science fiction

Alien Clay, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Orbit 978-0316578974, trade paperback, 432pp, $19.99) September 2024

If Michael Bishop and Tom Disch had collaborated to script an episode of the Aliens franchise, and then the result had been filmed by Toho Studios, the result might have well come to resemble Adrian Tchaikovsky’s newest kick in the pants, Alien Clay. This is one of three great books Tchaikovsky has released in 2024; similar ...Read More

No/Mad/Land, Franceso Verso (Flame Tree Press 978-1787589278, hardcover, 384pp, $26.95) September 2024

Even when deploying familiar tropes of the genre in totally au courant ways, science fiction by non-Anglo authors always reveals an idiosyncratic slant or attitude or worldview. This has been evident at least since Stanislaw Lem burst onto the English-language publishing scene, and is witnessed more recently in works from such accomplished authors as Cixin Liu, Hannu ...Read More

Rebel, David Weber & Richard Fox (Baen 978-1982193607, hardcover, 496pp, $28.00) September 2024

I seem to be on a bit of a quest lately to try to acquaint myself with authors I’ve shamefully overlooked. That’s always a healthy move, I think—aligned with, but distinct from, keeping up with brand-new debut writers. I reviewed a Michael Flynn book for the first time recently in these pages (alas, only after he ...Read More

Time’s Agent, Brenda Peynado (Tordotcom 978-1250854315, trade paperback, 208pp, $16.99) August 2024

Would it be possible to write a piece of fiction that exhibited or contained no emotions? That seems highly unlikely. Humans are made of emotions—and intellect. Those two realms are—to truncate the famous phrase coined by Stephen Jay Gould when he was trying to categorize the barrier between science and religion—“overlapping magisteria.” Two vast territories with a ...Read More

To Turn the Tide, S. M. Stirling (Baen 978-1982193539, hardcover, 464pp, $28.00) August 2024

Time travel novels—recently, a trendy favorite of non-genre slipstream authors—have reached a state of incredible complexity. Multiverses, paradoxes, change wars, closed loops, and doppelgangers proliferate. This is all very entertaining, but sometimes it’s nice to read a simple, straightforward “person visits past, gets stuck, makes do” kind of book. A chrono-Robinsonade. That’s exactly what S. ...Read More

In the Belly of the Whale, Michael Flynn (CAEZIK SF & Fantasy 978-1647101015, trade paperback, 400pp, $19.99) July 2024

Why is the field of fantastika like Walt Whitman? Because both are “large and contain multitudes.” (And also, parts of it contradict other parts.)

Seriously, though, for at least the past twenty years or thereabouts, the output of fantastika has been so large that no single reader can keep up ...Read More

Lake of Darkness, Adam Roberts (Gollancz 978-1399617673, hardcover, 320pp, £22.00) July 2024

The newest novel from Adam Roberts—purveyor of endless unrepeating and unduplicatable narratives—is a utopian metaphysical suspense/thriller space opera—which also happens to be a commentary, I think, on progressive culture and progressive SF. Now, if you imagine that’s an ill-assorted congeries of tropes and styles and themes, you are underestimating the powers of Mr. Roberts. He weaves every ...Read More

Saturation Point, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Solaris 978-1837861743, hardcover, 176pp, $29.99) July 2024

Adrian Tchaikovsky is surely one of the hardest-working writers in fantastika. In 2023, besides a handful of short fiction, he delivered And Put Away Childish Things (which I reviewed here); Lords of Uncreation; and House of Open Wounds. This year has already seen Alien Clay and Service Model. And today we have to hand his ...Read More