2022 was a good reading year for me including SF magazines which are book-length (so not cheating) I read 100 books. I admit I didn’t finish Uncle Steve’s Fairy Tale, I had to read hundreds of unpublished Treatments and outlines for research, but only one of those was actually published at one time and doesn’t count. The amount Goodreads counted was 25,499 pages.
I did a bonus video doing a thumbnail review of each and every read here:
Video talking about all 100 books I read in 2022
Then for the podcast, I was joined by my homey Marc Rothenberg to break down our top reads of 2022 together. Now that it has been out for bit here is my list.
Here are the links for the discussion and which includes Marc's picks.
Video of my Top reads of 2022 Discussion
Audio of the Top Reads of 2022 podcaast
Best reading soundtracks:
Smashing Pumpkins CYR
Leprous – Mix
Katatonia - City Burials, Mix
Best non-fiction reads
Monster She Wrote by Lisa Kroger and Melanie Anderson
JG Ballard/ The Stars My destination Companion by D.Harlan Wilson
Dangerous Visions and New Worlds Edited by Ian McIntyre and Andrew Nette
John Brunner Modern Masters of SF series by Jad Smith
The World Hitler Never Made by Gavriel Rosenfeld
Best 5 retro reads:
Honorable mentions (Scanner Darkly by PKD, Blood Music by Greg Bear Conditionally Human By Walter Miller Jr.)
The Hustler by Walter Tevis: I read almost all of the Tevis books in the last year, and the year before. The Hustler is a subtle classic, but a classic for a reason.
Ice by Anna Kavan The story of a weird apocalypse is at times almost surreal. A supernatural cold is slowly creeping across the landscape entombing the earth in a sheet of thick ice. We are told this story by a nameless narrator who goes on a hero’s quest across this cold and dying landscape in an attempt to save the “Glass girl” a blue-eyed super goth lilly white-skinned woman who is on the cover of this edition. Just wow.
Northwest of Earth by C.L. Moore: An amazing collection of 1930s Weird Tales written by a woman who grew up in depression-era Indiana. Stunning.
Galaxies by Barry N. Malzberg: Meta-surreal SF novel that breakdowns down the concept of the genre itself. Full podcast coming with James Reich and D. Harlan Wilson (PFDW #101)
The Big Jump by Leigh Brackett: My favorite novel from the 50s by the woman who wrote the first draft of the Empire Strikes Back. Dark hard SF. Well based on the science of the time.
Top ten new releases
Honorable mentions – Manhunt by Grethen Fleker Martin, The Devil takes you Home by Gabino Iglesias, and God’s Leftovers by Grant Wamack.
10: Road of Bones by Christopher Golden
Road of Bones is a brutal high-concept horror novel that I would describe as a strange mix of Paranormal Activity, Ice Road Tuckers, Wages of Fear, and Joe Carnahan’s The Grey. I personally find isolation horror to be one of the most intense forms of the genre. Maybe the years living in San Diego have made me weak, but the knife-sharp cold makes the isolation even more powerful. Enter one of the most horrible settings I can imagine.
The story is simple, and the execution is not. Tightly wound around atmosphere at times, and action at other moments in this novel. it has more packed into its pages than novels twice its length.
9: Daphne by Josh Malerman
A horror master at the top of his form. Daphne is a far better novel than the concept would lead you to believe, much the way I felt when I read Malerman’s Peral. This shouldn’t work but it does. Why? Because Malerman is that good. Not everybody could pull off this book, the amazing fact is Only Malerman could. A horror novel that is equal parts a deconstruction of teenage anxiety and a loving tribute to the sport of basketball.
8: Aurora by David Koepp
Koepp uses his strength for suspense and details to create creepy moments that signal everything has changed. When the Aurora comes the neighbors all go out to watch the light show, and for a bit, the power stays on, and people ignore the warnings thinking the media was fear-mongering. Like the moments when the storm passed and NOLA thought they escaped Katrina. The moment the power goes out is not a huge moment but subtle and creepy. Aurora is a sneaky good novel. The concept is not groundbreaking. There is nothing that makes me think that I have to tell everyone they can't miss it. To me, it is a page-turner for one major reason. This is a storyteller driving a few narrative threads perfectly in the dance of parallels and reversals. This might is a storyteller's story for that reason.
7: The Last Storm by Tim Lebbon
The Last Storm is a CLI-FI novel, it has effective world-building, but it also has rich characters, and as Lebbon does so well there is a strong family dynamic. Jessie and Ash are tragic figures who have such important talents but it ends up being a curse. This is a powerful story on many levels as a piece of science fiction it would be easy to focus on the dynamic of the rainmakers and the allegory they represent in the drought-stricken future. That is the heart of the story part of the story.
6: Insomnia by Sarah Pinbrough
The last couple of Pinborough novels are about the day-to-day death of a thousand cuts, and daily patriarchy in every way that Margaret Atwood deals with the system. Insomnia is a paranoid feminist horror masterpiece. As the date approaches day by day, Emma loses everything through a series of plot twists. If there is a challenge to the book some of these twists are complicated, but no problem for SP. As Emma starts to lose sleep the events quickly spiral into paranoia and the reader will question her sanity just as Emma does herself. The 40th birthday becomes a monster lurking in the shadows, excellently off screen like the shark in Jaws
5 The Feverish Stars by John Shirley
My favorite stories included Meega, Weedkiller, Waiting Room, and one written just for this collection Exelda’s Voice. a sly character-driven story about a criminal who robs a bank with the help of a next-generation AI power directions app on his phone. It wasn’t lost on me in this high-tech world of the future the man in the story is robbing a bank to pay off healthcare debt. * Waiting Room is a story about being an old punk rocker. Weedkiller is the most powerful story about people who live online.
Best Shirley story this year – Lost City of LA in Startling Stories 2022 issue…
4:Noor by Nnedi Okorafor
Noor is a deeply rich work of science fiction, that has more invention in the short length than some novels twice its length. The subtext is close to the surface and hard to miss. Africa is a part of the world that for so long now had to fight colonial invasion and definition. AO and DNA Are on the run for their lives and that is the action on the surface, the real battle is how they define themselves. My favorite Okrafor novel so far.
3: Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi
There is nothing soft, gentle, or politically sensitive about this novel. Which is kind of a pleasant (from my perspective) divergence from much of modern fiction that at times is afraid to push boundaries. I think the reaction will be interesting as it is a very progressive story politically, but the delivery is zero fucks given warts and all depiction of the post-climate world. Of course, the future TO envisions is one where most of the wealthy have escaped earth to orbital colonies while the marginalized struggle to survive in our mutual home.
This novel is about the intersection between Racism/Classism and the growing climate change apocalypse. That was Brunner's message as well, but TO's window into it is fresh and vital in a way a book by a radical white Brit in 1968 just can't do anymore no matter how amazing it still is.
2: How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
The marketing of the book makes the cross-comparison between Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven. The format is clearly influenced by David Mitchell's style of narrative formatting, It wasn't just that novel as he used a similar structure, he also used it in at least The Bone Clocks. The Station Eleven comparison is mostly pandemic related, but also the tone of reaching for hope.
Snortorious the pig chapter sucked. As a science fictionist and a space nerd, I found the chapter set on the generation ship escaping earth just as heartbreaking as an amusement park for euthanizing kiddos. Even with a chapter I hated, the rest was strong enough for it to be number 2.
1: A Sweep of Stars by Maurice Broddus
Sweep of Stars mixes deep cultural mythology and African vibes with characters who keep it real. Characters who give their family members shit and curse like normal people.
Sweep of Stars is Space Opera with an African feeling, it is an epic tale with lots of characters, narrative shifts, and twists and at the heart is a story that is entertaining for the events we witness as much as the radical ideas that get a subtle introduction.
“All of Muungano’s Territory lit up as a hologram projection, from the Dreaming City to Mars to the mining outpost. No borders, per se, not the way O.E. might define them. Only communities of alliance. This was what they had all fought so hard to forge. They needed a new vocabulary to describe the experiment they embarked on. Empire wasn’t it. A budding cooperative cradled in a sweep of stars.”
This is one of the first elements I have seen ignored in almost all the reviews I have read. This may seem like simple world-building and MB does it subtly and right. These moments are not over-explained, they are naturally told in the midst of the story. You will of course notice the title of the book so it is not a stretch to think this passage is part of the mission statement of this story.
Leguin and Spinrad are some of the most well-known genre anarchists and I am not saying this book goes that far but it is clear MB is suggesting a divorce from western culture and standard capitalist monoculture. At the same time, this future while vastly different and divergent from our timeline is connected by characters like the Hellfighters soldiers who make a point not to forget the struggles the African diaspora had in our times.
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