A mix of science and science fiction reading teach me about the world and help me imagine what’s possible. While that doesn’t cover all the material I read this year, it certainly summarizes my favorites. Im breaking this up into fiction and non-fiction, listed in the order I read them. My family teased me about picking 4 books, but that means that it was a top 10% book, and I like that I had to restrict myself to the best of what I read.
Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley
This is the year that I fell in long-distance love with Kameron Hurley, a sci-fi writer about my age based out of Dayton, Ohio. To be fair, I also found Ohio to be a surreal place to live 😉 If you have not read her “We have always fought” essay, you should now. Point is, she is all about bad ass warriors that happen to be female, and that is a theme in the Light Brigade, although that might be a bit of a spoiler because the main character, Dietz, does not use pronouns until the end of the book. I have loved time-travel science fiction since I came unstuck in time with Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse-Five in high school. Hurley delivers a fresh and also timeless take on a timeline that skips around as a way of experiencing war.
“Imagine us all standing in a circle, trying to describe an object to one another, and as we agree on its characteristics, the thing at the center of our circle begins to take form. That’s how we create reality. We agree on its rules. Its shape.”
― Kameron Hurley, The Light Brigade
Kindred by Octavia Butler
Staying with the time-travel theme, I also read Kindred. It was my first Octavia Butler work, and I read it and the Parable series in one gulp. In 2021, I heard about a lot of white people reading as one way to try to understand race and diversity, and also heard some skepticism about this practice. In contrast to the modern tomes, this book is about as old as I am. I did not come to this book to add some diversity to my reading list, but it did open my mind to how much modern black women still might have to contend with the ghosts of generations past. I had the distinct impression that she was writing to understand who she was and how she got here for herself as much as for educating anyone else. As it should be.
“Sometimes I wrote things because I couldn’t say them, couldn’t sort out my feelings about them, couldn’t keep them bottled inside me.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred
State of Terror by Hillary Rodham Clinton & Louise Penny
This book was a fun thriller read. While the plot and details were all clearly fiction, there were some nods to reality- serving a Secretary of State under a former political rival, the continuous onslaught of underestimation that middle age women face, entanglement between press and political players, and how down right creepy intimate gifts like *your* perfume or *your* favorite flowers can be when they come from a stalker/ rival. It demonstrates how Americans have a complex and evolving relationship with the rest of the world. Parts of it seem tongue in cheek in that it pokes fun at its role as propaganda. I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s and loved Top Gun, so maybe I’m a sucker for some types of propaganda entertainment.
“The propogandist is his own first customer.”
― Hillary Rodham Clinton, State of Terror
Origin by Dan Brown
Artificial intelligence was a reading theme for me this year, both in science and fiction. I read the Asimov classic I, Robot, which was fantastic, foundational and dripping with sexism. Lots of the non-fiction I read in this field was oddly dystopian considering my 10 year old tries to ask Alexa how she should do her hair. Origin struck the right balance for me between dystopian and something I want. Plus it is a fast paced romp through Spain, which I love. I hope the future is as fun as is it scary and weird. I love seeing what humans can create and how they live with the web of actions and consequences.
“We are now perched on a strange cusp of history, a time when the world feels like it’s been turned upside down, and nothing is quite as we imagined. But uncertainty is always a precursor to sweeping change; transformation is always preceded by upheaval and fear. I urge you to place your faith in the human capacity for creativity and love, because these two forces, when combined, possess the power to illuminate any darkness.”
― Dan Brown, Origin
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[…] I posted my favorite fiction from 2021. The real world is also interesting and important. Here are my favorite non-fiction works I read, […]