The Last Cuentista

Written by: Donna Barba Higuera

First line: Lita tosses another pinon log on the fire. 

Why you should read this book: Petra and her family are among the lucky few granted a place on the great starships leaving Earth just before Haley's comet smashes into it and destroys everyone and everything, including her beloved storyteller grandmother, and now she will spend hundreds of years in cryo-sleep, having important computer files uploaded to her brain so she can be a scientist when humanity finds its new home. But even as the ship launches and Petra falls into an uneasy stasis, dissidents have taken over the ship, and when Petra finally awakes, it is into a strange, nightmare reality controlled by "The Collective," a group that has evolved into a species she can barely recognize as human, which has eliminated hunger and war by eliminating art, culture, love, feelings, family, and the stories that Petra loves. Alone among the others on the ship, Petra retains her memories of Earth, and armed with her grandmother's stories, she must find a way to save what remains of humanity from The Collective's single-minded focus to destroy it. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It took me way longer than usual to read because this book is frankly terrifying for a children's story; I don't scare easy in print (I think the last time was Joe Hill's Heart Shaped Box) but something about this girl forced to pretend to be brainwashed while mourning the loss of her family and the rest of humanity and made to live among the fascist Collective just hit way too close to home. 

Leave Me Alone!

Written by: Vera Brosgol

First line: Once there was an old woman.

Why you should read this book: An old woman lives in a small house with a large family, and cannot seem to get a moment's peace to do her knitting without children interfering with the process. Winter is coming and her task is important, so she packs up and ventures through the land, looking for a little peace and quiet, but everywhere she goes, creatures seem determined to interfere with her work, even when she climbs onto the moon (where little green moon-men examine her with handheld scanners that go "beep boop"). Finally, the old woman finds an empty dimension where she can work alone, and the solitude of that strange place helps her appreciate the noise and commotion of her big family when she returns. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: If you found an empty dimension, you would never go back. 

All Systems Red (book 1 of the Muderbot Diaries)

Written by: Martha Wells

First line: I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites.

Why you should read this book: "Murderbot," a security unit created from both robot and organic parts, does his job in the hopes that no one will notice he's been hacked, but his primary concern is watching TV: 35,000 hours of streaming video so far. Far more interested in the lives of the fictional characters in his favorite serials than the very real scientists he's supposed to be protecting, he still does his duty as it becomes increasingly apparent that the mission has been sabotaged and someone wants his entire crew dead. If he ever wants to watch TV in peace again, Murderbot must outwit the antagonists and save his small group of intellectual researchers from a much larger and better armed opponent. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: This is one of those stories where the plot is sort of irrelevant, but the voice and the character journey is so engaging you don't really care. (Apparently this series is being developed by Apple TV for a show starring Alexanders Skarsgard, so I guess you could wait a while and then enjoy the story the way Murderbot would want you to enjoy it, if Murderbot cared about you, which it probably doesn't.)

The Sandman: Overture

Written by: Neil Gaiman and JH Williams III

First line: It was a small planet.

Why you should read this book: It's the prequel to the other Sandman books, published nearly 2 decades after the end of the series, which tells the story of the dangerous but important mission that took Morpheus away from his domain and led to his weakness and capture at the beginning of volume 1. Dream, at a convention of Dreams, comes to understand that the universe is in great peril, and it's entirely his fault for not doing his job correctly in the past. He comes to understand that there's nothing he can do to fix his mistake, which is then rectified pretty much by a literal deus ex machina and the literary equivalent of clapping for Tinkerbell.

Why you shouldn't read this book;  While following many of the successful conventions from the preceding books, including spectacular world-building and a brooding protagonist who basically tries to be a decent being despite also being a self-involved jerk, and containing appearances from many beloved secondary characters, as well as introducing Dream's mother and father (!), this story doesn't ever seem to have anything at stake.

Ada and the Galaxies

Written by: Alan Lightman, Olga Pastuchiv, & Susanna Chapman

Why you should read this book: Living in a big city, Ada can barely see any stars at all, and looks forward to visiting her grandparents in Maine, where the night sky is easily visible. All day Ada enjoys the coastal life and learns about nature, but the entire time she's just thinking about when she can see the stars, and when the sun finally sets, the fog rolls in and Ada still can't see the stars. Instead, she continues learning astronomy from her grandfather and his books, and finally, just before bed, realizes that the fog has lifted and she can see the stars after all. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: The premise seems a bit far-fetched but I guess it takes all kinds.

