When the Moon Hits Your Eye, John Scalzi (Tor 9780765389091, $29.99, 336pp, hc) March 2025.
In When the Moon Hits Your Eye, John Scalzi posits a question: What will humanity as a whole do when forced to confront something truly impossible happening right before their eyes? And because this is Scalzi, that impossible thing also needs to be thoroughly ridiculous. In the blink of an eye, the moon ...Read More
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Future’s Edge, Gareth L. Powell (Titan 978-1-80336-863-4, $17.99, 352pp, tp) February 2025. Cover by Julia Lloyd.
Gareth L. Powell’s Future’s Edge exists in a universe where aliens have contacted humans recently and human/alien interaction has been going along quite merrily, right up until it isn’t. In his first book since 2023’s equally space-operatic Descendant Machine, Powell gives us an adventure featuring alien technology, sentient spaceships, and human derring-do. ...Read More
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Beneath Ceaseless Skies 1/9/25 Small Wonders 1/25 Lightspeed 1/25
January’s Beneath Ceaseless Skies issues deal with family, death, and hope, and Marie Croke does a great job of exploring those themes in “Our Echoes Drifting Through the Marsh”. In it, Embri lives in a village pushed away from its ceremonial burial marsh by the appearance of enormous, predatory birds called waders. Rather than fight for the magical place ...Read More
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khōréō 4.3
“The Last Flesh Figure Skaters” by Claire Jia-Wen opens khōréō 4.3 on a strong note, following the rivalry between two competitive skaters, each using different kinds of body modifications. The rivalry between them leads to fascination, which develops into a romantic relationship. The story is beautifully written, exploring parents living vicariously through their children and the pressure often put on young athletes to succeed. The story ...Read More
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The Fake Muse, Max Besora (Open Letter 978-1-96038-533-8, $16.95, 176pp, tp) February 2025.
It will be a bizarre (but wonderful) year if I encounter another novel as chaotic, obscene, and metatextual as Max Besora’s The Fake Muse (translated by Mara Faye Lethem). It’s a work that doesn’t so much defy description as feel pity (and a modicum of sympathy) toward the sort of people (like me) who are obligated ...Read More
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Murder by Memory, Olivia Waite (Tordotcom 978-1250342249, hardcover, 112pp, $21.99) March 2025
Should a mystery be deemed “cozy,” almost by definition, if it contains a yarn shop and some interesting talk about knitting that actually proves to be a central clue? What if that yarn shop is located on a gigantic interstellar generation ship named Fairweather—helmed naturally by an AI dubbed “Ferry?” And what if one of the interlocutors ...Read More
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Shroud, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK 978-1-0350-1379-1, £22.00, 448pp, hc) February 2025. (Orbit US 978-0316579025, $19.99, 416pp, tp) June 2025.
I find it impossible not to think of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Shroud as a companion piece to its 2024 predecessor, Alien Clay. The novels are unconnected and freestanding, but in both, humans encounter alien life so different in its basic makeup that it is nearly unrecognizable as highly organized and ...Read More
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The Dark 1/25 Apex #148 Nightmare 1/25
The first of two originals in The Dark #116 might fit well in The Deadlands. “Four Questions with Something Like God” by Carlie St. George is a listicle story dealing with a dead person who wishes to persist. At first, it seems the issue’s second tale, “Lost You Again” by Ian Rogers, could fit as well. But this ...Read More
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Wake Up and Open Your Eyes, Clay McLeod Chapman (Quirk 978-1-68369-395-6, $24.99, 384pp, hc) January 2025. Cover by Andie Reid.
Being a fan of an author and reading everything they publish is a lot of fun, and it’s even more fun when the author in question constantly changes what they do. Clay McLeod Chapman is a horror fiction chameleon, and his novels show that. Wake Up and Open Your ...Read More
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Asimov’s 1-2/25
The January/February issue of Asimov’s opens with “In the Splinterlands the Crows Fly Blind” by Siobhan Carroll, a novelette full of gorgeous imagery and excellent worldbuilding. When Charlie’s younger brother Gabe goes missing, he initially tries to wash his hands of the situation. He’s spent a lifetime caring for Gabe, finding them a new home on Earth 3, and he’s done cleaning up after his ...Read More
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Worlds of Possibility 12/24 Strange Horizons 12/16/24, 12/23/24 Kaleidotrope Winter ’25
The December Worlds of Possibility is full of fiction and poetry that focuses on growth, seeds, and transformations, as in E. S. Hovgaard’s lovely “Journey of a Dandelion Seedling”, which follows a seedling named Wish who doesn’t want to be planted – who wants to fly free. Their nature and biology, however, seem to demand that ...Read More
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I Am Not Jessica Chen, Ann Liang (Harper Collins 978-1-335-52312-9, $19.99, 320pp, hc) January 2025.
