Read any good science fiction books with disabled characters lately?

[kestrell]

I'm thinking of writing about images of disability in science fiction books which have been published since I wrote my thesis on the subject in 2005.

Peter Watts's _Blindsight_ came out a few months after I submitted my thesis, so that is one, but I would mostly like to hear about recent books.

So, hit me with your recommendations!

Comments

[bibliofile]

Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach has a protagonist who is an amputee and who replaced their limbs with many tentacles.

Mishell Baker's Arcadia series has multiple characters with physical and/or mental disabilities. The protagonist of the first book, Borderline (2016), is a double amputee with borderline personality disorder.

Richard Powers's The Overstory (2019) focuses on several characters over time. One of them has significant physical disabilities; another is a veteran with PTSD and related mental health issues, IIRC.

The graphic novel series Polarity, by Max Bemis & Jorge Coelho, is about the experience of bipolar/manic depressive disorder.

Goldenland past dark is a 2013 novel (from ChiZine) about disability and physical difference, centers around a circus in the 1960s.

but wait, there's more (at least, of books that I've read myself)

[bibliofile]

In the rebooted Ms. Marvel comics, my LibraryThing tags tell me that Volume 7, "Damage per second", includes hacks for physical disabilities. I don't recall the details, alas. Written by G. Willow Wilson.

Earth girl (2013, Pyr) by Janet Edwards is a YA SF book about how humans can travel instantly to other plants -- unless you're handicapped in some way. The protagonist is allergic to planets that aren't Earth, so she's stuck there with the other broken humans. However, students do travel to Earth for stuff like archaeological digs, which the protagonist joins.

WWW : wake (2009) by Robert J. Sawyer features a girl who's been blind since birth. Tech to give her vision also lets her see the Web. I remember that parts of this book were mildly annoying, but that sometimes happens with Sawyer's work, for me. It's the first book in a trilogy; I haven't read the other books.

That's all I've got, for now.