Monica Byrne 608 pages Harper Voyager (2021)
Read this if you like: Maya civilization, anarchist utopias, long-view fiction tl;dr summary: A story across three timelines spanning 2,000 years, from a dying dynasty in the Maya empire to a nomadic far-future civilization and a teenager on vacation in Belize in the middle.
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Valerie Valdez 416 pages Harper Voyager (2019)
Read this if you like: Antihero starship captains, space romps, galaxy-scale worldbuilding
tl;dr summary: The misadventures of Captain Innocente and her crew, combining all the fun and action of sci-fi adventure pulp with relatable characters and next-level worldbuilding.
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Christine Rice 361 pages University of Hell Press (2016)
Read this if you like: Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, Alan Heathcock’s Volt
tl;dr summary: Life in New Canaan, MI is shitty, and lots of different characters tell you why.
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I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I read The Epic of Gilgamesh for the first time only in my early thirties. It’s not long; about half of the 125-page copy I have is scholarly background and analysis. The actual myth is around 60 pages—and it casts a massive shadow for such a small text, if for no other reason than its status as the earliest surviving epic, believed to date from around 2,100 BC. For context, The Odyssey was written in the 8th century BC, and theologians believe the earliest Bible books were written between 1,500 and 1,000 BC.
Whether you realize it or not, a lot of Western cultural myths today owe their origin to Gilgamesh, either directly through plot points (e.g. the Bible’s story of the Flood) or indirectly thanks to the idea of the heroic epic. If you’re a genre writer, especially, Gilgamesh should be required reading at some point in your life. I’ve broken down what I found to be some of the most unique aspects of the world and tale below.
Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor 401 pages Harper Perennial (2015)
Read this if you like: The Hitchhiker’s Guide series, Borderlands, Terry Pratchett
tl;dr summary: The surreal world of Night Vale finally arrives on the page, in all its terrible, absurd beauty.
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Haruki Murakami 400 pages Kodansha International (1985)
Read this if you like: Unicorns, cross-genre experiments, simulated worlds
Tl;dr summary: Part surreal fantasy, part sci-fi detective story, all wonderfully bizarre—and masterfully constructed.
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Sherrie Flick 207 pages Autumn House Press (2016)
Read this if you like: Writing and reading flash fiction
tl;dr summary: Collection of short (and short-short) literary stories showing the everyday lives of a variety of characters.
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Vernor Vinge 774 pages TOR Books (1999)
Read this if you like: Hard sci-fi, world building, the Foundation series
tl;dr summary: Long-view space opera with deep political undertones that presents a unique viewpoint on both technology and time.
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