2020 was quite the year for science fiction, but it wasn’t just about escaping to other worlds. it’s easy to imagine fantasy spaceship flights as a respite from reality, but science fiction and fantasy literature is the product of people with real concerns about the real world, and consequently writing about the challenges we see in the real world. world. around us. For the past 12 months, I have been thinking about the value of speculative literature at a time like this. there is a meme that says that reading is a collective hallucination that we get from looking at pieces of a dead tree. that’s certainly accurate, but I like to think of science fiction as some sort of cheat guide or rough map of directions.
This year’s crop of books are the ones that have a thumb on the pulse of everything that’s been going on around us. but they are not speeches that lecture readers on the ills of the world: they are thoughtful and interesting stories with characters you support, who fight against great challenges. they are fighting against oppression, wealth inequality, and racism. all characters try to survive, build new worlds or save their friends and family from harm. Collectively, they are the stories that show us our way out of a gloomy world into a slightly better one, one page at a time.
You are reading: Best science fiction books 2020
waterfall by robert jackson bennett
robert jackson bennett’s foundryside was a cyberpunk fantasy wrapped up in an epic fantasy novel. is set in a world where magic permeates everything, imbuing objects with a kind of low-level intelligence through a process called scriving. by meddling with the source code of the universe, a door can be forced to open only under a certain set of circumstances, or an arrow can be “convinced” that gravity is greater, prompting it to fly faster than you could do it any other way. In that book, a woman named Sancia Grado has been altered to see the underlying magic in the world and, with some unlikely allies, saved the city of Tevanne from destruction.
In this sequel, Bennett returns to Tevanne and heals when a new threat arises. In ancient times, a man named Crasedes became a god through the power of writing and was eventually defeated. after millennia, someone figured out how to resurrect him, and he plans to remake the world and humanity, in an effort to better humanity. This latest story is a gripping read as Sancia and her allies encounter the otherworldly horror that is Crasedes and work to counter her plans. At the heart of the novel are the mechanics of his plans, and Bennett has a good handle on how the inequalities in society tear the world apart and lead to revolutionary change.
calling cry from p. djèli clark
the cover of p. The Scream from Djelí Clark’s novella should give you an immediate idea of the threat at hand. Set in 1922 Georgia, the Ku Klux Klan experiences a resurgence in support, but not from the places you’d expect: their ranks are being infiltrated by otherworldly creatures drawn to their hatred and racism, and who plan to use magic ( in the form of the racist film Birth of a Nation). Facing them are three black women, Maryse, Sadie, and Cordelia, who have emerged from World War I with a deadly skill set and the will to use it to fight the evils of our world and beyond.
After a summer of protests against police brutality and racial inequality, Clark’s book strikes a balance between cathartic justice and pulpy adventure fiction as Maryse and her companions begin to understand the Lovecraftian threat they face. face. The otherworldly Ku Kluxes have found an easy path into our world through racists and bigots, but Maryse discovers that power corrupts, and even if her cause is just, she can easily turn down a devastating path that will destroy her home and everything. who has fought by.
piranesi by susanna clarke
A man named Piranesi lives a solitary existence within a seemingly endless labyrinth of rooms, each with its own flavor and character. the halls of it are lined with statues of all kinds, and within those walls is an ocean trapped, bobbing up and down. piranesi has made it his mission to explore as much of his world as possible, and the only other evidence of other humans is 13 skeletons and a man named the other.
piranesi and the other are seeking a better understanding of what their world is, and when the other asks piranesi about a person number 16, he begins to suspect that there is much more to their shared world and his own past than meets the eye. that I belived. . Ultimately, Clarke has produced an exquisite novel about walls and the world around us, and the importance of questioning the very nature of the world.
the witches of the past and the future by alix e. stands
After her fantastic and worldwide debut, January’s Ten Thousand Doors, Alix E. Harrow follows the story of three sisters, Agnes Amaranth, Beatrice Belladonna and James Juniper, who reunite after years of estrangement in Salem at the height of the women’s suffrage movement. Salem, of course, is synonymous with the witch trials of the late 17th century, and witchcraft has been largely eradicated across the country. the three sisters realize that women seek not only the right to vote, but also the founding power of witchcraft that threatens the male-dominated world.
