Archives de catégorie : Science Fiction

THE HALTER de Darby McDevitt

Combining the inventive worldbuilding of Philip K. Dick and the elegiac longing of Raymond Chandler and for fans of Ready Player One and Rabbits, THE HALTER by Darby McDevitt (lead writer for Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag) is a debut sci-fi novel that fuses cyber-noir, psychological suspense, and high-concept speculation in a breakneck search for truth inside a utopian metaverse on the verge of collapse.

THE HALTER
by Darby McDevitt
Diversion Books, February 2026
(via Kaplan/DeFiore Rights)

In a world where virtual addiction kills, Kennedy Stark is paid to pull the plug. A professional halter—part detective, part counselor—he trawls the world’s darkest surrogate-reality feeds in search of the lost. When he isn’t working, he’s dreaming of a one-way ticket to Mars, where a new colony has been established as a hopeful alternative to an Earth in the early stages of climate collapse.

One evening, after a botched rescue attempt, a mysterious client offers Kennedy a tantalizing new case: brilliant software engineer Delia Walsh, who Kennedy fell in love with years ago, has disappeared inside a surrogate reality project called The Forum. Entering under an assumed identity, Kennedy finds a simulation unlike any other. The Forum bills itself as a tool for cutting-edge scientific research and radical philosophical investigations, but the signs of its corruption are everywhere. As Kennedy investigates, he learns Delia had been working on a new simulation that could upend The Forum’s primary purpose, and that even in this prurient playground for the super wealthy, the dangers are very real.

Brimming with black humor, hardboiled attitude, and a cast of endearing misfits lost in brittle fantasies, The Halter introduces a charismatic detective and heralds a unique and assured new voice in sci-fi crime.

Darby McDevitt is a writer and game developer best known for his work on the Assassin’s Creed series of video games. He served as lead writer for Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag and as narrative director for the forthcoming Assassin’s Creed: Codename Hexe. His short fiction has appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Jeopardy, Griffel, and In Pieces: An Anthology of Fragmentary Writing. McDevitt is a dual citizen of the US and Canada and lives in Montreal.

DIE MACHT DER MUSIK d’Ullrich Fichtner

Music makes us happier, healthier, smarter and nicer – and we need more of it in our lives.

DIE MACHT DER MUSIK
(The Power of Music)
by Ullrich Fichtner
DVA/PRH Germany, November 2025

Music has an extraordinary effect on us: it can give us goosebumps and butterflies, it can make our hearts beat faster, it can cheer us up and make us sad, can bring our stress levels down and ease pain. Not just that, but the latest findings from neuroscience and brain science show that it can have a positive impact on our health, psyche and social skills, and help develop and reinforce cognitive skills in both the young and the old.

In DIE MACHT DER MUSIK, the multi-award-winning Spiegel reporter and music aficionado demonstrates that music has huge tangible benefits. Using his wide-ranging experience with music and musicians in all genres around the world, as well as the latest scientific studies, he reveals how and why music is so important both for us individually and society at large, how it works, its enormous potential as a social tool, and how it can help us live a healthier, happier, more peaceful – in short: better – life.

Ullrich Fichtner was born in 1965 and is a Spiegel reporter based in Paris. With three Egon Erwin Kisch and three Henri Nannen prizes to his name, he is one of the most award-winning German journalists. His latest book, « Geboren für die großen Chancen » (‘A future of opportunities’) was shortlisted for the German Non-Fiction Prize.

MOBIUS, INC. d’Adam Fawer

The impossible can be done—if he can raise enough money. A sci-fi thriller set in the back-stabbing world of New York City’s Silicon Alley.

MOBIUS, INC.
by Adam Fawer
April Yayıncılık (Turkey), October 2024
(via Liza Dawson Associates)

Caleb had it all—brilliant wife, adorable son, fantastic career as CFO at a hot tech startup. But he screws up and in one moment it all vanishes.

His son dies while Caleb is distracted by a work text, his marriage disintegrates, and the arrogant CEO Caleb recruited and mentored for eight years fires him. In a drunken rage, Caleb tweets out every salary at his company. This goes over about as well as you might expect.

Desperate, Caleb agrees to meet with a new start-up recommended by his mentor Jim, a brilliant but callous billionaire venture capitalist.

The company—Mobius, Inc.—is located in one room in a fifth-floor walkup in deepest Brooklyn. The founders—Andy, a slippery trust fund kid, and Rowan, an inscrutable genius physicist—are half Caleb’s age and already hate each other.

