science fiction

The Way, Cary Groner (Spiegel & Grau 978-1-95411-842-3, $29.00, 304pp, hc) December 2024.

In Cary Groner’s second novel, The Way, a heavily mutated and infectious avian flu wipes out 80 per­cent of humanity. The event, dubbed ‘‘Mayhem’’ by the survivors, leads to the expected break­down of civilisation – ‘‘starvation; migration; a brief, limited nuclear exchange; then finally the return of endemic diseases like TB, diphtheria, typhoid, cholera, malaria, ...Read More

Interstellar MegaChef, Lavanya Lakshminarayan (Solaris 978-1-83786-233-7, $16.99, 400pp, tp) November 2024.

I’ve always loved a good cooking show. Back in the day, it was Top Chef (where a contestant always undercooked the chicken) and Great British Menu (where every pudding had to include rhubarb). Now, I’m obsessed with Uncle Roger’s YouTube channel. His takedown of Jamie Oliver’s Egg Fried Rice, with 28 million views and over one million likes, ...Read More

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

It has been another excellent year for uncon­ventional narratives. There’s Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera, which I called “a full-frontal deconstruction of narrative and genre”; there’s Rita Bullwinkel’s magnificent Headshot, a story structured around the intense, chaotic and bal­letic bouts of a junior girl’s boxing tournament; and there are the 1,281 F-bombs that punctuate the ...Read More

State of Paradise, Laura van den Berg (Farrar, Straus, Giroux 978-0-37461-220-7, $27.00, 224pp, hc) July 2024.

I move from one instance of weird Florida (Area X is a distorted version of North Florida) to another: Laura van den Berg’s State of Paradise. I’d say that reading VanderMeer and van den Berg back-to-back (alliterative surnames aside) is a remarkable coincidence, except that Florida, to outsiders such as myself, has ...Read More

Ultra 85, Logic (Simon & Schuster 978-1-98215-827-9, $18.99, 304pp, tp) September 2024.

I’d never heard of the rapper Logic (AKA Sir Robert Bryson Hall II) or his work (both musi­cal and literary) until I was sent a copy of Ultra 85. That’s not an indictment of Logic but instead speaks to my narrow, stunted musical tastes. Ultra 85 is Logic’s sophomore effort, the follow-up to his debut Supermarket ...Read More