I'm going to offer a thread of non-escapist science-fiction recommendations, many of them by writers of color. these are books that for one reason or another help me think about our current situation & the future. /1

these are for all, but especially if you're the sort of white reader who sees yourself as a serious reader, not a genre-fiction reader, or anyway not a speculative fiction reader, this is some of the stuff you're missing that you really shouldn't miss /2

first of all, read Jemisin. NK Jemisin's Broken Earth Trilogy is the most decorated speculative fiction ever, having won 3 successive Hugo Awards for its 3 books. themes of racism, loss, governance, decline, family, technology. dark, intense, uncategorizable, beautiful. /3

read Butler. especially Parable of the Sower from 1993, a near-future tale of a 15-year-old girl surviving & becoming a leader in an apocalyptic America that looks awfully recognizable now. the Lilith's Brood series is out-there science fiction, but deals with related themes. /4

I love most of Butler's work - for more traditional, you might appreciate Kindred, a time-travel story about a modern Black woman with a supernatural connection to an enslaved ancestor. /5

I tend to enjoy the science fiction of diplomacy & bureaucracy - mild-mannered administrators grappling with weird situations is my jam. in that vein, the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy by Cixin Liu - starting with The Three Body Problem - is excellent (& not w/o action) /6

the premise of The Three Body Problem is that an obscure Chinese government outpost made first contact with aliens during the Cultural Revolution & it was kept a secret. but the stresses on the system, the flow of information, how governments react when it comes to light... /7

...I've been thinking about it a lot, although I have to confess it's on the dark side. I intended to re-read it in the fall of 2016 & I haven't been able to do it yet. /8

the Malka Older trilogy I mentioned earlier, the Centenal Trilogy, is also great science fiction of administration (but also with some action) - it builds on the franchise nations of classic cyberpunk (which I'll get to in a minute) to show a near future of "micro-democracy" /9

what if we didn't have to be conglomerated into large states & could choose governments at much smaller scale with like-minded people...but there was also (mostly) world peace - how the hell would the information systems of such a society work? WCGW? /10

getting to LeGuin, I absolutely adore her science fiction, although some of the premises are a bit dated now - but I'm going to recommend her essays. an incredible humanist writer unafraid to use imagination to make a point. she coined the term "speculative fiction" ... /11

in response to some 60s-70s bros who wanted to insist that science fiction basically could only be peer reviewed accuracy level & shouldn't, you know, deal with too much emotion /12

LeGuin's essays, & her fiction as well, deal with issues of inequity, sexism, & what it means to be human. she also wrote non-white characters (LeGuin was white) when this was not ordinary in speculative fiction. there are several collections - pick one up. /13

ok. to classic cyberpunk. what I think is important about it is that it's a collection of warnings about networked software. the worlds have a bunch of other interesting features that allow fun speculations, but that's the crux. /14

these are mostly by white guys, although the genre is getting more diverse in recent years. (& if I have missed a 70s-80s cyperpunk by not-a-white-guy please please tell me because I would LOVE to read that)

Snow Crash & The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson are the ones that really closely reflect an internet world in the near-ish future of a recognizable timeline. they have some plotting issues, but the worldbuilding is really the point for me, & they're incredibly fun reads /15

oops I missed 15, that was 16, this is 17. William Gibson's recent work concerning The Jackpot is important, but I still love Neuromancer (from 1984), possibly the novel that started the subgenre. it's a wild caper in a world both more & less advanced than ours... /17

...where RAM is expensive, body modifications aren't that expensive, some local space travel is possible - but the network is what's important. seminal book, & good fun. will make you think. /18

in a very cyberpunk, but also very contemporary vein more concerned with algorithms & AI (in a way Gibson wouldn't have known to be in 1984), Annalee Newitz's Autonomous from a couple years ago is very interesting & lyrical. /19

...& that's the thread, I think. these are the books I personally have been thinking of repeatedly during these awful times. I think speculative fiction has a lot to offer us all right now, & if you don't normally read it, I hope this might give you an entry point. /20

& I'm also interested in what books you've been haunted by as we go through this. /f