Good science fiction always makes us think.
And great science fiction entertains the hell
out of us while doing so.
So here are the five best sci-fi books of
recent times that I enjoyed.
Number one: Ready Player One
Okay, it’s a low hanging fruit, but Ready
Player One does deserve all the praise.
Ernest Cline’s novel gained a cult status
immediately after release because of its 80’s
and 90’s nostalgia.
It’s basically a love letter to the childhood
of many of us.
And it came at a right time.
I mean there are new Predator, Jurassic Park
and King Kong movies coming up.
We’re living a zero-lite version of the
past.
But the greatness of Ready Player One goes
beyond style and tone.
It’s not just about the past.
It’s about an accurate prediction of the
future as I’ve seen.
Virtual reality will change our lives more
than Apple and Facebook combined.
The barrier between the real world and the
virtual will slowly vanish.
And it’s not necessarily a dystopia.
It will create a new kind of social network
between people, and bring them closer through
their shared experience.
And unlike how it was presented in Wall-E,
gamers are probably going to be the most athletic
people.
Oh, and one more thing; the film is fun, but
the book is the real deal.
Number Two: Six Wakes
This one was nominated for both the Hugo and
the Nebula award for Best Novel.
The story is set on a generational starship,
taking humans to their new home.
But the crew is made up of clones.
In this future, people take backups of their
minds, and when they die, those backups are
restored into new, young bodies cloned from
their own DNA.
It’s an interesting way of solving aging
and mortality, and the question is obvious:
Is a copy of you, really you?
But it wouldn’t be good sci-fi without a
fast-paced plot.
So when six clones wake up from restored and
outdated backups, we have a murder mystery
on our hands.
One of them killed the others, but nobody
remembers anything.
So basically, this is a closed room, whodunnit,
murder mystery, in space, with clones.
It’s a recipe for greatness.
Number three: The Themis Files
Well, technically this is a trilogy of books,
but it’s one big story.
And it’s another debut from a previously
unknown writer who writes as pragmatically
as Arthur C. Clarke, and as thrilling as Michael
Crichton.
In the story, a girl named Rose discovers
a giant metal hand, buried under the Earth.
It’s a thousands of years old, made out
of unknown metal and has strange symbols inscribed
in it.
This bizarre artifact remains a mystery seventeen
years later, but Rose became obsessed with
it.
When she realizes that it has various other
components scattered around the world, the
hunt begins to assemble this creature.
And the hunters are so obsessed whether they
could, they never stop asking whether they
should.
It’s also about what happens if we have
to bend our biological features to adjust
to new technologies.
Say no more.
Number Four: Artemis
It’s a new novel from Andy Weir.
If his name rings a bell, he took the literary
world by storm a few years ago with his novel:
The Martian.
A year after that, it was turned into a movie
that became a blockbuster hit.
He became an overnight success, but there
was a little doubt whether he’s a rising
star or a one-trick pony.
Well, the answer is kinda both, but in a good
way.
In Artemis we get the same tricks he used
in The Martian but in a fresh new way.
This time we’re in for a heist story on
the Moon.
But it’s the same kind of highly detailed
scientific puzzle, and it takes you by force
all over again.
Number Five: Annihilation
Jeff VanderMeer’s book is a gamechanger
in sci-fi.
It doesn’t just turn everything on its head
in the genre, it’s also something unprecedented
in literature.
We follow an expedition of investigators tasked
with exploring Area X, a mysterious dome that
has popped up out of nowhere.
Area X defies explanation: nobody knows its
origins or what happened to the people who
lived in there.
But instead of focusing on characters, VanderMeer
doesn’t even give them names, and instead
of focusing on a story, he’s more interested
in mood.
What’s new in Annihilation, and what makes
it great, is that it strips away objectivity
as nobody in the team can agree what they
see.
It seems like Area X presents itself differently
to everyone.
And that feeling of reality slipping away
and our perception is being unreliable sets
the tone for the horror of the uncanny.
Annihilation is a spiritual sci-fi like never
before.
I hope you will enjoy these and if you have
any suggestions for me, I can’t wait to
hear your favorite sci-fi books.
