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"They had spent all that money on us just to kill us in training?" ~ from Joe Haldeman's The Forever War |
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New and Recently Released!
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| Corsair by James CambiasNear-Future SF. Once lovers, now adversaries, Air Force Captain Elizabeth Santiago and cybercriminal David Schwartz face off when the latter hijacks a lucrative shipment of helium-3 mined from the Moon's surface. As David pursues profit and Elizabeth chases David (and his ill-gotten gains), their activities attract the attention of some especially unsavory players in the thriving industry of interplanetary piracy. If you enjoy high times and space crimes, check out this fast-paced, action-packed adventure by the author of A Darkling Sea. |
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| The Machine Awakes by Adam ChristopherSpace Opera. This 2nd installment of the Spider Wars series introduces Special Agent Von Kodiak, an intelligence operative tasked with investigating the assassination of the space fleet's admiral. Unfortunately, Kodiak's prime suspect, psi-Marine Tyler Smith, was killed in action months before the incident occurred. However, his twin sister Cait, a member of the same unit, disappeared right around the time of her brother's death. Could there be a connection? Less creepy and more suspenseful than its horror-tinged predecessor, The Machine Awakes expands the boundaries of the near-future world established in Burning Dark. |
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| The Fire Sermon: A Novel by Francesca HaigPost-Apocalyptic SF. Four centuries after nuclear catastrophe, humanity has evolved in some strange ways: each person has a twin to whom they are symbiotically connected. Some are Alphas, physically perfect, while others are Omegas, born with deformities that make them second-class citizens. Cass is a psychic Omega whose Alpha twin, Zach, keeps her imprisoned. Cass wants a life of her own and the freedoms that the Alphas take for granted, but since no one can survive without his or her twin, Cass' dreams of equality may mean sacrificing her own life for the future of all Omegas. For another post-apocalyptic tale in which disaster has divided the human race into warring factions, try Julianna Baggot's Pure trilogy. If you enjoy tales of far-future freedom fighters working to overthrow rigid caste systems, check out Pierce Brown's Red Rising. |
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| Superposition by David WaltonSF Mystery. Physicist Brian Vanderhall has been murdered on the grounds of the New Jersey Super-Collider facility, and his colleague Jacob Kelly is the prime suspect. Before his death, however, Vanderhall revealed a stunning breakthrough pertaining to quantum entanglement, one that set in motion multiple parallel realities. In one, Jacob stands trial for Vanderhall's murder; in another, Jacob and his daughter investigate the crime. Superposition is the 1st installment of a planned duology; keep an eye out for the forthcoming Supersymmetry. And if you enjoy science fiction whodunits that bend the laws of physics, try Adam Roberts' Jack Glass or Ellen Larson's In Retrospect. |
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| The Affinities by Robert Charles WilsonSocial SF. In the not-so-distant future, researcher Meir Klein creates an algorithm with an unprecedented success rate when it comes to grouping compatible people. Building upon this research, a corporation called InterAlia develops a test enabling individuals to determine their inclusion in one of 22 groups, or "Affinities." When Adam Fisk qualifies for Tau, the largest Affinity, he feels -- for the first time in his life -- a sense of belonging. But complications quickly arise. Klein intends, with the help of Tau, to release the now-proprietary testing code to the rest of humanity, the vast majority of which is unaffiliated with any Affinity. Meanwhile, Tau's main rival, Het, will do anything to stop the algorithm's distribution. Don't miss this suspenseful near-future SF story of social media on steroids. |
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| Lost Fleet: Dauntless by Jack CampbellMilitary SF. After battling the Syndicate Worlds for a century, the Alliance is losing. Stranded in enemy territory, its fleet crippled, the Alliance has one last weapon to deploy against the Syndics: legendary war hero Captain John "Black Jack" Geary, awakened from hibernation after decades of drifting through space, presumed dead. Currently the highest ranking Alliance officer, Geary takes control of the battle cruiser Dauntless, which carries the Syndic hypernet key, a crucial component of the Alliance victory strategy. But can Geary live up to his own legend? Dauntless kicks off the Lost Fleet series. For another action-packed, plot-driven novel about a cryogenically frozen and revived space hero, try John C. Wright's The Hermetic Millennia. |
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| Death's Head by David GunnMilitary SF. A member of the Death's Head, the intergalactic equivalent of the French Foreign Legion, mercenary Sven Tveskoeg survives one deadly mission after another thanks to a winning combination of hard-won skill, super-human abilities, and plain luck. