[ExI] The best science fiction and fantasy novels of 2020

[John Grigg]

 "2020 was quite the year for science fiction, but it wasn’t all about
escaping to other worlds. It’s easy to imagine flights of fancy in a
spaceship to be a reprieve to reality, but science fiction and fantasy
literature is the product of people with real concerns about the real
world, and accordingly, they write about the challenges that we see in the
world around us
<https://www.polygon.com/21515800/new-science-fiction-futures>. Over the
last 12 months, I’ve been thinking about the value of speculative
literature in a time like this. There’s a meme going around that reading is
a collective hallucination that we get by staring at bits of a dead tree.
That’s certainly accurate, but I like to think of science fiction as a sort
of cheat guide or rough map of directions.

This year’s crop of books are ones that have a thumb on the pulse of
everything that’s been going on around us. But they’re not screeds
lecturing readers about the evils of the world — they’re thoughtful,
interesting stories with characters that you root for, fighting against
huge challenges. They’re fighting against oppression, wealth inequality,
and racism. The characters are all trying to survive, to build new worlds,
or save their friends and family from harm. Collectively, they’re the
stories that show us the way out of a dismal world and into a slightly
better one, one page at a time."
I intend to read Vagabonds, Network Effect, and The Ministry For The
Future...

https://www.polygon.com/22220762/best-books-2020-sci-fi-fantasy
<https://www.polygon.com/22220762/best-books-2020-sci-fi-fantasy>

John
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