It’s about the end of the year, and I know there will all sorts of lists of the best books published this year, so this is a different question: regardless of when published, which SF books that you personally read this year did you enjoy the most. I’m also asking which you enjoyed instead of which you thought were the best, so feel free to include fluff without shame.
I’ll go first. Of the 60+ books I read this year, here are the ones I liked most. No significant spoilers, not in any order.
Children of Time, Adrian Tchaikovsky
- A project to uplift monkeys on a terraformed world, at the peak of human civilization, is sabotaged by people who don’t think humans should play god. There follows a human civil war that nearly destroys civilization. A couple thousand years later, an ark ship of human remnants leaving an uninhabitable earth is heading towards that terraformed planet. This is a great book, with lots to say on intelligence, the nature of people, and both the fragility and heartiness of life.
Kiln People, David Brin
- Set a couple hundred years in the future, technology is ubiquitous that lets people make a living clay duplicate of themselves that has their memory and thoughts to the point they were created, lasts about a day, and whose memories can be reintegrated with the real person if desired. The duplicates are property, have no rights, and are used to do almost all work and to take any risks without risking the humans. A private detective and some of his duplicates gets pulled into an increasingly complex plot that could reshape society. This is a thoroughly enjoyable book, with lots of twists, and an interesting narrative as we follow copies who may or may not reintegrate with our detective.
Sleeping Giants, Sylvain Neuvel
- A little girl falls down a deep hole in the woods and lands on a gigantic, glowing, metal hand that’s thousands of years old. This is a wonderful alien artifact story with some interesting twists. I really enjoyed this book. Not exactly hard SF, but checks a lot of the boxes for me, including the wonder of discovery.
The Peripheral, William Gibson
- A computer server links the late 2020s to a time 70 years later, allowing communication and telepresence between the two times. A young woman in the earlier time witnesses a murder in the later time and gets sucked into a battle between powerful people in both times. This is a great book; I think I could have recognized it as Gibson’s writing even if I hadn’t known it in advance. Very interesting premise, engaging characters, and fun without feeling like fluff.
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
- A coalition of human planets has sent the first envoy to an icy world where the people are gender neutral and sterile most of the time, but once a month become male or female (essentially randomly) and fertile. This is a classic, written in 1969, and my second reading - the first being in the late 80s. Le Guin creates an amazingly rich world, even with its harsh, frozen landscape. The characters grow to understand how gender impacts their cultures, and the biases they didn’t know they had. It’s also aged remarkably well for an SF book written 55 years ago. There’s nothing about it that feels outdated.
A couple notes:
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If I hadn’t stuck to my own “enjoyed” constraint, the list might have looked different. For instance, Perdido Street Station, by Meiville, is a really great book, but there’s so much misery and sadness that it’s hard to say I “enjoyed” it.
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I hesitated to put The Left Hand Of Darkness on the list, simply because Le Guin is so widely recognized as a great master, and the book one of her greatest, that it seemed unfair. In the end, it seemed unfair to exclude it for such an artificial reason.
I can see that. I might have to go through the series again and see how I notice it now.
But in the context of the story the first woman was abused by a draconian regime and hated humanity. And the second woman didn’t really have a choice. Humanity was doomed either way, from the trisolarans or any other sufficiently advanced species, and she chose to stop fighting. In the end, it was all the same and the absolution she receives is to address her guilt about a lose-lose situation.
Also how do I tag spoilers? I’ll go back and edit
That’s something the books suffer from in general. Stuff happens in very convenient sequence with very little agency for the reader to live through.
She was the only woman considered, and only due to popular demand. The other candidates were all men, from an age when “real” ones existed.
They were chosen specifically due to being suitable for the task at hand, she was not.
The button needed to be pressed. She didn’t do it. According to the story, no person from the age of peace would have either, nor would ANY woman, because apparently no female candidates aside from her were even considered.
Eventually, a man somewhere else, presses it for her.
That in isolation these plot points can be excused, doesn’t change the fact that every aspect of a fictional story is deliberate to at least some extent. The series consistently makes events and the people who are in them men and women, depending on what needs to be felt, said, or done.
When women do stuff, things go wrong. Men then step in to fix it, until a woman ruins things further. It happens several times in the series.
And when you combine that with what characters say to each about what humanity and its genders represent, I don’t approve.
Characters don’t just say stuff. That’s especially deliberate, and from the author. She could have come to terms with her guilt entirely on her own, without a man, or another person at all. And she could have come to terms with it through some completely different logic, that didn’t need to make it about her gender.
The author barely lets her think for herself to begin with. In fairly harsh contrast to the male perspective characters.