Over at SciFiScavenger on YouTube, I spend a half-hour chatting with host Jon Jones about plants, Usurpation, and my other books, and I share some recommendations for books I love.
Here’s the list — by the way, you can find more of my book opinions at Goodreads.
Life Beyond Us, edited by Julie Nováková, Lucas K. Law, and Susan Forest. The European Astrobiology Institute created this anthology of 27 short stories by top authors about first contact with life unlike our own. Each story is matched with an essay by a scientist. Exciting and educational.
Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. If you liked Semiosis, you’ll like this. Similar theme, lots of spiders, and a transcendent ending.
Meet Me in Another Life, by Catriona Silvey. If you like romance novels, this is the science fiction novel for you. Two people keep meeting, but why? I wept like a baby at the ending.
Langue[dot]doc 1305, by Gillian Polack. If you like historical fiction, this is the science fiction novel for you. Scientists travel back in time to France in 1305, and they underestimate the people who live there. Worse, they don’t listen to the historian traveling with them.
Babel, by R.F. Kuang. As a translator, I found the magic system fascinating and meticulously constructed. Better yet, the story is solidly anchored in historical fact.
17776: What football will look like in the future, by Jon Bois and Graham MacAree. This is a daring multimedia SF experiment, and not really about football. I’ll never forget the tragic death of the heroic light bulb. Find it here: https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football
The Marlen of Prague: Christopher Marlowe and the City of Gold, by Angeli Primlani. Magic is the only thing that might save Europe from the Thirty Years’ War. The author clearly understands Prague and the theater.
In Defense of Plants, by Matt Candeias, PhD. How can you resist a book with an entire chapter about “The Wild World of Plant Sex”?
The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai. Not SFF at all, sorry, but I live in Chicago, and this novel accurately reconstructs the disaster of AIDS in the gay community in the 1980s. You might consider it historical fiction.
Semiosis 