Originally Published: https://amazingstories.com/2019/12/science-fiction-…for-january-2020/
Happy New Year! And for science fiction readers it’s a very happy New Year indeed, with the arrival of Agency, William Gibson’s much-anticipated sequel to Peripheral (2014), a great collection of stories in The Best of Elizabeth Bear, a gripping voyage to the edge of the solar system in Patrick Chiles’ new novel, Frozen Orbit, and lots more.
 “One of the most visionary, original, and quietly influential writers currently working” (The Boston Globe) returns with a brand-new novel.
In William Gibson’s first novel since 2014’s New York Times bestselling The Peripheral, a gifted “app-whisperer,” hired to beta test a mysterious new product, finds her life endangered by her relationship with her surprisingly street-smart and combat-savvy “digital assistant. |
 The Best of Elizabeth Bear by Elizabeth Bear1/31/20 (Subterranean)Here are 27 wide-ranging stories from one of today’s most gifted authors, full of strong protagonists, often outsiders in whatever setting they’re in, and almost always about to undergo a transformation into something else. Becoming free from station, or programming, or circumstance is a theme that runs throughout this excellent collection. As Professor Harding, a black researcher investigating the Lovecraftian Shoggoths frees them from their constraints when given the choice to command them, he says; “I want you o learn to be free…and I want you to tell your brothers”. Bear’s characters are strong but never unfeeling. Determined, but compassionate, they come in all shapes, sizes, genders, and genomes, from vampire to AI to space beast and plenty of humans, genetically tweaked and normal. I interviewed her for SFRevu.com last March with the release of her latest book, Ancestral Night, and it was clear to me that she’s not in any danger of running out of things to say. While fans of the author, or science fiction in general, should find this collection rewarding, it should also appeal to fans of great writing and short fiction outside the genre. |
 THE BEGINNING OF LIFE AWAITS AT THE END OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM.
A FROZEN ANSWER AT THE EDGE OF PLANETARY SPACE Set to embark on NASA’s first expedition to the outer planets, the crew of the spacecraft Magellan learns someone else has beaten them by a few decades: a top-secret Soviet project codenamed Arkangel. Now during their long race to the Kuiper Belt, astronauts Jack Templeton and Traci Keene must unwind a decades-old mystery buried in the pages of a dead cosmonaut’s journal. The solution will challenge their beliefs about the nature of humanity, and will force the astronauts to confront the question of existence itself. And the final answer lies at the edge of the Solar System, waiting to change everything. |
 “Riot Baby bursts at the seams of story with so much fire, passion and power that in the end it turns what we call a narrative into something different altogether.”—Marlon James
Rooted in foundational loss and the hope that can live in anger, Riot Baby is both a global dystopian narrative an intimate family story with quietly devastating things to say about love, fury, and the black American experience. Ella and Kev are brother and sister, both gifted with extraordinary power. Their childhoods are defined and destroyed by structural racism and brutality. Their futures might alter the world. When Kev is incarcerated for the crime of being a young black man in America, Ella—through visits both mundane and supernatural—tries to show him the way to a revolution that could burn it all down. |