Sci-Fi/Fantasy Recommendations

+ Recommended Sci-Fi:
Jeff VanderMeer’s
- Southern Reach Trilogy: A record of the twelfth expedition into Area X, and what happened after.
—-Start with: Annihilation
- Ambergris Trilogy: Life and times in a city that may or may not be increasingly devoured by mushrooms of unknown origin.
—-Start with: City of Saints and Madmen

Charles Stross’s
- Future of Scotland series: Mysteries ensue in a near-future independent Scotland up to its eyeballs in augmented reality.
—-Start with: Halting State
- The Laundry Series: Lovecraft meets James Bond meets Java Programming, 5th Edition
—-Start with: The Atrocity Archives
- Accelerando: Three generations of a very odd family grow up in a world with rapidly accelerating technology.
—-Made available by the author for free at: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html

Iain M. Banks’s
- Culture series: The lives and times of a post-scarcity interstellar utopia that calls itself The Culture, which entertains itself by helping others. Or trying, anyway.
--Start with: The Player of Games

Hannu Rajaniemi’s
- Jean le Flambeur series: 19th century-style charming thief in the 22nd century.
—-Start with: The Quantum Thief

Joan Slonczewski
- The Highest Frontier: It’s freshman year for the newest member of the Kennedy dynasty at Frontera College, located in a space habitat.
- A Door Into Ocean: An all-female species attempts to defend their entirely water-covered moon from a military invasion.

Kim Stanley Robinson
- 2312: A tour of our solar system in the year 2312 by an unmedicated artist and her alien friend.
- Aurora: Hundreds of years after its departure from Earth, a spaceship approaches a new planet, with no idea what they’ll find.
- The Years of Rice and Salt: What if the Black Death killed off 99 percent of Europeans, instead of 33 percent?

Ian McDonald
- River of Gods: On the eve of India’s celebration of 100 years of independence, radical change sweeps nine people up in a series of strange events.
- The Dervish House: Six people struggle to achieve their goals in Istanbul in the mid-21st century.
- Luna: New Moon: Five corporations fight for supremacy on our inhospitable, ruthless moon.

+ Recommended Fantasy:
Kameron Hurley’s
- Bel Dam Apocrypha series: A former government assassin tries to make a living in a world torn apart by seemingly unending interstate warfare.
—-Start with: God’s War

Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series: Hilarious British satirical fantasy.
—-Start with: Wyrd Sisters (send-up of Hamlet)
—-Start with: The Truth (send-up of modern media)

China Miéville’s
- Bas-Lag series: Life in a very strange city starts getting weirder. Heavy on moths and rebellion.
—-Start with: Perdido Street Station
- The City & The City: Life in two very strange Eastern European cities starts getting weirder.  Heavy on noir and psychogeography.
- Embassytown: Life on a very strange alien planet starts getting weirder. Heavy on xenolinguistics.

Clive Barker’s
- Abarat Series: 25 islands, one for every hour of the day, and all of them in an uproar as Candy Quackenbush from Minnesota seeks shelter from villainous forces, bringing chaos in her wake.
—-Start with: Abarat

Christopher Priest
- The Islanders: Welcome to the Dream Archipelago, neutral islands situated between two continents at war. This guidebook will help you navigate the islands, know which languages and currency to use, and figure out who murdered the Archipelago's most beloved mime.