It was a pleasure to read the book in 2020, especially after a contentious presidential election. Harrow imbues the novel with a passionate understanding of the history of women’s rights, and the book is filled with anger at how men have found ways to exclude women from equality for centuries. witchcraft and magic may be the focus of the plot, but their banishment and criminalization is just one way those in power have found to undermine women throughout history.
the city we became by n.k. jemisin
nk jemisin is easily one of the best living writers working on speculative fiction today: her broken earth trilogy earned her numerous accolades and, earlier this year, the john d. and Catherine T. the macarthur foundation named her a macarthur fellow for her work.
frequently explores the nature of racism and its consequences in his books, and in his latest, The City We Became, puts a fantastic spin on the gentrification of New York City, exploring racism through the lens of cosmic lovecraftian upside down. horror. Jumping from her tale “The City That Was Born Great”, we learn that the world’s major cities give birth to avatars, their essence in human form, and New York City has created several, one for each district.
As these avatars awaken and begin to realize their purpose, they also begin to realize that they face a new threat, a woman in white, who seeks to destroy our world and remake it for her own otherworldly purposes. . jemisin weaves a wonderful love letter to the city and the people who make it great, and how forces like white supremacy and gentrification go hand in hand to destroy its vibrancy and spirit.
wanderers by hao jingfang (translated by ken liu)
A long-standing trope in science fiction is what would happen after humans establish a colony on Mars: how long would it be before they began to resist Earth rule, and how would the two worlds differ culturally? ?
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that’s the premise behind hao jingfang’s first novel, vagabonds. A century ago, Mars fought Earth in a bid for independence and won. Now that the embers have cooled, Mars has begun sending its first cross-cultural emissaries (known as the Mercury group) to Earth to reestablish diplomatic and cultural ties.
After returning home after five years, the members of the Mercury group find themselves caught between two very different worlds: the hyper-capitalist Earth and a more collective/socialist Mars. they are disillusioned with their lives and opportunities back home, and one member, the granddaughter of a Martian leader, begins to question her family’s role in the separation between the worlds. Hao’s story is a slow but excellent examination of the cultural differences and inequalities that separate us.
the space between worlds by micaiah johnson
If there was ever a moment where we felt like we accidentally jumped into the wrong timeline, that was the year. Multiple and Alternate Worlds is a trope that Micaiah Johnson plays with in his first novel, The Space Between Worlds, which follows a young woman named Cara as she travels between worlds. Years earlier, a man named Adam Bosch discovered a method of traveling to other alternate realities, about 400 of them. a traveler could make the journey, but only in realities where his alternate selves were not present. enter cara, who grew up in the post-apocalyptic slums and whose alternate personalities seem to have bad luck: she can travel to 372 different worlds.
She works for the Eldridge Institute to collect data on the various worlds, but even with her new privileged status as a traveler, she’s stuck between worlds: she’s only valuable to the company because of the misfortunes of her alternate selves – a status that could easily disappear in an instant. Through Face, Johnson explores broad themes of economic and racial inequality and privilege, and how the boundaries we set define who we are, all through the eyes of a powerful character seeking to change the world.
the only good Indians by stephen graham jones
In the opening moments of Stephen Graham Jones’ latest novel, The Only Good Indians, a blackfooted man is murdered in the parking lot of a midwestern bar after confronting a moose in a parking lot. Ricky is one of four friends of his who will soon meet the moose, spectral revenge for the decisions he made a decade ago.
The quartet grew up on a reservation and headed to a no-go area to try to kill before the end of the hunting season. they hit the nail on the head: a herd of moose sheltering in the middle of a blizzard and quickly falling under their bullets. a decade later, the spirit of one of his victims has returned and quickly begins to track them down for revenge.
Jones has built a gripping horror story, one that takes you into each man’s life before he kills them. but while there is certainly horror in the final acts, he masterfully builds the tension by injecting them with paranoia, fear, and greed, capitalizing on the inequality of racism directed toward Native Americans.
the implacable moon by mary robinette kowal
A couple of years ago, Mary Robinette Kowal wrote “The Lady Astronaut From Mars,” a short story that follows “The Lady Astronaut” Elma York on an alternate space race that began after a devastating asteroid hit Earth. Earth.
