The late Iain M. Banks
Alamy Stock Photo
Are things slowing down as we approach the end of the year? Not in terms of science fiction releases – in November alone we can look forward to a hugely exciting new novel from The Power author Naomi Alderman, which according to Sally Adee, New Scientist’s science fiction columnist, I find incredible. We have previously unpublished work from none other than the mighty Iain M. Banks; Meanwhile, mega-names Cory Doctorow and Brandon Sanderson are also treating us to new novels, and I love the sound of Samantha Harvey’s space-set Orbital. If new Star Wars and Saga episodes are added, it will be difficult to keep up.
The future of Naomi Alderman. Alderman is the Women’s Prize-winning author of The Power, in which the world is reoriented after teenage girls develop a deadly power. In “The Future,” we’re promised “private weather, technological prophecies, and undeniable weaponry,” and a handful of friends plan a heist that could spell the end of civilization. Sounds good!
Auli’i Cravalho as Jos Clearly in Naomi Alderman’s award-winning film The Power
Katie Yu/Prime Video
The Culture: The Drawings of Iain M. Banks. I was overwhelmed when I first read Banks’ The Wasp Factory and met its unreliable young narrator, Frank. When I found out in The Player of Games that adding an M to your name gives you a universe run by benevolent AI minds (with brilliant names: I’m thinking of you, Mistake Not…), he shot me on the nerves list of favorite authors. Banks died in 2013 – this is a collection of his drawings from the time he was creating the cultural universe, reproduced from his sketchbooks of the 1970s and 1980s, showing the “ships, habitats, geography, weapons and language” he himself to tell his stories with. I mean, I’d rather have a new culture novel – but this would do well instead.
Defiant by Brandon Sanderson. I know Sanderson mostly through his imagination – but he has an excellent origin story. With 12 rejected novels before he finally secured a book deal in 2003, his reputation is such that his crowdfunding campaign for four “secret novels” last year became the most funded publishing project of all time, raising a staggering sum of around £1.5 million U.S. dollars grossed $41 million. However, Defiant is science fiction – the final novel in his Skyward series, in which Spensa travels across the stars to save the world she loves.
The Lost Cause by Cory Doctorow. Doctorow’s always excellent new novel is set in a generation in the future where climate change is a fact and millions of people work in disaster relief. As always, Doctorow takes a fascinating approach: He looks at older people in the US who still believe climate change is a hoax and asks what we’re doing about them. In this case they are also “armed to the teeth”.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey. This slim novel seems very beautiful and very special. It follows the lives of six astronauts in the International Space Station as they conduct their experiments and observe their silent blue planet. “I don’t think I’ve read anything else that shows such love for the characters and such clarity about the state of the planet,” says Sarah Moss (herself a can’t-miss author; “ Ghost Wall”, in which a father…The desire to recreate an Iron Age life turns very dark for his poor daughter is unbelievable).
Samantha Harvey’s Orbital follows the lives of six astronauts on the International Space Station
Jungle House by Julianne Pachico. I’m not always a fan of the “X meets formula.” This is about a young woman, Lena, who is raised in the jungle by an artificial intelligence called “Mother” while rebels elsewhere fight to take over the country. But what happened to Lena’s friend Isabella, who used to visit with her security drone but hasn’t been seen in years?
Saga Volume 11 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. This is the 11th volume of the incredible saga comic series in which new parents Marko and Alana try to raise their child during a galactic war. It’s science fiction, it’s a space opera, it’s – as the publisher says – “Romeo and Juliet meets Star Wars”. Of course, if you haven’t tried it yet, start with volume one, but be sure to give this multi-award winning and critically acclaimed series a try.
Moth City by Caroline Hardaker. David grew up in a world where bodies with wings turned up and people went missing, but no one let him find out what was going on. Then his beloved grandfather, who had been working on a discovery for years, disappeared. David, now 26, receives a strange package instructing him not to leave Earth, and a new world opens before him.
Star Wars: The Eye of Darkness (The High Republic) by George Mann. This new Star Wars novel is set one year after the events of The Fallen Star. In it, the Jedi seek to break the Nihil’s control over the galaxy and fight the nameless creatures that exploit their connection to the Force.
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