recommended
The Best Sci Fi Books of 2019: The Arthur C Clarke Award Shortlist, recommended by Tom Hunter
If you’re hoping to travel to a galaxy far, far away with your next book, these six excellent sci fi novels will help you on your way. Tom Hunter, the director of the Arthur C Clarke Award for science fiction books, discusses the 2019 prize shortlist.
The Best Science Fiction of 2022: The Arthur C. Clarke Award Shortlist, recommended by Andrew M. Butler
Every year, the judges for the Arthur C. Clarke Award select the best of the latest batch of new scifi books. In 2022, the science fiction award’s shortlist includes new work from Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro, a novel-in-verse from the Scottish writer Harry Josephine Giles, and a new title in Arkady Martine’s beloved Teixcalaan series. Andrew M. Butler, academic and chair of the judges, talks us through the finalists.
Popular Fiction Highlights of Spring 2024, selected by Cal Flyn
Popular fiction is popular for a reason: confounding mysteries, devastating love stories, and spectacular visions of speculative worlds offer us an escape hatch from everyday life. Here we offer a handy Five Books round-up of superior genre novels of spring 2024 including unmissable new titles from firm fan favourites. See all our best novels of 2024 recommendations