Out of This World: Star-Studded Haiku

Written by: Sally M. Walker and Matthew Trueman

Why you should read this book: Exactly what it says it is: a short collection of short poems and splashy paintings that describe our knowledge of the celestial world. Stars, planets, the Big Bang, the robots on Mars, and other cosmic concepts get the 5-7-5 treatment. Includes 6 additional pages of historical, factual, and scientific details about the subject matter, along with a glossary, reading list, and links to relevant websites.

Why you shouldn't read this book: I think, to enjoy this book, you have to be really into space and really into haiku.

The Best of All Possible Worlds

Written by: Karen Lord

First line: He always set aside twelve days of his annual retreat to finish reports and studies, and that left twelve more for everything else.

Why you should read this book: This provocative far-future speculative fiction novel sees a low-level civil servant scientist, Grace Delarua, thrust onto a deeply meaningful year-long diplomatic mission to help displaced people, including the reserved, always-appropriate Dllenahkh, survey the human resources of their new home. Following the destruction of their own planet, where most Sadiri women lived, the survivors settle on Cygnus Beta, and must determine how best to preserve their genetic and cultural heritage; specifically they need to start getting married to non-Sadiris and popping out the babies before they get testosterone poisoning and stop behaving appropriately, but since they're basically Vulcans, this is easier said than done. Meanwhile, Grace, Dllenahkh, and their team are about to come face to face with numerous hidden truths about Cygnus Beta, the nature of reality, and the meaning of love. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: There's so much world building and so many characters and so many plot points that I couldn't always keep score, and it seemed to me that not every question was answered by the end of the book.

The Divine Invasion

Written by: Philip K. Dick

First line: It came time to put Manny in school.

Why you should read this book: Herb Asher is having a weird existence, living as a colonist on a far-off planet where he's being guilt tripped into becoming the legal father of God and smuggling his new wife and their unborn fetus deity back to Earth; but also he's dead and in cryogenic stasis reliving his entire life over and over while being subjected to elevator music and awaiting a new spleen; but also he's living in an alternate reality where his actions will have a major impact on the eternal battle between good and evil. Emmanuel, Manny, also known as Yahweh, or Yah, has his own issues, trying to remember who he is and what he's forgotten over the last few thousand years, which he needs to do before the Adversary foils his plans. This second book in the VALIS trilogy, while not a true sequel, continues to examine Dick's late-in-life musings about the nature of reality, this time with a strong focus on Judeo-Christian mythology.

Why you shouldn't read this book: If you need to know what is definitively real in a story and have it seem logical and rational, this isn't the book for you. People with no understanding of Torah and Kabbalah or no interest in Judeo-Christian mythology may have trouble keeping up.

FTL, Y'all! Tales from the Age of the $200 Warp Drive

Edited by: C. Spike Trotman and Amanda LaFrenais

First line: Mornin'

Why you should read this book: It's a graphic anthology featuring nineteen short comic stories linked by the common theme of a near-future reality in which anyone with $200 and an internet connection can build a faster-than-light drive and explore the cosmos. There are heroes, villains, aliens, overworked moms, and hapless researchers, in a world that is much larger than our own, but still features elements the human race will not likely outgrow for a while: misogynistic internet trolls, unpleasant airport experiences,  heroic rescues, teenagers searching for themselves, liars, loneliness, idiots, geniuses, and bad parenting. Also, due to the nature of the technology, basically any vessel can be a starship, so there are some hilarious looking starships.

Why you shouldn't read this book: While connected by the theme of the $200 warp drive, there's no further continuity to the stories, so they don't actually feel like they're all set in the same world.

Ancillary Justice

Written by: Ann Leckie

First line: The body lay naked and facedown, a deathly gray, spatters of blood staining the snow around in.

