What SF books did you enjoy the most in 2024? - Lemmy.World
It’s about the end of the year, and I know there will all sorts of lists of the
best books published this year, so this is a different question: regardless of
when published, which SF books that you personally read this year did you enjoy
the most. I’m also asking which you enjoyed instead of which you thought were
the best, so feel free to include fluff without shame. I’ll go first. Of the 60+
books I read this year, here are the ones I liked most. No significant spoilers,
not in any order. ##### Children of Time, Adrian Tchaikovsky - A project to
uplift monkeys on a terraformed world, at the peak of human civilization, is
sabotaged by people who don’t think humans should play god. There follows a
human civil war that nearly destroys civilization. A couple thousand years
later, an ark ship of human remnants leaving an uninhabitable earth is heading
towards that terraformed planet. This is a great book, with lots to say on
intelligence, the nature of people, and both the fragility and heartiness of
life. ##### Kiln People, David Brin * Set a couple hundred years in the future,
technology is ubiquitous that lets people make a living clay duplicate of
themselves that has their memory and thoughts to the point they were created,
lasts about a day, and whose memories can be reintegrated with the real person
if desired. The duplicates are property, have no rights, and are used to do
almost all work and to take any risks without risking the humans. A private
detective and some of his duplicates gets pulled into an increasingly complex
plot that could reshape society. This is a thoroughly enjoyable book, with lots
of twists, and an interesting narrative as we follow copies who may or may not
reintegrate with our detective. ##### Sleeping Giants, Sylvain Neuvel - A little
girl falls down a deep hole in the woods and lands on a gigantic, glowing, metal
hand that’s thousands of years old. This is a wonderful alien artifact story
with some interesting twists. I really enjoyed this book. Not exactly hard SF,
but checks a lot of the boxes for me, including the wonder of discovery. #####
The Peripheral, William Gibson - A computer server links the late 2020s to a
time 70 years later, allowing communication and telepresence between the two
times. A young woman in the earlier time witnesses a murder in the later time
and gets sucked into a battle between powerful people in both times. This is a
great book; I think I could have recognized it as Gibson’s writing even if I
hadn’t known it in advance. Very interesting premise, engaging characters, and
fun without feeling like fluff. ##### The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le
Guin - A coalition of human planets has sent the first envoy to an icy world
where the people are gender neutral and sterile most of the time, but once a
month become male or female (essentially randomly) and fertile. This is a
classic, written in 1969, and my second reading - the first being in the late
80s. Le Guin creates an amazingly rich world, even with its harsh, frozen
landscape. The characters grow to understand how gender impacts their cultures,
and the biases they didn’t know they had. It’s also aged remarkably well for an
SF book written 55 years ago. There’s nothing about it that feels outdated. A
couple notes: - If I hadn’t stuck to my own “enjoyed” constraint, the list might
have looked different. For instance, Perdido Street Station, by Meiville, is a
really great book, but there’s so much misery and sadness that it’s hard to say
I “enjoyed” it. - I hesitated to put The Left Hand Of Darkness on the list,
simply because Le Guin is so widely recognized as a great master, and the book
one of her greatest, that it seemed unfair. In the end, it seemed unfair to
exclude it for such an artificial reason.
