When people ask me for recommendations of fiction to read, I almost always turn to science-fiction and fantasy. It’s not that I dislike naturalistic or other forms of fiction; I read it, and I think there are a lot of great places to get good recommendations for that work. It’s rather that I prefer stories that are both invented and not bound by any need to adhere to reality—when I fly, I’d like to fly far away.

(That said, I  re-read most of the Rex Stout “Nero Wolfe” series of mysteries in 2021 after appearing on the Like the Wolfe podcast to talk about my life of that detective.)

I’ve been reading sci-fi and fantasy since I was in my single digits, but I feel we’re in another golden age—maybe it’s lasted 20 years so far, maybe longer—in which all the lines are blurring between so-called genre fiction and mainline, and the kinds of stories being told break new ground.

As if to jog my memory, I recently taped an episode of The Incomparable podcast (airing later this year) in which we picked our favorite sf/f books from 2010–2019 in a draft format; all of my favorites fall into that period. I’ve arranged them roughly in the order that I recommend them to other people for accessibility and interest, but I put all of them in the first rank.

This Is How You Lose the Time War (2019)

This slim novel, written by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, is an epistolary novel of letters passed between two enemies across time and space. It’s hard to describe quite how beautiful and extraordinary it is. Spare in its description, it builds an entire universe while also keeping track of multiple universes. I read it again every time the memory of it has faded slightly in my mind—three times so far.

Night Circus (2011)

What if the horrific circus in Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury) were actually delightful, compelling, cloying, surprising, and generally not fatal? Erin Morgenstern’s novel isn’t really that—that’s just a hook I would use to reel you into the midway. Her story is about a wager between two magicians and the pawns they put into play who try to become kings and queens and overturn the chessboard. It’s such a sweet work to read, a fantastic tale told with such roots in human nature that you regularly forget the events can’t occur.

The Golem and the Jinni (2013)

Helene Wecker melds cultures and mythology to create what amounts to a thriller/mystery story in which the starring roles are occupied by, yes, a golem and a jinni. The landscape she paints of the early 20th century in lower Manhattan are vivid and well informed, and she writes a tale that stretches from the Old Country and the Middle East and separate peoples to where they intersect. The worst demon isn’t a creature of earth or fire. (The sequel, The Hidden Palace, came out in 2021, and picks up the story.)

Spinning Silver (2018) and Uprooted (2015)

Naomi Novik retells fairy tales in these books, which are unrelated except by style. Spinning Silver weaves Jewish and Slavic peasant culture (and anti-Semitism) in a strange but familiar-enough world with fairies, two kingdoms, ancient horrors, and a Mr. Darcy-like romantic hero and a seemingly Ugly Ducking princess who turns out to be anything but. Everyone gets their due in the end, unlike some fairy tales.

Uprooted, which precedes Spinning Silver, is an also enjoyable dip into fairy tales, this time bringing in enchanted wood and poisoned fruit and ancient witches; it’s a little thinner, but also a great read and withstands a second reading very well. (Novik is the author of the popular “what if Lord Nelson and Napoleon but also dragons” series of Temeraire novels, which are superb.)

The Goblin Emperor (2014)

Look, some of us like reading about infrastructure! And The Goblin Emperor (by Katherine Addison) certainly features some excellent discussions of it. But it’s more precisely a fish-out-of-water tale, in which an unlikely heir to the throne is placed upon it and then rises to the challenge. Every page is a treat. A sequel of sorts, Witness to the Dead, takes place in the provinces in the same world and is far more meditative.

Among Others (2011)

Jo Walton’s fantasy involving magic and fairies is also a deep dive into the history of science fiction through its main character, a girl who finds herself in a school she’d prefer not to be in, and makes friends with delightful nerds.

Some Bigger Commitments

I have several other recommendations that require a little more commitment, due to length, their peculiar tone, or the number of sequels you might be swept into reading:

• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (2010): An introduction to N.K. Jemisin, now the winner of untold numbers of writing awards, this first book in a three-novel arc builds not just a world, but a universe. Gods and humanity intermingle to their detriment, as in a three-god system one of them becomes jealous. It features another improbable young person brought in from the provinces to a palace, but the story unfolds with incredible richness and beauty. Palace intrigue mixed with the potential for massive destruction; not good and evil, but something like order, chaos, and existence split among deities. The next two novels are just as good, told from different perspectives.
• Leviathan Wakes (2011): The first of several lengthy novels, James S.A. Corey (a pen name for two writers) spin us a tale of humanity have expanded to Solar System wide expansion, with Earth remaining at the top of the hierarchy, a proud (and bellicose) independent Mars, and the Belters, people living in the Asteroid Belt and on moons and satellites on outer planets who are treated as disposable. But the story isn’t just the politics—though there is plenty of that—but the intrusion of a malignant outside force. It holds up! Across many novels! (The TV series is pretty terrific, too.)
• The Magician's Land (2014): It’s weird to start by recommending the third novel in a series of three, right? But I didn’t initially like The Magicians (2009)—and it was published before 2010. I was so put off by the whining anti-hero of the first novel and its ending that I never read the second, The Magician King. But I randomly picked up the third at the library, starting in on it, and found that the series works best read all together. The seeming flaws in the first novel are part of the evolution of the character (and maybe the author). So much is redeemed by the third novel that it required I re-evalute the first. (In fact, I wrote a whole essay about this with spoilers.) The Magicians TV series is one of the best fantasy shows I can remember, though it also is sluggish in the first season; it gets its legs in the second and then absolutely flies for the next three.
• Exhalation: Stories (2019): Ted Chiang is probably my favorite short-story writer across all genres, and his work is always unique and eye popping. This collection of short stories includes one in which a mechanical person documents their examination of themselves in a closed universe,  Exhalation doesn’t thrill me as much as his previous collection,  Stories of Your Life and Others, because one large portion of it is the novella “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” (2010) that I had previously read on its own. but it’s absolutely worth reading and I own in it hardcover. Stories of Your Life and Others contains his absolute finest work, “The Story of Your Life,” which was made into an equally worthy film, Arrival (2016), by Denis Villeneuve—I come back to thinking about that story on a regular basis, unbidden, as all the seeds of the fears of parenthood and aging are in it.
• The Dream of Perpetual Motion (2010): Dexter Palmer wrote one weird novel, which opens with a man in a zeppelin slowly descending to the ground to crash, its controls impossible to access, and the unearthly singing of a young woman (?). The novel is about class and money, a mix of old tech and new, and features a steam-powered typesetting robot, sex on a mound of coal, and terrible, terrible surgeries.
• How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (2010): I don’t know if this work is entirely successful, but it’s intensely interesting to read and think about. It’s more like a challenge to the reader, but it’s quite funny and moving, and full of things that remind of Philip K. Dick without imitating him. Author Charles Yu went on to write episodes of Westworld season 1, and reading this book, that will not surprise you in the least.