Five of the best books with ambitious birds

Nancy Kress’s SF has won six Nebulas, two Hugos, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Award. Her most recent book is Tomorrow's Kin, an expansion of the Nebula-winning novella “Yesterday’s Kin,” which takes the story forward several generations.

One of Kress's five favorite "birds that are more than warm-blooded bipeds—birds with ambition," as shared at Tor.com:

All The Birds in The Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

This novel, winner of the 2017 Nebula, defies classification. It’s a coming-of-age YA, it’s a dystopian cautionary tale, it’s a war between (and within) magic and science, it’s a love story, it’s genuinely strange in the best possible way. It’s also about birds, who here serve a dual function: They introduce the heroine to her magical powers as a future witch. They also act the traditional part of canaries in a coal mine, warning of eminent disaster, this time for the whole world. “Too late!” they cry, until the lovely writing and quirky inventiveness of Anders’s plot mitigate that to, “Almost too late. Practically too late.”

Never has a pigeon been so prescient.

Read about another book on the list.

All The Birds in The Sky is among Laura Lam's five top books about futuristic California.

My Book, The Movie: All the Birds in the Sky.

--Marshal Zeringue