Recs if you like Alien Clay...

SFF featuring second worlds and storytelling that reflect and engage with hopes, anxieties, and imaginations about human activity and its influence on the environment + environmental justice. Always open to suggestions! (Note that I am using “second world” very loosely here, to mean both traditional second worlds and/or versions of Earth or parts of Earth that are so distant/strange as to be unrecognizable)

includes contemporary fiction, scifi, horror, speculative fiction and nonfiction

In honour of the 2026 nominations, this list compiles all the nominees for the Hugo Award for Best Novel from 2010 - 2026.

Fantasy and sci-fi books where much of the plot is driven by politics

Fiction with revolutionary themes or spirit because prefiguration (imagining possible futures, designing alternatives) is crucial. Also contains works engaging with revolutions and the lives enmeshed within them. We must protect the little flame. And books are the best.

Sci-fi, Fantasy, and some Horror (not all) where fungal and botanical contagion threatens our protagonists with ominous powers or foreboding new changes. (More than botanical horror.)

Works published in 2024

Best Novel Nominees: 🏆🌕 The Tainted Cup • Alien Clay • 📔 The Ministry of Time • Service Model • 🌌 Someone You Can Build a Nest In • A Sorceress Comes to Call

Best Novella Nominees: 🏆 The Tusks of Extinction • The Brides of High Hill • The Butcher of the Forest • Navigational Enganglements • The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain • What Feasts at Night

Legend: 🏆 Winner • 🌌 Nebula Award Winner • 🌕 World Fantasy Award Winner • 📔 GR Choice Winner 2024

At Nohara66's request, scfi books "without space and physics!" (Or as close as can be). Some of these do feature spaceships in the background or as a step from point A to B, or set within galactic empires, or once colonised worlds, but involve no physics and don't focus on life/travel in space.

Books featuring a day in the life for characters in a high-stress, high-stakes environment where no matter how bad things get, intense fear won't put food on the table. Every day could be your last, but it's not over yet, so...

The general vibe of this list is to collect books which, rather than changing the world through a heroic perfect storm, involve a slice-of-life portrayal of a character's daily journey through a rather dangerous path.

Stories with aliens of every kind: similar to us, shockingly different nature, allies, enemies, invaders of the Earth, invaded by humans, got there too late so don't exist no more...

My recommended science fiction stories (stand-alone and series) that I think are worth giving a go.