science fiction

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

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

I first came across Jesse Ball back in 2007 when his debut, Samedi the Deafness, was shortlisted for the Believer Book Award (a terrific prize that introduced me to authors as varied as Bennett Sims, Keith Ridgway, Valeria Luiselli, and Danielle Dutton. I miss it… and the magazine). I bought the novel ...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