Book-buying group recommendations: Travelling into a sci-fi summer

Whether you’re staycationing, travelling or just stuck at work or at home over the holidays, why not take a trip to another world or two with our selection of science fiction books?

Joan Slonczewski, A Door Into Ocean

 wildly underrated classic, A Door Into Ocean invites us to travel to the moon Shora, a water-world inhabited by a society of women whose scientific expertise allows them to live in balance with Shora’s marine ecology. A delightful trip if you’re interested in biology,  lesbians, non-violent resistance to empire, or all of the above.

Simon Jimenez, The Spear Cuts Through Water

In a world where the moon has fallen from the sky and death and darkness stalk the earth, two boys – one a murderer, one a liar – meet at the bedside of a dying God and set out together to find new endings to old stories handed down to them.

Nicola Griffith, Ammonite

On the planet Jeep, a human colony has been decimated by a virus which has left only women alive. Anthropologist Marghe Taishan travels across the planet, through plains, forests, and arctic regions in search of healing.

Adrian Tchaikowsky, Spiderlight

In a world where good battles evil, a small band of plucky travellers confront a great spider which lurks in darkness. What seems at first like a well-trodden path will take you in unexpected directions, opening up new ways of seeing ourselves and the stories we tell.

Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun: The Shadow of the Torturer

Somewhere between Lord of the Rings and Alice in Wonderland, Wolfe’s masterpiece invites us to explore a future Earth transformed almost beyond recognition, accompanying the torturer Severian, exiled from his home and forced to make his way through an unfamiliar world almost as strange to him as it is to us.

Nalo Hopkinson, Blackheart Man

On the magical Caribbean island of Chynchin, strange things are afoot. Griot-in-training Veycosi leads us from one chaotic escapade to another, as the threats to Chynchin mount: an invading army, disappearing children, and the old horror, the Blackheart Man, threatens to emerge from the tar pits at the heart of the island’s economy as well as of its myths.   

Book recommendations by Marika from our Book buying group