Science fiction deals with imaginative and futuristic ideas, often with advanced science and technology, space exploration or time travel. Science fiction has been called the literature of ideas and can explore the consequences of scientific advances. The #ownvoices hashtag has been used to signify works of fiction that feature diverse characters from creators who share that identity. The books in this week’s BWG picks feature diverse characters in the science fiction universe. Science fiction can provide an excellent space to explore culture, society and civilization and these works explore them using a lens of cultural identity which lend an extra dimension to the stories.
The Freedom Race by Lucinda Roy
In the aftermath of a cataclysmic civil war known as the Sequel, ideological divisions among the states have hardened. In the Homestead Territories, an alliance of plantation-inspired holdings, Black labor is imported from the Cradle, and Biracial "Muleseeds" are bred. Raised in captivity on Planting 437, kitchen-seed Jellybean "Ji-ji" Lottermule knows there is only one way to escape. She must enter the annual Freedom Race as a runner.
The Rosewater Redemption by Tade Thompson
In the conclusion to the award-winning, cutting-edge Wormwood trilogy, life in the newly independent city-state of Rosewater isn't everything its citizens were expecting. Operating across spacetime, the xenosphere, and international borders, it is up to a small group of hackers and criminals to prevent an extra-terrestrial advance.
Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon
Vern gives birth to twins and raises them away from the influence of the outside world. But something is wrong-not with them, but with her own body ... A genre-bending work of Gothic fiction that wrestles with the history of American racism.
Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell
Summoned before the Emperor, Prince Kiem--a famously disappointing minor royal and the Emperor's least favorite grandchild--is commanded to renew the empire's bonds with its newest vassal planet. The prince must marry Count Jainan, the recent widower of another royal prince of the empire. But Jainan suspects his late husband's death was no accident.
