Canon Class of 2027 Preview
BREAKING NEWS! The Hinterlands Annual #1 is now available digitally! Get it here.
We’re past the middle of the year now, so it’s a good time to take stock of how things are going. In my case that means talking about the books I’ve read. I’ll be doing a best reads of the year so far list over on my youtube channel in a few weeks, so instead of replicating that here I thought I’d do a brief round-up of just the books that I’m eyeing for next year’s Canon class. These won’t be full write-ups because I’m saving that for the actual canon articles next year, but I’ll give a bit of insight on why I’m considering the work in question, my relationship to it, and any doubts I may have.
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Re-read this recently for the third time, but it was my first read in about a decade. Yeah, it’s as good as it’s reputation says it is. It was one of maybe a dozen books I considered for the inaugural class but wanted to re-read before giving it the full “honours”. It’s in! Possibly alongside the entire Sprawl trilogy depending on how I feel after my re-read of Count Zero and my first read of Mona Lisa Overdrive.
It's interesting, the first time I read this book I found it very challenging and elusive, and yet certain parts of it stuck with me like very little else ever has. This time, after reading a bunch of dense 1000 page classics, it read like a breezy crime thriller, which it also is. I'm exaggerating a little, it's still dense and complicated, but it's so fun! Gibson can write.
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
Read this for the first time last month. A jaw-dropping book. I had read Parable of the Sower and liked but didn’t love it, so I went in expecting the same out of Kindred. I was stunned. Spectacular book.
I won't say I was low on Butler after reading Parable of the Sower last year, because it's a very good book and her writing was a big part of that. However, reading first Blood Child (the short story) and now Kindred has elevated her so highly in my estimation. It's becoming clear to me I just don't really like collapse of society stories that much.
Apollo’s Song by Osamu Tezuka
I was going through my reading history looking Canon prospects I’d overlooked, and realized the Canon had nothing by Tezuka. A few years ago I read every Tezuka comic they had at the library and it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my reading life. Much of Tezuka’s best work is in his adult oriented comics which skew more towards political and psychological thrillers, but he created an absolute treasure trove of science fiction and fantasy work, much of which is more adult than the art style might lead one to believe. Apollo’s Song is one such story, about a cycle of reincarnation where one character continually chases love and finds heartbreak again and again throughout history.
Tezuka's stories are so one of a kind. They feel urgent and special even though half a century or more has passed. Like Jack Kirby he makes the most out of the fast pace and cartoonist's art-style of the golden age of comics. There's nothing like it today.
Astro Boy by Osamu Tezuka
I’m still debating whether Astro Boy belongs in the canon, mostly because I haven’t read as much of it as I’d like. However, what I’ve read is very strong: timeless cartoon stories playing with fresh and new science fiction ideas, unafraid to be dark and frightening despite being written for children. I also feel like it’s an important companion to the next entry.
Some day I'll read all of Astro Boy, and all the other Tezuka stuff they don't have at my library. They had a lot though, I read like 10,000 pages of comics or something. For his more adult stuff I recommend MW, The Book of Human Insects, Ode to Kirohito, and Ayako, among others.
Pluto by Naoki Urasawa
Naoki Urasawa is another Manga creator I’ve become deeply invested in over the last few years. Like Tezuka, much of his best work is in the mystery and thriller genres and so not really relevant to the Canon. Pluto however, his retelling of an iconic Astro Boy story, is the first place I encountered his work and it is still among the finest comics I’ve ever read.
I feel like I'm always talking about how great Urasawa is on here, but I'll do it again goddamn it. I just finished Monster and Master Keaton and they both rule. 20th Century Boys is great, I'm over halfway through that now. Billy Bat just started getting published in English and I read the first volume - that also rocks!
The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World by Harlan Ellison
Fell in love with Ellison’s voice from reading this collection, which rages, sneers, and scoffs at the established powers and values of the world around it. Some great stories in here.
Watch the Youtube Video where I talk about this collection here.
The General Zapped an Angel: Stories by Howard Fast
This was a revelation for me, an incredibly strong collection top to bottom which peaks with some these incredible metaphors which scorn subtlety in a world that has always done the same.
Watch the Youtube Video where I talk about this collection here.
Annihilation
I haven’t loved much of the modern science fiction and fantasy I’ve tried since I began reading regularly again, so I had some trepidation about reading this. Ultimately I loved it, a biologists riff on Roadside Picnic by a lover of ecology and SF history. I picked up a copy of the complete Area X trilogy (now incomplete with the recent addition of a fourth book) and will try to get those in by the end of the year so I can weigh in on the series as a whole.
Excited to read more of the Area X trilogy but also concerned that it can't live up to the first book. Is he going to explain things? He better not!
