Wallace West

2022 was the single best year in the history of my site for visits and unique viewers!

As I mention year after year, I find reading and writing for the site—and participating in all the SF discussions generated over the year—a necessary and greatly appreciated salve. Whether you are a lurker, occasional visitor, or a regular commenter, thank you for your continued support.

Continuing a trend from 2021, I read only a handful of novels this year. Instead, I devoted my obsessive attention to various science short story review initiatives (listed below), anthologies, and histories of the science fiction genre. Without further ado, here are my favorite novels and short stories I read in 2022 with bonus categories. Descriptions are derived from my linked reviews.

Check out last year’s rundown if you haven’t already for more spectacular reads. I have archived all my annual rundowns on my article index page if you wanted to peruse earlier years.

My Top 5 Science Fiction Novels of 2022 (click titles for my full review)

George Underwood’s cover for the 1979 edition

1. Vonda N. McIntyre’s Dreamsnake (1978), 4.75/5 (Near Masterpiece): Won the 1979 Hugo, Locus, and Nebula Award for Best Novel. Snake journeys across the post-apocalyptic wastes of a future Earth with three serpents healing the sick and caring for the dying. She is a member of the healers, who adopt orphans and rescue the oppressed and train them how to use the serpents. Mist and Sand are genetically modified vipers of terrestrial origin. But Grass comes from another alien world. Snake uses Mist and Sand’s venom to create vaccines, treat diseases, and cure tumors. Grass, the rare dreamsnake, with its alien DNA is the most important of them all–it provides therapeutic pleasure and dreams that facilitate conquering one’s fear and healing in the ill. In Snake’s voyages, she encounters prejudice and violence. A joyous sense of sexual freedom permeates the proceedings. A powerful and different take on a post-apocalyptic worldscape in every possible way.

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Virgil Finlay’s interior art for Sherwood Springer’s “No Land of Nod” in Thrilling Wonder Stories, ed. Samuel Mines (December 1952)

In the March 1955 issue of John Brunner’s fanzine Noise Level, the young author listed a handful of “thematically edgy stories”–including Sherwood Springer’s “No Land of Nod” (1952), Theodore Sturgeon’s “The World Well Lost” (1953), and Lester del Rey’s “For I am A Jealous People (1954)–that he considered a “step forward” in the field [1]. The previous year he had praised elements of Philip José Farmer’s “The Lovers” (1952) in a fan letter to Startling Stories. According to Jad Smith, the stories feature “lived-in, morally ambiguous backgrounds much noisier and dynamic than the two-dimensional backdrops of more conventional fare” that appealed to Brunner’s embryonic views on genre [2]. Brunner viewed social change as a “messy and unpredictable process riddled with moral complexities” [3].

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