The conversation around the Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF is tapering off, but one aspect of it I’d always meant to keep better track of is the lists of authors and stories that readers suggested as being examples of great and mindblowing SF. I thought such a thing might make a nice list for the Carl Brandon Society blog. And maybe for other things… ;)
In comments, please list authors or stories or novels you would include in a list of mindblowing science fiction. If you’d like to include a bit on why you feel these choices are mindblowing, feel free. There is no restriction on time period, both modern and decades long past authors and fiction are desired. If someone has already mentioned an author, story, or book you were going to, co-sign.
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Mindblowing Science Fiction by POC
The Between by Tananarive Due. It’s horror with some science fictional elements. A boy’s life is saved by his grandmother under somewhat weird circumstances, and it gradually becomes clear that he isn’t properly part of the time stream any more.
I’m nominating it as mind-blowing because the premise is strong stuff both emotionally and intellectually.
Warning: there’s a lot of on-stage blood and injury (much of it as nightmares).
Most of Ted Chiang’s stories are mindblowing. Seriously, _The 72 Letters_ and _Hell is the Absence of God_ are among the greatest SF stories of all time.
Well, everything by Octavia Butler, obviously.
Vandana Singh.
May I recommend the four-book Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons?
Doug, I hadn’t realized that Dan Simmons was a POC. That’s a little odd, but not impossible I suppose.
Well, it’s not like anybody’s going to overlook Dhalgren, but when I happened on it mixed in with the military/survivalist SF at my (un)friendly local book & dirty videotape store, it completely blew my mind, and made me go read Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, which did it again.
The Salt Roads, by Nalo Hopkinson – again, no surprises but a book I give away whenever I can convince anyone to try it.
I just started reading Minister Faust’s book Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor pad and it is already mindblowing. Also possibly the nerdiest book it is possible for anyone ever to write. I want to buy a pallet of these and airlift them to anyone who even *thought* of saying “there are no fans of color anyway”.
Not sure if this is SF, because it’s literary, but I’m pretty sure Gayl Jones’ book The Healing is the one that features a grand multidimensional Black women’s conspiracy that is attempting to remake the world.
I just spent a couple minutes on google books looking for this because the only Gayl Jones book I actually have on my shelf is Mosquito, but one of her books definitely spirals out into serious SF in parts.
The post simply asked for “mindblowing SF”, not “mindblowing SF by a PoC.”
Oh, and this is a nice one: Isaac Asimov’s personal favorite among his stories.
(Asimov was a Jewish atheist – does that count?)
Please note the whole post, Doug, including the title. To put some context on this, in case you’re unaware of it, plenty of white men have been suggested already.
Could the original poster please clarify whether or not we should suggest good science fiction by white men?
Doug,
The original poster isn’t here; this article has been ‘ported over from the Angry Black Woman. If you have a question for her, you might want to go to that site and ask there.
That said, I’m not really sure what’s so confusing about the post title: “Mindblowing Science Fiction by PoC.”
Anything by Tananarive Due.
Anything by Stephen Barnes (and I’m not just saying that because he’s a contributor to the ABW blog).
Anything by Octavia Butler.
I haven’t been reading a lot. I’ll get back to you all.
Nojojojo:
It’s the fact that POC aren’t mentioned in the text of the post that’s confusing. I did a doubletake also, wondering if suggestions by white women were also being considered. Then I looked at the title.
(That’s not why I haven’t made any suggestions. I’m just feeling over-saturated right now.)
Doug:
I was obviously confused, too, but yes. Fiction by white men is clearly, given the subject, not what’s of interest in this thread.
That doesn’t mean the story doesn’t rock / isn’t mind-blowing. It’s just that the rest of us, being not white men, would kind of like to be acknowledged as potentially mind-blowing, too. And POC are the subject of this post. Why don’t I ask Amp to pull your recc into one of the open threads with his nifty new software?
Nalo Hopkinson – _Salt Roads_
Octavia Butler – everything, everything, everything. Particularly: Lilith’s Brood, Fledgling, Parable of the Sower, Wild Seed, Bloodchild, Amnesty, and what’s that short story where people have the disease that encodes their biology in certain ways, and some of them become diggers?
Nisi Shawl – Filter House. There are particular stories in Filter House I find more mindbending than others, which I would name, but the kitten is sitting on me.
Ted Chiang – Hell Is the Absence of God and Seventy-two letters (as upthread) are good, but my favorites are Division of Zero and Story of Your Life
There are several non-white writers from the Iowa Writers Workshop whose short fiction was breathtaking. I hope they start publishing soon, although they won’t necessarily appear in genre magazines, even when the work is occasionally SFnal. Nora Khan comes strongly to mind. (Jenny Zhang’s work blew my mind, too, but was definitely lit. And Nimo Johnson. Who I thought was already publishing, but I can’t turn up any work by him via google.) I really want to recommend some of their work, damn it.
Tananarive Due’s “Like Daughter.” Oh, oh, so awesome.
Perhaps this is me being Pollyanna-ish, but I’m going to assume that the commenters jumping in with all the “What About the White Menz?!?” questions are not aware that there might be a backstory to this particular call for fiction.
So.
It is here:
http://theangryblackwoman.com/2009/08/05/this-is-why-science-fiction-cant-have-nice-things/
Mandolin,
Remember that stuff posted on ABW is aimed at its audience, which we assume is predominantly PoC. Set to a different default, in other words; we don’t always need to specify that everything there is “by/for PoC” because that’s assumed. When it gets crossposted here to Alas, I think it’s a good thing for white readers to realize they’re not the assumed subject all the time. But that does sometimes cause confusion in the translation.
Nojojojo,
Sure. I was just explaining why the confusion had happened at all, imo (and why I don’t think Doug was being deliberately obtuse).
However, I should add, that it would behoove Doug and all commenters to respond to you, Karnythia, and ABW as if you were moderators. Certainly, you should have the authority to shape the discussions here on Alas, if you want it.
Sadly, aside from the amazing Octavia Butler, most of my favorite SF (and F) has been by white men and white women. Most of the time, however, there’s no picture of the author on the cover of mass market paperback novels, so unless I go to some effort to find out, I actually wouldn’t know if an author I’ve never read before is a person of color or not. (I actually read several novels by L. E. Modesitt Jr. without knowing his gender; I eventually looked it up online.)
Well, Doug, now you have a whole new list to investigate.
By your own admission up there, you haven’t (yet :-) ) read everything there is in the world to read.
Enjoy!
Yes, I did mean POC in this thread. Also, though there are not always pictures of authors in the back of books, there are many authors who we know are POC because they have a reputation and have been photographed elsewhere. Additionally, why do you then assume, since you don’t know, that the authors whose races you’re not explicitly aware of are white?
If you’d like to list female authors whose work is mindblowing, you can check out this thread on the Feminist SF blog.
Thank you for your clarification.
Good question. As it turns out, though, after looking through my collection and Googling a bunch of names, the only person of color SF&F writer I came across, other than Octavia Butler, was the already mentioned earlier Stephen Barnes, and the only books of his that I have are his collaborations with Larry Niven. So my assumption, regardless of what it happened to be based on, wasn’t actually wrong.
(My collection does include many books by white women, though.)