By Kris Vyas-Myall
As some of you readers may know, 2023 was a particularly hard year for me. As such I didn’t get as much reading as I would normally do. However, that doesn’t mean I haven’t read some books from last year I didn’t love. So here are my top 10 to date:
- The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Ann Older
I sometimes feel a bit funny about promoting Tor Novellas. They get so much coverage as it is, do they really need my help? However, I also adore Older’s work and this is just so much fun. I mean a Lesbian Sherlock Holmes adventure taking place on platforms orbiting a gas giant with a take on environmentalism? What’s not to love?
- Virgin Land by Chloe Smith
Talking of environmentally focussed novellas, Smith’s work came as wonderful surprise to me. At first it seems like a standard piece of frontier fiction but it then branches out in to fascinating areas looking at sustainability, relationships and what we owe to each other and ourselves.
- Translation State by Ann Leckie
I had not been as huge a fan of the previous Radch novels as many in the SF community. I liked them but also felt them flawed in some ways. This, however, felt like it was written for me. Returning to the universe but looking at it from the outside, we get a more nuanced complicated tale that really spoke to me.
- Our Hideous Progeny by C.E. McGill
What I am on record as being a huge fan of, however, is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. People trying to riff on the concept don’t always work as well. McGill’s debut definitely does. It uses the prism of Shelley’s work to explore real life areas of Victorian science and morality, raising questions that still resonate today.
- Apollo Weeps by Xian Mao
Whilst I think you might be able to debate how SFnal this is, this novella plays with the concepts and tropes well enough that I definitely consider it so. Going through the history of an American family, the canon of theatre and contemporary issues around prejudice, it is among the most crunchy and complex works for me of 2023.
- The Future by Naomi Alderman
In science fiction, contemporary literary novels and everything in between, I am a big fan of Alderman’s. She has the ability to get to the heart of an issue, stick the knife in and extricate the beating mess with flair and style. Here she takes on Tech Billionaires and AI. A book to be experienced.
- The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty
This book falls into what I think of as one of my favourite subgenres, “inclusive pulp”. It takes the feel and concepts of pulp fiction of the 20s and 30s, but then uses them in new ways and includes groups that are often not part of these tales. Here she takes a Sword & Sorcery quest narrative and combines it with the Sinbad tales (another favourite of my youth) with an older middle-eastern woman in the lead role. Told with wit, style and tremendous imagination.
- The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi
The politics and complexity of translations are something that fascinates me. Should one be truly authentic to the original text? Who owns the tale? Is sharing of stories in this manner inclusive or colonialist? This literary delves headfirst into these questions with a horrific mystery designed to leave you unsettled.
- Broken Light by Joanne Harris
I sometimes feel like Joanne Harris is a victim of her own success. Every year she seems to put out yet another piece of brilliance, I feel like some critics take her for granted. But we should not overlook her and be thankful for such a prolific author of this calibre. Here she gives us a devastatingly beautiful tale of abuse, trauma and power that almost beggars belief in its sharpness.
- Corey Fah Does Social Mobility by Isabel Waidner
If there is one author, I could scream from the rooftops about it is Isabel Waidner. They use concepts from Science Fiction and Fantasy to explore our contemporary world in the most innovative ways but seem to have been completely ignored by the SF community (they even lack an ISFDB page). Here we get an author trying to collect a literary prize that keeps flying away whilst also having to deal with Bambi (not the Disneyfied version but the real one with spider legs that eats creatures) falling through a wormhole. What to do but have a reality TV crew follow you as you try to retrieve the award?
Once again, a masterpiece.
Cloaked Creators 