I can't stop reading speculative fiction. I love the world building. I love seeing all the different ways authors extrapolate our world into its future and into worlds unknown. I love when something hits so close to home I start to wonder if it's ever happened. I love the feeling of being completely transported from this world when it feels like too much. 

I thought for my summer reading list I'd highlight some recent and future faves!

Alienation seems to have it all: body horror, google glands implanted into brains, mass extinction, AI artificial-insemination, and the ability to summon several kinds of sushi to your apartment instantly. Amidst all the dystopian chaos, Estrada keeps our attention on the mundanity that persists in this on-demand, endless-experience world.

Ezra Clayton Daniels and Ben Passmore are the comics duo that dreams--and maybe a few nightmares--are made of. BTTM FDRS is an intergenerational exploration of the horrors and complexities of gentrification. Light on lectures and heavy on horror, there's lots here for your mind to wander off with.
(coming July)

Ellen Ullman is very cool. She was a programmers in the early dotcom boom, and has also been writing for decades. Natasha Lyonne liked Ullman's latest book so much that she brought her in to consult on Russian Doll (swoon).  Close to the Machine, a memoir, and The Bug, a novel, are her first two books. Her work is fast-paced and accessible to coders and the computer-shy alike. Most of all, Ullman champions thoughtfulness and unknowability from the heart of a culture barreling towards profitable predictability and endless efficiency.

The Centenal Cycle: Infomocracy, Null States, and State Tectonics, is set about 100 years in the future, when a new global entity called Information presides over a new global governance system: microdemocracy. Think Google, Facebook, and the UN combining to make nations--and borders--obsolete. Each book features different characters and highlights different aspects and challenges of this new order. Older's writing is a perfect example of how speculative fiction can give fears a home, and transform them into something both critical and hopeful. 

Khloris is a collage-comic series in which a quartet of blossom-headed demi-goddesses team up to overcome the Pantheon Patriarchy once and for all! It's gorgeous and funny and oh, yeah, the main characters fend off the likes of Poseidon and Prometheus by unleashing streams of flowers at them. A comic even those with the sniffle-iest, sneeze-iest pollen allergies can revel in. 

Michael Deforge's latest, Leaving Richard's Valley, takes place in a parallel Toronto filled with talking animals, cults, rising rents, and artists trying to see what they can get away with. The four-panel format takes me back to childhood, reading saved newspaper comics in the backseat. This book made me laugh, and it also made me want to take a stroll around my neighbourhood. 

I'm eagerly waiting for the re-release of this feminist sci-fi trilogy from the 80s. In order to resist the oppressive system they're living under, a group of women construct an entirely new language (one that Elgin, a linguist herself, constructed while writing the series!!!). If you've read this far in my list, you've probably caught on that I'm here for stories with alternate political systems, speculations on language and power, and harsh critiques of patriarchal norms. This trilogy has all three! For fans of The Left Hand of Darkness & The Handmaid's Tale.

I devour everything dorothy, a publishing project releases. Seriously: when I came to the end of their latest releases (Wild Milk and The Taiga Syndrome), it felt as though I'd swallowed them whole. I also adore everything Renee Gladman writes, and so I am particularly delighted that dorothy has published four of her books. This summer I plan to luxuriate in the entire quartet:  Event Factory, The Ravickians, Ana Patova Crosses a Bridge, and Houses of Ravicka. In these books, the city of Ravicka is an omnipresent character whose shifting houses and plans at times seem more lively than its inhabitants.  

Tender is an exquisite collection, full of worlds and seemingly beyond time. Whatever your summer travel fantasies might be, this book has an escape for you. But beware! You might find some of your terrors lurking as well. The writing is adventurous, too, with many different storytelling styles throughout, all undercut with a touch of fantasy. 

Tentacle is a hurricane of a book. In a little over 100 pages, there are three timelines, two protagonists, and one prophecy-completing anemone. In one timeline, it still may be possible to save the oceans from their impending devastation (the consequences of which are already playing out in another). This book is queer, action-packed, and haunting. 

Not sci-fi, but not to be missed: