Three Literary Science Fiction Books I have Read Recently and Enjoyed

I have been quite lucky, the last three books I read have all been bangers, and each are very different from each other.
My taste in books is very much literary science fiction. I am much more interested in humans and their response to technology and extreme change than I am in hard science fiction. These three books all fit into my personal taste very well.
The newest book here is The Employees: A Workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn as it was written in 2018 and was translated into English in 2020. It is a series of statements made by employees on a spaceship that has left a devastated Earth. It has recently landed on an alien planet and picked up some objects. The statements all seem to be answers to questions asked by some kind of HR representative. It is a very sensual book and seems to deal with a lot of ideas around loss and longing. It has a lot of typical science fiction tropes- alien world, androids, apocalypse, etc.- but the framing of the story and the very personal nature of the statements really brings something beautiful and deeply affecting to the surface. It feels very real in how it shows the emotional turmoil of those who find themselves in this situation.
The other two books are a little older. The first of these , Termush by Sven Holm, was written in 1967 and was translated into English in 1969. It is the story of a handful of people who have survived an apocalyptic event. They paid for places in a hotel with underground shelters that could survive the oncoming end of the world. The story starts s they emerge from their bunkers into the hotel. the management of the hotel do not allow them to go out and their life is quite regimented. They are protected by security and looked after by a doctor, all the while having everything they know about what has happened to the world come from the possibly unreliable management. It is a very slow burn and is told from a first person perspective, so it is a tainted an unreliable tale told by someone whose paranoid grows by the day. It is quite short and the prose is incredibly clear and lucid, very contemporary. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I wouldn’t expect any amount of heavy action sequences. This is very much a fable that is told from a singular person who has little by way of facts to go by, and deals more with how they handle the situation psychologically.
The Third book, The Ark Sakura by Kobo Abe, was written in 1984 and translated into English in 1988. Kobo Abe is very well respected Japanese author and this is a book that skirts the lines of science fiction. It is again a first person narrative told by someone who seems reliable but has a very distinct way of looking the world. Maybe quite naive, but they tell the story in such a way that we the reader maybe have more insights into other people’s motives than they do. It is about a man who lives in an underground quarry that they have kitted out for the apocalypse. On his weekly trip into the city he meets a trio of very suspect characters who come to join him in his shelter. the whole story I told in what I would call ‘real time’. We are told the story of one day from beginning to end with no jumps in time or cuts to different perspectives. I was fascinated the entire way through and drawn on by the incredible sense of suspense. From the beginning you have no idea where the story can be going, and each thing that happens is a revelation. It is also quite funny when it isn’t being horrific towards the human race. Again, no spoilers, but it does get a bit chaotic. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Have a look for these books, they are well worth a read.

by The_Eyes_Halve_It