[recs] alt history/fantasy/sci-fi(ish) books

[kaberett]

This is apparently what I do when I am asked for recs, so have some copypasta from elsenet:

ZEN CHO (most of her stuff is available for free online from her website). Ken Liu. China Mieville. John Scalzi (the Old Man's War series starts out pretty standard military sci-fi, give or take the QUEER CHARACTERS, but then turns into SOCIOLOGY and is FANTASTIC). Lois McMaster Bujold is incredibly problematic (I, er, kind of threw the most recent book in the Vorkosiverse across the metaphorical room ten pages in, and have never gone back to it). Ekaterina Sedia, with her Moscow But Dreaming. Patricia McKillip. Helen Oyeyemi. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel, obviously. MAGGIE STIEFVATER (if you can overlook the whole Everyone In Canada Is White thing; if you can't, go for The Scorpio Races, which is set on a Scottish island). Jenn Manley Lee's graphic novel series Dicebox (available online in webcomic format; it's AMAZING). Ursula LeGuin, obviously. Amal el-Mohtar. Paula Rentz (Red Tape Stories from Indian Country is a great anthology). Madeleine L'Engle (A Wrinkle in Time, etc). Salman Rushdie, but ONLY the children's books (Haroun & the Sea of Stories; Luka & the Fire of Life). Susan Price (the Sterkarm trilogy).

Followed by further discussion of LMB...

I would recommend reading Vorkosigan up to Memory (9th book). From there I would recommend reading the fantastic AU-from-that-point multi-novel fanfic. :-p

Basically, it is sociology and I loved it, but the most recent book in it is geniunely so appalling transphobic (I bought an electronic ARC, wrote them an e-mail about this, and never got a response) that I am no longer willing to give her the benefit of the doubt on other gender/sex slips earlier in the series (that she DOES correct in later books). And as such I am no longer willing to give her money, but with that caveat am willing to suggest that people read her.

Also, I really like The Sharing Knife quartet, but I think the thinly-disguised magical nomadic race that lives in tribes is, um. REALLY DUBIOUS in a pseudo-US setting, when compared with the settled farming immigrant race...

The first two books [of Vorkosigan] are the ones I am most willing to give untempered recommendations for (they're bound together as Cordelia's Honour), BUT they come with massive trigger warnings for rape and violence against women (which are clearly flagged as Not Okay in-universe, but are still kind of horrible). On the plus side, one things the Vorkosigan series DOES do is have lots of key characters with disabilities, and just treats this like a thing.

Questions? Want more detail? Have at it!

Comments

[jjhunter]

Another good source for book reviews / recs on this front - check out the following tags from 50books_poc:

• fantasy
• alternate-history
• science fiction

Re: Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series - I am so, so glad they exist, and yes, a number of them are comfort reading, but also yes, this is not a utopian future, and there aren't always narrative cues in how problematic stuff is presented to make one feel confident as a reader that the author knows they're problematic.

And yet, and yet - this series was the first place I encountered the idea that maybe one day in the future babies could be gestated outside people's wombs, the first place I was invited to imagine what that might mean on a society-wide level in terms of increased freedoms for women to serve in combat, in space, in exploration. (Variations on this might not be quite as far off as one might think.) This was the first place I encountered a richly realized conception of what a society might look like if people had complete control over their own reproductive and sexual freedoms (see 'Beta'), and I still love the idea of everyone wearing earrings that signal highly nuanced combinations of gender identity, sexual orientation, current relationship status, and interest or disinterest in receiving offers of sex or romance.

So yes, there are flaws, and definitely yes, the earlier books are stronger, but I am so very glad these books exist. Let's just write more books that go further, dare more, so that the Vorkosigan books are shoulders to boost from rather than up on a pedestal of 'among the best written so far'.

[kaberett]

AWESOME THANK YOU.

Yes - I adore Bujold, and part of why I am so spiky and angry about never giving her money again is that I trusted her to be better than that.

[frith_in_thorns]

Guy Gavriel Kay! He writes high fantasy and world-ranging alt history with magical elements. With queer people and PoC and women being awesome! He has a really good mix of protagonists across his books.

