Publisher: Tor
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 04/10/2012
ISBN-13: 9780765330963
ISBN-10: 0765330962

SF. Josef Horkai awakens from cryo-sleep paralyzed from the waist down, and with no memories. He is further horrified to learn that an indeterminate apocalyptic event has driven humanity's few survivors underground. Rasmus, the survivors' leader, insists Horkai is their last hope: amnesia and paralysis aside, he seems uniquely indestructible. Carried by ambiguously human handlers called "mules," he must trek 100 miles of wasteland to breach a mountain fortress and retrieve the mysterious cylinder that will prevent humanity's annihilation. Immobility is a hard-to-put-down, what's-going-on, post-apocalyptic odyssey in the grand tradition of Harlan Ellison's "A Boy and His Dog" and Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

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Publisher: Tachyon
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 04/01/2012
ISBN-13: 9781616960650
ISBN-10: 1616960655

Social Issues SF. Hugo Award-winner Nancy Kress explores humanity's fragile tenacity in three narratives that blur boundaries of past, present, and future. First, when human-induced ecological disasters (aka "The Fall") precipitate Earth's last gasps, aliens intervene: a few humans are saved, who may be permitted to repopulate -- if they won't just commit the same errors. Then, in 2035, 15-year-old Peter describes life in an alien-supervised prison/refuge. Allowed occasional "Grabs" to the past for survival necessities, he is sometimes asked to bring a new child to the refuge. Finally, in 2013, Julie Kahn develops an algorithm to predict the next in a series of mysterious robberies and kidnappings. As industrial waste begins to destroy all plant life, Julie's awareness offers hope.

Publisher: Ace Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 06/05/2012
ISBN-13: 9780441020713
ISBN-10: 0441020712

SF. Africa dominates 22nd-century global economics and technology; thanks to scientific advances, Earth's colonies stretch from the Moon to Mars, while crime, war, disease, and poverty have all but disappeared. A scion of one Africa's most powerful families, Geoffrey Akinya happily dodges the spotlight to immerse himself in studies of elephant intelligence. But the death of his grandmother (the family's matriarch) compels him to investigate a mysterious safe-deposit box on the Moon. At best, its contents may destroy his family; at worst, they could shatter the galaxy as he knows it. Fans of David Brin and Kim Stanley Robinson will be thrilled with this blend of creatively plausible science and character-driven SF adventure.

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 06/19/2012
ISBN-13: 9780312681555
ISBN-10: 0312681550

Post-apocalyptic SF. The ruling World Court denies "full human" status to anyone with even a hint of inherited DNA markers traceable to Earth's now centuries-past apocalypse. As Earth crumbles in final nuclear decay, powerful magnate Nathan Serca -- obsessed with cleansing this "taint" from humanity for good -- secretly plots to relocate only society's most genetically pure to a new Martian colony. But Threnody Corwin and her band of psionically gifted "gene-trash" rebels refuse to die gracefully as planned -- and Lucas, Nathan's son, has his own sinister motivations for helping them thwart the World Court's plans in this thrill-a-minute sequel to Mind Storm.

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Publisher: Tor
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 06/05/2012
ISBN-13: 9780765316998
ISBN-10: 0765316994

Humorous SF. Redshirts follows the adventures of Ensign Andrew Dahl aboard the Universal Union starship Intrepid. Tickled to be aboard the pride of the fleet (even if he's been humbly assigned to its xenobiology lab), Dahl looks forward to his exciting away missions. Old hands seem to vanish when senior officers appear on the bridge looking for mission recruits -- and the chief science officer always goes, taking several newbies along, so -- Dahl's prospects look great! (Or...not.) This affectionately wry, pitch-perfect homage to TV's original Star Trek series will please avid Trek fans and readers who loved the author's earlier light SF, Fuzzy Nation and Android's Dream.

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Publisher: Pantheon Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 11/01/2002
ISBN-13: 9780375421518
ISBN-10: 0375421513

SF Short Stories. Two of the 23 outstanding stories collected here offer clever explorations of memory, reality, and identity in the near future. In "The Minority Report" (which inspired a film of the same title), aging cop Joe Anderton harnesses precognition to fight crime. Three "pre-cogs," individuals with talent, are imprisoned in stasis chambers so police can harvest their visions. With guilt so easily determined, most crimes are stopped before they ever happen. But could a "pre-cog" ever misremember the future...on purpose? In "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (the basis for the film Total Recall), a sinister company selling memory implants runs into unexpected risks.

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Publisher: Pyr
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 04/03/2007
ISBN-13: 9781591025412
ISBN-10: 1591025419

Parallel Worlds SF. When pilot Titus Quinn returns to the parallel universe Entire, he does so with no memory of exactly how he lost his wife Johanna, his daughter Sydney, and his company's ship there on his first (accidental) visit. While his employers have their own motives in sending him back, Titus is determined to find his family. To do so, he must carefully navigate the strange and perilous politics and landscape of the Entire, a world in which the sky is fire, many bizarre alien species comingle, and a version of Earth's Chinese culture has been grafted into the mix. Booklist lauds Bright of the Sky as a "fascinating and gratifying feat of world building."

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Publisher: Little, Brown
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 07/01/2011
ISBN-13: 9780316006965
ISBN-10: 0316006963

SF. America is a corporate subsidiary of Japan, an Islamic superpower has nuked Israel off the map, and 87% of Americans are hooked on "flashback," a drug that plunges users blissfully back into the best moments of their lives. Like most "flashers," ex-cop Nick Bottom trips on the early 20th century's good ol' days: before corrupt U.S. officials destroyed America -- and before his wife's tragic death destroyed his life. Years later, Nick learns that a young Japanese man was murdered at almost the same time, while he was profiling flashback addicts. Nick sets his metaphorical fedora on "stun" to reveal a memory-bending global conspiracy that links both deaths. Catch another SF/noir mash-up with Walter Mosley's The Wave!

Publisher: Ace Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 06/30/2006
ISBN-13: 9780441014033
ISBN-10: 0441014038

Near Future SF. After a voluntary memory extraction, Robin awakens in "the Glasshouse" -- a former prison for interstellar war criminals, now a post-surgical rehab center. As flickering half-memories of war-time atrocities resurface, doubts torment Robin's mind: did he really suffer such cruelties? Or, worse: do them to others? Either way, his deadly enemies haven't forgotten him at all. An experimental whole-body "identity reassignment" within a controlled 21st-century simulation could be Robin's best escape -- or the Glasshouse's cleverest trap. This stylish SF thriller explores memory, identity, and "humanity" in a complex future 'verse that fans of Richard K. Morgan's Afterburn will like.