I was surprised that I hadn’t heard of any of these ten novels and authors from The Shades of Orange YouTube review “The Top Science Fiction Books Published in 2023.” Is this an indication of how out of touch I am with new science fiction, or do my tastes just run much different from the reviewer? When and why did I stop reading new science fiction?

Here are Shades of Orange’s Top 10 SF novels for 2023. The numbers in parenthesis are from Goodreads. They are (average rating / # of raters / # who left reviews). Those numbers are from Goodreads users who have marked the title read. It would also be interesting to see the number of people who have the book in their library marked “Want to read.” Titles with an asterisk have audiobook editions.

  1. The Deluge by Stephen Markley (4.22 / 3,107 / 738) *
  2. The Infinite by Ada Hoffmann (4.27 / 241 / 55) *
  3. Ethera Grave by Essa Hansen (4.09 / 141 / 29)
  4. Generation Ship by Michael Mammay (3.83 / 805 / 187) *
  5. The Scourge Between Stars by Ness Brown (3.6 / 3,006 / 808) *
  6. The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon (3.3 / 1,091 / 391) *
  7. Saint Elspeth by Wick Welker (4.11 / 44 / 28) *
  8. The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport Samit Basu (3.67 / 684 / 255)
  9. Bile and Blood by Katherine Franklin (4.50 / 2 / 2)
  10. Rubicon by J. S. Dewes (3.95 / 1,632 / 324) *

I wonder if science fiction fans growing up in the 1930s felt the way I do now when they read best-SF-of-the-year lists in the 1990s? Nearly all my favorite science fiction writers I got to know growing up are dead, and the living ones that became popular during my lifetime evidently aren’t favorites with young readers in 2024 anymore.

If I read these new books, would I find the same kind of excitement I did sixty years ago? Even more interesting to contemplate: Do young readers today find the same kind of excitement that I did in the 1960s and older generations did in the 1930s? Both Doc Smith and Samuel Delany wrote space operas, but were their intent and appeal the same?

If I could somehow get every generation of science fiction readers to write an essay “What I Discovered in Science Fiction” would the revelations be similar?

I am intrigued by the tiles: The Deluge, The Archive Undying, and Generation Ship. Since all three are available as part of my Spotify subscription, I’m going to try them. I keep forgetting that Spotify includes 15 hours of audiobook listening with my music subscription. I think I’ll use that feature to test out new science fiction books since it won’t cost me anything extra.

I’m also impressed with many of the YouTube book reviewers. I assume YouTube is making an enormous impact on what books readers buy today. However, many of my favorite YouTube reviewers only review older science fiction. This is still great because I’ve missed a lot of great science fiction, but it seems to indicate new science fiction gets less attention.

My absolute favorite YouTube reviewer is Bookpilled. He has 36.6 thousand subscribers. I’m absolutely fascinated by which books and authors from the past he still finds significant. Bookpilled doesn’t review new SF.

After Amazon and Audible, I stopped going to new bookstores every week. I think that’s where and why I used to keep up with new releases. Another reason I quit discovering new science fiction at new bookstores is because the science fiction sections grew too large. There was just too much choice, so I gave up.

Shades of Orange has done me a favor by limiting my choices to ten.

by James Wallace Harris, 2/17/24

19 thoughts on “Have You Read Any of These Ten Science Fiction Books from 2023?”

    1. True, but they were favorites of the book reviewer and that’s what I was responding to. I used the Goodreads number to see if other readers liked them.

      It must be damn hard for new authors to build an audience.

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  2. YouTube reviewers do a really good job of covering the latest in science fiction and especially in fantasy. I took me a while to find some channels that mostly focused on older works. And those that do usually have a fairly narrow focus of what they think is good with a focus on certain periods of science fiction. If you are only watching channels that cater to the older works then, no, you are not seeing all the videos about Adrian Tchaikovsky, Martha Wells and Christopher Ruocchio. Almost nobody on YouTube is reviewing Golden Age SF favorably. When they do touch on works that old, there are only certain works that are ever talked about. A lot of wonderful older books are being ignored. And short fiction especially is overlooked by most on YouTube. But short fiction in the magazines is mostly where science fiction grew up. Some writers wrote almost nothing else, like Cordwainer Smith and Harlan Ellison.

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    1. I’ve seen reviewers cover Tchaikovsky, Wells, and Ruocchio, but their older books. What I was meaning by reviewers of newer books was reviewers who review books just as they come out. The kind we used to see in the SF magazines who would get advanced review copies. Do you know of any YouTube reviewers who do that?

      Locus Magazine has a YouTuber that talks about books that are just released, but she doesn’t review them.

