32 Highly Anticipated Sci-Fi and Fantasy Reads for Summer

Mark wrote: "Sorry but I find reading young, female authors absolutely painful and I don't understand why 90% of the new books you list are by them?! I find almost nothing that you write to me about worth looki..."

Oh my goodness, not this nonsense again. May I recommend looking through previous comments? A really good comment to look at is Madison's who breaks down the statistics, start here: Madison wrote: "Morten wrote: "It seems very biased towards female and ethnic authors/stories.
It may be a good thing. I'm not sure, I wouldn't be aware of most of them otherwise. It can be nice with a fresh pers..."
If you really want to use numbers and not address your statement about "young female authors" being absolutely "painful," then you would find that only 59% of this list (not 90% as you pose) are women.

If this still doesn't convince you to look into your own unconscious bias, then I will reiterate what many people have said: don't read them. Good news is there are decades worth of male dominated science fiction and fantasy for you to catch up on. That being said I highly encourage you to try something new because you just might learn something. Have a good day!

Lydia wrote: "So much woke."

GLAD YOU APPROVE

Morten wrote: "It seems very biased towards female and ethnic authors/stories.
It may be a good thing. I'm not sure, I wouldn't be aware of most of them otherwise. It can be nice with a fresh perspective on litt..."

You don't think decades of "balance" toward white male authors was sufficient?

Simon wrote: "I'm in total agreement with Lydia and Morten. The only title that interests me is the new Andy Weir novel. I have read four novels of N.K. Jemison , an African American female author, and love her ..."

Oh please. You are more intelligent than this kind of ridiculous comment.

Relax-your author is on the list. Last row.

Baz wrote: "Where is Joe Abercrombie in this list? The Wisdom of Crowds is due out in September. Perhaps the plethora of female authors crowded another male out of the list...."

He's in there, "The Wisdom of Crowds".

Morten wrote: "It seems very biased towards female and ethnic authors/stories.
It may be a good thing. I'm not sure, I wouldn't be aware of most of them otherwise. It can be nice with a fresh perspective on litt..."

It's spelled literature. And the fact you are complaining about the lack of white male authors is telling.

Lydia wrote: "So much woke."

By "woke" you mean people who offer perspectives on social injustice and racism? How is that a bad thing? Oh, too many non-white and/or female authors for you I guess.

What a bunch of closed-minded people, complaining about the number of ethnic and female "woke" authors here. This is why humanity will fail.

who decides if it is SF or fantasy? It can't always be told by the title/cover -- Would like to see an effort to separate them -- at least let the author choose -- one or the other or both then separate the lists :-)

I don't care much about gender or ethnicity, but where are the scifi titles? I think I counted 5, while most books on this list are fantasy. I enjoy fantasy, but how about a space opera or two? Or hard science with a good story? Such books are still being written, ie the new Murderbot novella, and I'm looking forward to A Desolation Called Peace and The Last Watch, but please give us a better actual scifi representation in a field of 32 books. And while you're at it, how about at least a couple of horror titles--as "dark fantasy," many of them qualify.

My concern here is that that other than The Hail Mary Project, none of these are science fiction. I enjoy fantasy from time to time, but prefer science fiction, and too many plot descriptions here are basically the same: marginalized person X discovers their hidden powers and must save the empire/world from the evil Y.
Let's continue to highlight writers I might not have come across otherwise, but surely there are worthwhile science fiction books coming out?

Simon wrote: "I'm in total agreement with Lydia and Morten. The only title that interests me is the new Andy Weir novel. I have read four novels of N.K. Jemison , an African American female author, and love her ..."

OH really? Are you seriously suggesting Caucasians are being discriminated against? Unbelievable.

