Monique's 10 Science-Fiction Recommendations From Authors Around the World

If you're looking for an original and innovative murder mystery with strong science fiction elements, you may want to try Tail of the Blue Bird. A well preserved Ghanaian village called Sonokrom is a place of beauty and wonder. The villagers speak the language of the forest and coexist with their ancestral spirits. 

Human remains are found in Sonokrom. A western forensic scientist and an old hunter from the village share their knowledge and experiences aiding one another in solving the case. Tail of the Bluebird is immersive, drawing in old and new notions with the occasional use of Pidgin English that increases this book's authenticity, making it stand out from other novels available in the West.

Silicon Isle is on the Southeastern coast of China, where electric waste is recycled. Our protagonist Mimi works there with many other migrant workers who hope and dream for a better, more comfortable life away from this electric wasteland. 

When an American company plans to make money off Silicon Isle by modernizing and bringing new ideas to the recycling process, worlds collide and a virus strikes. Waste Tide is a fantastic speculative fiction novel drawing in many loved themes and genres such as cyberpunk, dystopia, and good vs evil. 

This is a great eco-thriller and will be one to add to your list if you're looking for something particularly distinct and different.

Rodolfo Martinez made a name for himself by creating and propelling the presence of cyberpunk in the Spanish literature community. 

Cat's Whirld is a dense network of political intrigue and dangerously advanced technology set in the distant future on the neutral Convergence Space Station #1. It seamlessly blends elements from sci-fi, thrillers, mysteries, and even the Sherlock Holmes universe to create a dense network of political intrigue and perilously advanced technology. 

When some strange individuals appear on the Whirld, it's up to Arthur Conan Chandler and his jovial gang of 'Irregulars' to determine what they're up to and put a stop to the scheme that threatens to destroy the entire space station. Whirld is a lot of fun if you're into science-fiction and cyberpunk.

There was once a colonial village called The Old Drift on the banks of the Zambezi River, just a few kilometres from the magnificent Victoria Falls. 

The epic chronicle of a little African nation begins here, as narrated by a mystery swarm-like chorus claiming to be man's greatest adversary. In 1904, a feverish Old Drifter called Percy M. Clark makes a mistake that entangles the fortunes of an Italian hotel manager and an African busboy at the hotel across the river. 

This sets in motion an unintended cycle of revenge between three Zambian families as they encounter and overlap. Their accomplishments, faults, losses, and hopes – demonstrate what it is to be human as the demographics shift. If you're looking for something particularly different in the realm of science-fiction, this may be the one for you.

You may recognise the name of this if you like your Netflix series, which created two amazing seasons. The adaptation was glorious but if you're looking for more detail and world building, you should get into the books too. 

Set 400 years in the future, humanity has managed to reach the stars and live across the galaxy. Human consciousness is now digital which means you can also inhabit bodies of your choice. Takeshi Kovacs is hired to investigate the murder of a billionaire and finds himself engaged in more complicated matters. Altered Carbon is perfect for those who also love mysteries and thrillers.

Danso is an incredible Scholar on the brink of greatness but he's not interested in becoming great, he wants to investigate the mysteries beyond the wall and the stories he's heard about them. 

Those who are top of the food chain in this ancient city, Bassa, want nothing to do with what's outside of it and the immigrants from beyond the wall are not allowed to talk about what's out there. Son of Storm is written from multiple perspectives with diverse characters and a unique magic system.

An engaged couple coordinates their separate trips to far-flung parts of the cosmos so that, thanks to relativity, they can return to Earth at the same time and walk down the aisle. 

One thing remains constant throughout the millennia on Earth, as the terrain and climate change: the longing of lovers to be together. Kim Bo-Young cleverly illustrates the concept of timeless love in two different but interconnected stories. 

This was the first time I experienced an intergalactic love story and it was so beautifully done. All the stories encountered perfectly complement one another.

The Novel of the Future ranks higher in its predictions of moral progress than technological growth as a prediction of living in the second half of the twentieth century. 

Novel of the Future is very speculative and explores things such as technology, politics and religion in a future setting. This is the kind of novel you would read if you're in the mood for serious topics and a look back into how the future had once looked.

The story follows a few different protagonists who are investigating a series of seemingly unrelated occurrences around the world.

Two marine researchers create a theory that the root cause comes from the depths of the ocean, where an entity later coined as the Yrr has established a gigantic system of single-cell organisms, and the planet begins to experience an escalating and dramatic series of major catastrophes. 

It's inflicting devastation in order to keep humanity from permanently damaging the planet's ecological equilibrium. If you're prepared to be compelled, thrilled and a little scared, read the Swarm. The use of vivid language combined with what we already know and have seen in real life to create catastrophic events makes the experience of reading this so much better.

Surprisingly, the ISI and RAW find out the hard way that guarding Pakistan's and India's borders will be the last thing on their minds when the reptiloid alien race invades Earth via smartphones as gene-tampering weapons.

I adored this most because this is the first time I've read a science fiction set in India and to see the difference between Aliens in Delhi and popular sci-fi from the west was truly fascinating.