As I mentioned yesterday, it was my turn to select three books to put before the book club members as candidates for discussion at the next meeting. The criteria for selection were that they must be SF&F, and easily available in a mass market paperback format. The latter is to keep the cost down for book club members, but it inevitably restricts the choice to classic titles and very new books.

I added some selection criteria of my own. I wanted to do science fiction by women, and I was not going to include Ursula K. Le Guin because, much as I love her work, she is not the only female science fiction writer in the world.

So my three choices are as follows:

The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter – because it is my favorite work of feminist SF about gender, which is quite an achievement for a book written back when feminism really didn’t understand trans issues. Also Angela Carter is awesome and everyone should read her.

Grass by Sheri S. Tepper – a Hugo nominee back in 1990 (beaten by Dan Simmons’ Hyperion, which is nothing to be ashamed about) and a book about which Adam Roberts has said: “Those who have not read this powerful masterpiece should be herded with cattle-prods out to the bookshops until that situation is remedied…”. (That review is here, and comes with massive spoiler warnings.)

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie – the book everyone is talking about this year, and deservedly so. It does wonderful things with AIs, gender and the idea of the galactic empire. If you are missing Iain M. Banks, read this.

I was pleased that the group had trouble picking which one to read, and I very much hope that they end up reading all of them. But which one would you have chosen?