Books by Max Gladstone
“Last First Snow is the fourth book in Max Gladstone’s Craft sequence, but each of the books are standalone. This one is the earliest in the story, chronologically, and it is basically a book about zoning, generational trauma, and protest movements. Max does my favourite trick in speculative fiction, which is to take a very nasty real-world problem – which here is gentrification, and the destruction of a culture by an industrialised, corporatised culture, and police brutality – and get up really close to it, but make all of those things about a world that isn’t our world.” Read more...
The Best Political Sci-Fi Books
Arkady Martine, Novelist
“I suppose you could call it a time travel story. It takes place across all history, and features two protagonists, two women who are essentially spies—saboteurs for rival visions of the future, who are trying to twist the timeline to lead to their respective faction’s visions. But then they fall in love with each other. The story is incredibly beautiful and moving, and the language is so poetic. You get such a great sense of the two protagonists, their distinct personalities, their distinct ways of viewing the world, of seeing time.” Read more...
The Best of Speculative Fiction
Ken Liu, Novelist
Interviews where books by Max Gladstone were recommended
Epistolary Novels
Epistolary novels are told through the form of written correspondence between characters, or sometimes by way of diary entries or fictional documents. Though there were earlier examples, the epistolary novel took off as a form in the 18th century and remains very popular for its immediacy and sense of realism. We’ve put together a selection of epistolary novels—notable for their literary significance or their evergreen popularity—many of which have previously been recommended by our expert interviewees.
The Best of Speculative Fiction, recommended by Ken Liu
Ken Liu, the multi-award winning author of The Paper Menagerie, explains how using elements of fantasy and science fiction can help us examine deep truths about the human condition, as he recommends the best of contemporary speculative fiction.
The Best Political Sci-Fi Books, recommended by Arkady Martine
Science fiction has a rich tradition of examining not only space-age technology but political ideology. Arkady Martine, author of the Hugo-award winning A Memory Called Empire, introduces us to political science fiction books that explore systems of government, power hierarchies, and the geopolitics of other planets.
