Five Sci-Fi Books to Read This Summer

While Summer 2020 is shaping up to look different than its predecessors, there is still at least one beloved summer hobby fully available to us: reading! With a little help from our English faculty’s newest addition, Dr. Leia Wilson, you’ll be well on your way to a much earned literary vacation from our current reality. Check out Dr. Wilson’s sci-fi summer reads below—

Assistant Professor of English, Dr. Leia Wilson here with some of my favorite sci-fi reading recommendations. I love science fiction! Women and women of color have shaped science fiction as a genre—as far back as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Sci-fi gives us a means to imagine not only the future but its possibilities. By virtue of genre, you’re required to imagine outside the box. It’s not necessarily about advanced aliens or laser swords—sci-fi is about compassionately inventing alternatives to inequity. It’s about imagining opportunity and possibility and empathy from within a narrative of sustainability. It requires us to be engaged thinkers and activists. As readers, we can re-imagine the ways we interact with each other, our responsibilities to the environment, and our own potential. Of course, I also love monsters, cyborgs, robotic jellyfish, spaceships, and weird technology.

Join me for some sci-fi this summer in ENG220: Women in Science Fiction—online, no pre-requisites necessary, and all course readings will be provided. Or… if you can’t join me for class, be sure to check out some of these excellent summer reads—

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

Required reading for any science fiction fan. The most terrifying speculative fiction stories mirror our own lived realities. If you’re not into a hauntingly familiar, alternate reality that reflects what’s happening in the U.S. and globally, this might not be the book for you (right now). But if you’re a fan of Black Mirror’s oddly familiar dystopian scenarios, you’ll love it. Dystopias are misunderstood: they’re not about presenting worst-case-scenarios, they’re about imagining solutions for situations that feel hopeless.

In a society that has collapsed due to corporate greed, abuse of power, unsustainable environmental relationships, pollution, and income disparities, how will Lauren survive? Read to find out! Think X-Men meets Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale. But if you prefer literal aliens in your science fiction, I recommend Dawn, also by Octavia Butler.

A Door into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski

If your idea of a utopia includes thriving women-led societies, you’ll love A Door into Ocean. Plus, if you like gardening, octopuses, whales, and jellyfish, there is a lot to enjoy about this book. In a utopian society centered around gardening, hanging out with ocean animals, and reading—yes, reading as part of a social structure—what do you do all day? You’ll have to read for more.

Think Little House on the Prairie meets Planet Earth, but in space. If you’ve always wanted to breathe under water, this book may be the closest you can get (besides scuba-diving, I suppose). Or if you liked Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland or Disney’s A Little Mermaid, this book is definitely for you.

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to attend the most elite institute of higher education in the galaxy? But in addition to leaving home and trying to make new friends, you also have to battle nightmare space monsters? If you like science fiction as a genre but haven’t yet read any Africanfuturism, you are missing out! One of the cool things about science fiction as a genre is that it allows us to imagine the future outside of a Western perspective or a capitalist paradigm; we can imagine anything. A narrative about the future can start anywhere, in any tradition, any location. Binti is what would happen if the Star Wars saga met Nigerian mythology. Plus, it’s a novella so you can read it in one sunny (or rainy) afternoon.

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

This is a mammoth of a book—but it’s worth every minute. Mystery! Action! Amazing supernatural powers! Rather than imagining the apocalypse as one singular, catastrophic event in time, in this world, apocalypses happen as often as rain. Seismic, volcanic, atmospheric, manmade disasters happen so frequently, they’re called Seasons. This society thinks of disasters as structural imbalances that have to be dealt with on a daily basis. Now imagine doing this as you’re being written out of the narrative. What does that even mean? You’ve got to read to find out! Think Jessica Jones meets Captain Planet meets Murder She Wrote. I won’t give anything away—the mystery guiding this narrative is thrilling. If you liked Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, or Stranger Things, this is good company.

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

I just finished this last week and didn’t realize it would be part of a trilogy—rookie reading mistake! I cannot WAIT for the next book in this series! It’s supposed to come out this year, fingers crossed. Lesbian necromancers in space, do I need to say anything else? This book follows the story of Gideon, a sword-wielding soldier and indentured servant who is ready to escape the necromantic cult she grew up in. Unfortunately for Gideon (fortunate for us readers), she is thwarted at every turn by her nemesis, Harrowhark, the most powerful necromancer of her generation. Stay tuned for Harrow the Ninth, a sequel coming this August.

Special thanks to Dr. Leia Wilson for her excellent sci-fi selections. If you’re interested in taking Leia’s summer sci-fi course, check it out on the course schedule.