I absolutely despise when someone starts a TikTok or YouTube video with, “I know you haven’t seen me in a while.”

Why? Because I have the object permanence of a fruit fly and I didn’t miss you. I love you, I love your content, but if you didn’t show up on my FYP, you've ceased to exist in my little fly brain. And now you've reminded me of that, and I feel like a garbage person. A crap friend. Yes, I know it’s a parasocial relationship—but I still feel bad I didn’t check on you.

THAT BEING SAID...
You probably haven’t seen my face in a while—and that’s totally fine. I don’t expect you to have missed me, or even noticed my absence. (In fact I kinda hope you haven't because then I'll feel like I've let you down.)

How could you notice my sabbatical when the world is actively burning?

So what does a reader do when we’re not out protesting, joining the PTO in preparation to overthrow the school board, showing up for our libraries, writing letters and making phone calls where we pretend to be very disappointed middle road republicans to our alt right Alabama reps so they will actually listen to us, popping our anxiety meds, and drinking gross water out of spite because we must outlive our oppressors?

We retreat into our books.

I don’t know about you, but the usual comfort reads aren’t hitting like they used to. I reread The Locked Tomb—my favorite series of all time—and even THAT couldn’t touch the earth-shattering moroseness I’m currently cultivating like a sad little houseplant.

"Six for the truth over solace in lies." —Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth (Yes, I'm sixth house, even though I'm a little goth girlie Harrow wannabe. DUH)

But like any autistic eldest daughter baddie, I know how to operate on burnout. I know how to bury the feelings in a neat little grave six feet under my to-do list and keep going. Because if I don’t, who will? (Rhetorical question. I know many of you are doing far more than I am, and I see you. I love you. I’m in awe of you. You are my inspiration, my validation, my collective-care baddies of the resistance. RAGE against the machine my friends.) This is just my way of coping with ongoing psychological trauma. It’s called Eldest Daughter Syndrome, and if that phrase alone unlocked something deep in your soul, I recommend this read:
https://www.verywellmind.com/eldest-daughter-syndrome

Anyway—my old favorites aren’t doing it. And leaning into nonfiction like They Thought They Were Free (which I do highly recommend… to myself—it’s been silently screaming at me from the shelf for months now while I continue to lack the emotional fortitude to actually open it) is just getting a little too real.

So what do we do?

Cozy sci-fi.
Oh, you thought I was going to say smut, didn’t you? Bestie, you’re not wrong. But there are 3,564,745 Booktokers already making that content. Only, like, five of us are carrying the sci-fi torch full-time. So yes—read the smut. Hydrate and get railed in space. But when you want sci-fi recs? Come to an expert. It's me, hi, I'm the problem it's me. Oh shit wait, did we cancel Taylor Swift?

Now that I feel like one of those food blogs that makes you scroll through a 2,000-word personal essay just to get to the damn recipe, here we go.

I mean, what’s life without a little foreplay?

Here’s some cozy sci-fi for your morose heart:

1. A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

   At just 150 pages, no war, no fascism, just a nonbinary monk having a midlife crisis with a tea cart and a robot in the woods, this low stakes cozy robot book is the next book I plan to pick up. I think. Don't make me commit ok?!

2. Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

   "But I've already read that!" You'll tell me. Yes, but did you know that the third book in the saga, Brigands & Breadknives, is currently on Netgalley? It comes out in November!

3. Dead Endia by Hamish Steele

   Graphic novels are just so low commitment and high impact. When you need that serotonin you get from marking a book Finished on Storygraph (bestie if you're still on Goodreads we need to talk) wildly fun graphic novel with a queer MC that has an accompanying cartoon on Netflix. Yes, they cancelled future seasons because MAGA, and my kids are still PISSED, as they should be.

4. Space Battle Lunchtime by Natalie Riess

   While we're discussing graphic novels, Space Battle Lunchtime is an adorable read for anyone in the middle of the Sci-fi Reader/Great British Bakeoff fan Venn diagram. And if you say this book is for kids I SWEAR TO BEYONCE y'all, all books are for anyone who wants to read them. Shut up and let me enjoy my kiddie stories.

5. Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente

   OK, so it's a bit high stakes because if this band doesn't win the competition, Earth gets vaporized. But it's satirical and biting and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy funny, so it's on my list.

6. Finna by Nino Cipri

   Neurodivergent and queer IKEA employees get sucked into an interdimensional wormhole in search of a missing grandma. If you lean chaotic good, this is for you. (Imagine if ADHD and queer breakups powered the multiverse.)

7. Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

   I'm admittedly smitten with Okorafor since my read of Death of the Author (an excellent read but SUPER HEAVY so if you have ableism triggers be warned) but in Book 1 of Binti a Black girl leaves home to go to space university with jellyfish aliens. And it gets heavier in future books so it's nice to have choices in this economy isn't it?

8. The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa and Louise Heal Kawai (Translator)

   Hear me out: short chapters. Talking cats. One POV. Low conflict. No blood. These are murder mysteries that never actually stress you out.

9. The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz

   Admittedly not low stakes, but the plot takes place over a couple hundred years and 2 generations, so it's not super stressful, but if those Chicken Soup for the Soul books actually felt like chicken soup for your soul, this book would be good soup. (If y'all don't make Harrow jokes in the comments after I gave you an opening like THAT I will truly lose faith in humanity.)

10. Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove

    Dracula and werewolves and Frankenstein...on a spaceship. This book is such a weird and tropey mash-up that you will be laughing out loud and saying "aweeee" while reading it. I promise.

Reading is supposed to be fun and enriching, and while sometimes that means a cognitive obstacle course that requires a PhD and a trauma therapist to get through, these books are here to help you recover from that one novel.

Did I miss your favorite neurodivergent-brain-safe book? Drop it in the comments or send me recs—I’m always looking to restock the emotional support TBR. Bonus points if it’s weird, queer, or in any way smartass. You know what I like, give me more daddy. (Ok, I made it weird.)

And if you liked this list—or just enjoy supporting reader-powered publishing—consider subscribing. I may be in a bit of a slump right now, but let’s be honest: at some point my autistic brain is going to latch onto something with the intensity of a TikTok algorithm sniffing out your deepest emotional wound, and then I’ll produce an obscene amount of content in a 48-hour frenzy (in which I forget to eat sleep or pee) of hyperfixated brilliance. It’s not a matter of if. It’s WHEN.

Get in now so you can say you were here before the content deluge hit.