A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

There are two phrases from this year that my friends and I shout at one another whenever we’re in the same room. One flesh, one end (from Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth) is a fun little rallying cry, but it is this piece of poetry from Martine’s debut novel that makes me tear up every time I utter it: “Released, I am a spear in the hands of the sun.”

While I have always enjoyed space opera well enough, considering how many stories fit within the subgenre, this is the first book where I found myself delighting in all of the trappings. Martine dives deep into this byzantine far-future universe, clearly so excited about every detail that you cannot help but be equally enthusiastic… even when you rationally know that you should not be so captivated by colonialism.

But that’s the point. Teixcalaanli civilization, with its alien-yet-logical naming conventions and obsession with its own epic poetry, is so addictively interesting that readers are automatically as emotionally invested as diplomat Mahit Dzmare. After an upbringing on the empire’s fringes in independent Lsel Station, Mahit finally gets to visit Teixcalaan’s famed city-planet capital, only to be thrust into a political thriller full of mysterious deaths, sex-as-diplomacy, and an emperor with an unusual agenda. Not to mention, Mahit has her own cultural capital that she must keep from getting assimilated into the empire like everything else in the universe.

Read A Memory Called Empire knowing as little as possible, aside from the fact that you will meet a bevy of damn competent women and find yourself murmuring about spears released in no time. The fact that Teixcalaan is a culture obsessed with repeating the patterns of its epic stories in contemporary life is so endearingly geeky and very relatable to our present moment.

– Natalie Zutter

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You Look Like A Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works

Janelle Shane became internet-famous through her blog AI Weirdness and its social media offshoots. Her wacky computer-generated lists have been making me laugh for years, so I was quick to jump on her first paper book of artificial intelligence and humor. Half of the appeal are the lists of computer-generated things: the title comes from a list of comically nonsensical and occasionally sweet pickup lines. There are plenty of lists like these in the book, providing a break in the science for some high-quality random humor. The networks she trains don’t know what words they should be putting together, so they surprise in a way that a human could never quite do.

The other half of the appeal is the science. Shane outlines what in our daily lives counts as artificial intelligence and what doesn’t, why asking “what the program was thinking” is a nonsensical question, and how artificial intelligence (specifically, certain kinds of machine learning) actually works. Ideas are explained with precision, clarity, and ease. The science is also funny without being twee. This was both one of the most informative and most fun books I read all year. To be one would be nice; to be both is astonishing.

– Megan Crouse

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Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson

I had never read any of Winterson’s work, but her modern, queer retelling—not just of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but of the entire process around writing the first science fiction novel—makes clear just how lacking all other Frankenstein adaptations are in innovation and relatability. Most concern the doctor and his creature locked in a cat-and-mouse game of wits and horror, yet still so predictable that they all blur together whether period piece or futuristic cyborg story or police procedural. Yet Winterson’s take is so radically different from its forebears that you find yourself not guessing how the story will turn out, despite the fact that she lays out the narrative beats in the beginning and follows them—with the occasional detour to a sex robot convention or London’s waterlogged underground tunnels.

read more: 16 Best Fall Reads

Because Winterson knows that the heart of the story is in Mary’s life, pockmarked by so much loss, and in her frankly incredible writing process. Instead of the two Frankensteins, the interweaving duo in this book is writer Mary Shelley and Ry Shelley, a trans doctor who finds himself falling for the charismatic, otherworldly transhumanist Victor Stein. Winterson lays out the blueprints for the story by first visiting Mary, her husband Percy, the insufferable Lord Byron, her bimbo stepsister Claire, and the awkward Doctor Polidari at that life-changing rainy weekend writing retreat on Lake Geneva—which, honestly, has all the makings of a Mary Shelley biopic right there. Then, once you know enough about the characters, Winterson leaps ahead 200 years to the familiar strangers of Ry, Victor, and sex robot designer Ron Lord and his perky creation Claire.

Frankissstein is a creepy, sexy, soggy, surprisingly hilarious demonstration of how time is just a circle and history repeats itself. Except this time with cryogenically frozen millionaires and filthy-mouthed pleasure bots.

