The December Roundup of Scifi Books
I'll get straight into the books this time!
The Flying Dutchman of the stars! Rigger and star pilot Renwald Legroeder undertakes a search for the legendary ghost ship Impris—and her passengers and crew—whose fate is entwined with interstellar piracy, quantum defects in space-time, galactic coverup conspiracies, and deep-cyber romance.
The science vessel, Hermes, has been urgently recalled from its mission to survey the moons of Saturn, just as First Officer Miranda Lee receives bad news from home—her mother is dying so she must leave the ship and return to Earth—for good. Commander Scott McNabb is so distraught by her sudden decision to leave that he pays little or no attention to the parameters of the new mission being requested by the Council of Europa.
Harry Robinson lives an idyllic lifestyle. A brilliant computer engineer, he made his fortune pushing the limits of android design. When a neighbouring planet is hit by a global nuclear strike, he feels compelled to help. A chance encounter with a group of offworld soldiers launches him on the trail of the perpetrators.
Prefect Olivia Johnson leads a Legion of disillusioned soldiers from both sides of the civil war. She blames herself for failing to prevent the attack. Now her mission is to hunt for its architect. But first, she must reclaim their adopted home from a different enemy. An enemy who won’t even talk.
The Indescribable Joy of Destruction is Johnson’s best friend and closest ally. Despite the lives they have saved, artificial intelligences are still the victims of fear and prejudice. The shadowy warship fights to defend the first place it felt accepted, and for equal rights for its kind.
Ironvale. Splitdawn. Poisoncry.
Three bloodthirsty guilds that control the decaying corner of space called the Reaches. This balance of power exists at a tipping point. One nudge and chaos reigns. Sela Tyron is willing to supply that nudge to help her partner with an important rescue. Even if it means trusting a shifty criminal. Or turning herself into a power-armored assassin.
The Commonwealth government refuses to acknowledge it. Propaganda and lies fill the media, dispelling all rumors of the invasion. Anyone who dares reveal the truth finds themselves in prison. Their minds erased by Entrents -- genetically engineered telepaths.
There are no heroes here. Only people and aliens trying to survive. This is not a story about the end. We are only at the beginning.
Welcome to the Kwa system, where three suns shine their light on over twenty worlds, where a giant cloud nebula dominates the skies and where everything and everyone can be bought and sold. Until now.
Ex-smuggler Will scratches out a living piloting a deep-space fishing boat over the vast sea of dust, but trouble is stirring in the outer reaches of the system and soon Will and his motley crew find themselves dragged into a conflict that could engulf every one of the Kwa worlds. Caught between the in-fighting gangsters who run the system and a rebellion by the native Kwa, Will has to balance his obsessive search for one man with his love for another.
When a bankrupt armourer ends up owning a second-rate jugger player, he decides to go for it. But will he manage to even turn a profit, when he knows little about the game and its seedy world, when the opponents play dirty on and off the field, and when the game's popularity grows with every player injury and death?
1899 years after the Catastrophe, Bridges is owned by the Mob. As the city's steam-driven infrastructure fails, a new faction rises: the Red Dogs.
Jacqueline Spadros is haunted by her best friend Air's death, killed as he tried to stop her sale to the Spadros crime syndicate ten years ago. Now in an unwilling marriage to the city's biggest drug lord, she secretly runs a small-time private eye business to earn enough money to escape.
Air's little brother disappears from his back porch. And now someone is following Jacqui.
Dark, gritty, psychological, multi-layered Victorian-inspired far future detective noir that keeps the reader guessing to the very end.
After The Fall the scattered pockets of civilization that survived choose to live in ignorance of the past. No-one wants to know what caused the apocalypse. No-one, except Ethan.
As a boy, Ethan believed in the guardians – mysterious lights in the night sky that, according to folklore, safeguard survivors from The Maddening. This horrific sickness mutated men and women into Roamers; savage nomads, stripped of their humanity. But when a Roamer attack killed his parents, Ethan’s faith was shattered and replaced with a hunger to know the truth.
One night Ethan watches a light grow bright in the night sky and crash to the planet’s surface near a ruined city. There he finds Maria, a descendant of the pre-Fall civilization which is trapped off-world and unable to return to the poisoned planet. Maria has risked everything to find a Planetsider; a man or woman with an inborn resistance to The Maddening. She begs Ethan to help to save her people, and in return he will finally learn the truth.
But the revelations come at a terrible cost and Ethan finds himself drawn into a war that has raged for generations. Who will he choose to save and can he himself be saved?
Over 100 players enter a virtual world to play a game – survive 24 hours of their chosen apocalypse. Instead of game over at the end, they're plunged straight into another game, and then another.
They have no communication with the outside operators. Their simulation pods are designed to only last 3 days. The artificial intelligence is tapping into their minds and creating 'death dreams'. And they’re trapped in a dangerous world with strangers they can’t trust.