But Rowan has invented a Temporal Displacement Portal, a device that receives messages from the future. Instantly Caleb knows: Mobius is his salvation. He will go back in time and save his son. Fix everything.

Rowan says going back is impossible, but after decades in tech, Caleb knows that the impossible can be done—if he can raise enough money.

All he has to do is navigate the venture capitalists who hate him, keep Andy and Rowan from killing each other, and not get fired. Or worse.

Adam Fawer (born 1970 in New York City) is an American Novelist. Improbable, his first novel, has been translated into eighteen languages and won the 2006 International Thriller Writers Award for best first novel. His second novel, Empathy, has been published in 2008 in German, Japanese and Turkish. Fawer holds undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and received an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. During his corporate career, Fawer worked for a variety of companies including Sony Music, J.P. Morgan, and most recently, About.com, where he was the chief operating officer. He lives in New York with his partner and two sons.

THE LAST LOVE STORY de Katharyn Blair

A tropey, soapy, twist-filled teen romance standalone set in a dystopian world perfect for fans of The Hunger Games films.

THE LAST LOVE STORY
by Katharyn Blair
Avon/HarperCollins Children’s Books, August 2026

ROMANCE IN A DYSTOPIAN WORLD: This accessible read with soapy twists, cliffhangers, and love triangles is just in time for the current dystopian renaissance. Fans of The Hunger Games and Divergent films will love the crackling tension and romance tropes galore!

LONELINESS, AI, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND CENSORSHIP: This book explores questions that matter to teens: the role of AI; friendships and romance during an increasingly isolating digital age; extreme weather; and book banning. It also poses questions about politics and gently critiques extremism, with a message for empathy and finding a middle ground.

LIGHT, SOAPY, AND COMPULSIVELY READABLE: Under 300 pages, with short chapters and accessible writing by Katharyn Blair, television writer for Marvel’s “Loki” and “Daredevil,” this book is a perfect entry point for teen readers. The commercial package will also communicate the romance-forward content.

SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING: Ripley models social awareness through perspective-taking; relationship skills through teamwork; and responsible decision-making by evaluating ethical responsibility.

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: “The Last Love Story is a twisty standalone romance set in a dystopian world, perfect for Divergent and Hunger Games fans who are mostly in it for the swooning. Written by Marvel TV’s Katharyn Blair and edited by Sara Schonfeld, this one will have a commercial package and short cliffhanger chapters, and pubs right on time for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping movie next year.”

Katharyn Blairis the author of The Hushed (A Haunt for Jackals), Unchosen, and The Beckoning Shadow and screenwriter of « Loki » Season 2 and « Daredevil: Born Again. » She’s been a social media coordinator for several films at 20th Century Fox, an intern at her city’s Parks and Recreation Department, a gymnastics coach, and a writing professor at Azusa Pacific University.

THE LAST DAYS OF GOOD PEOPLE de A.T. Sayre

A bittersweet science fiction novel for fans of Becky Chambers and Ted Chiang’s Arrival that contemplates civilization, determinism, and friendship as a scientist is forced to decide whether to intervene and help a dying species.

THE LAST DAYS OF GOOD PEOPLE
by A.T. Sayre
JAB Books, February 2025
(via JABberwocky)

On a small corner of a doomed world, where the capricious laws of nature can’t be reversed, a civilization arrives at the end of its days.

Warin is one of a small team charting the demise of the last few inhabitants of Retti 4, a distant planet in the throes of an extinction-level virus. It’s not Warin’s job to intervene in natural evolution or to question the whims of a cruel universe. He is only to observe and report. Until Warin actually steps foot on Retti 4.

Not the primitive species Warin believed them to be, the rettys are an industrious and ethical lot working together in a close-knit farming village. Lacking the human traits of fear, suspicion, and aggression, they are welcoming, curious, and eager to share their traditions—even in the shadow of a tragedy that they, and Warin, are powerless to stop.

As they embrace Warin into their fold, his compassion grows. So does his own self-discovery. For Warin, far away from Earth, comes a deeper understanding of friendship, civilization, and the true meaning of humanity. And above all, the peace and profound strength it takes to accept the inevitable.

A.T. Sayre has been writing in some form or other ever since he was ten years old. From plays to poems, teleplays to comic books, he has tried his hand at pretty much every medium imaginable. His work has appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Haven Speculative, Aurealis, Andromeda Spaceways, and StarShipSofa. His first short story collection, Signals in The Static, was published in May 2024 by Lethe Press.