Science Fiction

Science fiction reviews: speculative narratives exploring technology, space, time, and the future of humanity.

  • The Coward

    The Coward opens with a premise that feels both familiar and quietly subversive. Kell Kressia, now a middle-aged farmer, was the sole survivor of a legendary quest that supposedly saved the world a decade ago. Everyone else on that quest died. Kell came home. He has spent the years since trying to forget everything that…

  • Apex

    When Ramez Naam published Nexus in 2012, the premise was lean and propulsive: a near-future nanodrug allows human minds to link directly with one another, and a graduate student named Kade Lane has just made it dramatically more powerful. Crux, the sequel, widened the canvas considerably, scattering characters across continents and governments. By Apex, the…

  • The Offset

    Calder Szewczak is the pen name of writing duo Natasha C. Calder and Emma Szewczak, who met while studying at Cambridge. Their debut novel, The Offset, arrived from Angry Robot in September 2021 with a premise that hits like a slap: in a near-future world wrecked by environmental collapse, a policy called the Offset mandates…

  • The Circus Infinite

    The Circus Infinite is Khan Wong’s debut novel, published by Angry Robot in March 2022. It follows Jes, a young man of mixed Rijala and human heritage who possesses a rare and coveted ability: he can manipulate probability fields, bending the physical forces around him in ways that look, to untrained eyes, like magic. Born…

  • In the Ravenous Dark

    A.M. Strickland’s In the Ravenous Dark, published in 2021 by Imprint, drops you into Thanopolis, a city steeped in ancient Greek-inspired culture where bloodmages are bound to undead shades who serve as both guardian and jailer. The premise is deceptively simple: a young woman named Rovan has spent twelve years hiding her blood magic after…

  • Flex

    Paul Tsabo is not the kind of person you would expect to save the world. He is an insurance adjuster in an alternate New York where people whose obsessions burn hot enough can reshape reality. These people are called ‘mancers, and their magic is illegal. Paul has a daughter with severe burns, a prosthetic foot,…

  • United States of Japan

    In 1988, the western half of North America belongs to Japan. The war ended differently here: the Japanese Empire and Nazi Germany divided the globe between them, and the territory once called the United States became the United States of Japan, a colonial state where citizens are expected to worship a living Emperor, giant mechas…

  • The Spare Man

    If you have ever watched a screwball comedy where the husband and wife team banter their way through a murder investigation while maintaining perfect cocktail etiquette, you already have the emotional blueprint for The Spare Man. Mary Robinette Kowal’s 2022 novel is a loving, unapologetic tribute to Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man, transplanted onto a…