This page collects our Season 2 reading recommendations in one convenient location, sorted by episode! For Season 1 recs, see here.
Episodes
Season 2, Episode #1: Make It Make Sense, part 1
If you’re interested in a weird, fucked-up story about alien life-forms using another planet to host their reproduction, Lleu recommends Sofia Samatar’s short story “Honey Bear”.
If you’re interested in a story about alien contact and communication that digs into the details of linguistic first contact (with diagrams!), Nazh recommends Ted Chiang’s short story “Story of Your Life,” also the basis for the (very Hollywoodized) movie Arrival.
If you’re a science nerd looking for a sci-fi novel aimed at science nerds, Roxie recommends Liu Cixin’s Ball Lightning (tr. Joel Martinson), about obsessive scientists attempting to unravel the mysteries of ball lightning.
If you’re STEM-curious and interested in a break from all the fiction we’ve been recommending, Tequila recommends Simon Singh’s Fermat’s Last Theorem (also published in the US as Fermat’s Enigma), a history of Fermat’s Last Theorem, which she emphasizes is accessible to non-mathematicians with appendices for those curious about the math.