2020 Review/2021 Preview

I keep a notebook in which I list the books I’ve read, and flicking back through it now reminds me that it’s been a great reading year, probably because I unashamedly used books during 2020 as an escape from reality. The strange thing is that I never feel the need to escape to better worlds. No utopias for me this year: violence, fear, dystopia, and post-apocalyptic nightmares all kept me hooked. Being fictional was the only requirement.

Having said that, I did find Paul Tremblay’s Survivor Song a little too close to reality at times, but that’s because it’s got a wonderfully upsetting killer virus at its heart that destroys normal life, fills hospitals, and leads to a hugely tense final fifty pages that I had to read in one sitting. If you can handle virus-based literature right now, I really recommend it.

A calmer escape came in the form of Rym Kechacha’s Dark River, which uses dual narratives split over many thousands of years. Following the essential journeys of two mothers, one living in 6200BC and the other in 2156AD – both fleeing the effects of climate change – it finds many parallels and makes interesting reflections on how we can’t escape our landscapes. The writing is beautiful.

K&R: Kidnap and Ransom by James Smythe was just brilliant at creating suspense with a fantastical twist that really draws you in. He’s one of my favourite contemporary writers.

I read some wonderful collections this year, too. Gary Budden’s impressive London Incognita features stories of the big city that come together to create a London that feels layered, secretive. And M. John Harrison’s Settling the World: Selected Stories 1970-2020 shares a few of his stories from a fifty year span. What’s amazing is how clearly his voice, so aware, so far-reaching, comes across no matter what page you turn to.

Looking Ahead to 2021

I’ve been lucky enough to already read some amazing books that will be turning up throughout 2021. Look out for Oliver Langmead’s Birds of Paradise, which is so stylish and involving. It’s the story of Adam, the first man, travelling across continents to find the things he’s lost along the way while humanity has changed beyond comprehension. Equally gorgeous, but with its eyes fixed on the near future and an Earth upon which sea monsters are thriving and much of humanity has fled to space, is Marian Womack’s elegant novel The Swimmers.

And if you’re a Jack Vance fan then try Tim Stretton’s Bitter Sky, which I think is going to be published early in 2021. It’s the first in a series of fantasy novels set in a world of wars, steamships, air balloons, military honours, and demons. It’s a heady combination told in a dry, fantastically entertaining voice.

On The Horizon for Aliya Whiteley

I’m delighted that my novel of alien contact and clashing cultures in the near future, Skyward Inn, will be published by Solaris in March, and I’ll also have a short story collection called From the Neck Up published by Titan Books in September. That will contain some of my weirdest stories from the past ten years, and I’m excited to see it out there. Happy 2021, everyone.

About the Author

Aliya Whiteley writes across many different genres and lengths. Her first published full-length novels, Three Things About Me and Light Reading, were comic crime adventures. Her 2014 SF-horror novella The Beauty was shortlisted for the James Tiptree and Shirley Jackson awards. The following historical-SF novella, The Arrival of Missives, was a finalist for the Campbell Memorial Award, and her noir novel The Loosening Skin was shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award.

She has written over one hundred published short stories that have appeared in Interzone, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Black Static, Strange Horizons, The Dark, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and The Guardian, as well as in anthologies such as Unsung Stories’ 2084 and Lonely Planet’s Better than Fiction.

She also writes a regular non-fiction column for Interzone.