Archives de catégorie : Science Fiction

THE POSSIBILITIES de Yael Goldstein-Love

Inception meets the transformational madness of early motherhood when a new mother ventures into the multiverse to save her missing child, in a mind-bending novel that turns the joys and anxieties of parenthood into an epic quest.

THE POSSIBILITIES: A Novel
by Yael Goldstein-Love
Random House, July 2023
(via The Gernert Company)

Hannah is having a bad day. A bad month. A bad year? That feels terrible to admit, since her son Jack was born just eight months ago, and she loves him more than anything. But ever since his harrowing birth, she can’t shake the feeling that it could have gone the other way. That her baby might not have made it. Terrifying visions from different paths her life could have taken begin to disrupt her cozy, claustrophobic days with Jack, destablizing her marriage, and making her husband concerned for her mental health. Are the strange things Hannah is seeing just new mom anxiety, or is something truly weird and sinister afoot? What if Hannah really did unlock something she wasn’t supposed to during childbirth? When Hannah’s worst nightmare comes true and Jack disappears from his crib, she discovers that her reeling mind has extraordinary powers that she must tap into in order to save her child: She has the ability to enter the multiverse—and she must visit different versions of her life while holding onto what is most important to her in this one to bring her child back home. From the intimate joys of parenthood to the cosmic awe of the multiverse, THE POSSIBILITIES is an ingenious and wildly suspenseful novel that dares to stare down into the dizzying depths of maternal love, vulnerability, and strength.

Yael Goldstein-Love is a psychotherapist working toward her doctorate in clinical psychology. She is the co-founder and Editorial Director of Plympton, a literary studio that innovates at the intersection of writing and technology, and has worked with luminaries such as Roxanne Gay, Min Jin Lee, Adam Haslett, and Joyce Carol Oates, among many others. A graduate of Harvard University, where she studied philosophy of science, she lives with her four-year-old son and their cat in Berkeley, California.

THE MEADOWS de Stephanie Oakes

A queer, YA Handmaid’s Tale meets Never Let Me Go about a dystopian society bent on relentless conformity, and the struggle of one girl to save herself and those she loves from a life of lies.

THE MEADOWS
by Stephanie Oakes
Dial/ Penguin Young Readers, September 2023

Everyone hopes for a letter—to attend the Estuary, the Pines, the Glades, the Meadows. These are the special places where only the best and brightest go to burn even brighter.
When Eleanor gets her letter, she knows she’s freed from her hardscrabble life by the sea, in a country ravaged by climate disaster. But despite the Meadows’ luminous facilities, endless fields, and pretty things, it keeps dark secrets.
Four years later, Eleanor and her friends seem free of the Meadows, changed but not in the ways they expected. Eleanor is an adjudicator, ensuring her former classmates don’t stray from the lives they’ve been conditioned to live.
But Eleanor can’t escape her past, or thoughts of the girl she once loved. Because Rose isn’t here anymore. And as secrets emerge that force Eleanor to grapple with her history, she must wage a dangerous battle for her own identity and for the full truth of what happened to the girl she lost, knowing if she’s not careful, Rose’s fate could be her own.

Stephanie Oakes is the author of The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly, which was a Morris Award finalist and a Golden Kite Honor book, and The Arsonist, which won the Washington State Book Award and was an ALA/YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults pick. An elementary school librarian, Stephanie lives in Spokane, Washington with her wife and family.

GROWING UP WEIGHTLESS de John M. Ford

Out of print for more than two decades, John M. Ford’s Growing Up Weightless is an award-winning classic of a “lost generation” of young people born on the human-colonized Moon.

GROWING UP WEIGHTLESS
by John M. Ford
with an introduction by Francis Spufford
Tor Books, September 2022

Matthias Ronay has grown up in the low gravity and great glass citadels of independent Luna―and in the considerable shadow of his father, a member of the council that governs Luna’s increasingly complex society. But Matt feels weighed down on the world where he was born, where there is no more need for exploration, for innovation, for radical ideas―and where his every movement can be tracked by his father on the infonets.
Matt and five of his friends, equally brilliant and restless, have planned a secret adventure. They will trick the electronic sentinels, slip out of the city for a journey to Farside. Their passage into the expanse of perpetual night will change them in ways they never could have predicted…and bring Matt to the destiny for which he has yearned.
With a new introduction by Francis Spufford, author of Red Plenty and Golden Hill.