– Natalie Zutter

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Protect the Prince by Jennifer Estep

I may have raved a little bit last year about Jennifer Estep’s series launcher Kill the Queen. Estep has written in a number of genres over her career, but Kill the Queen showed me that epic fantasy is her true home; it went delightfully above my expectations, creating Evie, a compelling protagonist who’s both a reluctant hero and a natural one: she takes risks for others without thought and only truly fears her own destiny, because for years she’s been convinced that she’s not worth claiming a loftier mantle. There’s also a gladiator troupe, shapeshifting magic that creates a whole new mold for what those powers can look like, and some excellent romantic tension and humor.

Estep’s sequel, Protect the Prince, raises the stakes, thrusting Evie deeper into the intrigue between kingdoms as she hopes to forge a lasting peace, while also driving a wedge between her and her love interest, a bastard prince who—like Evie—has been told his whole life he’ll never amount to much. Evie must manage the nobles of her own kingdom, prevent war with other nations, and fight against the constant sabotage of power-hungry Mortan king, whose spies have been plaguing Evie’s life even longer than she realized, and who are continuing to try to kill her.

Even as Evie sets her own plans into action, playing the long game against her enemies, the story leaves room for romance and friendship, and for Evie to find a way to become the Winter Queen everyone expects her to be. The trilogy wraps in March, 2020, with Crush the King, and you can bet I’ve already got that on preorder.

– Alana Joli-Abbott

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Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes

The book lays it out for you right away: Evvie (her name rhymes with Chevy) was leaving her husband when she got the call that he had died. That emotional quagmire is where NPR’s Linda Holmes, host of Pop Culture Happy Hour, plants her witty and warm romantic comedy of a novel. Evvie rents out a room in her house in Maine to Dean, a former Major League Baseball pitcher hiding out from the world after he left the game when he woke up one day with a bad case of the yips and simply couldn’t throw anymore.

Grounded in the complicated reality of grief, the book has so much to say about platonic mixed-gender best friends, single parenting, re-learning how to relate to parents as an adult, and life in a small town. There’s so much room in the world for smartly written adult romance, and Holmes knows how to bring the heat when she wants to. Yes, it’s a romance, but there are no short cuts, easy answers, or guarantees of a perfect happy ending. Evvie and Dean test one another emotionally in ways that feel organic to their characters, rather than plot-driven, and their victories are earned on the page. Charming, hopeful, and with great emotional depth, reading Evvie Drake Starts Over means getting all the joy of a romcom without having to sacrifice on quality or consent.

– Delia Harrington

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Giraffes on Horseback Salad by Josh Frank & Tim Heidecker

The Marx Brothers were at the peak of their popularity when Salvador Dalí presented then with a screenplay called “The Surrealist Woman.” It was only a few pages and they turned it down for not being funny enough, but it still carries mythical significance in both the art world and cinema history. Josh Frank’s graphic novel Giraffes on Horseback Salad fleshes out the sparse notes to present the how the film would have looked on the screen.

Giraffes on Horseback Salad is a love story. But the world hangs in the loss of balance. The book includes a preface which tells the story of the artists relationships with each other and placing the film them in a historic context. It would have been made after A Night At The Opera and A Day At The Races, which were produced by Irving Thalberg, who died before this would have been up for consideration and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer declared it too expensive and too surreal.There are quite a few surprises.

The biggest is Harpo speaks. Not only does he speak but people hang on to his every word. Gone are the curly locks and tattered overcoat. Here Harpo’s Jimmy is an important man who wears impressive suits and has an A-list significant other who ultimately pales in significance to the lady of surrealism. The illustrations by Spanish surrealistic artist Manuela Pertega, capture what could have been possible to put on the screens. The surrealistic jokes added by comedian Tim Heidecker may explain why Groucho passed on the work, but you can see the magic such a film may have conjured. Even the name of the book’s publisher, Quirk, feeds into the skewered reality.

– Tony Sokol