science fiction

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