List: awards:nebula-award

American Gods is a polarising book, and I belong to the people enchanted by it. Gaiman does wonderfully dirty, touching things with language, and mythology, and just drew me in.

The Dispossessed

by Ursula K. Le Guin · published 1974 · read 2018-02-12

Anarchist SciFi by Ursula K. Le Guin. It's a bit slow, but the content made me forget all about that.

This Is How You Lose the Time War

by Amal El-Mohtar · published 2019 · read 2019-09-21

This Is How You Lose the Time War was written by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. They must be magic. They can't just write like this without magic. Trust me.

Doomsday Book

by Connie Willis · published 1992 · last read 2026-01-25

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis is the best book about time travel that I know of, with the notable exception of "This is how you lose the time war". It's started out good, and then proceeded to kick me in the feelings. Repeatedly. Time

The Mountains of Mourning

by Lois McMaster Bujold · published 1989 · read 2018-11-23

The Mountains of Mourning is a very touching Vorkosigan novella by Lois McMaster Bujold. It's deeply impressive to me how very emotional and touching this novella gets in under 150 pages, while still maintaining the character and tone

Babel-17

by Samuel R. Delany · published 1966 · last read 2023-07-30

It's been a long time (apart from Too Like The Lightning) that I've read a novel that felt so tailored to me like Babel-17. I mean, it's a queer polyamorous scifi novel where linguistics are key, even to winning space battles, which the

Ancillary Justice

by Ann Leckie · published 2013 · read 2018-03-13

by Ursula K. Le Guin · published 1969 · last read 2024-06-19

Wow wow wow.

The Left Hand of Darkness

Wow! This is a fantastic, clever, wonderful scifi book. I loved the explicitly humanoid species (that are probably expanded on, especially their origin, in other parts of the series). I loved the mostly-androgynous species, their peculiarit

The Stone Sky

by N.K. Jemisin · published 2017 · read 2019-02-13

The Stone Sky is a great ending to a great trilogy. I dislike books where the ending is clear ahead of time, but the amounts of good storytelling and additional context we got made up for it. Nassun's development felt a bit heavy-handed at

Speaker for the Dead

by Orson Scott Card · published 1986 · last read 2022-08-29

I prefer this book to the first, more famous one. It's deeper, and more powerful, and doesn't rely on one cheap trick.

Ender’s Game

by Orson Scott Card · published 1985 · last read 2020-08-01

Rereading Ender's game six years later, I found it better than I remembered it. Sure, you'll never see the twist coming the way you saw it the first time, and when I read it the first time I didn't know about OSC's personal politics. But re

Among Others

by Jo Walton · published 2011 · read 2020-05-10

Among Others worked super well for me, especially considering that there is little-to-no plot and the whole book is a well-dressed bibliography. But the protagonist's (diary author) voice is super strong and realistic, and … okay, let's be

Binti

by Nnedi Okorafor · published 2015 · read 2018-06-07

I liked Binti a lot more than Akata Witch, which I enjoyed very much. Binti was impressive and creative scifi, and the tha fast pace (du to the <100 pages) was refreshing and very well executed. Binti is a wonderful protagonist, and the

Every Heart a Doorway

by Seanan McGuire · published 2016 · read 2018-10-06

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire is a nice little fantasy tale of the place where children go after going through a Door to Another Place (Fairylands, for example), and then coming back. It's short, and sweet, and sad, and gruesome

Falling Free

by Lois McMaster Bujold · published 1987 · read 2018-04-11

How is Lois McMaster Bujold not one of the first authors to be recommended to people starting scifi? Falling Free introduces the Quaddies (humans with arms instead of legs), as seen and told by an Engineer, capital E. It's awesome, and it's

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

by Ken Liu · published 2016 · read 2018-03-16

A heart-breaking short story about belonging, and families, and a tiny bit of magic. But mostly heartbreak.

