Science fiction, or maybe science fantasy. Set in a future world built in part out of elements drawn from Chinese history. The China-ish realm is besieged by giant aliens which can only be fought off by equally giant transforming mechs, each piloted by one man and one woman, the latter of whom often ends up …
Sci-fi thriller. Set in a ship that has been sent by the monopolistic corporation that claims all non-Earth space to explore a world for possible settlement. The main character is a psychologist of sorts, but one that specializes not in talk therapy but in observing people’s secret tells to figure out what they won’t talk …
Sci-fi. A scientist who has developed sophisticated human cloning technology that works but that has not yet been broadly commercialized finds out that her husband is somehow having an affair with a clone of her. Told in a first-person voice that wonderfully conveys (particularly in the audiobook) the suffer-no-fools, brilliant, not really very nice, damaged, …
Sci fi. Set far enough in the future that there has been a major climate crisis-related collapse on Earth and then a recovery, as well as expansion of humanity to points within the solar system and even to the stars beyond. It is a universe with no non-human sentient species, at least so far, and …
Cosy hopepunk-ish sci-fi, from one of the authors responsible for the recent popularization of that sort of book. It is, in fact, the fourth (and I believe final) instalment in the series that started with Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. This one is set at an interstellar truckstop of sorts, on a planet …
Sci-fi novella. The next entry in the Vorkosigan saga, which I am slowly working my way through. The series largely follows Miles Vorkosigan, scion of a powerful house on a planet with a deeply engrained, quite feudal, very hierarchical, and intensely militarist social order that is, in all of these respects, gradually becoming looser, more …
Sci-fi short stories, plus three essays about the genre. Translated from Chinese. The stories cover a real range of kinds of science fiction and kinds of writing, so it is hard to make any general statements about the book, and the introduction by the editor/translator quite rightly warns against reductive Orientalist readings of their Chinese-ness. …
Sci-fi. A first contact story set in 2007. The protagonist is the estranged oldest daughter of a narcissistic publish-all-the-leaks anti-government guy. He releases a leaked memo indicating that the US government has been covering up the existence of extraterrestrial life on earth, but she has no interest in this and wants nothing to do with …
Science fiction. Near future. A company develops technology that, when implanted in the brain, allows human beings to have much greater ability to focus on multiple things at once and to for-real multitask. This makes those with the implants considerably more productive and therefore more valued in the capitalist economy and its associated institutions (e.g. …
Science fiction. Starts fifteen minutes into the future and extends for several decades, focusing on the climate crisis at a global scale. Begins with a powerful chapter describing in an embodied way one character’s experience of a devastating heat wave that ultimately kills 20 million people – made all the more gripping and disturbing by …