Jones is great, yes! (And I can list a lot of good DC nonfiction; you joined bookclub too late for The Great Society Subway, but it's a lot of fun, and of course Tiptree spent a substantial portion of her life in and around DC so there's a lot of DC in her biography. Which is not "fun," but is powerful and compelling.) But I was thinking specifically of SF&F, where the DC-set books I can think of include:
Future Washington: anthology of short science fiction about DC, of which I have forgotten literally every bit except the Cory Doctorow story where ants control car navigation. And that particular story is set in Southern California.
Andre Norton's Star Ka'at: fairly forgettable middlegrade science fiction. Does have a solid sense of place in its set-in-DC parts, with the slight weirdness that Norton is clearly drawing for her personal memories of DC in the 1940s--but (based on the state of background Cold War politics) setting it in the 1970s. This is a little jarring if you know how DC's urban geography changed across those decades.
Kim Stanley Robinson's The Blind Geometer: interesting enough science fiction, very cleanly drawn DC setting, unfortunately contains the single worst-written sex scene I have ever had the misfortune to read. This is the book with "Now with each plunge into her (cylinder capped by cone, sliding through cylinder into rough sphere.)" Robinson has written other DC-set books I haven't read that . . . probably contain less painfully described anatomy?
Elizabeth Hand's Winterlong, Waking the Moon, and probably other books that I haven't read: fantasy/post-apocalypse. Excellent DC character; Hand knows this city, and I know and love many of the obscure places she chooses to set scenes. Also, gender essentialist in a particular second wave feminist sort of way that IMO thinks it's more radical than it is. I'm just going to quote Hand from an interview here: "up until I was about six I had my own very fluid ideas of gender in that I believed that, somehow, an individual could choose whether or not s/he wanted to be a boy or a girl. I identified more with boys than girls, so I assumed that eventually everything would sort itself out and I’d end up on that side of the bullpen. I was pretty bummed out when I realized I was stuck being a girl." This approach to gender kinda pervades the books.
Nnedi Okorafor's The Book of Phoenix: perfectly fine book, mostly not set in DC, that has an extended sequence set at my employer that irritates me deeply. I would like it better if it was zero percent set in DC.
Claire O'Dell's A Study in Honor: Sherlock Holmes done as near-future science fiction with lesbians, set in DC. I hated this passionately, and not only for the petty reason that at one point it describes a bus commute, naming specific real bus lines, that makes absolutely no sense as a way to get from point A to point B. I admit that is part of the reason, though (or at least, indicative of some of the broader problems). If you can't be troubled to get the details right, handwave and make shit up.
Morowa Yejide's Creatures of Passage: more magical realism than fantasy; also, more horror than I usually look for. Gorgeous sense of place; meandering sense of anything else. You might like it more than I did? I don't think it's a bad book, it's just not the kind of book I prefer.
Alaya Dawn Johnson's Love Is the Drug: have not actually read this! I should fix that. After, you know, I read the other Johnson that is sitting on my shelf unread.
Oh, and in other genre fiction, Barbara Hambly set one of her Benjamin January mysteries in DC; that was pretty good, as I recall. Good Man Friday. But I don't know how you feel about mystery in general, and it's not a great place to start the series. (Speaking of which, you know the Vo with mammoths is book four in a series, right?)
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Date: 2025-07-07 02:46 pm (UTC)Future Washington: anthology of short science fiction about DC, of which I have forgotten literally every bit except the Cory Doctorow story where ants control car navigation. And that particular story is set in Southern California.
Andre Norton's Star Ka'at: fairly forgettable middlegrade science fiction. Does have a solid sense of place in its set-in-DC parts, with the slight weirdness that Norton is clearly drawing for her personal memories of DC in the 1940s--but (based on the state of background Cold War politics) setting it in the 1970s. This is a little jarring if you know how DC's urban geography changed across those decades.
Kim Stanley Robinson's The Blind Geometer: interesting enough science fiction, very cleanly drawn DC setting, unfortunately contains the single worst-written sex scene I have ever had the misfortune to read. This is the book with "Now with each plunge into her (cylinder capped by cone, sliding through cylinder into rough sphere.)" Robinson has written other DC-set books I haven't read that . . . probably contain less painfully described anatomy?
Elizabeth Hand's Winterlong, Waking the Moon, and probably other books that I haven't read: fantasy/post-apocalypse. Excellent DC character; Hand knows this city, and I know and love many of the obscure places she chooses to set scenes. Also, gender essentialist in a particular second wave feminist sort of way that IMO thinks it's more radical than it is. I'm just going to quote Hand from an interview here: "up until I was about six I had my own very fluid ideas of gender in that I believed that, somehow, an individual could choose whether or not s/he wanted to be a boy or a girl. I identified more with boys than girls, so I assumed that eventually everything would sort itself out and I’d end up on that side of the bullpen. I was pretty bummed out when I realized I was stuck being a girl." This approach to gender kinda pervades the books.
Nnedi Okorafor's The Book of Phoenix: perfectly fine book, mostly not set in DC, that has an extended sequence set at my employer that irritates me deeply. I would like it better if it was zero percent set in DC.
Claire O'Dell's A Study in Honor: Sherlock Holmes done as near-future science fiction with lesbians, set in DC. I hated this passionately, and not only for the petty reason that at one point it describes a bus commute, naming specific real bus lines, that makes absolutely no sense as a way to get from point A to point B. I admit that is part of the reason, though (or at least, indicative of some of the broader problems). If you can't be troubled to get the details right, handwave and make shit up.
Morowa Yejide's Creatures of Passage: more magical realism than fantasy; also, more horror than I usually look for. Gorgeous sense of place; meandering sense of anything else. You might like it more than I did? I don't think it's a bad book, it's just not the kind of book I prefer.
Alaya Dawn Johnson's Love Is the Drug: have not actually read this! I should fix that. After, you know, I read the other Johnson that is sitting on my shelf unread.
Oh, and in other genre fiction, Barbara Hambly set one of her Benjamin January mysteries in DC; that was pretty good, as I recall. Good Man Friday. But I don't know how you feel about mystery in general, and it's not a great place to start the series. (Speaking of which, you know the Vo with mammoths is book four in a series, right?)