It’s March, and my Amazing Stories column is up. There are a lot of good science fiction titles out this month. Even better, many of them drop on the 2nd. I’m pretty sure there’s something for everyone. Let me know if you think I missed anything you’re looking forward to.
Amazing Stories: Science Fiction to Look for March 2021
Border Crosser by Tom Doyle
Paperback, 383 pages | September 15 2020 | Ring of Fire Press
I’d reviewed a few things by Tom Doyle, starting with American Craftsmen (2014), a story about a unit of paranormal operatives for the US government that goes back to George Washington’s time. The other day he reached out to me to see if I wanted to take a look at Border Crosser, his latest book. I’d really liked American Craftsman, so even though I’m as buried in books not yet published as ever, I said, sure…I’ll take a look.
The cover very nearly stopped me. Don’t get me wrong. I’m up for occasional glam gals in spacesuits with guns and explosions, but the level of cheese here made this a hard sell. Still, I’d promised, so when a copy arrived at my Kindle, I thought I’d give it a quick look, then get back to stuff I needed to read. You probably know how that goes.
Border Crosser has a lot of problems, but not being a good book isn’t one of them. Continue reading
A new year, a fresh start, and lots of great books to read. I’ve got high hopes for 2021.
This month we’ve got two books with parallel world themes, Tim Pratt’s fanciful Doors of Sleep, in which a man wakes up in a new world every time he falls asleep. He’s a little Dr. Who and a little Gulliver. In the other, Threader Origins, a young man standing too close to his fathers’ quantum energy experiment gets shifted a world over and does not find it an improvement.
Several books involve AIs that wish they had bodies, or have gotten them on the sly, including the Seven Samurai–esque Persephone Station. Dealbreaker, which follows the events in L. X. Beckett’s Gamechanger from last year though a generation on, and Michael Kaufman’s The Last Exit: A Jen Lu Mystery, a police procedural about a detective with a brain implant that’s too smart for its own good.
Octavia E. Butler: Kindred, Fledgling, Collected Stories is an excellent introduction to her work from Library of America that the Library says is the first title in their “canonization of discomfort.” I know a lot of you might not be looking to be discomforted, and both this book and Nnedi Okorafor’s novelette Remote Control are anything but comfort food, However, I recommend them to you as windows into cultures that science fiction has historically used aliens to represent, but that now demand our unblinking attention.
Although I try to stick to books I’ve actually gotten my hands on, there are two upcoming titles I’m especially looking forward to though haven’t seen yet. Star Trek: Picard: The Dark Veil (2) by James Swallow is set before the series opens and has Riker in command of the Titan, Seeing Riker in the big chair in Picard facing down Roumulans made me want more of that, so hopefully this will deliver. Adrian Tchaikovsky is on my shortlist of authors to keep a close eye on and his second Expert Systems book, Expert System’s Champion, looks interesting. Check out these and more in my Other Recommendations section.
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The end is near! The end is near! When it comes to 2020, that’s a good thing, but as Yogi Beara pointed out, it’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future. Hopefully, you’ve enjoyed a lot of good books this year, and we’ve got a few more coming this month to close the year out. I can’t promise a better year in 2021, but I know there are some great reads on the horizon. Meanwhile, don your kerchief or cap, settle down for a long winter’s eve, and read some of December’s books.
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The days are growing shorter and shorter, which means it’s time to recall that old adage: spring ahead, fall back into an easy chair with a good book. We can help you with finding one.
For space opera fans, I recommend C.S. Friedman’s This Virtual Night, in which an action-junkie explorer takes a side job and winds up partnering with a game designer who’s the only hope of stopping a digital pandemic. For variety, you’ve got Tim Pratt’s The Fractured Void, in which a small crew on boring patrol duty gets all the excitement it could ask for. It’s the first novelization from the Twilight Imperium board game, and it’s fast and fun.
Closer to Earth, you’ve got Nucleation, Kimberly Unger’s debut, a hardcore space procedural with some very interesting ideas about micro wormholes, nanomachines, and entangled communications, set in a first contact situation and a conspiracy.
Leaving space behind, we’ve got three very different novels. Refraction by Christopher Hinz follows the now-adult subject of a government experiment as he seeks answers and tries to stay alive, while W. Michael Gear’s The Alpha Enigma is full of action as the inmates at a high-security military psychiatric facility turn out to be our world’s last hope. For something completely different, you can head to the coast of Maine to chill with author Jonathon Lethem’s The Arrest, set in a post-apocalyptic organic farming community…at least until a refugee from Hollywood blows into town in his atomic RV.
Finally, it’s the 40th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back, and Elizabeth Schaefer has put together a terrific collection of short stories about the film’s minor characters, From a Certain Point of View.
There are always books I can’t get to in time for the column and wind up on the Other Recommendations list, but three deserve special consideration. Ernest Cline continues Wade Watt’s virtual adventures in a Ready Player Two. In Firefly Generations, Tim Lebbon deepens the Firefly backstory when Mal and his gang find one of the original ships that brought humans to the ‘verse, and Christopher G. Nuttall provides a satisfying conclusion to an interstellar civil war in Debt of War.
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