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      1. Yes, I see BookTube videos like that from people who read NetGalley copies and post reviews as soon as the book is released. I have done a couple of those myself. Unfortunately the focus of the channels I know of that are doing that are fantasy and horror. Shades of Orange does a variety of genres and yes does get to SF periodically. Good channel. SFF180 used to do more current reviews but has not been doing that lately. Outlaw Bookseller will talk about newer books if he finds something good enough, but not all that often. He has high standards. A lot of Booktubers have been saying that reviews aren’t getting views and have moved away from them as the emphasis. I don’t find that to be the case with my very small channel. My viewers seem to prefer the reviews, but I’m reviewing the old stuff on my channel. In general, there isn’t as much SF being published today as there are fantasy and horror, unless you dig into the Indie books. The books that are being published I agree more Booktubers need to give more promotion. I almost never see reviews of the latest from Doctorow, Asher or Egan—authors who have been very active recently. I also would love to see more talk about the short fiction being published in the magazines. I’ve started trying to do that, but tend to run out of time each month. I guess if we want more current SF books reviewed on Booktube, we all need to comment on the different channels and encouraging them that we will watch.

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  3. I still read only anthologies ..best ofs etc.which are good because they serve up the tried and true but also the GOOD up and comings.Where I don’t know ANY of the authors download Kindle versions.I’m 76 and started with Asimov,Dune etc then nothing for about forty years and ten years ago discovered Book Depository,became rapt with the quality and diversity that abounds and now have a bookcase full.Still much to enjoy,James🧓

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  4. jim,

    Thanks for your interesting explorations of SF review videos.

    I will admit that I did not remember any of those authors or books. That’s not a bad thing, considering they are all novels and I am not focusing on novels as much right now.

    I show stories by two of these authors in my tracking spreadsheet.

    Two of them, the same two authors, have SFADB entries. Two of them were reviewed at Science Fiction Book Club. All but one author has an ISFDB entry. I will admit that I don’t pore over the Locus Magazine book reviews as much as I used to, both because I am focusing more on short fiction and because too much of it is fantasy or other sub-grenres I am not as interested in, so I could have missed these being reviewed there. Or not. See my summary of this, at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-fuw5adyjYqVPM9-_zEpxvlDxwQ-PJRT-EgAQXJ8T9g/edit?usp=sharing

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  5. Only four of them have small entries in the SF Encyclopedia: Ada Hoffmann, Essa Hansen, Michael Mammay and J. S. Dewes.

    I have been reading some anthologies of international SF, like Lavie Tidhars The Best of World SF and second Invisible Planets Chinese SF stories collected and translated by Ken Liu. A lot of unknown names. Some Chinese stories have really impressed me though.

    There are so many books by older writers I still want to read that it is impossible to keep up with new ones. When you go through the critical work of say Budrys there are so many books still to read. Then there are the surveys of science fiction literature like Magill’s, Neliler, Tusk etc. providing another enormous mass of unread material.

    I guess I’m old enough to stick to the past for my reading if not my breathing.

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  7. Just for context; fantasy author Mark Lawrence says that from his and other’s sales data, you can take the number of Goodreads ratings, multiply it by 4 to get a ballpark figure on the number of recently, traditionally published, books sold. If correct, little wonder you don’t hear about them.

    Fantasy is what is selling these days.

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      1. I gather that it’s nearly impossible to make a living writing in any genre. Writing is a side gig for most writers and even so, I’ve heard it said that, at least in SFF, 50% are out of the business in 5 years, 90% in 10 years.

        To put those rating numbers in perspective, the 2023 fantasy book that my granddaughter, nieces, and even my daughter are into, The Fourth Wing, has almost 1.3 million ratings on Goodreads. Go big or go home, in publishing.

        It is strange that most SF booktubers are focused on old SF. The field seems to be looking back on past glories rather than looking to the future. It seems that the future isn’t what it used to be.

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  8. The only book there I’ve read is Generation Ship. I enjoyed it, but I don’t feel it added much to the discussion of generation ships that already exists. It also took some strange turns in the latter half.

    Essa Hansen and J.S. Dewes are authors I’ve read, though not those books. They certainly appear to be darlings of the more book-oriented social media, but I don’t understand the hype surrounding them. Perfectly functional entertainment, but nether wrote series I was interested in continuing.

    I personally avoid much of Book YouTube, as it seems to consist largely of click-grabbing top 10s rather than individual reviews. Those books that do get reviewed tend to be the bigger names or the classics, with little room for the midfield authors in between. There’s also a definite clique to the YouTube community where a book/author really takes off. Christopher Ruocchio, for example, is currently doing the rounds among the book reviewing community. Empire of Silence is a fantastic novel, but it’s certainly become something of a cult success in the reviewing community.

    YouTube (and more recently TikTok) has definitely taken over from venerable blogs as the main source of awareness surrounding books. As a blogger, I do find that somewhat depressing, especially when no one seems to be reading the same books that I am, but it is what it is.

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  9. I haven’t read any of those, but I have also been having fun finding new SFF that I like – more and more I’m delving into the large backlist that I haven’t read.
    Hope you enjoy the ones you are going to try

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