If there was a paucity of new science fiction in August, then September more than makes up for it, with everything from a long-awaited piece of speculative fiction from China Miéville to a short story collection paying tribute to the genius of Ursula K. Le Guin, with contributions from names including Ann Leckie and Kelly Link. Then there’s a new near-future novel from Station Eleven author Emily St John Mandel, a fresh sci-fi series from the bestselling Brandon Sanderson (and co-author Janci Patterson) and a strange but intriguing tale from one of my favourite writers, Naomi Alderman.
This is something I absolutely cannot wait to read: a collection of 15 new short stories, inspired by the work of the one and only Ursula K. Le Guin and intended to honour her amazing legacy. The names contributing are super impressive, including Karen Joy Fowler and Charlie Jane Anders: what a treat.
China Miéville is one of our great contemporary writers, master of the weird and author of masterpieces including The City and the City and Embassytown (my personal favourite). New book The Rouse comes in two whopping volumes, and its publisher promises it is a “decade- and continent-spanning epic of grief, global tumult, and grim conspiracy”. I can’t tell you for sure that it’s science fiction, as I’ve yet to tackle the two doorstopper tomes I’ve been sent, but I can predict it will definitely be weird, and speculative.
Michael Moorcock, no less, calls it “completely without parallel”. In my younger days, I was an avid reader of Garth Nix’s young adult Old Kingdom series, so I’m interested to see what this excellent author’s first venture into sci-fi will be like. It’s a military space opera, set in a universe where interstellar war rages between Earth and Mars – and where for over two centuries, humans have travelled into space on huge sentient mountain ranges known as Massifs.
Then the crew of the ship Sassafras starts asking questions about why the Massifs carry humans to the stars – and talking to the powerful avatars piloting the ships. This is the first in the new Skyward Legacy series from the mighty Sanderson, co-written with Janci Patterson. It’s a complicated set-up: humans have warred against alien oppressors for decades.
Now they’re free, and Arturo Mendez, leader of Skyward Flight, is sent on a mission to make contact with a settlement of humans isolated during the long war. But Blightfall, the planet he’s sent to, is more dangerous than he’d anticipated. I am such a Naomi Alderman fan.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