[merryway]

Is the AU-In-Question the one that I first saw from you and have been incoherently gleefully flailing about the central relationship being written entirely within canon character personalities/etc in the best possible sense and jus oh dear god the deliciously, peverse, romantic gesture with someones hands between someone elses and I just hnnnng?

[kaberett]

THAT WOULD BE THE ONE YEP

[liv]

So, uh, this AU-from-that-point multi-novel fanfic for fixing post-Memory Vorkosigan actually exists, right, it's not just something you wish existed? Could there perhaps be links? I haven't read all the way through to CVA and the transfail because I got annoyed with the way the series was going after Memory; I'm a lot less interested in Miles when he is an all-powerful Auditor with unbelievably perfect women throwing themselves at his feet, than when he had nothing but sheer chutzpah, no rank, no good looks, no political power.

Chris Moriarty's Spin cycle [sic] is something I push on people who like LMB and want something with similar strengths. The main character, Li, is a little bit like Miles, only less of a Mary-Sue (and also Queer, female and in some sense Asian though ethnic categories in the book's future aren't exactly the same as contemporary ones, which is one of the things I like about the book). She has had to undergo some pretty radical surgery to be who she is, and she deals with injury / impairment / pain / disability though again there's exploration of these categories meaning different things in the future setting, and it's not a Book About Disability. Moriarty's stuff is more like conventional hard SF and less like space opera than the Vorkosigan books (Moriarty herself has a day job as a physicist) but has strong characterization and exploration of different societies.

[kaberett]

Here is the series! Miles is an Auditor, but his political situation becomes... complicated, as does his personal situation, in ways that have (realistic, plausible, explored) impacts on his ability to Recklessly Do Shit in the way he likes. It is plotty, it has action, it has sociology, it has politics, and I LOVE IT. I have read it at least once a year since first coming across it, and am about due for my next reading...

[elialshadowpine]

Ooh. This looks interesting. I notice that it is tagged Miles/Gregor; may I ask how great a role that plays in the story? (Simply that, I don't quite see that pairing, although I suppose a good fic would make it convincing! But I am very intrigued by plot, sociology, and politics!)

[kaberett]

It does play a major role, but I started out kinda unconvinced and am now super-convinced by it. It's handled REALLY well.

[kaberett]

which is also of course the fic that introduced me to Neruda

[elialshadowpine]

I am sadface about the Vorkosigan. I love the books, I love Miles, but there are... iffy bits. Like the whole storyline with Dono, and the attitudes towards him, and well, the concept of someone going through transition for the sheer purpose of inheritance. I suspect from what I have read, LMB was trying to explore an outcome of an incredibly patriarchal culture that prizes men over women... but it just read skeevy to me. I suppose part of that may be because we never see Dono's POV, just from his interaction with other people and their thoughts. Which is troubling in and of itself because it puts cisgendered POV over the actual trans person's.

And the attitude towards Dono is definitely problematic. I think that part of it is that LMB uses deep third writing style, and thus the narration is in character. But we are also only shown the Barrayaran characters and their conservative attitudes, rather than any sort of contrast with more accepting and liberal cultures.

I would also add the caveat to Cordelia's books of the somewhat biphobic commentary from Cordelia regarding Aral -- that he used to be bisexual but now he's monogamous. Which I think possibly was directed at the terribly conservative Barrayarans that she was fighting against but it still set my teeth grinding. (Although I try to remind myself of when the book was written, and that sexuality being inborn is a relatively recent concept.)

It's frustrating because I so very much love Miles and his adventures, and his love story with Ekaterin (who I very much identify with in regards to her reactions to abuse, omg). I had honestly never before read a character that was so much like me in fiction -- with his struggle with disability, and then his mental illness as well. His mood swings and the way that they interact with his physical disability, and then the seizures (which, I have anxiety related seizures)... it really struck a chord, and I actually literally cried at some points in reading because omg there is a character like me, someone wrote a story in which somebody like me can have adventures, holy shit... and then the trans- and biphobia. Augh augh augh. :(

[kaberett]

Yeah, that commentary is something I am willing to tolerate because she fixes it in a subsequent book. There is... no way for her to fix CVA that I would be happy with, AFAICT.