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Quiz: What Work of Speculative Fiction Should You Read Next?

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Anne Mai Yee Jansen

Contributor

Anne Mai Yee Jansen is a literature and ethnic studies professor and a lifelong story lover. She exists on a steady diet of books, hot chocolate, and dragon boating. After spending over a decade in the Midwest and the Appalachians, she returned to the sun and sandstone of California’s central coast where she currently resides with her partner, offspring, and feline companions. Find her on Instagram @dreaminginstories

Speculative fiction is a huge category. It encompasses such sub-genres as fantasy, horror, sci-fi, paranormal fiction, magical realism, and more. (For a more nuanced overview of speculative fiction, read this essay explaining the term speculative fiction.) Sometimes that variety makes it hard to decide which book you should pick up.

Feeling ghosty? That might mean magical realism or it might mean paranormal or even horror. Or perhaps you’re feeling whimsical. Does that mean you should go for a fantasy read or a work of magical realism?

Tough choices, dear reader.

So I offer you an easy solution: take this quiz to get a recommendation for a recent work of speculative fiction. I’ve include a wide variety of books so that your responses will lead you to a special read that speaks to your current needs.

As with any other works in all kinds of genres, speculative fiction often brings together different genres. You might find a humorous ghost story that engages with social realism, or a survival narrative about environmental collapse that forays into horror. Maybe you’ll even find Afrofuturist sci-fi that interrogates the tenets of body horror.

Whatever your results, I hope you find a book you want to spend some time with!


All Results

The Return of the Sorceress by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

Noor by Nnedi Okrafor

The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

Bestiary by K-Ming Chang

Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklin

To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara

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The Most Influential Sci-Fi Books Of All Time

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