Science Fiction
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21 Science Fiction And Fantasy Books With Powerful Women Protagonists

Israel Budz

Women’s magic and women’s votes are both outlawed in this alternative version of 1893. The Eastwood sisters mean to change that. Pushed into New Salem by their father’s abuse, the three sisters live separate lives: Studious Beatrice Belladonna works in a library, beautiful Agnes Amaranth works in a factory, and wild James Juniper joins a women’s suffrage group. When a cruel and misogynistic politician throws his hat in the ring to become mayor of New Salem, the sisters unite against him. They gather other women willing to fight for women’s rights by using the most potent weapon at their disposal: magic. This gorgeous, feminist novel depicts three sisters at war against misogyny.

Find The Once and Future Witches at Bookshop or Amazon.

Talyien is Queen of Oren-Yaro, a people known for their ruthlessness. Talyien is no exception, and when her husband abandons her and their son on the day

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Science Fiction
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Here Are The Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Books Coming Out This Spring

Israel Budz


MCD; Tor Teen; HarperTeen; Harper Voyager; Erewhon; Tor

VanderMeer weaves an ecological thriller set in a dystopian landscape defined by climate change and corporate greed with his trademark complexity and inventiveness. In her investigation of famed ecoterrorist Silvina’s murder, security consultant “Jane Smith” discovers a series of taxidermied animals, including a hummingbird and a salamander, as clues. But by investigating Silvina’s murder, she puts her family at risk. Much like in the

Southern Reach

trilogy, VanderMeer’s writing is claustrophobic and immersive, with clues within clues and plots within subplots for readers to untangle.

Get it from Bookshop, Target, or Amazon. Find the audiobook at Libro.fm.

Aliens brought Tina, then an infant, to her adoptive human mother. They told her mother that one day Tina’s internal beacon would alight and they would come back for her. Now Tina is a teenager, and she’s begun to have flashbacks

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Science Fiction
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Let’s talk about wonderful Indian science-fiction and fantasy novels

Israel Budz

Two venerable champions of the form are Anil Menon and Vandana Singh, both of whom have published widely in short fiction. Menon’s 2009 novel, “The Beast With Nine Billion Feet,” dazzles with its vision of 2040 India, while Singh’s most recent collection is the terrific “Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories.” (Singh is physicist, and her science fiction tends to be both hard and lyrical.) On the fantasy side, it is hard to ignore the indefatigable Ashok Banker, whose multivolume epic fantasy retelling of the Ramayana — beginning with 2003’s “Prince of Ayodhya” — was published by Orbit in the United States, a move that was somewhat trailblazing for Western publishing of the time. His most recent novel in the United States is “Upon a Burning Throne” (2019).

So who are the bright new writers reimagining Indian fantasy and science fiction today? What

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Science Fiction
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Let’s talk about ‘Starship Troopers’ and other science fiction and fantasy novels that wowed us on screen

Israel Budz

Silvia: I don’t often follow the old adage: Read the book before you watch the movie — but I should have for “Under the Skin” by Michel Faber. I saw the film when it came out in 2013, and I’m afraid that when I read the novel afterward, I could not shake the impression of Scarlett Johansson as the alien who picks up men and takes them to what is essentially a meat processing facility. In the novel, her character has a more bizarre appearance and the book has a dreamy, haunted quality, along with moments of shocking cruelty. Slow, but delicious and disturbing.

I discovered “The Repossession Mambo” by Eric Garcia after I chanced upon the film “Repo Men” (2010) with Jude Law in the lead role. Both share a great concept: In the near future, you can buy spare organs with ease, but you

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