You already know that books make the best gifts, so of course you want to give a book to everyone you love this holiday season. But choosing the perfect read for each person can be a challenge. This year, we’ve created seven custom gift guides guaranteed to help you select a wonderful present for every reader on your list.
Read on to see suggestions for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Fanatic in your life, and check the bottom of the post for our full collection of gift guides.
The Big Book of Science Fiction edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Ann Vandermeer
“The Big Book of Science Fiction is exactly what it says it is, nearly 1,200 pages of stories by the genre’s luminaries . . . as well as lesser-known authors. . . . [It] prizes diversity of all kinds, and translates work by several writers into English—some for the first time.” —The New York Times Book Review
What if life were neverending? What if you could change your body to adapt to an alien ecology? What if the pope were a robot? Spanning galaxies and millennia, this must-have anthology showcases classic contributions from H. G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, Octavia E. Butler, and Kurt Vonnegut, alongside a century of the eccentrics, rebels, and visionaries who have inspired generations of readers.
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The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood
“Quintessential Atwood. . . . The writing here is so persuasive, so crisp, that it seeps under your skin.” —The Boston Globe
Margaret Atwood puts the human heart to the ultimate test in an utterly brilliant novel that is as visionary as The Handmaid’s Tale and as richly imagined as The Blind Assassin. The Heart Goes Last is a vivid, urgent vision of development and decay, freedom and surveillance, struggle and hope—and the timeless workings of the human heart.
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Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis by Anne Rice
Lestat is back. The Vampire Chronicles continue in “a mythical, sea-bound new setting: The lost city of Atlantis.” (Entertainment Weekly)
From Anne Rice, conjurer of the beloved bestsellers Interview with the Vampire and Prince Lestat, an ambitious and exhilarating new Vampire Chronicles novel of utopian vision and power.
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The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
“Spectacular. . . . The Buried Giant has the clear ring of legend, as graceful, original and humane as anything Ishiguro has written.” —The Washington Post
As they are joined on their journey by a Saxon warrior, his orphan charge, and an illustrious knight, Axl and Beatrice slowly begin to remember the dark and troubled past they all share. By turns savage, suspenseful, and intensely moving, The Buried Giant is a luminous meditation on the act of forgetting and the power of memory, an extraordinary tale of love, vengeance, and war.
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“Smart, shimmering and thought-provoking. . . . Compulsively readable.” —The New York Times Book Review
In Satin Island, Tom McCarthy—the acclaimed, Man Booker Prize–nominated author of Remainder and C—captures the way we experience our world and our efforts to find meaning in the narratives we think of as our lives. Unlike anything you’ve read before, Satin Island is a mind-bending adventure from one of the most original voices in literature today.
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The Familiar, Volume 3 by Mark Z. Danielewski
From the universally acclaimed, genre-busting author of House of Leaves comes the third volume of The Familiar, a “novel [which] goes beyond the experimental into the visionary, creating a language and style that expands the horizon of meaning . . . hint[ing] at an evolved form of literature.” —Library Journal (starred review)
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The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
“A noir-ish, cinematic thriller set in the midst of a water war between Las Vegas and Phoenix. . . . Think Chinatown meets Mad Max.”— All Things Considered, NPR
From the bestselling author of the Hugo Award–winning novel The Windup Girl comes a scorching thriller born out of today’s front-page headlines about potential catastrophic failures awaiting us in our resource-starved future.
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Wind/Pinball: Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 by Haruki Murakami
“Early Murakami isn’t Murakami-in-the-making, it’s already and entirely Murakami.” —The Guardian
In the spring of 1978, a young Haruki Murakami sat down at his kitchen table and began to write. The result: two remarkable short novels—Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973—that launched the career of one of the most acclaimed authors of our time. Wind/Pinball, a unique two-in-one volume, includes, on one side, Murakami’s first novel Hear the Wind Sing. When you flip the book over, you can read his second novel, Pinball, 1973.
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Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
“Shining, haunting, mind-blowing tales. . . . Ted Chiang is so exhilarating, so original, so stylish he just leaves you speechless.” —Junot Díaz
Stories of Your Life and Others delivers dual delights of the very, very strange and the heartbreakingly familiar, often presenting characters who must confront sudden change—the inevitable rise of automatons or the appearance of aliens—with some sense of normalcy. With sharp intelligence and humor, Chiang examines what it means to be alive in a world marked by uncertainty, but also by beauty and wonder. An award-winning collection from one of today’s most lauded writers, Stories of Your Life and Others is a contemporary classic.
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A Blink of the Screen: Collected Shorter Fiction by Terry Pratchett
“A book meant to be cherished.” —The New York Times Book Review
The first career-spanning collection of short fiction by Sir Terry Pratchett—one of the most beloved and bestselling writers of our time—A Blink of the Screen charts the development of Pratchett’s creative vision throughout his prolific career, from his early writings in school to the dizzy mastery of the phenomenally successful Discworld series.
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Browse all of our gift guides:
For the . . . Memoir Reader | Super Sleuth | Fiction Addict | Movie Maven | Nonfiction Enthusiast | Staff Picks