book recommendations

covers of 9 recommended books

Hopepunk Books

In these challenging times, could you use a little lightness in your heart? A little boost of hope to give you the energy to keep on fighting for what’s right? Check out Hopepunk books!

What is Hopepunk?

Hopepunk is a genre of speculative fiction (sci-fi). In 2017, Alexandra Rowland coined the term. They went on to say:

Hopepunk says that kindness and softness doesn’t equal weakness, and that in this world of brutal cynicism and nihilism, being kind is a political act. An act of rebellion. It’s about DEMANDING a better, kinder world, and truly believing that we can get there if we care about each other as hard as we possibly can, with every drop of power in our little hearts.

True hopepunk is not just “hopeful” and not just “cozy.” This article in Vox further defines it:

[hopepunk is] a narrative message of “keep fighting, no matter what.” … [not just] a brightly optimistic state of being, but as an active political choice, made with full self-awareness that things might be bleak or even frankly hopeless, but you’re going to keep hoping, loving, being kind nonetheless.

Hopepunk is in the eye of the beholder, so not everyone agrees on what counts. For example, though Becky Chambers’ books appear on virtually every list of hopepunk books, Brendan Hughes argues that Chambers isn’t really hopepunk because her stories aren’t really set in dark times. So, perhaps all the books I list here won’t be strictly “hopepunk” but they are all books that I loved that lightened my load as I read them.

My Recommendations

First: Everything by Becky Chambers! Includng The Monk and Robot duology: A Psalm for the Wild-Built and a Prayer for the Crown Shy) Wayfarers Series (The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, etc.) In an Ask Me Anything interview, Chambers said

I love a good spaceship battle as much as anyone, but the things I’m most interested in writing are the little moments. An exchange between friends. An argument that affects no one but the participants. A bad day. A good day. A meal. A home. Because that’s the stuff that we actually spend our lives on, right? The grand majority of us aren’t embroiled in big political to-dos or planetary problems. We’re just trying to feed our families and do good work and find some meaning in it all.

9 recommended hopepunk books

More:

Set My Heart to Five by Simon Stephenson. I just finished this book and found it a delightful read. A bot, programmed not to feel, sees old tearjerker movies and finds his shirt is inexplicably wet after the movie – maybe an environmental irritant caused his eyes to water? Then he gradually awakens. A tribute to the beauty of humanity, while being ironic and witty. (A little like Murderbot in vibe.) Back in 2020, rumor was that Edgar Wright was doing a movie of this – would love to see that happen!

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. While this is certainly not a Polyanna everything is happy book, the idea of a traveling symphony performing Shakespeare in a post-apocalyptic world feels hopeful to me. The Station Eleven series on HBO Max was very good but differed substantially from the novel.

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal (and other books in the Lady Astronaut series). An alternate history where in 1952, a meteorite obliterated much of the east coast of the US and will make Earth inhospitable. How the lady astronauts (and other diverse folks) help save humanity.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, and his other books. (And the movie The Martian.) I also like these books (and several others on this list) for being what podcaster Jeff Cannata calls “competence porn” – smart people doing smart things. Here’s a post I wrote about The Martian as a study in character.

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey. I debated about including this one, as I don’t feel it was as good as I wanted it to be. But… how can you resist a pulp western style novel with queer librarians traveling a post-apocalyptic world to spread resistance against authoritarianism.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells. The first in the Murderbot series.Where yes, a “murderbot” hacks their system to claim its freedom and despite claiming they would prefer watching soap operas, keeps helping out the humans around them with a grudging affection developing. Although I really liked this book, I didn’t want to pursue reading more in the series. Murderbot on Apple TV was a fun series, worth watching. Darkly optimistic.

The Bear by Andrew Krivak. Different from anything I’ve ever read in terms of pacing and plot. Just spending time with the last two humans on earth (father and daughter) and how they survive, even as one is lost.

Some books I read long ago that I think qualify as hopepunk, though I’d have to re-visit them to be sure: The Left Hand of Darkness is Ursula K. Le Guin’s; Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy, Handmaid’s Tale (yes it’s dark… but Rowland used it as an initial example of what counts as hopepunk) and The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk. (An idea from this book has been in my head for decades now… in any community, there are jobs that nobody wants to do like perhaps cleaning toilets or hauling trash – what if every citizen spent one day of their week doing one of these thankless jobs?)

And the Hunger Games and many other dystopian YA would fit in the Hopepunk realm of people finding ways to choose kindness even as they fight cruelty.

Here are a few books that I haven’t read yet that appear again and again on lists of recommended hopepunk: Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki; Parable of the Sower or Dawn Octavia Butler; The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune; and This is How You Lose the Timewar by El-Mohtar and Gladstone.

Escaping or Re-charging?

I am writing this post on January 30, 2026, which many people across the US are recognizing as a “general strike” day against the Trump administration. This is not a time in history when I believe we can just “escape” from the world and ignore what is going on. I do believe that we need to find ways to keep our energy up and keep our hope alive, and maybe these books will provide that little respite for you.

I encourage you to check out a post by Alexandra Rowland. They say not to mistake the hopepunk genre for the “noblebright” genre.

Noblebright is about goodness and truth and vanquishing evil forever… The work will never be finished. ….Evil cannot be vanquished, only beaten back for a day or two… Ask it of hopepunk, then: “What’s the point?” … The fight itself is the point…. It’s about doing the one little thing you can do, even if it’s useless: planting seeds in the midst of the apocalypse, spitting on a wildfire, bailing out the ocean with a bucket. Individual action is almost always pointless. Hope and strength comes from our bonds with each other, from the actions we take as a community, holding hands in the dark.

I have a magnet on my car that reads “choose kindness, show empathy, demand justice” and that seems a good encapsulation of the hopepunk world view.

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Finding the Books

Note: This post includes Amazon affiliate links, because that’s an easy way to take you to a book description and reviews. (And yes, if you buy something after clicking on one of those links, I do get a small bonus, which helps to support my work.) But rather than supporting Amazon, I encourage people to support their local libraries (like KCLS in King County, WA) and independent bookstores.

Check out Book Riot’s list of independent bookstores around the country, or check out IndieBound, where you can choose to shop directly from them but some of the proceeds are sent to independent bookstores, or you can choose “shop local” to be transferred to your local store’s website to complete the purchase. Or, if you read e-books, Bookshop.org allows you to support local independent bookstores but buy and read in your web browser or on an iPhone or Android app.