105
Powell’s Essential List: 25 Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of the 21st Century (So Far)
(www.powells.com)
this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
105 points (94.1% liked)
Science Fiction
13602 readers
2 users here now
Welcome to /c/ScienceFiction
December book club canceled. Short stories instead!
We are a community for discussing all things Science Fiction. We want this to be a place for members to discuss and share everything they love about Science Fiction, whether that be books, movies, TV shows and more. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow.
- Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
- Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.
- Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed
- Put (Spoilers) in the title of your post if you anticipate spoilers.
- Please use spoiler tags whenever commenting a spoiler in a non-spoiler thread.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I've read schockingly few of the ones on the list, and from what I know, I feel torn. Some I'm happy to see: NK Jemisin is a great author, and although I haven't read Exhaltation by Ted Chiang, everything I've read of his has been incredible.
On the other hand, seeing Perdidio Street Station as the first entry really threw me for a loop. The book is totally fine, but it is extremely weird, and I definitely don't see it as a must-read.
Edit: typo
I haven't read Perdidio Street Statio; you thought it was bad?
I think "bad" would be the wrong word. I usually describe it as "weird". And it feels a bit smushed together somehow: lots of different things that don't really fit that well together, in my opinion.
It may well be worth reading, but as the first entry on a list of best science fiction and fantasy, it feels out of place to me.
I think it was a forerunner, I kept seeing it referred to as "the New Weird", and in that sense I can see that it was influential. More influential than good, I think.
But the followup, "The Scar", I thought was excellent, and was just as "New Weird" as Perdido Street Station. All round a better book, really blew my mind at the time - but seems to be rarely as mentioned because Perdido Street Station gets all the attention for being first.