In his latest iteration, The Relentless Moon, Kowal delves into some of those themes, following veteran astronaut Nicole Wargin as she’s tasked with running security on a moon base. The space program has been threatened by unrest as religious extremists work to sabotage the program’s rockets and facilities, while Wargin fights to keep the people she works with safe.
Throughout the series, Kowal has explored the inequalities that exclude women and astronauts of color in our own real-world space program. the unforgiving moon excellently analyzes how people cope with trauma, mental illness, and inequality under extreme pressure in extraordinary situations.
mexican gothic by silvia moreno-garcia
Mexican socialite Noemí Taboada is sent to a rural farm called High Place in Rural Mexican after her father receives a distressing letter from her cousin, telling him that she is being held against her will and that the house is full. of ghosts What she discovers is more than a sick relative: a sinister plot by a decadent English family with a terrifying secret.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s electrifying and wonderful novel contains all the elements you’d expect from a gothic story: a family long past its glory days, strange supernatural influences, and a wondrous family home falling apart. As Noemí works to uncover the strange happenings at a high place, Moreno-Garcia outlines a determined and empowered heroine who will stop at nothing to save herself and her family.
moreno-garcia goes beyond a mere homage to the genre and is based on horror by using the history of European colonization and the conquest of Mexico. The history of the High Place and its bloody and oppressive legacy is an integral part of the scene Naomi uncovers, and her revelation is masterfully presented, making for a gripping and thoughtful read.
tochi onyebuchi’s riot baby
tochi onyebuchi’s first adult novel is set in the present day, following a young black woman named ella and her brother kev, who were born amid the rodney king riots in los angeles in the early 1990s She has some special powers: she can see the future, fly, and project herself to other places. As the story progresses, the two boys grow up and Kev ends up arrested, abused, and imprisoned by the police and the court system.
Over the years while he was incarcerated, he was visited by his sister, who helped keep him sane while enduring a brutal sentence. she, with all her powers, is unable to change her circumstances after he leaves his cell and enters a new high-tech, dystopian world. Onyebuchi’s slim book is a powerful read brimming with anger at the cyclical nature of oppression and violence directed at Black people, and how they might break free.
black sun by rebecca roanhorse
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rebecca roanhorse’s latest book is a bit of a departure from her first two novels, trail of lightning and storm of locusts. Where those two urban fantasies were light-hearted, action-packed thrillers set in a fantastical United States and future ravaged by climate change, Black Sun is an ambitious fantasy about a power struggle in a world inspired by Native Americans.
As the winter solstice approaches, the town of Tova prepares for a grand celebration, unaware of the threat looming from a forgotten clan once massacred for their beliefs by one of the priests of the city sun. The remaining members of the Carrion Crow Clan have not forgotten the attempt to exterminate them and have sent a special weapon, a child raised as a weapon of revenge, to take revenge for those crimes. Roanhorse’s novel is a harrowing (and dark) look at the impact trauma has across generations, and how the characters involved struggle against the systems they’re trapped in.
ministry for the future by kim stanley robinson
if there’s one book that really hit me this year, it was kim stanley robinson’s ministry for the future, an epic about climate change and humanity’s efforts to try to turn the tide before it’s too late .
robinson has explored these themes before: his novel aurora is a realistic vision of what space exploration could look like, ultimately concluding that we really need to focus on earth before heading out into the cosmos; new york 2140 follows a series of characters in a drowned city, looking at what the impact of climate change might be after a catastrophe strikes.
Ministry for the Future jumps ahead just a couple of decades, and Robinson presents a terrifying look at what we might be waiting for. Earth is facing cataclysmic heat waves that kill tens of millions in weeks, mass migrations and conflicts, all fueled by a rapidly warming planet. Through the members of an agency designed to save the planet, as well as chapters exploring everything from intrepid scientists working to keep Antarctica’s glaciers from falling into the ocean, to atoms of hydrogen and carbon, Robinson lays out the difficult steps that we will probably have to take to change our way of life to save the plant.
burned by p.w. singer and augusto cole
Take the artificial intelligence and machine learning headlines of the last decade and use them as the basis for a story about an experimental police robot teamed up with an fbi agent. that’s the premise of p.w. the latest technothriller from the singer and augusto cole drawn from the near future, in which they build a gripping read on what our near future of robotics could plausibly look like.
