9 Essential Summer Reads—From Sci-Fi to Philosophical Superheroes

This weekend marks the unofficial beginning of summer. (Technically it starts June 21, but everyone knows it truly commences with the first three-day weekend during which it's acceptable to wear shorts.) That means the time has come for taking hikes, playing frisbee, and spending long hours in a pool near you. But for a certain class of folks—the species known as "bookworm"—summer is the ideal time to practice their page-turning. But with so many new tomes hitting shelves, it's hard to know where to start. Below are some of our favorite books of 2017. Pick them up; the last thing you'd want to forget on this Memorial Day weekend is a good read.

__Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
__Saeed and Nadia meet and start dating. But, just as their courtship begins, the city they live in—an unnamed place full of migrants and refugees—starts to fall apart. Terrorism is on the rise, the government cuts off phone signals, and drones are surveilling everyone. As violence breaks out, the couple must flee. Much like Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad took the historical Underground Railroad and turned it into a fantastical subterranean railway, Exit West transforms the realities of the refugee crisis in its own otherworldly way. At a time when the fate of refugees is at the forefront of American political discourse, Moshin Hamid's new novel is an important, and beautifully written, read. —Lexi Pandell

__Borne by Jeff VanderMeer
__Shape-shifting biotech, giant flying bears, genetically-modified feral children—Jeff VanderMeer's latest novel is as wacky as it is futuristic. The book centers on Rachel, a scavenger in a post-apocalyptic city who finds herself the unwitting parent of a piece of biotech that grows from a plant to many-eyed lamp to feathery octopus. The creature, which Rachel names Borne, initially learns through reading, but when it starts gaining knowledge by absorbing people whole, it threatens to take down the city's fragile ecosystem of survivors. The story is delightful, as are all of the author's zany little details (surveillance moss, anyone?). Fans of VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy won't be let down. —Charley Locke

__The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple by Jeff Guinn
__The last time Jeff Guinn went deep on a decade-defining cult commander, the result was 2013’s best-selling Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson, a thoroughly reported, vividly written biography that remained engrossing right up to the last page—even if you already knew the ending. Road to Jonestown is just as satisfying, a detail-rich accounting of how Jones—who led more than 900 followers to their deaths in a 1978 mass suicide—went from lower-tier preacher to social-justice champion to a pot-bellied, pill-zonked maniac. But it's also a story of how American mini-empires are built, detailing the various hierarchies, rinky-dink scams, and byzantine infrastructures Jones established in order to keep acolytes in his grip. And while the book’s final chapters are just as unsettling as you’d expect, *Jonestown’*s biggest chilling effect is the realization that, decades later, we’re as susceptible as ever to the kind of swagger and fall-in-line group-logic that made Jones infamous in the first place. —Brian Raftery

Void Star__ by Zachary Mason
__Admittedly, there aren't a lot of artificial intelligence thrillers out there to choose from, but if you have to pick just one, opt for the novel written by a guy with a degree in computational linguistics. In Void Star, Zachary Mason imagines a near-future where AI is embedded not only in our interactions, but in our brains. Mason's AIs think in glyphs, or waves of data, and only people with cranial implants can understand them. His book follows three such individuals as they are pursued by a mysterious AI, a 150-year-old billionaire, and memory-ghosts. The plot may leave you scratching your head, but the scenes set in a San Francisco overrun with technology—commuters getting dressed in drone cars, tech magnates commissioning homes that’ll last a millennium, ambitious young men faking autism to get promoted at tech companies—feel eerily spot-on. —Charley Locke

__Startup by Doree Shafrir
__On your summer trips, you probably want to escape office drama. We get that. But if you have a hard time turning off and find yourself binge-watching Silicon Valley, you’ll probably want to read Startup. Doree Shafrir’s debut novel follows several interconnected stories in New York’s Silicon Alley: Mack McAllister, famed start-up CEO spurned by a recent office fling; Isabel Taylor, said office fling who is now being harassed by her boss; Katya Pasternack, a chain-smoking reporter for a tech site; Dan Blum, Katya’s boss; and Sabrina Choe Blum, Dan’s wife who is struggling to stay afloat in a tech industry she barely understands. Shafrir is a senior tech writer for BuzzFeed and, though she has made it clear the story is not a roman à clef, it certainly mirrors drama she's seen and reported on in the tech world. Startup is a dramedy-of-errors, a Shakespearean yarn of secrets, sex, miscommunication, misogyny, and money. And unlike so many other industry parodies, this story focuses largely on its female characters. Crack this one open on the beach and you just might find yourself a little more enlightened when you return to the workplace. —Lexi Pandell

