Among Others

Among Others has magic and witches and fairies, so, it is a fantasy, right? Well I'm not so sure. This book fits right in with mainstream literature and really doesn't need to be saddled with a genre label. It may be a fantasy, or it may just have an unreliable narrator. It's entirely possible that the narrator is not sane, though towards the end of the book, she does get a witness to see fairies. Or maybe she just tells us that he saw them.

Mori, a fifteen year old girl, is in a strange family situation, having run away from her mother, a dark witch. She tells us all about it, the whole story, in her daily journal entries. Her twin sister was killed and she was partially crippled when hit by a car trying to avoid one of her mother's spells. She's pretty sure her father's three sisters are witches, too. They enroll her in a boarding school and she joins a science fiction book club at the town library. She's an avid reader and loves science fiction. She discovers the book club after using magic to find a karass. This is an allusion to Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, but I don't think she ever really explains that. She does that a lot. There are references to Anarres, George Orr, and others. She even says "hot jets". If you haven't read the books these references are from, they'll just go right over your head. I know there were many that I didn't recognize because I hadn't read the books. She mentions a lot of science fiction books, lots and lots. She loves Zelazny, Heinlein, Le Guin, and Vonnegut; Doesn't think much of Dick.

Here is a listing, probably not complete, of the books (and a handful of short stories) mentioned in Among Others, in order of appearance:

1. Lord of the Rings
2. Ursula Le Guin's The Wind's Twelve Quarters, Volume 2
3. John Boyd's The Last Starship from Earth
4. Judith Kerr's When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
5. Anderson's Ensign Flandry
6. Roger Zelazny's Creatures of Light and Darkness
7. Empire Star by Samuel R. Delany.
8. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
9. Cat's Cradle
10. Breakfast of Champions
11. The Sirens of Titan
12. Zenna Henderson-Pilgrimage
13. A Canticle for Leibowitz
14. Dying Inside
15. Have Spacesuit, Will Travel
16. The Chrysalids
17. The Bull From the Sea
18. The Charioteer
19. The Lathe of Heaven
20. Dragonflight
21. Le Guin's City of Illusions
22. Larry Niven's The Flight of the Horse
23. Ringworld
24. A Gift From Earth
25. Out of the Silent Planet,
26. James Tiptree, Jr.' s Warm Worlds and Otherwise
27. Nine Princes in Amber
28. The Guns of Avalon
29. Our Mutual Friend
30. Samuel Delany's Triton
31. Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle
32. The Starlight Barking
33. Purposes of Love
34. The Last of the Wine
35. The Magus.
36. "The Girl Who Was Plugged In"
37. "Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death"
38. The Left Hand of the Electron
39. The End of Eternity
40. The Communist Manifesto
41. The Symposium,
42. World of Ptaavs, Niven
43. Time Enough For Love
44. Sturgeon story in Dangerous Visions, "If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?"
45. Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Spell Sword
46. Delany's Babel 17
47. Glory Road
48. Spider Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon
49. Waldo and Magic, Inc.
50. Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword
51. Telempath
52. Up the Line
53. Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains
54. Heritage of the Star
55. Four Quartets
56. Ted Hughes's Crow
57. Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsinger
58. Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen Donaldson
59. A Wizard of Earthsea.
60. The Silmarillion
61. The Hobbit
62. The Crystal Cave
63. The Shockwave Rider, Brunner
64. Stand on Zanzibar
65. Arthur C. Clarke's Imperial Earth
66. Childhood's End
67. 2001
68. Born With the Dead
69. Alan Garner, Red Shift
70. The Dispossessed.
71. The Shockwave Rider
72. Clifford Simak's City
73. Frank Herbert's Dune
74. Plato's Republic
75. Josephine Tey, Daughter of Time
76. Nevil Shute's An Old Captivity
77. Brave New World,
78. The Eye of the Heron
79. The Word For World is Forest
80. The Left Hand of Darkness
81. Stepsons of Terra
82. Voyage to Alpha Centauri
83. Poul Anderson's Guardians of Time
84. The World Inside
85. Make Room! Make Room!
86. The Dark Is Rising,"
87. The Mote in God's Eye
88. The Pern books: The White Dragon
89. Dragonquest
90. Citizen of the Galaxy
91. The Grey King
92. Silver on the Tree
93. The Farthest Shore!
94. Emma
95. Star Wars
96. Isaac Asimov's Guide to Science
97. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
98. Four Quartets
99. Charisma by Michael Coney
100. Hello Summer, Goodbye
101. Sign of the Unicorn!
102. the Foundation Trilogy
103. The Dream Master
104. Clement's Mission of Gravity
105. Piers Anthony, Vicinity Cluster
106. Chaining the Lady,
107. A Spell for Chameleon
108. Mary Renault's Return to Night
109. Brat Farrar
110. Isle of the Dead.
111. Return to Night
112. The Greeks by H. D. F. Kitto
113. Brunner's Telepathist.
114. Space Hostages
115. "Houston, Houston"
116. Doorways in the Sand
117. Roadmarks
118. Charisma
119. Heinlein: The Number of the Beast
120. Starship Troopers
121. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,"
122. This Immortal
123. The Sword of Shannara
124. "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side"
125. Mary Renault's The Persian Boy
126. Phaedrus
127. The Laws
128. Pavane.
129. Times Without Number
130. Dick's The Man in the High Castle
131. Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee
132. Christopher Priest's A Dream of Wessex
133. Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen
134. Too Many Magicians.
135. Theodore Sturgeon's A Touch of Strange,
136. Christopher Priest's Inverted World,
137. Gate of Ivrel by C. J. Cherryh
138. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil

There is a Goodreads Listopia with a somewhat different list than mine, here: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/12864.Novels_mentioned_in_Among_Others_by_Jo_Walton