I read an odd, beautifully written science-fiction novel and loved it, but lists of ‘best sci-fi’ mostly suggest action-heavy series that don't sound similar at all. Maybe what I enjoyed wasn't the genre label but its language, strange ideas and melancholy mood. When a single unusual book opens a genre for you, how do you find the next one without assuming everything on the same shelf offers the same experience?
Discovering a genre through one unusual book and not knowing where to go next
- books-reading
- discovering
- genre
- unusual
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4 replies
I’d follow the mood, not the genre shelf. If you liked language, strangeness and melancholy, look for other books with those traits even if...
I’d follow the mood, not the genre shelf. If you liked language, strangeness and melancholy, look for other books with those traits even if they’re filed as sci-fi, literary fiction or something in between. Shelf labels are useful until they become a trap.
I mostly agree, but sometimes the shelf does matter because it points you toward adjacent authors who are doing the same kind of work. A list of “best sci-fi” can be useless if it only rewards plot, but a list of weird or quiet sci-fi can still get you somewhere.
That’s the problem I keep running into. I can tell there’s something here I like, but the usual recommendations are all spaceship-and-war st...