From magical wormholes to cyber hacking to secret societies so out there that we had to Google some things, the last year has been a wonderful exploration of fictional worlds in literature. We had new releases from beloved authors like Salman Rushdie and solid new stories from writers we have grown to love over the years like Chuck Wendig.
Wendig’s Zeroes, Disabato’s The Ghost Network, and Swyler’s The Book of Speculation gave us stories in worlds that looked starkly familiar to everyday characters and situations we could never imagine actually happening on an average day. Their books are drastically different and exhilarating for completely different reasons. Fink & Cranor brought a cult podcast into a new medium with Welcome To Night Vale and Aziz Ansari expanded upon his recent standup themes to give us the wonderfully exposing Modern Romance if you’re looking for some insight into love in 2015.
Rushdie’s Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, Meyer’s Winter, and Dewitt’s Under Majordomo Minor have the roots of fables that are woven so closely into our hearts and minds that they seem a part of us, but gave us new stories to fall in love with told from the perspective of different narrators. Meanwhile, Miéville’s Three Moments of Explosion will have you considering a letter writing campaign geared towards wresting individual novels for each of his short stories from the writer’s hands.
If you’re looking for something in the comic arena, you must pick up Lumberjanes as soon as humanely possible. Boom! Studios, Grace Ellis, Noelle Stevenson, and Brooke Allen lit a spark in the world of comics in April when the Scooby Gang transformed into a bunch of ass-kicking teenage girls at summer camp. I gave it to my nieces, and I am still judging the person who I loaned my copy to for not returning it on time.
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Images via Random House, Boom! Studios, Macmillian Publishing, Amazon, Orbit Books, LitHub, Barnes & Noble, and NPR
