The Berlin Novels (1935 and 1939) by Christopher Isherwood
A Door Into Ocean (1986) by Joan Slonczewski
Voting ended onNov 8, 2025
Book summaries and submitted endorsements below:
The Berlin Novels (Mr Norris Changes Trains/The Last of Mr Norris, Goodbye to Berlin) (1935 and 1939) by Christopher Isherwood
First published in 1935 and 1939, the two related novels, The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin, which make up The Berlin Stories are recognized today as classics of modern fiction.
A charming city of avenues and cafés, a grotesque city of night-people and fantasts, a dangerous city of vice and intrigue, a powerful city of millionaires and mobs - all this was Berlin in 1931, the period when Hitler was beginning his move to power.
Here are Mr. Norris, the improbable old debauchee mysteriously caught in the struggle between Nazis and Communists; plump Fräulein Schroeder, who thinks an operation to reduce the scale of her Büste might relieve her heart palpitations; the Landauers, a distinguished and doomed Jewish family; Sally Bowles, whose misadventures in the demimonde were popularized on the American stage and screen by Julie Harris in "I Am a Camera" and by Liza Minelli in "Cabaret."
Classics, short stories, 1930s
A Door Into Ocean (1986) by Joan Slonczewski (Elysium Cycle series)
Endorsement from submitter: "What happens when an ocean moon, populated by an all-woman people who live pacifist and nomadic lives is threatened by a neighboring and much more militaristic society desires their natural resources."
A ground-breaking work both of feminist SF and of world-building hard SF, it concerns the Sharers of Shora, a nation of women on a distant moon in the far future who are pacifists, highly advanced in biological sciences, and who reproduce by parthenogenesis--there are no males--and tells of the conflicts that erupt when a neighboring civilization decides to develop their ocean world, and send in an army.
Science fiction, environmentalist, far future, series, adult
A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski (Elysium Cycle series)
The Stars Too Fondly by Emily Hamilton
Voting ended onNov 23, 2024
Book summaries below:
A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski (Elysium Cycle series)
A ground-breaking work both of feminist SF and of world-building hard SF, it concerns the Sharers of Shora, a nation of women on a distant moon in the far future who are pacifists, highly advanced in biological sciences, and who reproduce by parthenogenesis--there are no males--and tells of the conflicts that erupt when a neighboring civilization decides to develop their ocean world, and send in an army.
Science fiction, environmentalist, series, adult
The Stars Too Fondly by Emily Hamilton
In her breathtaking debut—part space odyssey, part sapphic rom-com—Emily Hamilton tells a tale of galaxy-spanning friendship, improbable love, and found family.
So, here’s the thing: Cleo and her friends really, truly didn’t mean to steal this spaceship. They just wanted to know why, twenty years ago, the entire Providence crew vanished without a trace, but then the stupid dark-matter engine started on its own. Now these four twenty-somethings are en route to Proxima Centauri and unable to turn around while being harangued by a hologram that has the face and snide attitude of the ship’s missing captain, Billie.
Cleo has dreamt of being an astronaut all her life, and Earth is a lost cause at this point, so this should be one of those blessings in disguise that people talk about. But as the ship travels deeper into space, the laws of physics start twisting; old mysteries come crawling back to life; and Cleo’s initially combative relationship with Billie turns into something deeper and more desperate than either woman was prepared for.
