The Science Fiction Book Club’s last comic of the summer is On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden. This book has everything: space, ancient architecture, fish, teen boarding school drama, love, sports, and more. Walden started writing it as “a version of outer space that [she] would want to live in” and ended up with a 544-page epic comic.
Walden is perhaps best known for her Eisner award winning memoir Spinning. After Spinning was released, she worked on what she was calling “Space Book,” which later became On a Sunbeam. Much of it was completed while vacationing alone in Japan. She posted each chapter as she finished it online, and once she was done it was published as a print book. You can read it online here (the About page has a lot of good info about its creation!). So far, it’s been listed as a Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner and got an excellent review in The New Yorker.
If you’d rather read the physical book, you can find On a Sunbeam here at the Claire T. Carney Library, at your local public library, or through interlibrary loan.
We look forward to chatting with you about On a Sunbeam on Monday, August 12th at 12pm in Library 314.