Jake Casella Brookins

An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth, Anna Moschovakis (Soft Skull 978-1-59376-783-9, 208pp, $16.95, tp) November 2024. Cover by Gregg Kulick.

I’m continually interested in how the corona­virus pandemic does – or commonly doesn’t – make its way into fiction. It’s such a huge event, but one that “realistic” novels, movies, and television series seem hesitant to engage with, opting instead for a kind of hazy ...Read More

A Hunger With No Name, Lauren C. Teffeau (University of Tampa Press 978-1-59732-207-2, 156pp, $28.00, hc) September 2024. Cover by Madeline M. Eisele.

Lauren C. Teffeau’s novella A Hunger With No Name might take place on a far-future Earth, or in a similar secondary world; regardless, it’s told by a people who have survived some vast disaster, a ‘‘Great Scatter’’ that has receded into a mythic past. The Astravans have ...Read More

Remember You Will Die, Eden Robins (Source­books Landmark 978-1-72825-603-0, $16.99, 336pp, tp) October 2024. Cover by Erin Fitzsim­mons.

After reading Manuela Draeger’s fascinating novel Kree, about afterlives and reincarnation, and translator and anthologist Anton Hur’s ex­cellent debut novel Toward Eternity, in which artificial intelligences and nanite-transformed humans have found a strange immortality, the centrality of mortality in Eden Robins’s Remem­ber You Will Die is almost refreshing. While ...Read More

Kree, Manuela Draeger (University of Min­nesota Press 978-1-51791-512-4, $21.95, 280pp, tp) October 2024.

Manuela Draeger’s Kree is so immedi­ately violent that I wasn’t sure it was going to be for me. Somehow, though, within just a few chapters, the novel’s mix of haunting imagery and almost humorous un­predictability grew so compelling that I found myself wanting to track down everything else the author has written. A midapocalyptic story set ...Read More

The Repeat Room, Jesse Ball (Catapult 978-1-64622-140-0, 256pp, $27.00, hc) Cover by Sara Wood. September 2024.

We have such a cornucopia of dystopias right now, fictional and otherwise, that they’ve really got to do something different to catch my attention. The Repeat Room, the latest novel from the prolific Jesse Ball, captured it thoroughly: haunting, spare, and inventive, it’s a bleak tale that’s nonetheless rich with sparkling turns ...Read More

Toward Eternity, Anton Hur (HarperVia 978-0-06334-448-8, 256pp, $26.99, hc) July 2024. Cover by Stephen Brayda.

Initially set in a near-future Cape Town, South Africa, and eventually taking us to ever more distant times and locales, Anton Hur’s debut novel Toward Eternity begins with scientist Mali Beeko confronting the mysterious disappearance and reapparance of “Patient One.” Mali specializes in a nanotechnology treatment that cures cancer by replacing the host’s cells with ...Read More

The Years Shall Run Like Rab­bits, Ben Berman Ghan (Buckrider Books 978-1-98949-688-6, 300pp, $21.00, tp) May 2024.

Sometimes, I really enjoy speculative fiction that works more by image and dream logic than plot and worldbuilding. Not to say Ben Berman Ghan’s The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits lacks those traditional elements: The ingredients here are quite recognizable – deadly cyborgs and lunar colonies, time travel and genetic engineering. But Ghan ...Read More

Ocean’s Godori, Elaine U. Cho (Hillman Grad Books 978-1-63893-059-4, 352pp, $28.00, hc)

Set in a lightly sketched future in which humans have spread into space, terraforming along the way, Elaine U. Cho’s debut novel Ocean’s Godori follows Ocean Yoon, a talented spaceship pilot. Following an initially unexplained fall from grace, Ocean has signed on with the Ohneul, a low-ranking ship. Aloof but comfortable in her ship’s found-family dynamic, Ocean’s biggest ...Read More

Same Bed Different Dreams, Ed Park (Random House 978-0-8129-9897-9, $30.00. 544pp, hc) November 2023. Cover by Will Staehle.

Framed from the perspective of Soon Sheen, a writer-turned-tech worker, Ed Park’s Same Bed Different Dreams is an intri­cate and entertaining puzzlebox of a novel, an expansive and allusive meditation on Korean history and much else. Soon works for GLOAT, a giant and quietly dystopian tech company in the mold of ...Read More

Inversion, Aric McBay (AK Press 978-1-8493-5504-9, $17.00. 240pp, tp) November 2023. Cover by Bob Kayganich & T.L. Simons.

Every once in a while, I run into a new science fic­tion story that feels remarkably classic, as though it had been written at the height of some previous era and only recently discovered. Or classical, perhaps – so well-versed in its themes and tropes that you can immediately see where ...Read More