English novelist Naomi Alderman gained plenty of attention for her last novel The Power, a speculative look at what might happen in a shift of global power. She has followed that book up with something a little closer to reality, but still on the speculative side. The Future takes as its premise three of the…
Tobias S Buckell’s standalone speculative fiction novel A Stranger in the Citadel opens with literally a killer first line: The gods say, “You shall not suffer a librarian to live”. Riffing on classics like Fahrenheit 451, Buckell creates a future world in which largesse is provided through giant machines known as the cornucopia and books…
Sarah Flannery Murphy showed in her first two books her capacity to take a speculative premise and use it illuminate real world issues. In The Possessions, her protagonist had the capacity to channel the lives of the dead and Girl One revolved around a group of young women with extraordinary powers. In both cases, what…
Speculative fiction often lives and dies by its premise. So long as the author can sell the premise and hold it together, speculative fiction has the capacity to open minds and deeply explore issues. Guy Morpuss’s debut novel Five Minds has what can only be described as a double speculative premise. On top of this…
Patricia Marques’ debut The Colours of Death is a successful genre mash. Marques has taken a down-the-line crime procedural, mixed it with a well imagined alternative world in which some people are ‘gifted’ with specific powers and set it on the very real streets of Lisbon. All anchored by a strong, flawed and despite her…
After having done giant robot on robot action in his Themis Files trilogy, Sylvain Neuvel embarks on something a little different in his new book A History of What Comes Next. Set between the dying days of the Second World War and the launch of the first man into space, this is not so much…
In the near future, a child is created using the DNA of three parents; mother Stacey, father Isaac, and a long deceased ancestor of mankind. This child will not be able to hold a passport, live a normal life, or even be issued with a birth certificate. She is Fauna. Stacey and Isaac, a young…
Australian science fiction and thriller author Max Barry goes the full Heinlein in his latest book Providence. Providence is military science fiction with a take no prisoners attitude. It takes readers into an ongoing war with an alien race but also questions whether humanity is really up to the task. The book opens with humanity’s…
