Just finished Ted Chiang’s recent book of short stories, Stories of Your Life and Others, which is really excellent, some of the best sci fi I’ve read this year. Quite a few of the stories express really fascinating philosophical thought experiments (but are still fully entertaining). Here’s one I liked a lot (readable in full at website): “Liking What You See: A Documentary.” Highly recommended.
The other really great one I’ve read recently is Emily St John Mandel’s novel Station Eleven. A deeply thoughtful and moving look at what our civilization looks like, from just before and just after it ends. It reminded me of William Gibson and of David Mitchell. I’m not sure it’s quite in that very first rank, but it’s one of the best books I’ve read in a long time, and I can’t wait to read more of her work.
Peter Watts, Blindsight and Echopraxia. Some of the most thought-provoking hard science fiction I’ve read since The Quantum Thief. Almost worth it for the citation-packed afterwards alone, where the author lays out the case for his wild ideas being plausible.
Claire North, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. Time travel novel, of a sort, with a literary bent. Reminded me a bit of The Time-Traveler’s Wife.
John Scalzi, Redshirts. You almost don’t need to hear anything else, right? Hilarious spoof of bad sci fi tropes.
John Scalzi, Lock In. An inventive sci fi police procedural, in a future where robotics and VR improve fast, because millions of people are left paralyzed by a disease.
Laline Paull, The Bees. The story of a bee hive, from a bee’s perspective. Except sort of not, in a magical realist kind of way.