As Ann Liang’s latest novel opens, 17-year-old Jenna Chen is having the worst day ever. After striving and struggling for years at prestigious Havenwood Academy, yet never quite doing well enough to be one of the best, she has been denied acceptance to Harvard University. Sitting at a celebratory surprise dinner for her perfect cousin ...Read More
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rekt, Alex Gonzalez (Erewhon Books 978-1645661597, hardcover, 368pp, $28.00) March 2025.
Here comes another startling debut novel to give us all hope for the future of the field in the hands of a new generation of writers. But unlike Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory, another recent standout premiere, this book is not conducted in a “civilized,” literary, cultured manner. Its domain is not the corridors of state, nor ...Read More
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The Mune, Sue Dawes (Gold SF 978-1-91598-324-4, $19.95, 329pp, tp) March 2025.
The Hampdenshire Wonder, J.D. Beresford (Sidgwick & Jackson 412pp, hc) 1911. (The MIT Press 978-0-26255-141-0, $19.95, 282pp, tp) March 2025. Cover by Seth.
Who speaks in a novel, and how, is always important. In The Hampdenshire Wonder (1911), a lightly starched scientific romance about superhuman intelligence (and near-superhuman cricket), reissued by The MIT Press with a ...Read More
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The Third Rule of Time Travel, Philip Fracassi (Orbit 978-0316572514, trade paperback, 336pp, $18.99) March 2025
I will never forget the thrill of encountering Jack London’s novel The Star Rover when I was a teen. This incredibly powerful and vivid tale of a man who can send his consciousness roaming across time and space to live again through distant events was truly thought-expanding. It was mind-opening in its large ...Read More
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Water Moon, Samantha Sotto Yambao (Del Rey 978-0-59372-499-6, $28.99, 384pp, hc) January 2025. Cover by Fritz Metsch.
Samantha Sotto Yambao brings whimsy with an unexpectedly sharp edge in Water Moon, her first novel since 2020’s The Beginning of Always. Ishikawa Hana is about to take over the nameless family pawn shop, as her father finally retires after many years. This is no normal shop; for one thing, ...Read More
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The Black Orb, Ewhan Kim (Serpent’s Tail 978-1-80081-572-8, £14.99, 368pp, tp) August 2024. (Mira 978-0-77838-734-8, $28.99, 304pp, tp) February 2025.
There’s little written in English about South Korean science fiction author and critic Ewhan Kim. A brief profile of Kim written by the author on the ‘‘Science Fiction Writers Union of the Republic of Korea’’ tells us he became ‘‘a writer after reading Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles’’ and ...Read More
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Rest Stop, Nat Cassidy (Shortwave 978-1-95956-536-9, $13.99, 160pp, tp) October 2024. Cover by Alan Lastufka.
When done right, there’s nothing like a novella: short, fast, engaging, and easy to devour. Nat Cassidy’s Rest Stop brings all of that and more to the table. Besides being fast and engaging, it’s also weird, intense, and deeper than it seems on the surface.
A young vocalist and bass player named Abe is on ...Read More
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Clarkesworld 1/25
Zun Yu Tan’s “When There Are Two of You: A Documentary” in the January issue of Clarkesworld is set in a world where people can implant digital clones of themselves in their heads or have them uploaded into artificial bodies. The story is told in alternating sections between a woman with a Sentience in her head, and a digital clone in an artificial body, effectively ...Read More
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Baffling 12/24 Flash Fiction Online 12/24 Zooscape 12/24
Baffling closes out 2024 with plenty of steam in an issue that mixes queer themes, speculative elements, and a particular focus on intimacy and sex. In K-Ming Chang’s “The Glass Wife”, that focus illuminates a narrator and her lover, who is made of glass. For the narrator, having a lover made of glass means sometimes losing sight of her, ...Read More
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Our Winter Monster, Dennis Mahoney (Hell’s Hundred 978-1-64129-633-5, $26.95, 304pp, hc) January 2025. Cover by Janine Agro.
Dennis Mahoney’s Our Winter Monster is a wonderful mix of pulpy horror and crime that has a struggling couple at its center; a strange monster that wreaks havoc in an idyllic little town in the middle of winter, and a killer on the loose. Fast-paced, full of chaos, and featuring a unique monster ...Read More
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Luminous, Silvia Park (Simon & Schuster 978-1-66802-166-8, 400pp, $29.99, hc) March 2025.
