So I ⌨️ a long 🧵 on scifi/fantasy recommendations last night (all excellent or boundary-expanding reads, but all also #diversifyyourbookshelf) 👇🏽 in case you missed it.

Couple questions for y'all:

- good (non-Amazon) book URLs are surprisingly rare. I did a lot of bookshop.org links, only to find today that they don't work in the EU. Better ideas?
- this should be better structured than just #bookstodon tags. Bookwyrm? "books" user on my blog → fedi? ...?

https://social.coop/@luis_in_brief/112192369026384750

🧵 I lied; not done. The most mind-bending, “think about it all the time”, scifi of the past 5-10 years for me: @adapalmer ‘s Terra Ignota.

It wasn’t in the original 🧵 on 🐦 because it is not an easy set of books for a newcomer to scifi. Reading scifi is a bit of a skill—you have to figure out the puzzle pieces. And Terra Ignota pushes has a lot of pieces, but they are so rewarding.

https://social.coop/@luis_in_brief/111978182314117767

#bookstodon #diversifyyourbookshelf

🧵 Ending on the same note I started the thread, now several years ago: short stories in translation. The thread started with Chinese; these are from Spanish. Unlike the other short story collections I’ve tended to recommend, this one takes a longer view (including some very old pieces), and is a bit academic, so it is a bit more uneven to the modern ear. But still some good stuff in it.

https://www.weslpress.org/9780819566348/cosmos-latinos/

#bookstodon #diversifyyourbookshelf

🧵 Nisi Shawl’s Everfair was great if you’re into alternate histories of power and colonization; I need to read the (recent) second book in the series ASAP.

https://www.npr.org/2016/09/07/490101943/everfair-looks-into-steampunks-dark-heart

#bookstodon #diversifyyourbookshelf

🧵 @AnnLeckie ‘s Ancillary/Imperial Radch series is a great ripping read, and extremely sharp on gender and class. Can’t recommend enough for any fan of “hard” science fiction.

http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/ancillary-pronouns-transgendering-the-imperial-radch-trilogy/

#bookstodon #diversifyyourbookshelf

🧵 From Rivers Solomon, An Unkindness of Ghosts is a grim but well-done take on the traditional science fiction sub-genre of the generation ship.

The Deep is… hard to explain, but powerful and recommended, especially if you’re an experienced reader of fantasy wanting to push your boundaries.

https://rivers-solomon.com/

#bookstodon #diversifyyourbookshelf

🧵 Cairo and New Orleans magico-steampunk? Cairo and New Orleans magico-steampunk! Really like everything I’ve ready by @pdjeliclark. His “The Black God’s Drums” is particularly sharp and idea-driven; his Dead Djinn series is more fun, though still incisive on being an outsider (in keeping with the best detective noir).

https://pdjeliclark.com/books/

#bookstodon #diversifyyourbookshelf

🧵 Indigenous Americans are very under-represented in this list. Only thing I’ve knowingly read in that category is Rebecca Roanhorse's Between Earth and Sky, and it is amaaaazing fantasy, reminiscent of Tolkien or RR Martin. Incredibly rich worldbuilding, compelling characters. Final book in the trilogy just came out, but it is complex enough that I want to re-read the first two before I jump in.

https://rebeccaroanhorse.com/2024/06/09/mirrored-heavens-is-here/

#bookstodon #diversifyyourbookshelf

🧵 Cuban sci-fi? Cuban sci-fi! I can’t say I loved either the works of Yoss (“Super Extra Grande) or de Rojas (The Year 200, A Legend of the Future)—I’d probably only recommend to people looking to go pretty far afield—but interesting and different.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/galaxy-90-miles-away-view-cuban-science-fiction/

#bookstodon #diversifyyourbookshelf

🧵 These 25 post-dystopias are good (post-! recovery! optimism!) but they are about *beginnings* of recovery. Which also means a lot of grim detail about the recent or still-ongoing dystopia. Powerful in many places but also lots of triggering.

