Weird sci-fi. An invasion, of sorts, or an infection, or an infestation. An alien life form comes to earth, joins with humanity, and brings about a new world, a utopic world, a vaguely unsettling world, a world without the great harms that define ours, a world of community and met needs and amazing new tech …
Sci-fi. A novella by the author of *The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet* (which I loved) and its sequels, though set in a different universe. The story of a small group of 22nd century astronauts on one of the early crewed voyages beyond the solar system. They travel in suspended animation over years …
Sci-fi. A bind-up of the first three novels in Ursula Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle, a series of very loosely interrelated novels and stories set in humanity’s space-faring future. She came back to this universe a number of times later as well, but the three novels in this book were written quite early in her career, …
Good ol’ fashioned space opera. Told from the point of view of a former ship commander of a space exploration force now residing on the to-her alien planet where her new husband is a retired military officer and high-ranking nobleman’s son – she is pregnant and said husband has just been appointed regent for the …
Science fiction and fantasy, all at once. As a cover blurb from a prominent genre author puts it, “Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space!” Which on the one hand neatly captures some of the book’s key elements, but on the other hand doesn’t really capture its essence. I of course went into …
Sci-fi, I guess, of the 15-minutes-into-the-future variety. A group of oddball friends and the new kid in school, a girl who was a minor celebrity because her mother left her right after she was born to be part of the crew of the first ever space mission to leave the solar system – a long, …
A collection of short stories by one of the current giants of speculative fiction. A pretty wide range of lengths, tones, and kinds of stories. I think novel length work actually shows off her brilliance more effectively, but I definitely enjoyed this. One good measure of that is the fact that even with short story …
A novella by a fairly new sci-fi/fantasy author whose debut short story collection I read earlier this year and liked. Features two twenty-somethings precariously employed in low-wage retail jobs in a big box store – a sort of low-rent Ikea knock-off – who just broke up a few days before. A customer wanders into one …
Short stories. Weird, creative, clearly influenced by both literary fiction and sci-fi. Pretty queer. The stories explore things like history and memory on a generation ship, a working-class teen on a cross-country road-trip with a rich woman in a car shaped like a whale, escaping anti-semitism in Europe and moving to America with a mechanical …
Described on the jacket as “sociological science fiction.” Humanity lives in a network of cave cities deep beneath the ground, in a society organized into a rigid caste hierarchy. The ruler of the cave city in which this is set dies and a succession struggle ensues. Follows two brothers in a family of the caste …