Reading List — Imagining Disaster: Contemporary Art X Science Fiction
In chronological order, below is a selection of science fiction novels, anthologies, short stories and non-fiction. Suggested by the curator, contributors and audience of the Imagining Disaster events programme at Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, 30 August-5 September 2021, it is by no means exhaustive, merely a starting point for thinking and for conversations around its themes.
- We, Yevgeny Zamyatin, 1921
- Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future, Olaf Stapledon, 1930
- Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, 1953
- Solaris, Stanisław Lem, 1961
- The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick, 1965
- Against Interpretation and Other Essays, Susan Sontag, 1966
- The Atrocity Exhibition, J G Ballard, 1970
- Roadside Picnic, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, 1972
- The Word for World is Forest, Ursula K. Le Guin, 1972
- The Forever War, Joe Haldeman, 1974
- Always Coming Home, Ursula K. Le Guin, 1985
- Parable of the Sower, Octavia E. Butler, 1993
- The Faber Book of Utopias, ed. John Carey, 1999
- The Unreal & the Real, Volume 2: Outer Space, Inner Lands, Ursula K. Le Guin, 2012
- Moss Witch, Sara Maitland, 2013
- Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, Mark Fisher, 2014
- Sci-Fi: Days of Fear and Wonder – A BFI Compendium, ed. James Bell, 2014
- Science Fiction: A Guide for the Perplexed, Sherryl Vint, 2014
- The Book of Strange New Things, Michel Faber, 2014
- Octavia’s Brood: science fiction stories from social justice movements, ed. Adrienne Maree Brown, Walidah Imarisha, 2015
- Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology, ed. Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, 2015
- La Jetée (BFI Film CLassics), Chris Darke, 2016
- The Big Book of Science Fiction, ed. Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, 2016
- The Gradual, Christopher Priest, 2016
- You Should Come With Me Now: Stories of Ghosts, M. John Harrison, 2017
- Science Fiction Criticism: An Anthology of Essential Writings, ed. Rob Latham, 2017
- Thought X: Fictions and Hypotheticals, ed. Ra Page, Dr Rob Appleby, 2017
- Iraq+100: Stories from a century after the invasion, ed. Hassan Blasim, 2017
- Science Fiction: A Literary History, ed. Roger Luckhurst, 2017
- Tentacle, Rita Indiana, trans. Achy Obejas, 2018
- Palestine +100: stories from a century after the Nakba, ed. Basma Ghalayini, 2019 (anthology)
- Sideways in Time: Critical Essays on Alternate History Fiction, ed. Glyn Morgan, Charul Palmer-Patel, 2019
- News From Nowhere: Moon Kyungwon & Jeon Joonho, contrib. Tamar Hemmas, Mike Pinnington, Moon Kyungwon & Jeon Joonho, 2019
- The Memory Police, Yōko Ogawa trans. Stephen Snyder, 2019
- Cygnet: A Novel, Season Butler, 2019
- The World After, David Blandy, 2019
- Documents of Contemporary Art: Science Fiction, ed. Dan Byrne-Smith, 2020
- A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia Butler, Lynell George, 2020
- Imagining the Unimaginable: Speculative Fiction and the Holocaust, ed. Glyn Morgan, 2020
- A Fledgling Abiba, Dilman Dila, 2020
- Water Must Fall, Nick Wood, 2020
- Afterland, Lauren Beukes, 2020
- Club Ded, Nikhil Singh, 2020
- Soul Searching, Stephen Embleton, 2020
- The Silence of the Wilting Skin, Tlotlo Tsamaase, 2020
- Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora, ed. Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Zelda Knight, 2020
- Ivory’s Story, Eugen Bacon, 2020
- The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction, ed. Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, 2021
- Son of the Storm, Suyi Davies Okungbowa, 2021
- The Best of World SF: Volume 1, Lavie Tidhar, 2021
Collated by Mike Pinnington, producer, Imagining Disaster: Contemporary Art X Science Fiction, August/September, 2021
Follow the conversation #ImaginingDisaster
Header image: Cover of Octavia’s Brood: science fiction stories from social justice movements, ed. Adrienne Maree Brown, Walidah Imarisha, 2015