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
Absolutely triumphant, a must-read for freaks. I love footnote based humour, what can I say? If you measure the diameter of your house from the inside and the outside and they don’t line up? I would probably say don’t worry about it.
Very funny to read this and then the Backrooms comes out. I still haven't seen that. I want to! I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
Hinterlands Zine #2: Summer 2026 is Solaris inspired. Solaris-centric. It is in Solaris’s orbit. It made a big impact on me is what I’m trying to say. It was the second book I finished this year and it may end up as the best.
Keep an eye out for The Hinterlands #2, coming physically at the end of July and digitally at the end of August (hopefully).
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure by Hirohiko Araki
I’m reading through JoJo this year, and just wrapped up Arc 4, Diamond is Unbreakable. Reading JoJo as a writer is a reminder that you can literally write anything. There is no limit to the kinds of crazy stories you can tell when you make stuff up for a living. Never limit yourself. Hirohiko Araki’s brain should be studied.
It's so hard to explain JoJo to somebody. You just have to read it. If you explain it, it sounds like total incomprehensible nonsense. And it is! But that's part of why it's so good.
Hellboy by Mike Mignola
Duh. Have you read Hellboy? One of the most obvious canon slam dunks of all time. Read Hellboy.
I first read the first two volumes of Hellboy like 10 years ago and then just never got around to reading more, and it's so frustrating reading it now because it was basically tailor made for me personally and I could have been living with Hellboy bouncing around inside my head for a fucking decade already and I'm only just reading it now. It's crazy. I wish I'd read it 100 times already. I can't read it fast enough.
BONUS: The Wall by Marlen Haushofer
This is a bonus because I haven’t decided if it belongs in the canon or not. It’s not an edge case because of quality: it’s one of the best books I’ve read this year. It’s not an edge case because of it’s status as a speculative fiction novel: the presence of a science fictional or even magical invisible wall cutting the main character off from the rest of society is unquestionably a speculative fiction element - that’s not a thing that happens in real life. That’s speculative.
At the same time the book is primarily a literary fiction novel where the wall is a plot contrivance to strand a middle class urban woman in the countryside. The analysis in the afterward, which is compelling, is that the social and physical violence levelled against women who try to live truly alone means that to even write this novel of solitude, a supernatural contrivance is required. This isn’t really a novel about a woman grappling with the end of the world, although it motions towards that in places and makes clear: the world seems to have ended! This is my dilemma: a book that certainly qualifies based on quality, technically qualifies based on speculative fiction elements, but thematically doesn’t really “feel” like speculative fiction. I think I’m going to include it anyway! I’ve read a handful of books this year that are borderline speculative fiction like this but are categorized more often with literary fiction based on the reputations of their authors or the choices of their publishers and marketing teams (genre is ultimately about branding more than content), and I haven’t liked most of them! (I won’t name names because that’s not the kind of blog I run, but my storygraph reviews are public). I think staking a claim for a literary spec-fic book that I do like is valuable. I’ve convinced myself. Into the canon it goes.
Really really good book! It's very sad!
Thanks for reading yet another blog post about my silly “canon”. Long term I plan to write ambitious blogs about the history of science fiction and fantasy, author and editor deep dives, and other research heavy projects, but those take a lot of time and effort. I’m going to work my way up to those, but in the meantime I plan to keep the blog active and front of mind with shorter posts like this one. I hope you’ll come along for the ride.
Here's a bonus just for you brave readers: My ten favourite fiction novels I've read so far this year. This isn't going in the mid-year review video, and this may totally change by the time we get to the actual year end review. Only you will know if I changed my mind.
- Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
- House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
- Kindred by Octavia Butler
- Underworld by Don DeLillo
- The Wall by Marlen Haushofer
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
- The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World by Harlan Ellison
- Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
- The General Zapped an Angel by Howard Fast
- The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth by Veeraporn Nitiprapha
Links and Recommendations:
I finished The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson last week, and I started off lukewarm on it but by the final story I was all the way in. A writer I'm interested in investigating more thoroughly (Largesse was his final book before his death).
I'm hearing some of my dear friends were low or at least not as high as me on Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. They're wrong. See it! See it as big as possible! I hadn't even thought about incorporating The Odyssey into my upcoming (Fall 2026) zine on Bronze Age Fantasy, but I sure will be thinking about doing that now.
As I mentioned at the top of the page, the digital edition of Hinterlands Annual #1 is now available here.
Last week's youtube video is below if you haven't seen it yet. I'm planning to switch to a Friday release date for youtube videos (for all those eager readers settling down with pizza and a beer looking for a youtube video to watch after a long week's work... what, that's just me?), and blog posts will stay as close to Monday as I can manage.
Okay bye!