Zoo City

One of the most exciting things about science fiction in the new century is that the traditional white, male, Anglo-American voice is being displaced. Wonderful new work is starting to emerge from Brazil, from Russia, from Germany, from Israel, from China, from South-East Asia. The South African Lauren Beukes, who won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Zoo City, is just part of this emergence of distinctive new writers from different traditions. In Zoo City she transforms the racial politics and social problems of Johannesburg into science fiction by having people bonded with animal avatars when they are convicted of a crime. The result is a novel that opens our eyes to the new.Why itâs on the list:Zoo City is fresh, vivid, unusual, revealing, everything, in fact, that science fiction is supposed to be.