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Favorite Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels of 2021

December 1, 2021 by in On Books

Here’s a roundup, in case you’re looking for speculative fiction novels to ring in the New Year.  Some were newly released in 2021, others are just new to me.

Remember to support your local, independent bookstores this holiday season! 

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Piranesi was the best novel I read all year, by far. 

Oddly enough, it begins by doing a lot of things I normally don’t like. Mainly, it describes the setting — a colossal-sized, labyrinth-like house filled with creepy-beautiful statues that are slowly being inundated by the sea – in excruciating detail. Yet it enchanted me because of its sheer originality and the sense that its author does all things with purpose.

This strange and compact novel is a study in opposites. The world it is set in is like nothing I’ve read before, yet it felt ancient and vaguely familiar. Its main character, Piranesi, is supposedly a scientist, yet he is also sweetly gullible and quite possibly insane. His best friend is also his biggest enemy. And although the entire novel is sold as a fantasy, by the end you can see how it is also arguably science fiction– as much a modern tale of isolation, ambition, loss and healing, as it is also inspired by magic and ancient philosophy.

You’re never quite sure what’s real and what isn’t, and that’s what pulled me through to this novel’s delightfully grounded and endearing ending.

 

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

If you loved The Martian, you’re sure to love Weir’s latest novel, a surprisingly heartfelt take on your classic, hard science fiction adventure.

The novel begins when the main character, Ryland Grace, wakes up on a spaceship with amnesia. He has no idea who he is, what happened to the two dead astronauts next to him, or why they are millions of miles from Earth, orbiting Tau Ceti.

Using the ship’s computer and flashes of returning memory, he slowly learns his mission: to stop a solar-dimming event that threatens to end all life on Earth. It seems an impossible task for a solitary molecular biologist-turned science teacher-turned astronaut. Luckily, Ryland isn’t as alone as he thinks. (And that’s all the spoiler I’m going to give you, although the rest of the novel hinges on it.)

Like The Martian, Hail Mary brilliantly uses hard science to solve a series of life-or-death problems.  Like The Martian, there’s plenty of humor and snark. What makes this novel different – and, some will argue, better – is it’s ending, which uses the main character’s spotty memory to deliver a big twist about who he is and how far he is (or isn’t!) willing to go to save others. I loved the way the novel played with the assumptions we make about heroes and what it said about self-sacrifice and friendship.  

 

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

When I first started to read This Is How You Lose the Time War, I had to stop, slow my normal reading pace and start over again from the beginning. That’s because this book is actually a poem disguised as novel.

I was initially fooled by the straight-forward sounding premise– half cat-and-mouse spy thriller, half military sci fi novel– in which two agents of warring empires hunt each other down across space and time. This is technically what the story’s about, but the heart of the book lies in the letters they start writing to one another – first as a taunt, then as budding infatuation, then as something far more dangerous: a game of love and death.

I found the mix of lush, literary prose with violent, futuristic battles and AI wonderlands to be initially disorienting but ultimately brilliant in its execution. I mean, why can’t a ruthless killing machine also be a heart-wrenching romantic? Why can’t I read the novel once to find out what happens, and then a second time just to appreciate the music of its words?

I can, and I did.

 

The Power by Naomi Alderman

If you’ve ever wondered what the world would be like if women were physically more powerful than men, then you’ll love this novel set in an alternative Earth where young women suddenly develop the ability to shoot electricity through their hands. That’s right: Watch out, boys – ZAP!

The story details how this new superpower changes the world, from the smallest interaction between male-female coworkers on the nightly news to global politics and war, giving feminist readers a bit of gleeful wish fulfillment in the process. But what I really liked about this novel was how it avoided the preachy (not to mention unrealistic) idea that ‘if only women were in charge,’ the world would be a utopia.

In fact, the book’s underlying premise is the opposite: that women are no better (or worse) than men and that power, by its very nature, is complicated and corrupting. The story’s dramatic conclusion reminded me of a quote from Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale: “Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse, for some.” I think anyone who likes Atwood’s dark speculative worldview will also enjoy The Power.

 

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

I love novels about strange alien cultures. I love tortured main characters who have royally screwed up their lives and are in the middle of an identity crisis. And I love twisty tales involving the political machinations of the Catholic Church. Mix all three together, and you have the novel, The Sparrow.

Although the novel is set in 2060, when a Jesuit priest returns to Earth following a failed mission to the planet Rakhat, it has the gritty, realistic feel of a historical novel. The narrative jumps back and forth between this “present” – in which the main character, Puerto Rican linguist Father Emilio Sandoz, is physically disfigured and close to suicide – and the “past” – starting in 2019 when the planet Rakhat first begins transmitting music to Earth, following Sandoz and friends as they set out to meet the music makers, straight through to the end of their incredible-yet-tragic interstellar journey.

My favorite thing about this book is how it wraps big, serious philosophical questions — about the nature of God, fate, first contact and faith– in a thrilling, sci fi plot.  Bonus: the novel is set to become an TV miniseries on FX, adapted by Scott Frank, showrunner of The Queen’s Gambit, and directed by Johan Renak of Chernobyl and Breaking Bad.  

 

Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi

Riot Baby is about blackness in America, about injustice and racism explored through the story of two siblings. Kev, the brother, is born during the Los Angeles riots of 1992 and goes to prison for burglary. Ella, the sister, has supernatural powers yet is helpless to save him. For now.

Given current events, I think this book is particularly important and timely. Not to mention, the prose is just flat-out gorgeous. But full disclosure: This novella is also challenging at times. It jumps between point of views unexpectedly. It doesn’t explain or define Ella’s powers the way most works of traditional fantasy do.  And it ends abruptly, letting us glimpse Ella’s powerful vision of the future, but not allowing us to walk with her as it becomes real.

To me, this last point was the book’s only disappointment. I was so immersed in the pain, fury and hopes of her character, I wanted more. Nevertheless, this brief novel is beautiful, brutal and unsettling – just like the real-world people and problems it depicts.  

 

Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

I’ve read a lot of novels set in a dystopian future where climate change is wreaking havoc, but this is the first one that felt real enough and made me guilty enough that I went online in the middle of the night and started researching more ways I could lower my carbon footprint.

What made this novel different? Maybe it’s Robinson’s agonizing specificity. He opens the novel showing an entire city slowly dying of heat exhaustion. Then he envisions how climate change will affect war and politics – with the poor countries most affected by extreme weather resorting to increasing acts of terrorism to get their needs heard by rich countries that refuse to act. Finally, he focuses on solutions – lots and lots of technical solutions – overseen by a Ministry of the Future that is trying to make sure the whole planet has a future at all.

If you are looking for deep characterization and a traditional narrative plot, this novel may not be for you. But if you like thought experiments about how the world can undo some of the damage we’ve done, if you like wonky politics, budgetary fights, secret spy slush-funds, economic theory and an ultimately hopeful ending, you’ll enjoy this thought-provoking read. As a former journalist who has sat in on more than a few governmental meetings, I found it all eerily and exhaustingly realistic.

I just hope humanity is as smart as Robinson thinks we are.  

 

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