In my continued efforts to rediscover the Internet of the aughts, I bring you: A listicle.
“The best fantasy novels that reimagine society” is a thing I was approached to write by the folks at Shepherd, which I mentioned on Monday is a collection of themed book recommendations by authors. (I leave the categorization highlighted in the featured image as an exercise to the reader.) I think I expressed the basic idea for the list pretty well in my intro:
Science fiction is rightly famous for experimenting with new and strange social worlds, but fantasy tends to fall back on the usual feudal tropes: the whims of kings, the valor of knights, the always-temporary powerlessness of farm boys, the technicalities of succession. Which is a shame, because fantasy provides just as much opportunity to reimagine what society could look like.
The theme is of course meant to evoke BRIMSTONE SLIPSTREAM, a link to which you’ll see before things get listicular in earnest.
Shepherd is a really interesting idea in book marketing for the post-social-media world, or at least for those of us trying to carve a post-social-media hidey-hole out of the world that is the case. It functions as a curator by borrowing the authority of authors, a marketing channel by lending those authors its own authority, and as a set of micro-recommendation engines by providing several “if you liked X then you’ll like Y” links with each post. And of course, since any given book might appear in multiple posts, you can think of the entire thing as inducing a network data structure that might power a much larger recommendation engine, which has to be part of the point. Whether deliberately proffered recommendations beat the preferences “revealed” from purchasing data exhaust is another interestingly turn-back-the-clock kind of confrontation, and I’ll be fascinated to see how it plays out.
… I got a little bit meta here because that’s how my brain works, and also because I’m bored of my own tastes; the books and authors appearing on my listicle are of course all at or near the pinnacle of literature in my weird estimation, which makes their inclusion almost painfully predictable if you’ve known me for five minutes. (Wolfe? Surely not Gene Wolfe?) But, of course, there are people on the Internet who haven’t known me for five minutes! So I will link to my listicle of fantasy books one more time and encourage those people to check it out. If you see anything you like, after all, you might like BRIMSTONE SLIPSTREAM.
Currently listening: JADE CITY, by Fonda Lee, read by Andrew Kishino.
If you’re enjoying my writing, you can get some of my short fiction on your e-reader for the low, low cost of $0. Remembered Air is a collection of six poems and short stories not available anywhere else. Download it here.