fbi special agent lara keegan is tasked with evaluating tams (tactical autonomous mobility system) as a potential new tool for the bureau. It comes in handy when Washington DC faces a new threat: a tech-averse extremist looking to attack the city at its various weak points: launching cyberattacks against infrastructure and using drones to carry out attacks against people. Singer and Cole hail from the worlds of politics and think tanks, looking not only at the potential threats that our current technological lives bring, but also how the growing white nationalist movement appears poised to take advantage of those problems.
the invisible life of addie larue by v.e. schwab
In 1714, a young woman named Adeline lives a quiet existence in her hometown of Villon-sur-Sarthe in France. she yearns for something more: to travel beyond the world with which she is familiar and to do something more than marry a neighbor from the village. she is ready for such a marriage when she meets a stranger from another world who promises to fulfill her wish, which she eagerly accepts.
As anyone familiar with Faust knows, these offerings come at a high cost. Adeline will live as long as she wants, completely free to explore the world, but no one will remember her. for the next three centuries, she finds her way in the world, moving from place to place and learning to survive, all alone in the world, except for her shadowy benefactor. all that changes in 2014 when a boy remembers her for the first time. go. Schwab’s story is emotional and heartbreaking, highlighting the importance of those connections we make as we move through life, even in a year filled with virtual meetings, distance meetings, and time spent alone in our homes.
network effect by martha wells
The four killer robot novels by Martha Wells feature a captivating character: a security robot that has broken free of its inner rulers and taken to calling itself a killer robot. but unlike the terminator, he just wants to be left alone to watch soap operas and avoid annoying humans. The Network Effect is Wells’s first full-length novel in the series (it’s not his last venture: another novel, Fugitive Telemetry, is due out next year), and like its predecessors, it’s an exploration of humanity and the awareness.
The network effect discovers that the killer robot and his companions are ambushed and captured by unknown assailants, forcing the android to take drastic measures to keep the people he reluctantly cares about safe. wells forces assassinbot to confront the things he resists doing, forcing him to realize that caring about people is not a bad thing, and that people and friends, even if they can be annoying, brings his surroundings into your immediate environment. circle are valuable, not only for the help they can provide immediately, but for the sense of being in the world. In a year where we had to put many people at physical distance, it’s a powerful story about the connections we form with those around us and how those connections contribute to a better world.
yudhanjaya wijeratne’s rescue crew
In the distant future, humanity has advanced to the point where we are able to expand to the stars, allowing us to settle on distant worlds. people survive the long distances and times of space by entering stasis or uploading their consciousness to become advanced artificial intelligences. In Yudhanjaya Wijeratne’s latest novel, The Salvage Crew, OC, a Buddhist turned AI poetry enthusiast hopes his trip to Urmahon Beta will be a routine run to dismantle a downed UN ship.
What he and his motley crew of helpers, Simon, Anna, and Milo, find on the planet’s surface is a much more challenging environment, filled with megafauna, cybernetic cultists, and disease that threaten their survival as they try to get by. enough scrap from the wreckage to make a profit. wijeratne spins together a fabulous space adventure that takes an unexpected turn into the philosophical as its characters are forced to confront what it means to be human and what intelligence beyond earth might look like.
finalists:
providence by max barryel wall by gautam bahatiaa beginning at the end by mike chenfinna by nino cipri, attack surface by cory doctorowagency by william gibsonbeowulf: a new translation by maria dahvana headleythe missing birds by simon jimenezorders of battle by marko kloosel god hot by rf kuanggoldilocks by laura lamel unspoken name by a.k. larkwoodthe hidden girl and other stories by ken liuharrow the noventh by tamsyn muirpacific storm by linda nagataa deadly education by naomi novikveil by eliot peper, impossible starlight by gareth l. Powellhearts of Oak by Eddie Robson88 Names of Matt RuffThe Last Emperox by John Scalzibonds of Brass by Emily SkrutskieCreatures of Charm and Hunger by Molly TanzerCyber Shogun Revolution by Peter TieryaA Pale Light in the Darkness by K.B. betsthe fires of revenge by evan winterthe lost book of adana moreau by michael zapata.
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