https://www.npr.org/2019/02/09/692484737/new-collection-asks-what-might-the-peoples-future-look-like

#bookstodon #diversifyyourbookshelf

🧵 @nnedi ‘s work is great—I particularly loved her (underrated) Book of Phoenix, and quite liked her recently-republished Desert Magician’s duology (again, techno-magic in the deserts of West Africa. And Hausa!). Her best-known work is probably her Binti trilogy, which didn’t work quite as well for me but are widely loved.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/books/ya-fantasy-diverse-akata-warrior.html

#bookstodon #diversifyyourbookshelf

🧵 This is How You Lose The Time War is as good as Bigolas Dickolas said it was. https://slate.com/culture/2023/05/amal-el-mohtar-bigolas-dickolas-tweet-interview.html

#bookstodon #diversifyyourbookshelf

🧵 I first discovered Saad Hossain’s work through his utterly bizarre Escape from Baghdad, which is hard to explain and not for everyone: Catch-22 meets Hunter S. Thompson via Iraq? His more recent The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday, and Kundo Wakes Up, are (briefly) djinn/AI crossover events, in a near-future subcontinent—more accessible and more fun, but still pointed.

https://locusmag.com/2022/04/gary-k-wolfe-reviews-kundo-wakes-up-by-saad-z-hossain/

#bookstodon #diversifyyourbookshelf

🧵 @djolder ‘s Book of Lost Saints is modern-day-ish magico-realist-fantasy that spoke personally to me as a Miami Cuban kid. I can’t possibly be objective about it and no way of knowing if it’ll work for others here, but I hope it works for somebody.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/daniel-jose-older/the-book-of-lost-saints/

#bookstodon #diversifyyourbookshelf

🧵 @maryrobinette ‘s Lady Astronauts series gets my highest possible praise, which is that I want to share it with my son as part of his early-teen intro-to-scifi reading—it’s smart, fun, and engaging, and also for a developing kid, so much better and more thoughtful about gender and race than any scifi I read at that age. And it’ll be getting a fourth book soon, apparently!

https://maryrobinettekowal.com/series/lady-astronaut/

#bookstodon #diversifyyourbookshelf

🧵 Kai Ashante Wilson’s Sorcerer of the Wildeeps and The Devil in America are both terrific stuff; pretty pure fantasy but outside of the normal bounds of that genre. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765385246/thesorcererofthewildeeps

#bookstodon #diversifyyourbookshelf

🧵 @ArkadyMartine ’s Teixcalaan books are Very Serious Hard Scifi but also smart about colonialism, gender, and a host of other topics, and in a style that really works for me.

(I say “but” here because, well, lots of Very Serious Scifi traditionally has been completely awful on all of those fronts. But if you’ve read this far in the thread you probably knew that already.)

I also thoroughly enjoyed her “Rose/House”.

https://www.arkadymartine.net/books

#bookstodon #diversifyyourbookshelf

🧵 @Catvalente gets two shoutouts, for vastly different books. If you want *light*, and/or are into Eurovision, Space Opera is… hilarious.

Her “Radiance”, on the other hand, is more… deeply weird. In a way that I found deeply amazing but, especially if you’re newer to scifi, may not be for everyone. https://social.coop/@luis_in_brief/111942707909189921

#bookstodon #diversifyyourbookshelf

🧵I really enjoy everything Becky Chambers writes, but I particularly have been enjoying her #solarpunk novellas, starting with Psalm for the Wild Built. They’re good for the heart.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/a-psalm-for-the-wild-built-becky-chambers/15125608

#bookstodon #diversifyyourbookshelf

🧵 NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth shouldn’t require a recommendation from me because anyone who is into science fiction or fantasy at all should already have read it; it is one of the towering achievements of the genre.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/17/16156416/n-k-jemisin-broken-earth-trilogy-the-stone-sky-fantasy-book-review

#bookstodon #diversifyyourbookshelf