Why you should read this book: Breq has a secret: she is not human, but the last remnant of a massive, two thousand year old artificial intelligence once controlled by a colonialist space empire, and Breq has a bone to pick with that empire. She doesn't understand why she's wasting her time rescuing Seivarden Vendaai, an officer who's hit hard times after a thousand years in cryostorage, but together they make their way through a dangerous universe, with Breq's unwavering focus on her goal pushing her forward to the next danger. The plot jumps back and forth between Breq's present day (far future) journey and the events of the last thousand years that precipitated her disenchantment with the culture that created her.

Why you shouldn't read this book: The world-building is so complex that it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out what was going on and to get into the story, and I'm still not one hundred percent sure what the author is trying to do with gender here, even though it's clearly significant.

Firefly: The Unification War Part I

Written by: Greg Pak, Dan McDaid, Marcelo Costa, and Joss Whedon

First line: "Hey, Wash...sorry to trouble you...but is that engine on fire?"

Why you should read this book: First off, you'd have to be a fan of the short-lived, ill-fated science fiction fan favorite, Firefly, and you'd have to know the series and the characters well enough to be dropped into a new episode of their (back) story without any further explanation. Captain Mal Reynolds and company find themselves in their typical situation: stuck on some backwater planet with a broken ship, no money, and a posse of extremely bad guys on their tail. This time, it's Mal and Zoë's past catching up with them, complicated by a bunch of murderous space cultists, and yeah, that engine was totally on fire.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You aren't already a fan of Firefly.

The Martian

Written by: Andy Weir

First line: I'm pretty much fucked.

Why you should read this book: The ultimate survival story combines a man-versus-nature trope with a hostile alien environment and just about as much science as a liberal arts major can handle as nerdy, foul-mouthed, resourceful Mark Watney survives 549 solitary sols (Martian days) on an unforgiving planet with nothing but a thumb drive of terrible sitcoms for company. Problem-solving at every turn, finding humor in the bleakest moments, nearly dying over and over, typically triumphing against the odds, and recording it all for posterity while the rest of humanity bites its nails and does what it can to help, Watney demonstrates that if anyone is going to get stranded on the red planet, it better be a botanist-engineer who's well-liked by his colleagues. As a bonus, the most ridiculous moment of the movie doesn't actually happen in this book, where it's no more than one of a thousand wisecracks Watney makes to combat the knowledge that almost everything he does could result in instantaneous death approximately one hundred and forty million miles from home.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Can't handle any science explanations whatsoever.

Intro to Alien Invasion

Written by: Owen King, Mark Jude Poirier, and Nancy Ahn

First line: What is that you have.

Why you should read this book: A deeply tongue in cheek graphic novel that really puts the comic in comic book, this is the story of a socially awkward college student and the spring break of terror that results when her gross, inappropriate astrobiology professor illegally smuggles alien-infested soil samples from Russia back to America, resulting in a bunch of kids getting impregnated by extra-terrestrials. Stranded on campus during a hurricane, Stacey and her rapidly dwindling peer group must avoid being infected by tiny blue ladybugs who turn humans into enormous jelly-filled bags before erupting from their bodies to eat and infect more students. It's both silly in its depiction of B-movie horror tropes and touching in its depiction of young adult relationships.

Why you shouldn't read this book: People's bodies swell up and then explode, coating survivors in itchy alien goo, so if that's not your thing, you're going to have a bad time with this book.

The Answer

Written by: Rebecca Sugar and Elle Michalka and Tiffany Ford

First line: This is the story of Ruby and Sapphire's time on the planet Earth.

Why you should read this book: For fans of Steven Universe, the world's only children's television program about gay space rocks, the love story of Ruby and Sapphire is central to an understanding of the show's larger thesis about love. This book recreates the episode of the same name, illustrating and lingering in the  moments of the characters' first association and the beginning of their relationship, with some additional commentary by the characters themselves regarding the way people on earth can change perspective, take control of their own destinies, and express powerful emotions that may also be forbidden. A sweet little love story (and New York Times bestseller), which has been compared to a fairy tale, but with gay space rocks.

Why you shouldn't read this book: It probably doesn't make any sense if you're not familiar with the first two seasons of the show. Or, I suppose, if you're a raging homophobe.

Hidden Figures

Written by: Margot Lee Shetterly

First line: "Mrs. Land worked as a computer out at Langley," my father said, taking a right turn out of the parking lot of First Baptist Church in Hampton, Virginia.

