Speculative Fiction

This is my fourth Matt Haig novel that I’ve read (though I have another three that I already own but keep putting off) and The Life Impossible is both somewhat on-brand for what you would expect yet also quite out there in the back half of the book. If you are a fan of The Midnight Library but have yet to read his other works or are picking this up as your first Matt Haig novel, I would strongly recommend trying out his other books first and coming back to this one later. While The Life Impossible is filled to the brim with introspective reflections and lengthy internal monologues that are to be expected for Haig’s style, I found the fantasy/magical realism plot elements in this one to be quite bizarre, random, and less effectively incorporated into the character work of his previous books. That’s not to say that The Life Impossible isn’t well-written; it’s very ambitious and complex. It’s that the presentation and the plot devices are nowhere near as mass appealing or accessible as the Midnight Library and even as a fan of Matt Haig’s books and slower reads, even I had trouble staying invested in this one…

Easily one of the most creative and whimsical novels I’ve read in many years. Simon Stephenson’s Set My Heart to Five is a thoughtful (and occasionally edgy) commentary on human behavior and societal culture wrapped up in a seemingly light-hearted, meandering AI bot adventure. Despite being compared to Vonnegut’s ideologies and writing, the book’s content reminded me a lot of Daniel Keye’s Flowers for Algernon (which is one of my all-time favorite novels) in which both stories feature an innocuous narrator who does not understand the complexities of human behavior and terrible people around them. Set My Heart to Five’s premise of an AI bot developing feelings admittedly isn’t new territory, but the style of delivery and humorously dry character voice puts it in an entirely new area. First and foremost, Set My Heart to Five is not going to be for everyone, nor does Stephenson make an attempt to be mass-appealing. Jared’s character voice is somehow both frank and dry, yet also entirely comical in a witty, dark humor kind of way; you know that one friend who always talks about the unspoken elephant in the room that’s not socially acceptable, yeah that’s Jared. Full of fun wordplays and…

The Ministry of Time is an ambitious, creative, and wonderful blend of different genres that could’ve easily ended up as a convoluted misfire if not for Kaliane Bradley’s thoughtful and carefully executed prowess with the various elements involved. Despite the obvious science fiction time-traveling elements, when you strip the story of its otherworldly themes, The Ministry of Time feels like a straight contemporary fiction drama novel that heavily explores the immigrant experience and assimilating into the Western English lifestyle. The five individuals pulled into the 21st century across time is a clear metaphor for the immigrant experience. TLDR, you do not have to be a fan of science fiction to enjoy this book. On a more basic level, The Ministry of Time was a homerun for me with a tone and sophistication I’ve been severely missing in most recent trending booktok novels (not that I would consider this one booktok’s norm). Right from its synopsis, the summary highlights its genre-bending elements well. The Ministry of Time is 100% part historical Fiction due to Commander Graham Gore being a real-life figure who was deemed lost as part of John Franklin’s Lost and tragic 1845 expedition to the arctic. Familiarity with the…

For two hundred pages I questioned why I was reading Klara and the Sun which for the most part, is a introspective and quiet story of an AF (artificial friend, think of M3gan without the horror malfunctioning) observing and learning from human activity around in her adopted household. An artificial friend resembling a doll of sorts, Klara spends an awful lot of time thinking about the sun (yes there’s reasons for that) and watching over a young but weak girl named Josie and her childhood life. However, there are signs and a slow foreboding sense that nothing’s is quite right but it takes a close look to notice it under Klara’s well-meaning yet unreliable narration. (On an unrelated note this book was an absolute pain to get and read for me locally, I had to wait 6 months on a library hardcopy waitlist and the ebook copy I had a hold for still currently has a 20+ week wait). To say anymore would potentially give away the surprises and dark developments left in the last 100 pages, but needless to say things go dystopian really really fast. I’m accustomed to the more stereotypical takes on the dystopian genres such as…

A Hugo award winner, this novel is classic sci-fi through and through and a fond callback to when sci-fi stories were less focused on immense world-shattering or convoluted epics and were instead more grounded while presenting various “what if’s”. While there is a plot involving the status and future of Way Station, an intergalactic stop/rest point similar in purpose to a bus transfer station, the bulk of the book is more abstract in nature. Rather than immediately delving into Enoch Wallace’s tale of an “immortal” Civil War veteran chosen as a caretaker for this Way Station, it presents various short stories of Enoch’s counters with both the extraterrestrial and (surprisingly more threatening) humans that encourage you to think about what it is that makes up the human existence and frame of mind. As an 120+ yr old veteran (returned my library copy, can’t recall exactly what yr this took place) who has had more interactions with intergalactic travelers vs humans, there’s a lot of interesting commentary layered with each story that cover topics from language, isolation, culture, bits of existential crisis, and the self-destructive nature of of human kind and war. Despite the topics, Simak’s writing style is still an…