Uprooted

by Naomi Novik · published 2015 · read 2018-07-21

Uprooted by Naomi Novik was a perfect fantasy story/fairytale. It's got all the right parts (dark magic, regular magic, unimpressed heroine, ambivalent wizard, etc), but isn't terribly predictable, and forms real characters instead of sha

The Tea Master and the Detective

by Aliette de Bodard · published 2018 · read 2019-07-07

The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard is a nie short scifi novella in a world where different sorts of teas can have a profound impact on how the human brain works, there is deep space that behaves entirely different from

Bloodchild

by Octavia E. Butler · published 1984 · read 2020-01-24

I first read Bloodchild last year, I think, and re-read it now. It's a very Octavia Butler story – aliens cohabitating with humans and making ties that touch on reproductive and life cycles is a thing she does. But she does it well, and it'

Parable of the Talents

by Octavia E. Butler · published 1998 · last read 2024-05-22

Very very nearly a five-star book for me due to the ending, and I enjoyed it much more than the first volume. The story of Olamina told by herself, but commented on by her daughter, is really something. The pacing is outstanding and not ver

Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather

by Sarah Pinsker · published 2021 · read 2022-08-10

Sarah Pinsker's done it again: great story, this one in the form of forum/footnote discussions about a creepy creepy old English poem. Won awards for a reason, very well done. This book is part of the [2022 Backlog Incident](/p/2022-ba

Dune

by Frank Herbert · published 1965 · read 2018-07-09

Dune is a classic scifi novel, which can mean it's anywhere between breathtaking genius and hardly accessible anymore. I found it a bit difficult to get into at first, similar to Ancillary Justice. Once I grew used to the storytelling devic

Tehanu

by Ursula K. Le Guin · published 1990 · read 2018-03-04

I liked the non-male focus on regular lives a lot! Tenar and Tenahu are both really cool. But the story was weird … pacing, content, it felt irregular and all over the place for me. Story 2/5, setting 4/5.

Flowers for Algernon

by Daniel Keyes · published 1966 · last read 2023-03-15

I liked Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes – even though the ending in itself felt predictable, it was very clear that the journey to that ending was the core of the book. It's not an easy question: How much does intelligence dete

A Master of Djinn

by P. Djèlí Clark · published 2021 · read 2021-09-06

Steampunk, non-Victorian edition: In 1912, Egypt is a rising world power due to its access to magic. Holding its own against the British and other world powers in a multicultural metropolis, Cairo is far from free and perfect, though: Our

Neuromancer

by William Gibson · published 1984 · read 2017-03-10

Not quite sure what to think of this one. It's fast paced, but I think it tries too hard. I liked how it plays with multiple realities, or layers of reality, but both the plot and the pacing felt so … forced.

The Forever War

by Joe Haldeman · published 1974 · read 2016-11-09

Very Scalzi-ish (although, of course, the other way around). Took some getting used to the terse style, after that very well thought through and enjoyable. Especially all the implication of time dilation by long distance space jumps.

All Systems Red

by Martha Wells · published 2017 · last read 2023-06-24

It's hard to judge All Systems Red on account of it being so short – it's fast-paced and engaging though, and I felt invested in the story. But after reading it, I was more interested in reading the next part and finding out more about

We Are Satellites

by Sarah Pinsker · published 2021 · read 2022-04-02

Let this website attest that I like Sarah Pinsker a lot – I'm not a short story person in general, and I love hers. That said: I wasn't a fan of this book. Her usual skill with small scenes and emotional gut punches showed, but the plot w

“Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman

by Harlan Ellison · published 1965 · read 2018-07-13

This is a tricky one: Repent, Harlequin!, Said the Ticktockman by Harlan Ellison is a metaphor against an over-reglemented world. It's old, and I'm afraid to my eyes it hasn't aged too well. It's got an important message, and the scenario

The Day Before the Revolution

by Ursula K. Le Guin · published 1974 · read 2018-02-17

Novella: recollections of a revolutionary. Very Zen.

The Calculating Stars

by Mary Robinette Kowal · published 2018 · read 2019-08-07

The Calculating Stars by Marie Robinette Kowal sure is a book. It is set in the US in the 50s, just shortly after a meteorite drops into the sea next to Washington, kills millions, and starts what might be an extinction level event. Our p

Annihilation

by Jeff VanderMeer · published 2014 · read 2019-12-17

Horror is not my genre, and this one just didn't have an effect on me? Not a bad book, just book-reader-mismatch, I think. The protagonist had a good distinct voice, and Area X was weird in a good way, but it never clicked for me.

Babel

by R. F. Kuang · published 2022 · read 2022-09-22