Originally published: https://amazingstories.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=219339
This month we’ve got some excellent debut novels, starting with Micaiah Johnson’s The Space Between Worlds, a parallel worlds novel that deftly turns the notion of the explorer as a person of privilege on its head. There’s also The Mother Code by Carole Stivers, a pandemic novel where humanity’s next generation is in the hands(?) of robots designed for space exploration, but coded with a mother’s touch. Finally, Architects of Memory is a very strong debut from Karen Osborne in which a plucky crew of salvage tug misfits gets caught up in a corporate struggle for an alien artifact. The premise may sound familiar, but Osborne brings rich characterization and excellent plotting to the tale.
If you’re looking for SF so hard it’s hardly SF, dock at Space Station Down by Ben Bova and Doug Beason, where terrorists take over the ISS with a plan to deorbit it onto NYC, and if the Big Apple doesn’t have enough problems, check out Bystander 27 by Rik Hoskin, a mind-bending take on the superhero reality and what it means.
Mil-SF and Space Opera fans should enjoy Debt of Loyalty by Christopher G. Nuttall, the second in this series, following Debt of Honor last year. A king in exile with half the fleet and a conflict waged by opposing admirals who once served together make a complex and well-told tale.
Mirage by Julie E. Czerneda continues her Web Shifter’s Library series with the return of Evan Gooseberry, an ambassador to alien races with anxiety issues and the shapeshifting alien(s) who manage the All Species’ Library of Linguistics and Culture. It might be subtitled, Fun with Esen and her Friends at the Library, and it wouldn’t be wrong.
City Under the Stars by Gardner Dozois and Michael Swanwick — Since we started out with debut novels, it’s only fitting we end with a last work, or at least a final collaboration. In 2018 science fiction lost one of it’s most treasured editors and authors, Gardner Dozois, who compiled The Year’s Best Science Fiction for 35 years, but along the way he also worked on a collaboration with Michael Swanwick. The two batted ideas back and forth for decades, and though it was originally planned as a longer work, Michael opted to close the story where they’d left off with their characters looking forward to things to come. It’s a terrific piece of work,.