The woman might have been beautiful once. Lips pink and plush, and long blond hair, the kind that shone with each brush. She was falling apart. Her face had been shredded into confetti, held together by one bleary blue eye, while her torso was a smooth bioplastic vest, translucent as a milk carton. Ruijie had tried pressing ...Read More
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Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 12/24 Uncanny 1-2/25 The Deadlands Winter ’25
Before launching into new fiction for the (at this writing) still-new year of 2025, let’s mention Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #49. It is a 2024 publication but came out late in the year. The issue contains two works of fiction: novella “Pomegranate Hearts” by Dora Holland and short story “Hannah and Grackle, Lost in the Woods ...Read More
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When We Were Real, Daryl Gregory (Saga 978-1-6680-6004-9, $29.99, 464pp, hc) April 2025.
In a career that has ranged from Dickian SF to rural horror, one scenario that seems to fascinate Daryl Gregory is bringing a small but diverse group of characters together under stress, whether survivors of gruesome horror stories (We Are All Completely Fine) or disparate members of a family gifted with psychic powers ( ...Read More
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Clarkesworld 12/24
“Stranger Seas Than These” by L. Chan in the December issue of Clarkesworld is full of lovely imagery and worldbuilding. Anna Maria, Professor Lin, and Sister Penitence are trapped in a submersible inside a dead Godwhale. When their readings suggest the Godwhale may be alive after all, Anna Maria jacks into the submersible in an attempt to communicate and ask for help getting home. Chan does ...Read More
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The Crimson Road, A.G. Slatter (Titan 978-1-80336-456-8, $18.99, 368pp, tp) February 2025.
Every time I review a new novel by A.G. Slatter set in the Sourdough Universe, I suggest you go back and read the other books – whether it’s the collections Sourdough and Other Stories and The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings or the novels All the Murmuring Bones, The Path of Thorns, and The Briar ...Read More
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Beneath Ceaseless Skies 12/26/24 Diabolical Plots 12/24
There’s only one December issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies this year, and it contains a pair of epistolary stories dealing with injustice, royalty, and punishment. Shoshana Groom’s “The Beloved Sisters of the Sun-Bleached Hills” unfolds as a series of letters between sisters Zarina and Durdana, who live in different kingdoms but who are facing the same alarming trend – their ...Read More
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Once Was Willem, M.R. Carey (Orbit 978-0-316-50502-4, $18.99, 320pp, tp) March 2025.
Once Was Willem, M.R. Carey’s new supernatural medieval fantasy, is a gorgeously written visit to 12th century England, a time of murderous lords, preoccupied kings and the life-and-death struggles of a small village called Cosham in the fiefdom of Pennick. This was the place and time of narrator Willem Turling, who died from illness at the ...Read More
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Death and Other Speculative Fictions, Caroline Hagood (Spuyten Duvvil 9781963908503, $18.00, 116pp, tp) January 2025.
Caroline Hagood’s Death and Other Speculative Fictions is an astonishing read, comforting and discomforting in equal measure. A philosophical, poetic meditation on the death of a parent, it’s a whirl of reflections on what fantastic stories can say about death, and vice versa. Don’t be dismayed by the fact that this doesn’t look like ...Read More
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The Dagger in Vichy, Alastair Reynolds (Subterranean 978-1-64524-280-2, $40.00, 120pp, hc) August 2025. Cover by Andrew Davis.
The Dagger in Vichy is very different from Alastair Reynolds’s other recent work. His most recent novel, Machine Vendetta (2024), saw him return to the Revelation Space universe. This novella, on the other hand, is set on Earth – albeit (it becomes clear) many centuries in the future. No space opera, The ...Read More
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Transmentation | Transience, Darkly Lem (Blackstone 979-8-21218-599-8, $28.99, 400pp, hc) March 2025. Cover by Kathryn English.
I came to this novel with no knowledge of what I was going into. I had heard that Darkly Lem was a collaboration between five authors – Josh Eure, Craig Lincoln, Ben Murphy, Cadwell Turnbull, and M. Darusha Wehm – but I hadn’t read any of their individual work. On top of that, ...Read More
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The Dream Hotel, Laila Lalami (Pantheon 978-0593317600, $29.00, 336pp, hc) March 2025.
This may sound like an odd question, but are algorithms starting to take over the narrative function that psi powers once served in SF? The idea of preventing crimes by pre-emptively arresting supposed perpetrators has been around at least since Orwell’s notion of ‘‘thoughtcrimes,’’ and in the 1950s this became the province of psionically gifted folks like ...Read More
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