Rambling about Science Fiction books

There are plenty of science fiction books I’ve read that have stayed with me for one reason or another.

I started out reading the classics by Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. But actually, my earliest read for Verne was an adaptation of Around the World in Eighty Days that I read at school, and came with fantastic art accompanying the text. I knew then that science and speculative fiction would be my jam!

Since last year, I’ve been reading The Expanse series. And honestly, it has managed to stay really really engaging for me the whole way through. I am currently on the 6th book: Babylon’s Ashes, and it’s seriously incredible to see.

At this point in time, I am completely invested in the world—the society, technology and conflicts—and even more so, its characters—their struggles, development, and relationships. Bundle that with the fact that it’s great at pretty much everything it tries, such as military action, political intrigue, cosmic horror or existential monologuing. Even if the build-up in some entries can take time, it always manages to hook me by pulling off some crazy premise, and seeing how the story evolves as the series has gone on has been a complete joy so far.

Even so, there are books where I can’t even tell you the name of the protagonist at all, but I can vividly remember the imagery and the wonder of the world described in the pages. This is the case for Brian W. Aldiss’ Hothouse, with it’s dying Earth, tidally locked, two million years in the future, dominated by sentient and deadly vegetal life, interwoven to the moon by giant webs and huge vegetal beings roaming free in the space between, with humans devolving to almost animalistic insticts, as everything around them represents a constant danger.

Or maybe the concept of a story is simply incredible to read, getting deep into the human psyche when put in terrifying situations. The utopian future lead by a benevolent alien species over the whole planet in Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, or the very much not utopian society found in D.G. Compton’s Farewell, Earth’s Bliss where every “undesirable” individual is sent to a settlement on Mars to form its own culture—which doesn’t go too well when every character is broken and messed up.

There’s this one time that I went blind into a book and was completely disgusted by it, while also being unable to stop reading—despite my best judgement—because of the premise of it all, Tender is the Flesh, by Agustina Bazterrica kept my eyes peeled, as Humanity resorts to cannibalism because they would rather do that over going vegan, after all animal meat on the planet becomes unedible.

Overall though, I’ve mostly stuck with older works of science fiction, classics of the 20th century, like The Mote in God’s Eye by Niven and Pournelle, which is still the most interesting first contact plot I’ve read, while featuring a bunch of cool concepts and world-building. And of course, Dune, an incredible, dense, palpable story that I got to both watch and read, and needs no introduction.

I guess I prefer to read older books because I like to compare the differences and similarities between the future they envisioned and today. How things turned out to be. From something like E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops which I feel I’ve mentioned so often because it’s just so ahead of its time, or the bleak hyper-capitalist world in The Space Merchants by Kornbluth and Pohl, filled with massive advertisement campaigns, modern slavery, and never ending debt.

Despite how dire some of those futures seem, there will be other books that fight back. The fear of the unknown, quickly replaced by an admiration for the alien, something beyond our humanity that gives us hope, in the spiritual and natural harmony shown in C.S. Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet. Or the inspiring, never-ending ingenuity of the human mind in its battle for survival, which can be seen in the journey against all odds on Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary.

If there’s something that long time readers may be able to tell, is that me truly disliking something I read is rather strange. Sometimes I think I just don’t go that deep into the things I read, even if I am enjoying them and even when they stay with me for months or years. I’ve never rated anything under 3.5 stars. I rarely rate things during my reviews at all—the times I’ve done it, they haven’t really added any value in the end—I just share my thoughts and overall conclusions.

As long as something gets me thinking and entertains me, it usually works out. Even when I didn’t enjoy the topic, or what happened, or dislike its conclusions (it’s hard to look away during a train-wreck). Most of the time I try to appreciate what an author attempts to do. Besides, I tend to be really picky about what I read in the first place, so it’s hard for me to end up with something I don’t enjoy at least a bit.

And of course, there’s space for books that are just dumb fun and filled with geek references while keeping the science pretty real, like the Bobiverse series! I read that long before I started this blog, but maybe I’ll revisit it someday.

This post ended up being a general overview of books I’d recommend—except for the cannibalism one but you could read it I guess—so that was quite the ramble to go on. I was going to turn this into something general for other types of media like Manga and TV Shows, but I think I’ll just do separate posts for them.

Funnily enough, after all this time, I am yet to read anything from the big authors of the last century, nothing by Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick or Robert Heinlein. Other authors like Ray Bradbury are still a blind spot too. There’s just so many things to read.

In any case, just check my bookshelf! Pretty much everything there is good in my opinion. Although I haven’t updated it with my latest reads like the Murderbot series.