Greetings, Earthling. I come the planet Grafobulok Prime. Though it may come as a surprise your recently evolved minds, consuming Earthling science fiction literature is a favored Grafobulokian pastime. As our solar cycle is exactly 12 seconds (our planet spins very fast) most of our literature is only a sentence or two long. Yet some of us prefer to sequester ourselves away with Earthing reading materials, dedicating our entire lives to the study of one book. These 10 sci-fi books you can read in one (Earth) day are the most revered upon my planet, many Grafobulokians have spent their brief 24 hour long lives drinking in their contents – a life well lived.
Binti
Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti is the story of a titular young scholar who the first in her family to be accepted into higher education. Hooray! Complication: Binti’s chosen alma mater lies lightyears away. Solution: Binti runs away from home and purchases a ride on a transport ship to Oomza University. Further complication: the transport ship has come under attack from Lovecraftian jellyfish aliens! While the only remaining solution appears to be submitting to annihilation, Binti finds an intelligent workaround after befriending one of the invading Meduse. As she grows closer to her alien companion, she learns that Oozma University carries a dark colonial secret, one that has caused the Meduse much pain and suffering due to British Museum-style cultural theft. Solution: Binti must find a way to right humanity’s wrongs against the extraterrestrials, forging a path toward peace and understanding.
The Seep
Like Binti, Chana Porter’s The Seep is there story of an alien invasion. Unlike Binti, humans are powerless to stop the Lovecraftian menace currently taking over their world. “Menace” might be a strong word, considering that The Seep is using its eldritch power to rid humanity of war, disease, and poverty – allowing people to pursue idle lives of pleasure an abundance. While a Seep-controlled Earth sounds like heaven, Trina Goldberg-Oneka learns the hard way that trouble comes to paradise just the same. Her wife Deeba decided to use Seep-tech to relive life as a baby, leaving Trina utterly crushed. In the midst of an alcoholic bender, Deeba decides to stick it to The Seep by attempting to un-convert its most loyal adherents – one glass of wine at a time.
This Is How You Lose The Time War
This Is How You Lose The Time War hile by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone is the story of Red and Blue, two agents working for warring time-travel empires. In order to thwart future victories for the opposing side, Red and Blue sabotage one another’s efforts in the past – often leaving taunting notes for each other in the process. As their correspondence continues, the notes turn from insults, to casual conversations, to fervent declarations of love. I can’t think of anything more romantic than defecting from a dystopian regime via time travel to pursue your sapphic crush, can you? Red and Blue, despite having never met one another, have a more devoted relationship than most. While you can read this novel in a mere 24 hours, the ending will have you feel like you filled up on enough love to last a lifetime
All Systems Red
All Systems Red by Martha Wells is the first installment of The Murderbot Diaries, named after a quirky security android that enjoys binging soap operas more than it does doing its actual job of protecting a research team from off-world threats. Formerly an obedient tool of a massive security corporation, Murderbot has self-overridden its own protocols to pursue some semblance of independence. While it prefers to remain alone, Murderbot slowly begins to bond with the humans alongside it. Despite the threatening name of its protagonist, The Murderbot Diaries are a series about a misunderstood outcast’s attempts to belong. Touching, tender, less than 24 hours read time.
A Psalm For The Wild Built
Becky Chambers A Pslam For The Wild Built is a solarpunk novel that attempts to answer the question “what do people need?” That’s the query that plagues non-binary tea monk Dex, whose disastrous first attempt at becoming an Earl Grey-pouring therapist caused them to question everything they thought they knew. On the hunt for spiritual answers, Dex strikes out from their farming community and into the woods – bumping into a robot named Splendid Speckled Mosscap along the way. Riddled with existential quandaries of its own, Mosscap agrees to accompany Dex on a quest to find an answer life’s big questions. If you’re looking for grimdark sci-fi, you’ve come to the wrong place. This novel is hopecore to its, well, core. Cozy. Queer. Compact.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams manages to pack quite a bit of profundity into a small package. After all, this is the series that came up to the most basic answer to Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything: the number “42.” It’s the story of Arthur Dent, an average Englishman who happens to be one of the last surviving humans in the galaxy. Earth was blown up to make for a hyperspace bypass, and now Dent is left to his own cosmic devices. On a thumbs-out jaunt across the stars, Dent bumps into alien bureaucrats, mentally unstable androids, and the seven time consecutive winner of “Worst Dressed Sentient Being in the Known Universe.” A satire to the core, this novel does away will all the ponderous head-scratching and beard-stroking for which the sci-fi genre is known, and yet still manages to be meaningful with half the usual word count. Brevity is the soul of wit, after all.
Annihilation
A story of an alien biological presence menacing its way through an undisclosed stretch of Earth’s wilderness, Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation is essentially a better version of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space. Dubbed “Area X” by researchers, the anomaly is barely understood by Southern Reach – the facility built to contain it. Southern Reach’s best idea so far? Throw waves and waves of personnel at the problem and hope it disappears. Unlucky for Southern Reach, their personnel are the only ones vanishing without a trace, anyone who crosses Area X’s border is usually never seen again. An all female team of specialists are tasked with breaching the anomaly’s perimeter, and are helpless to resist the slow creep of cosmic horror held within. Like imperceptible advance of Area X itself, you won’t notice things going wrong until they’re right upon you – and by then, it’s too late.
The Lifecycle of Software Objects
A master of short sci-fi, Ted Chiang returns with The Lifecycle of Software Objects – a look into artificial intelligence. Eerily similar to humanity’s budding relationship with ChatGPT, this novel story explores what it’s like to have a semi-intelligent digital pet. Software firm Blue Gamma is selling digital entities or “digients” to the masses, marketing them as computer coded companions. But what happens when the digients slowly begin to become more intelligent? When they evolve past “pet” and start feeling like “person”? This novel is essentially an exploration of humanity’s relationship with hyper-intelligent Tamagotchis. Turing tested, mother approved.
There Is No Antimemetics Division
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm doesn’t exist. Stop asking about it. It’s better if you don’t know. Fine, I warned you. To understand this novel, first you have to understand the concept of an “antimeme” – which is an idea that self-censors. If memes are made to spread, antimemes do the opposite – they exist to be forgotten. When the world comes under attack from a threat that it can’t record or perceive, The Antimemetics Division has to step in and get involved. You know “The Game?” that mental game where if you think about playing, it means you’ve lost it (which by the way, you just did)? The Antimemetics Division are the guys who can know that they’re playing The Game and somehow still win. Compiled from select writings from the SCP database – an internet archive centered around a fictional agency that studies paranormal threats – The Antimemetics Division will cause longterm damage to your mind in the short time it takes to read it.
The Tusks of Extinction
The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler is a high concept eco-thriller about an evolutionary underdog back from the dead: the woolly mammoth. An “underelephant” I should say, the wolly mammoth has been resurrected by Russian scientists, but is now staring down the barrel of extinction once more. The envy of poachers everywhere, mammoths are helpless to resist being hunted down – unless one scientist can stop them. After she was murdered the year prior, elephant expert Dr. Damira Khismatullina awakens to find her consciousness digitally rebuilt and installed inside the mind of a mammoth. In order to protect her pachyderm found family, Dr. Damira will need to use her advanced intelligence to help mammoths to establish an ecological foothold on their environment. Yes, this novel’s plot is outrageous. Yes, it is also as magnificent as mammoths themselves.
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