I've also noticed the gender bias in recommendations (and it is a bias - 22 of 32 authors are female), and the same thing occurs in other sources, such as io9's Gizmodo monthly sci-fi/fantasy recommendations. Fairs's fair - I grew up reading and enjoying Leigh Brackett, Andre Norton, Ursula Leguin, Anne McCaffery, etc., and am always happy to see a new book by Anne Leckie, Martha Wells, C.K. Jesmin, and other great female authors (as well as books by dozens of other women writing in other genres), but it couldn't be clearer that the people compiling these lists have unconscious or conscious preferences for certain types of authors...

Apologies to N.K. Jemisin for referring to her as C.K. Jesmin. My bad...

Girl One was awesome! I loved it so much that I bought another copy!

Morten wrote: "It seems very biased towards female and ethnic authors/stories.
It may be a good thing. I'm not sure, I wouldn't be aware of most of them otherwise. It can be nice with a fresh perspective on litt..."

Lydia wrote: "So much woke."

Are you having trouble finding books written by white men? Is that the issue? Did they all suddenly stop getting published? I'm really confused.

Simon wrote: "I'm in total agreement with Lydia and Morten. The only title that interests me is the new Andy Weir novel. I have read four novels of N.K. Jemison , an African American female author, and love her ..."

There are centuries of dominance by white male writers to bypass before anything ever verges on becoming "racist" against them. Representation matters. And women comprise 50 percent of the population, I think we could hear from a few more of them...don't you?

Tasha wrote: "Shane wrote: "Donna wrote: "Excellent list! The diversity of the writers, topics, worlds - amazing. Added quite a few of these to my TBR list. Quite a treasure chest!"

Question: how does being a m..."

👏👏👏👏👏 Brilliant response, Tasha!

Jens wrote: "Listopia's Best books of 2021 has The Zero Signal in third place, but it didn't make this list?

I mean, for sure it's not well known, but those who do know it seem to love it more ..."

😂 This list (and all of their lists) are based solely on how many peoples' "Want to Read" shelves they're on (that your fellow readers are adding to their Want to Read shelves"). This book's got 19 ratings and 9 reviews, I doubt thousands of people have this book on their "Want to Read" shelf.

Shawn wrote: "I really don't care who writes them, but I wish that science fiction and fantasy would be divided into separate categories. The great majority of these are fantasy and that's fine. But for those of..."

I'm with you, Shawn! Science fiction and fantasy are very different genres.

Maria wrote: "Wow. Just looking at this list of authors names, I assume that about half of the authors are women. I’m not sure why someone would think that half the population being represented with about half t..."

I agree! Great to see a comment from someone that isn't offended by equal representation.

Shawn wrote: "I really don't care who writes them, but I wish that science fiction and fantasy would be divided into separate categories. The great majority of these are fantasy and that's fine. But for those of..."

I agree, I think that is the real basis of the criticism. As a hard sci-fi fan the titles don't seem to be catering to those of us who like aliens and adventure. Who cares what the author's names are or gender. Based on the titles and artwork it just seems like a woke smorgasbord of navel gazing short stories and not a lot of indication of grand space opera. ergo, more specific categories would be beneficial. Honestly, I scanned the titles and had zero interest to find out what the books were about, some of them probably are hard sci-fi, but I don't feel like reading 30 descriptions to try and figure out which ones when on the surface (titles, artwork, NOT author names) they don't appear to be what I'm looking for. I'm not here to prove myself to anyone, I'll vote with my dollars. This list is not aimed at the hard sci-fi fans as presented.

I agree with a lot of other people on this thread. These books are rather insufferably woke. The most annoying part is that I don't even disagree with the messages they're sending. I remember being annoyed as a kid that all of the mid-grade sci-fi I liked was about boys and all of the girl stuff was realistic fiction/romance. I wished that there were more girls in the genres I liked. However, while YA and adult sci fi contains more female protagonists(which I like) now instead of just being good sci fi+ girl, the focus of the books have become much more on girl and the gender-related obstacles she faces. In addition, I feel like girls can't just be normal in sci fi. They always have to be tough and badass, whereas i feel like there's more freedom now to have fewer marine-tough male characters(yes, I know historically this was not the case). Same thing with race. I support having more diversity in sci fi, and having sci fi books about modern racial issues. However, I don't want it in every book(by that I mean the issue discussion, not the characters). Sometimes I just want to read a book where all the problems are new and exciting. I think it would be best if sci-fi handled it like TV has begun to: there are diverse characters, but their skin tone is not the focus of the series. They're just there, like every other character.

