Ahmed Khaled Towfik, Utopia, Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, 2011.
Translation: Chip Rossetti. First published in 2009 in Cairo, a year before the Arab Spring begun, this near future novel has something prophetic in it. But even some 8 years after the events, Utopia is a tale of violence and social unrest that still remains topical.
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Indra Das, The Devourers, Del Rey, 2016.
Here was The Devourers, popping up on a few of "Best of scifi 2016" lists. I'm always wary of those lists on which I often find the latest thing everyone raves about and that I barely managed to finish. Only one way to find out: I picked it up, started reading... argh, no, werewolves! Is it going to be Twilight all over again? But I kept on reading and I loved it. (And it's definitely not Twilight!) Tade Thompson, Rosewater, Apex Publications, 2016.
New edition: Orbit, 2018. Aliens arrived on Earth and... "Wait!" will you tell me, "I've already read this. Like, a thousand times! Not to mention countless formulaic American movies... Why would I read it?" Because it's far removed from your typical "Aliens arrived on Earth" story and so well written that it'd be a real pity not to read it... Art by Joshua Mays.
"Science-fiction is a white "menochrome": it's a genre written by white men for white men and in which characters are white men." Erm... No, really, no. So here are ten novels, chosen subjectively and by chronological order, that will get you on your way to discover that there are much more than just these ten novels and that scifi and fantasy is a genre as diverse as our planet's population... N.K. Jemisin, The Broken Earth, Orbit.
There aren't many novels that have received the Hugo Award and that I've really liked. But The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin grabbed me from the first pages and I couldn't leave it until I had reached the end. This review has been initially published in October 2016 and substantially updated and enriched in August 2017 after I've finished reading The Stone Sky. It nonetheless remains spoiler free. Nnedi Okorafor, The Book of Phoenix, Hodder & Stoughton, 2015.
Phoenix is an abomination. This is how she defines herself. She was born three years ago but looks like she's 40. The Big Eye scientists who created her have her under lock inside Tower 7, among other abominations, in New-York. She reads a lot. She falls in love with Saeed. She has a friend, Mmuo. But she also finds out why she's called Phoenix and which strange abilities the scientists have put inside her DNA... Cixin Liu, The Remembrance of Earth,
There's something of Mamoru Oshii's Avalon in The Three body problem, and also something of Kim Stanley Robinson, and also something of Otherland by Tad Williams (in much, much better), and also something of Stephen Baxter... Actually, the list of works and authors who seem to have inspired Cixin Liu is a long one, but the novel can't be summed up to that because it's a story in its own right... |
All reviews are spoiler free unless explicitly stated otherwise.
I only review stories I have liked even if my opinion may be nuanced. It doesn't apply for the "Novels published before 1978" series of blog posts. Comments are closed, having neither time nor the inclination to moderate them. |