It’s clear something is keeping them inside the game, but who or what? Everyone dreams of escaping reality but this game has far greater risks than they could have imagined…
The Flying Dutchman of the stars! Rigger and star pilot Renwald Legroeder undertakes a search for the legendary ghost ship Impris—and her passengers and crew—whose fate is entwined with interstellar piracy, quantum defects in space-time, galactic coverup conspiracies, and deep-cyber romance.
The science vessel, Hermes, has been urgently recalled from its mission to survey the moons of Saturn, just as First Officer Miranda Lee receives bad news from home—her mother is dying so she must leave the ship and return to Earth—for good. Commander Scott McNabb is so distraught by her sudden decision to leave that he pays little or no attention to the parameters of the new mission being requested by the Council of Europa.
Harry Robinson lives an idyllic lifestyle. A brilliant computer engineer, he made his fortune pushing the limits of android design. When a neighbouring planet is hit by a global nuclear strike, he feels compelled to help. A chance encounter with a group of offworld soldiers launches him on the trail of the perpetrators.
Prefect Olivia Johnson leads a Legion of disillusioned soldiers from both sides of the civil war. She blames herself for failing to prevent the attack. Now her mission is to hunt for its architect. But first, she must reclaim their adopted home from a different enemy. An enemy who won’t even talk.
The Indescribable Joy of Destruction is Johnson’s best friend and closest ally. Despite the lives they have saved, artificial intelligences are still the victims of fear and prejudice. The shadowy warship fights to defend the first place it felt accepted, and for equal rights for its kind.
Ironvale. Splitdawn. Poisoncry.
Three bloodthirsty guilds that control the decaying corner of space called the Reaches. This balance of power exists at a tipping point. One nudge and chaos reigns. Sela Tyron is willing to supply that nudge to help her partner with an important rescue. Even if it means trusting a shifty criminal. Or turning herself into a power-armored assassin.
The Commonwealth government refuses to acknowledge it. Propaganda and lies fill the media, dispelling all rumors of the invasion. Anyone who dares reveal the truth finds themselves in prison. Their minds erased by Entrents -- genetically engineered telepaths.
There are no heroes here. Only people and aliens trying to survive. This is not a story about the end. We are only at the beginning.
Welcome to the Kwa system, where three suns shine their light on over twenty worlds, where a giant cloud nebula dominates the skies and where everything and everyone can be bought and sold. Until now.
Ex-smuggler Will scratches out a living piloting a deep-space fishing boat over the vast sea of dust, but trouble is stirring in the outer reaches of the system and soon Will and his motley crew find themselves dragged into a conflict that could engulf every one of the Kwa worlds. Caught between the in-fighting gangsters who run the system and a rebellion by the native Kwa, Will has to balance his obsessive search for one man with his love for another.
When a bankrupt armourer ends up owning a second-rate jugger player, he decides to go for it. But will he manage to even turn a profit, when he knows little about the game and its seedy world, when the opponents play dirty on and off the field, and when the game's popularity grows with every player injury and death?
1899 years after the Catastrophe, Bridges is owned by the Mob. As the city's steam-driven infrastructure fails, a new faction rises: the Red Dogs.
Jacqueline Spadros is haunted by her best friend Air's death, killed as he tried to stop her sale to the Spadros crime syndicate ten years ago. Now in an unwilling marriage to the city's biggest drug lord, she secretly runs a small-time private eye business to earn enough money to escape.
Air's little brother disappears from his back porch. And now someone is following Jacqui.
Dark, gritty, psychological, multi-layered Victorian-inspired far future detective noir that keeps the reader guessing to the very end.
After The Fall the scattered pockets of civilization that survived choose to live in ignorance of the past. No-one wants to know what caused the apocalypse. No-one, except Ethan.
As a boy, Ethan believed in the guardians – mysterious lights in the night sky that, according to folklore, safeguard survivors from The Maddening. This horrific sickness mutated men and women into Roamers; savage nomads, stripped of their humanity. But when a Roamer attack killed his parents, Ethan’s faith was shattered and replaced with a hunger to know the truth.
One night Ethan watches a light grow bright in the night sky and crash to the planet’s surface near a ruined city. There he finds Maria, a descendant of the pre-Fall civilization which is trapped off-world and unable to return to the poisoned planet. Maria has risked everything to find a Planetsider; a man or woman with an inborn resistance to The Maddening. She begs Ethan to help to save her people, and in return he will finally learn the truth.
But the revelations come at a terrible cost and Ethan finds himself drawn into a war that has raged for generations. Who will he choose to save and can he himself be saved?
Over 100 players enter a virtual world to play a game – survive 24 hours of their chosen apocalypse. Instead of game over at the end, they're plunged straight into another game, and then another.
They have no communication with the outside operators. Their simulation pods are designed to only last 3 days. The artificial intelligence is tapping into their minds and creating 'death dreams'. And they’re trapped in a dangerous world with strangers they can’t trust.
It’s clear something is keeping them inside the game, but who or what? Everyone dreams of escaping reality but this game has far greater risks than they could have imagined…
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