John M. Ford (1957-2006) was a science fiction and fantasy writer, game designer, and poet whose work was held in high regard by peers ranging from Neil Gaiman to Robert Jordan to Jo Walton to Roger Zelazny, alongside innumerable others. His novels include the World Fantasy Award-winning The Dragon Waiting, the Philip K. Dick Award-winning GROWING UP WEIGHTLESS, and the contemporary thriller The Scholars of Night. His debut novel Web of Angels (1980) has been called “cyberpunk before there was cyberpunk.” He spent the latter decade-and-a-half of his writing life in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

THESE BURNING STARS de Bethany Jacobs

A sweeping portrait of an empire on the verge of collapse, a braided narrative with secrets and revelations around every corner, and a spectacular inversion of expectations. This thrilling new space opera is perfect for fans of Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire and Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit.

THESE BURNING STARS
by Bethany Jacobs
Orbit, March 2023
(via JABberwocky Literary Agency)

Jun Ironway, hacker, con artist, and only occasional thief, has gotten her hands on a piece of contraband that could set her up for life: a video that implicates the powerful Nightfoot family in a planet-wide genocide seventy-five years ago. The Nightfoots control the precious sevite that fuels interplanetary travel through three star systems. And someone is sure to pay handsomely for anything that could break their hold.
Of course, anything valuable is also dangerous. The Kindom, the ruling power of the three star systems, is inextricably tied up in the Nightfoots’ monopoly-and they can’t afford to let Jun expose the truth. They task two of their most brutal clerics with hunting her down: preternaturally stoic Chono, and brilliant hothead Esek, who also happens to be the heir to the Nightfoot empire.
But Chono and Esek are haunted in turn by a figure from their shared past, known only as Six. What Six truly wants is anyone’s guess. And the closer they get to finding Jun, the surer Chono is that Six is manipulating them all-and that they are heading for a bloody confrontation that no one will survive unscathed.

Bethany Jacobs is a former college instructor of writing and science fiction, who made the leap to education technology and now teaches tech heads how to write. She lives in Buffalo, New York with her wife and her dog and her books. THESE BURNING STARS is her debut novel.

UNDER FORTUNATE STARS de Ren Hutchings

A captivating debut space opera perfect for fans of Alex White and Becky Chambers, about two ships that fall into a space-time rift and discover they are from each other’s past and future. With their ships’ power running out, they have only once chance to escape the rift and save the future.

UNDER FORTUNATE STARS
by Ren Hutchings
Solaris/Rebellion Publishing, May 2022
(via JABberwocky Literary Agency)

Two Ships. One chance to save the future. Fleeing the final days of the generations-long war with the alien Felen, smuggler Jereth Keeven’s freighter the Jonah breaks down in a strange rift in deep space, with little chance of rescue—until they encounter the research vessel Gallion, which claims to be from 152 years in the future.
The Gallion’s chief engineer Uma Ozakka has always been fascinated with the past, especially the tale of the Fortunate Five, who ended the war with the Felen. When the Gallion rescues a run-down junk freighter, Ozakka is shocked to recognize the Five’s legendary ship—and the Five’s famed leader, Eldric Leesongronski, among the crew.
But nothing else about Leesongronski and his crewmates seems to match up with the historical record. With their ships running out of power in the rift, more than the lives of both crews may be at stake…

Ren Hutchings is a speculative fiction writer, writing mentor, and history grad. She spent most of the past decade working in game dev while also plotting twisty space novels. She loves pop science, unexplained mysteries, 90s music, collecting outdated electronics, and pondering about alternate universes. Ren always drafts out of order, and almost everything she writes ends up involving a dash of time travel. You can find Ren online at renhutchings.com, and on social media as @voidcricket.