National Science Fiction Day celebrates Asimov, speculative literature

With “The Rise of Skywalker,” the latest “Star Wars” sequel, currently blasting the competition at the box office, science fiction films are enjoying as high a profile as ever since the original movie in the franchise debuted in 1977.

Today, fans of the genre are encouraged to take a deeper dive into its original, written format, as part of the celebration of National Science Fiction Day.

The day to spotlight science fiction has been celebrated annually on Jan. 2 since 2012, according to timeanddate.com. The date was chosen because it is when seminal science fiction author Isaac Asimov, who died in 1992, celebrated his birth, 100 years ago in Russia.

Asimov created the influential “Foundation” series of novels and its concept of psychohistory and set forth the “Three Laws of Robotics” that are a benchmark for how human interactions with artificial intelligence have been portrayed in fiction.

While you couldn’t go wrong with observing National SF Day by cracking open one of Asimov’s classic works, the ever-evolving field has many current authors worthy of discovery.

Though some of the recommended titles stretch the boundaries of science fiction and might better be labeled as speculative fiction, Goodreads.com offers the following top vote-getters for best science fiction books of 2019 in its annual Goodreads Choice Awards:

1. “Recursion” by Blake Crouch (41,261 votes out of 225,203) — A New York City cop and a neuroscientist join forces against an opponent that is attacking the fabric of the past.

2. “Dark Age (Red Rising Saga No. 5)” by Pierce Brown (35,556 votes) — In the sequel to “Iron Gold,” war, political machinations and an outlawed revolutionary leader are part of this tale of a society with references to Ancient Rome that has colonized the solar system.

3. “Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb No. 1)” by Tamsyn Muir (23,273 votes) — In this “space fantasy,” swordswoman Gideon looks to escape a life of servitude, but her skills are needed by a necromancer who seeks to gain immortality.

4. “This is How You Lose the Time War” by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (20,344 votes) —Two time-traveling agents who represent warring factions begin to exchange letters and fall in love.

5. “The Deep” by Rivers Solomon with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes (18,350 votes) — Yetu is the historian among water-dwelling descendants of pregnant, enslaved African women who were thrown overboard. Swimming to the surface to escape traumatic ancestral memories, she learns more about her past, her people’s future and the identity they must reclaim.

Regionally, the University of Pittsburgh Library System observed National Science Fiction Day with a display of genre titles.