We humans are a race of storytellers. Over the course of the 300,000 years that we have commanded the power of speech, we have huddled in caves, sat around campfires, recited epic poems, published books, produced stage-plays, and used modern media to tell our stories. But in fundamental ways even...
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Early in 1861, a pro-slavery fanatic assassinates President-Elect Abraham Lincoln on a visit to Indianapolis. This event sets the scene for Ben H. Winters’ tension-filled alternate history thriller, Underground Airlines. Lacking Lincoln’s leadership, the American government stumbles...
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California’s long War of Independence has ended. It’s 2064. All of a sudden the new country’s many sentient robots, most of them veterans, face an uncertain future. The president has signed legislation declaring them HEEI (pronounced HE-eye), or Human Equivalent Embodied...
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From time to time, the inner solar system witnesses the arrival of a visitor from the distant Kuiper Belt or even from somewhere in interstellar space. The comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1994, for instance, which crashed into the surface of Jupiter. That event created a monumental splash that could...
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Anyone with a passing knowledge of World War II is aware that Germany attempted to build a nuclear weapon. What is less well known is that Japan did so, too. Both programs failed, the Japanese more quickly and decisively than the German. But at least one prominent US-trained Japanese nuclear...
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Writers have to earn a buck to put food on the table. Once they’re well established as professionals, some grab the opportunity to contract with a deceased author’s estate to continue a best-selling series or use some of its characters in works of their own. And the Australian science...
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Since the publication of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook in 2002 and Absurdistan four years later, Gary Shteyngart has deployed satire and humor to illuminate the human condition in our times. He followed those two novels with his first venture into dystopia, Super Sad True Love Story. Now...
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Bandwidth rules. A Silicon Valley-based consortium of tech companies called Commonwealth monopolizes “the feed” in the world’s most prosperous countries. And the feed provides a window into a personalized reality for every individual plugged into it. Which, in this world wracked...
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So, here’s the problem. I picked up Mickey7 because it was an NPR Best book of 2022 and Amazon listed it as #5 in Humorous Science Fiction. Was I wrong to expect to laugh a lot? The premise has potential, because Mickey, the protagonist, volunteers for a job that requires him to die over and...
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Welcome to the no-longer-United States of America. Half of Florida lies underwater, and the West Coast is burning and choked with smoke. “Where JFK Airport’s big pool of light used to be, broken terminals and flooded runways” lie hidden in the heat. It’s now a permanent...
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Mary Robinette Kowal’s Lady Astronaut series sprawls across the years from 1952 to 1970 and beyond. The saga takes shape in four novels and several shorter stories (which have yet to be collected in a single volume). Kowal guides us through the career of the remarkable Dr. Elma York, a child...
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Here’s the latest entry in Peter Cawdron’s remarkable series of standalone First Contact novels. It extends Cawdron’s reach further into the boundless realm of possibilities represented by humanity’s first encounter with aliens. However, at a glance, the book appears to be...
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For decades, as climate change has wreaked havoc ever more visibly, scientists and engineers have advanced a plethora of technological fixes. Not just switching to renewables such as solar and wind power but direct interventions into the climate through geoengineering. Examples range from the...
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On October 17, 2017, Canadian astronomer and physicist Robert Weryk at Haleakalā Observatory in Hawaii discovered a comet he named ‘Oumuamua. For a time the cigar-shaped object sparked wild theories in the popular press that it was an alien spaceship headed for Earth. Strangely, nearly a decade...
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Redshirts is uproariously funny all the way up until . . . well, it’s not funny anymore, just brilliant. No wonder this book won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the genre’s top prize. In fact, if there were an award for hilarious science fiction, this novel would win that one, too. In...
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With a monumental global effort spearheaded by a trillionaire, the starship Phoenix has set out for the yet-to-be-named Planet X. An all-female crew of 80 represents the wealthier countries that have helped fund the project. They’re on a “one-way interstellar voyage to settle a new...
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Alice Mortimer lives in a college town where nothing much happens—until Alice finds herself in the middle of a mass shooting. She’s at the end of a 10-hour shift at a burger joint when a deranged young man starts shooting up the place. Alice gets seriously pissed off. She wrests the...
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Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and other prominent tech industry billionaires have built (or are currently building) doomsday bunkers to survive the apocalypse they believe is coming. There is no indication that any of them acknowledge the role they’re playing in raising the odds...
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Welcome to 2060. Manhattan is under water. The Gulf Coast has succumbed to superstorms, and California has fallen victim to extended drought. The rest of the world? Don’t even ask. But technology has continued to enhance the survivors’ lives. And in no area has there been more marked...
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Recent years have seen an increasing volume of science fiction on environmental themes, and no wonder. Of course, the world has known about global warming for decades. But it’s only in the past decade that the trend has become obvious to millions. And scientists who have dedicated themselves...
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Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review,
with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review,
with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.
Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.