M L Boutell wrote: "Surprised not to see the final book in The Expanse sequence (James A Corey )."

This list is for summer releases and Leviathan Falls isn't out till November.

Baz wrote: "Where is Joe Abercrombie in this list? The Wisdom of Crowds is due out in September. Perhaps the plethora of female authors crowded another male out of the list...."
@Morten, @Bazz @Simon: Uh NO. That is not being racist omg. White male authors have had--and still have--the majority of public notice for forever. It isn't a level playing field. If you want white authors perhaps you should visit most bookstores. If you want to read something JUST AS GOOD, try one of these authors. Or Octavia Butler

Baz wrote: "Where is Joe Abercrombie in this list? The Wisdom of Crowds is due out in September. Perhaps the plethora of female authors crowded another male out of the list...."

Bottom row, 2nd from the left.

Not people saying this list is discriminatory towards White Men... people are so sickeningly predictable.

Ken wrote: "My concern here is that that other than The Hail Mary Project, none of these are science fiction."

Are we looking at the same list? The All-Consuming World, Firebreak, We Are Satellites, Appleseed, Girl One and A Psalm for the Wild-Built are all science fiction. You could even argue that The Kingdoms is sci-fi since it involves alternate universes and time travel.

I think some people are revealing themselves when they complain that there's no scifi on this list because they don't recognize the authors or the covers are hard to decipher. Really, you don't know Hugo-award-winning Becky Chambers, whose book has a cyborg on it? You overlooked a book with the giant QR code on the cover (this in a genre that critiques consumerism)? And another with a DNA strand in the *title* and chromosomes featuring prominently on the cover art? And a third with the word "Satellites" in the title?!

If you can't see the covers, I'd absolutely understand that. But it seems like most of these folks can--so what's the problem? Is it terribly difficult to read the titles? Or maybe it's just that people are used to much simpler visual language, so they decided "spaceman on cover=sci-fi" and "no spaceman or cover=no science involved".

Or--and this is the least charitable reading, so please forgive me--could it be that people saw that the author's first name is feminine, then decided that since women don't write sci-fi, there's no way that their book could be about science fiction?

I AM SO HERE for all the special snowflakes whose noses are put out of joint by this list. 😁 😆 😅 😂 🤣

This is definitely a job well done Goodreads!

Simon wrote: "I'm in total agreement with Lydia and Morten. The only title that interests me is the new Andy Weir novel. I have read four novels of N.K. Jemison , an African American female author, and love her ..."

Maria wrote: "Wow. Just looking at this list of authors names, I assume that about half of the authors are women. I’m not sure why someone would think that half the population being represented with about half t..."

I'm struggling to guess the author's gender based on some of their names: TJ, Rivers, Zen, Cadwell, Fonda etc Don't really care about a novelist's background but suspect a lot of these writers are getting published as part of a diversity drive. Wonder how many will be read in fifty years.

Morten wrote: "It seems very biased towards female and ethnic authors/stories.
It may be a good thing. I'm not sure, I wouldn't be aware of most of them otherwise. It can be nice with a fresh perspective on litt..."

Well, do you feel any exciting books by white men are missing from this list? Cause white men make up a very small part of the population overall, and I count...9 out of 32 of these authors have names that are likely white men...which is just a little bit less than a third of all of the titles.

Steven wrote: "I dont read new books anymore, they are woke and feel forced with political narratives. I still have The Storm light archive and Malazan book of the fallen to start this year."

Stormlight 4 is wokey/a slog... just to warn you, but the first three are great.

I have Peter v Brett new one pre ordered