#SciFiMonth and #NovellasInNovember Reading Plans!

I’m once again taking part in #SciFiMonth, which runs from 1 to 30 November. As I did in 2021, I’ll be combining this challenge with #NovellasInNovember. Serendipitously, I tend to get on a lot better with SF novellas than with any other kind of novella, so these two challenges work well together for me.

I’ll be using this challenge to read some SF books I already had on my Kindle, plus some NetGalley ARCs and the science fiction that’s remaining on my 2022 reading list, then adding some SF novellas! (I doubt I will actually get through all these, but oh well).

On My Kindle

N.K. Jemisin’s short story collection How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? has been on my reading list for some time. I admired Jemisin’s The Fifth Season but did not feel compelled to read the rest of the trilogy. However, I’ve enjoyed short stories by her in various anthologies, and would like to give her writing another go.

Gwyneth Jones’s Life (originally published in 2004) has recently been republished in a beautiful SF Masterworks edition. I think it was Elle’s review that originally drew my attention to this novel, which focuses on the fictional, brilliant scientist Anna Senoz who discovers ‘transferred Y’ syndrome; sections of the Y chromosome can cross to the X chromosome, which may eventually make the Y chromosome redundant. I’m continually intrigued by SF which plays with sex and gender (The Left Hand of Darkness, Ammonite, The Men) and this sounds like a good addition.

Everina Maxwell’s Winter’s Orbit promises to focus on a high-ranking political figure rushed into an arranged marriage with another man against the backdrop of an interplanetary empire. However, it’s pitched as Ancillary Justice meets Red, White and Royal Blue, so I was instantly sold! I’m intrigued by the idea of a space opera that is quite light and romantic, as I often find them too convoluted and overly earnest (see: A Memory Called Empire).

NetGalley ARCs

Coincidentally, I had two SF ARCs lined up that both publish in November – and both on the 24th of the month! Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Memory is the final instalment in the trilogy that began with Children of Time. This hugely ambitious space opera started with the remains of the human race sleeping in stasis on an arkship called the Gilgamesh, having fled from an uninhabitable Earth. They come across a planet that appears to be habitable, but it’s guarded by an aggressive and hostile AI, and populated by giant, sentient spiders. In my opinion, the sequel, Children of Ruin, was the stronger novel, having dispensed with set-up and showing us how humans and spiders ally in the search for new worlds. The blurb of Children of Memory seems to suggest an about-face, as it focuses on a different human colony established by a different arkship, the Enkidu.

Aliette de Bodard’s The Red Scholar’s Wake promises space pirates and lesbians, an irresistible combination for me – and just look at that cover! Xich Si’s ship is captured by the Red Banner pirate fleet, led by Red Fish, who was the wife of the Red Scholar – until her wife died under suspicious circumstances. Xich Si expects to be tortured to death by Red Fish, but then she receives an unexpected offer. This sounds superficially similar to the blurb of Winter’s Orbit, so I’ll be interested to see how the two books compare.

2022 Reading List

The only SF novel left on my 2022 reading list is Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi. Set in a near-future Earth in the 2050s, the wealthy have fled to colonies in space, while the poor are left behind to survive on a dying planet. I’ll be interested to see how this compares to Sequoia Nagamatsu’s How High We Go In The Dark, the third section of Hanya Yanagihara’s To Paradise and Emily St John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility.

SF Novellas In November

Ellen Flages’s Passing Strange sounds right up my street. It follows the intersecting lives of four women in 1940s San Francisco as they explore the magical borderlands of the city. Inter-war and wartime US and European settings are usually a pass for me – I’m utterly unseduced by this kind of glamour – but I’m hoping the speculative elements will enrich this familiar material in the way they did in Nghi Vo’s Siren Queen.

Meanwhile, I’ll be continuing my journey through Ursula Le Guin’s wonderful science fiction with her novella The Word for World Is Forest (the title itself makes this a must-read for me!). This is part of her Hainish Cycle, which also includes The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. It focuses on a military logging colony set up on another planet by people from Earth, and I’m hoping for more of the social insight I so loved in The Dispossessed.

I’m also picking up another Adrian Tchaikovsky (he is PROLIFIC), but his novella Walking to Aldebaran sounds like it operates on a completely different scale from his spidery space operas. This tells the story of an astronaut sent to explore a mysterious alien rock; when he gets lost in the tunnels inside it, he becomes uncomfortably aware there’s something else there with him… Tchaikovsky is good at SF horror, possibly my favourite genre-cross.

Finally, I’ll be reading Zen Cho’s The Terracotta Bride. I wanted to try something by Cho, and this is advertised as ‘A tale of first love, bad theology and robot reincarnation set in the Chinese afterlife.’ Intriguing!

Are you taking part in #SciFiMonth and/or #NovellasInNovember? What will you be reading? Do any of my picks sound tempting?

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