Genre – the hard boundaries of separate literary aesthetics. Hard-eyed guards manning every crossing. No-man’s lands under the guns of critics. Except we’ve all lived there. Categories are great for giving an idea of where in the landscape a book might range, but you can cover a lot of country following where it leads. For example:
Ten Low by Stark Holborn
A barely terraformed moon, a greedy corporation, a desperate fugitive. The harsh realities of rationed oxygen, food and water. Except also a western from the acclaimed author of the genuinely remarkable Nunslinger, a full on Western romance that I loved every page of. Oh, and did I mention the maybe-supernatural mystery element? Because there is a full-on weirdness going on that might be alien SF-ness or might be something entirely weird in a very different way. Or just be the protagonist’s imagination…
Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North
Near future dystopia. After the incendiary collapse of civilization a new world pulls itself together. Not a Mad Max anarchy, but a cautiously negotiated alignment of polities and agreements overseen by a religion of respect for nature born from the terrible excesses of the past. So far, so recognisable. Except, right from the start, the protagonist has seen the monstrous avatars of the burning age, to be appeased and feared and never, ever provoked. Which makes the fact that his peaceful civilization has grown big enough to be turning towards tyranny and war all the more terrifying…
House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard
Paris has been laid low in a colossal war, leaving it strung between feuding gangs and the closed compounds of the Houses, all jostling elbows in the wreckage. Except the houses are ruled by actual fallen angels and there are immigrant Vietnamese dragon courts in the Seine and… It’s a phenomenal setting, gorgeously detailed and defiant of easy categorisation. Plus you have de Bodard’s Xuya series, spaceships and an interplanetary empire drawing on Vietnamese history and features living spaceships that are simultaneously home and family.
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Speaking of defying categorisation, the Locked Tomb series is a wild ride of memorable characters and bewildering concepts. The Emperor has ruled humanity for thousands of years, after possibly making it extinct and then bringing it catastrophically back from the dead. Because this is a SF setting powered by necromancy, and there are armies of skeletons and sword duels and some exquisite romance and a lot of it is also very, very funny. Some of the most mind-bogglingly original ideas paired with really masterful characterisation.
Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson
It’s the near future and Europe has fractured into a thousand little statelets with hard borders. Enter the Couriers, whose job it is to move your important stuff across this crazy-paving landscape. Buckle up for an elegant story of espionage and politics and crime and… well, I cannot tell you The Thing in this book, because it would spoil the drop, but just when you’ve settled into the immersive world Hutchinson envisages he pulls the rug out from under you so fast you’ll get literary whiplash…
Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Lincolnshire before heading off to Reading to study psychology and zoology. For reasons unclear even to himself he subsequently ended up in law and has worked as a legal executive in both Reading and Leeds. He’s the author of the critically acclaimed Shadows of the Apt series, the Echoes of the Fall trilogy, The Doors of Eden, and the Final Architecture series. Children of Time was the winner of the 30th Anniversary Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.
Children of Memory the third instalment in the series is out NOW from UK Tor