__Seven Surrenders by Ada Palmer
__It's got an Uber-ish network of flying cars that deliver you anywhere on the planet almost instantly, exquisitely racy scenes played out in Grand Siècle costumes, and a dark conspiracy. There's also a little blue dog and a mysterious child who can turn toys into living breathing creatures and some American Psycho–level torture porn. Oh, it's also got some potential incest, mysterious parentage, and patricide. And a cool tree that grows all the fruits. Ada Palmer's Seven Surrenders, the second in the three-part Terra Ignota series, delivers all the imaginative, carnal futurism that make science fiction so enjoyable. Your pants and stomach will like this book. So will your brain (Palmer is a historian at the University of Chicago, after all): What do gendered pronouns do to your perceptions? Is it acceptable to sacrifice a chosen few for the greater good of the many? Is the wielding of feminine wiles a judicious use of soft power or a capitulation to the patriarchy? What is the nature of god, religion, revelation, and faith in a society that wishes to move beyond the destructive power of belief in the divine? Is a just, peaceful society even a good thing at all or does it ultimately serve to destroy the drive and ambition that can launch human beings into a flying-car future in the first place? Would you take orders from a well-read, thumb-sized Army major who has been touched into being by a golden child with the power to save the world or snuff it out altogether? After reading this book, you might. —Sarah Fallon

__Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
__Turns out, spousal squabbling and neighborly one-upmanship doesn't end when life does. At least, not in George Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo, which tells the story of over 100 ghosts left lingering in a cemetery. The title alludes to Willie Lincoln, son of Abe, who takes up residency in the graveyard after dying at 11 years old, but the beauty of the book lies in all the ordinary people who died with unresolved problems. There’s a couple arguing about who left the fireplace grate open, three young bachelors intent on having the best night ever, a gloomy guy who died right before consummating his marriage. Saunders’ unparalleled ability to create characters through specific verbal tics and concerns is at its finest here as he renders a whole boneyard of unimportant, easily forgotten people as quirky, urgently real individuals. And if you’re looking for something for a weekend road trip, try the audiobook, which features a staggering 166 voices, from Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally to Saunders’ mom and high school geology teacher. —Charley Locke

__Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin
__Fever Dream is best downed like a shot, gulped in one go. Samanta Schweblin's novella, structured as a dialogue between a sick woman in the hospital and a boy at her bedside, unfolds like a surreal film that begins as body horror and pivots into a tale of ecological disaster. In just under 200 pages, the book explores the anxieties of mother-child relationships, the uncertainty of sickness, and the biological impact of genetically modified crops. The English title is certainly evocative of the sensation you get when reading the book, but the original title, Distancia de Rescate, better reveals the book's themes. It translates to "Rescue Distance," a measurement the main character calculates to determine how long it would take her to get to her daughter if she needed to be saved from harm. It's an estimate she makes to comfort herself, but as Fever Dream unravels, it becomes clear that sometimes no distance is close enough. —Lexi Pandell

__Dear Cyborgs by Eugene Lim
__Looking for an inventive story about a friend group of philosophically-minded superheroes? How about the tale of how comic books brought two young misfits together in suburban Ohio? Well, you’re in luck: In Dear Cyborgs, you can have both. The novel flips back and forth between the two plots, punctuated by brief notes addressed to—you guessed it—cyborgs. Along the way, there are kidnappers hiding out in the remote Himalayas and meditations on art as a form of resistance. The sequential vignettes of Team Chaos superheroes and alienated Midwestern preteens can feel jarring, but you might just find yourself charmed by this slim book of brusque sentences and odd, precise descriptions. And the last chapter’s union of the two narratives doesn't disappoint. —Charley Locke