Alexandra Pierce

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.

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Shroud is an epic first-contact novel and delivers one of the most intriguing visions of alien/human interaction that I’ve read in many years.

The Garveneer has been tasked with deciding whether a particular solar system is worth strip-mining. Through their exploration they discover that a gas giant’s moon ...Read More

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

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

Juice, Tim Winton (Picador 978-1-76134-489-3, AUD$45.00, 528pp, hc) October 2024. Cover by Adam Laszczuk.

Here’s an admission that would elicit a gasp from the Australian literary elite: I have never read a Tim Winton novel. Worse, I read the opening of one of his most famous novels and I hated it. But then I read Juice. And if all his novels hit like that for people who like realism… ...Read More

Hammajang Luck, Makana Yamamoto (Gollancz 978-1-39961-679-9, £20.00, 336pp, hc) December 2024. Cover by Jordan Wolfe. (Harper Voyager 978-0-06343-082-2, $19.99, 368pp, tp). January 2025. Cover by Janelle Barone.

I love a heist story. Getting the conspirators together, finding out the plan, overcoming obstacles, finding out the real plan, watch­ing it all unravel and then neatly come back together… I know the beats of the story, and that’s part of what ...Read More

Edge of the Known World, Sheri T. Joseph (SparkPress 978-1-68463-262-6, $18.99, 328pp, pb) September 2024. Cover by Kathleen Lynch.

In her debut novel, Sheri T. Joseph mixes frus­tratingly messy politics with painfully messy personal affairs to create a riveting novel of the not-far-enough-away future. It’s a future of familiar challenges – displaced people, xenophobia, tech­nologies that threaten individual privacy. Joseph uses three key characters, and their love triangle, to ...Read More

Fortress Sol, Stephen Baxter (Gollancz 978-1-39961-461-0, £25.00, 480pp, hc). October 2024.

Fortress Sol is classic Stephen Baxter. It’s driven by big ideas: Humanity’s response to a perceived existential threat includes both dispersing to the stars and mind-boggling engineering projects. Like 2021’s Galaxias, the focus is not so much on the alien threat as on humanity’s response. There’s a relatively small cast of characters, who are engag­ing enough but ...Read More

The Escher Man, T.R. Napper (Titan 978-1-80336-815-3, $17.99, 368pp, pb) September 2024. Cover by Julia Lloyd.

It’s 2101. Macau is filled with casinos and run by gangsters; Endel (aka Endgame), an Australian, is an enforcer for the main cartel, sent to kill traitors and anyone else who threatens the gang’s livelihood. Endel is a drunk and a gambler, and separated from his wife and child because of his behaviour. ...Read More

The Man Who Saw Seconds, Alexander Boldizar (Clash 978-1-96098-807-2, $19.95, 325pp, tp) Cover by Joel Amat Güell. May 2024.

A precog, an anarchist, and an assistant director of the NSA walk into a bar….

Preble Jefferson can see five seconds into the future. Fish is an anarchist, lawyer, and Jefferson’s friend. Thad Bigman is an assistant director at the NSA. The action in The Man Who Saw Seconds centres on ...Read More

The Year’s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 8, Allan Kaster, ed. (Infinivox 978-1-88461-265-7, 358pp, $19.99, pb). Cover art by Maurizio Man­zieri. June 2024.

The discussion about what counts as “hard” science fiction is a perennial one; and depending on the reason for having it, it can often be unproductive. In his introduction to this eighth in Infinivox’s Top Hard SF Stories series, Allan Kaster doesn’t offer a definition or a ...Read More

The Man Who Saw Seconds, Alexander Boldizar (Clash 978-1-96098-807-2, $19.95, 325pp, tp) Cover by Joel Amat Güell. May 2024.

A precog, an anarchist, and an assistant director of the NSA walk into a bar….

Preble Jefferson can see five seconds into the future. Fish is an anarchist, lawyer, and Jefferson’s friend. Thad Bigman is an assistant director at the NSA. The action in The Man Who Saw Seconds centres on ...Read More

Triangulum: An Epic of the Nine Worlds of Surya, Subodhana Wijeyeratne (Rosarium Pub­lishing 979-8-98661-460-1, $19.95, 300pp, tp) January 2024.

In his first novel, Subodhana Wijeyeratne takes elements of religious stories from the Indian subcontinent and reimagines them in space, with godlike aliens and humanity spread across the solar system. None of these aspects are apparent from the outset, but are gradually revealed as the story unfolds in epic, and ...Read More

2022 Best of Utopian Speculative Fiction, Justine Norton-Kertson, ed. (Android Press 978-1-95812-166-5, $21.99, 240pp, tp) December 2023.

In their follow-up to Bioluminescent: A Lu­narpunk Anthology, Justine Norton-Kertson has assembled a range of stories that suggest different ways of thinking about “utopia.” Going into this anthology I had clear expectations of what “utopia” meant and what these stories would probably look like: societies would be shown as having figured ...Read More