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6/1/14

June: My Month of Science Fiction

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I had such a fun time back in March with my Month of Crime Fiction that I decided to dedicate another month to a different genre: contemporary science fiction (I'm defining it as 1980 - present). Now, I have read some recent scifi, but not enough to get a real sense of what's out there and where the genre is headed.

So of course I took to twitter and facebook and asked for some recommendations and boy oh boy did I get some great ones. The most frequently recommended book was Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, so I'm very excited to check it out. And while I decided on the 6 novels pictured above for the month, that's only because that's how much I think I can cram into one month. This is just a jumping-off point though; the rest of the list (below) will be my guide for further contemporary scifi reading.

And please feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments!

Thanks to everyone who offered a recommendation, especially the good folks @GeekyLibrary, who doubled the list :-)



  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) by Douglas Adams
  • Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985) by Haruki Murakami
  • Hyperion (1990) by Dan Simmons
  • Doomsday Book (1992) by Connie Willis
  • Perdido Street Station (2001) by China Mieville
  • American Gods (2001) by Neil Gaiman
  • Saga of Seven Suns (2002-08) by Kevin J. Anderson
  • Merchant Princes series (2004-10) by Charles Stross
  • Self-Reference ENGINE (2007) by Toh EnJoe
  • The Windup Girl (2009) by Paolo Bacigalupi
  • Blackout/All Clear (2010) by Connie Willis
  • Expanse series (2011- ) by James S. A. Corey
  • Wool (2011) by Hugh Howey
  • 2312 (2012) by Kim Stanley Robinson
  • Redshirts (2012) by John Scalzi
  • The Last Policeman (2012) and Countdown City (2013) by Ben H. Winters
  • The Mad Scientist's Daughter (2013) by Cassandra Rose Clarke
  • The Lives of Tao (2013) by Wesley Chu
  • The Martian (2014) by Andy Weir

3 comments:

  1. Yay for SciFi! You have a lot of great stuff on your recommended list! The James S.A. Corey books are absolutely fantastic. Read them in order, and if you skip the digital only novellas you'll be fine. Ready Player One has a ton of 80s references, so if you were a kid of the 80s you'll laugh your head off. Embassytown and Neuromancer are very dense. They are both good, but rather brain melty.

    yay for scifi! :D

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  2. Ohhhh man this is such a good list. Embassytown is especially amazing if you're at all interested in linguistics (which most readers tend to be a little). I'm kind of obsessed with China Mieville. I'm going to add some of these to my TBR list!

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  3. I love this list! It's exciting to see Ready Player One on there and I've been meaning to get to Robot Uprisings.

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