Why you should read this book: There is so much going on in this meticulous account of the women of West Computing, the racially segregated group of human computers that supported aviation technology during World War II with their incredible number-crunching abilities. The book follows the lives of several of the most high-profile black women who worked in this group and later for NASA and other agencies, but it's also a story about the civil rights movement, military history, engineering advances of the twentieth century, the Cold War, the space race, and dozens of humans who helped revolutionize air travel and eventually made the 1969 moonshot possible. This is a fast-paced book that tackles plenty of tough territory but makes its ideas accessible to lay readers with no background on any of the aforementioned subjects.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You'd rather watch the movie.

The Ramshead Algorithm and Other Stories

Written by: KJ Kabza

First line: The first thing Jesper noticed was her parasol, twirling like a ghostly pinwheel between the branches and webs.

Why you should read this book: I'm not going to lie: KJ Kabza is my best friend and I would have read his book even if he wasn't good, but he's freaking great, so great that a publishing company inboxed him on Twitter and offered to publish a collection of his work without him even having to ask. This anthology features eleven speculative fictions, ranging in size from novella to flash, and in genre from steampunk to space opera to gothic horror to contemporary fantasy to somewhere you'd end up if you were a character in Black Mirror to places you've never ever gone as a reader. Seriously, buy this book; if you read anywhere on the speculative continuum, you won't be disappointed.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You want to make me cry.

Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet

Written by: Eleanor Cameron

First line: To the very peculiar-looking little man trotting about in the dark trying to find Thallo Street, the sound of tapping came faintly.

Why you should read this book: In this strange sequel to a strange first book, David and Chuck, seasoned space explorers, meet a slightly-evil scientist as well as a clever friend of a friend, and return to the Mushroom Planet in a bigger, better spaceship. Danger lurks around every corner, as do old friends and new adventures. Everything comes together satisfactorily, if not perfectly, leaving an opening for a third book in a trilogy.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You believe in scientific exploration regardless of its dangerous environmental impact.

The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet

Written by: Eleanor Cameron

First line: One night after dinner when David was reading Doctor Dolittle in the Moon, and his father was reading the newspaper, and his mother was darning socks, his father suddenly exclaimed: "Well, now, that's very odd."

Why you should read this book: The 1950s were a simpler time, one in which parents could happily grant their pre-adolescent sons to fly to other planets in homemade rockets on missions for local eccentrics; at least, that's what happens in this magical, charming, and wish-fulfilling tale for adventurous boys who weren't quite ready for Ray Bradbury. David and Chuck, the only two boys who see the strange notice in the newspaper, happily build their own rocket ship with scrap metal and then blast off on a mission to save a race of simple fungoid folks on an invisible planet that orbits the earth inside the moon's orbit. Despite their lack of characterization, education, or ability to prize any of their benefactor's admonishments above their own hunger, they enjoy a successful adventure in which no one dies in the vacuum of space.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You like your science fiction a little harder than a boiled egg.

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

Written by: Carlo Rovelli

First line: In his youth Albert Einstein spent a year loafing aimlessly.

Why you should read this book: Written for "those who know little or nothing about science," this simple-to-grasp volume offers up a basic understanding of physics, devoid of mathematics, and constructed of comprehensible anecdotes and metaphors for those who wish to understand the world in which they live. The two basic theories of physics, the theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics, are made plain, then further illustrated with details on the movement of the large bodies of the cosmos and the smallest particles within. The author introduces loop quantum gravity, current work seeking to combine the two basic theories of physics, and then goes on to make further observations about black holes, heat, probability, and what it means to be alive in such an interesting universe.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You believe in a flat earth orbited by an eternal sun, and probably stacked on the back of a turtle or something. Or you'd rather read seven long lessons on physics.

The Lovecraft Anthology Volume 1

Edited by: Dan Lockwood

First line: The most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate its contents.

Why you should read this book: Lovecraft's world does not typically lend itself easily to any visual medium, given that so much of the terror depends on the reader's imagination, but this volume does a fair job of communicating the emotional range of seven of his most popular stories. The most successful is probably "The Rats in the Walls," possibly because the horror in this tale is based on rats and cannibalism, which are much easier to render realistically than unspeakable horrors and colors not of this earth. Fun for a little light reading.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Sometimes pictures make it less scary.