Starting off our science fiction reading with The Water Knife

Starting off our science fiction reading with The Water Knife

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On Tuesday I floated the idea of reading a near-future science fiction novel.  The goal was twofold: to get ideas about the future, while having fun. Readers here and elsewhere (Twitter, Facebook, email) voted for their favorites and contributed more suggestions.

After brooding over your comments, here’s my selection for first book: The Water Knife (2015) (publisher link; Amazon; Audible) by Paulo Bacigalupi.  It’s about climate change warping the American Southwest, and how society changes as a result.  It’s also a thriller, with a good heaping of technology and politics.

Schedule: let’s dive in and read this through mid-August.  I can issue a post a week, say one for each third of the novel, to keep you all on track.

After that, here’s the list of titles that received two or more votes:

Madeline Ashby, Company Town
Ernest Cline, Ready Player One
Malka Older, Informocracy
Ada Palmer, Too Like the Lightning
Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age
Charlie Stross, Rule 34
Daniel Suarez, Daemon
Vernor Vinge, Rainbows End
Andy Weir, The Martian

Let’s think about which one to read after Water Knife.  I’m leaning towards Company Town.

In the meantime, I’ll reach out to the author on Twitter.  Let’s see if he tweets back.

And happy reading!  Already I’m making sure I have a water bottle to hand…

Edutech

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July 20, 2016 at 08:12AM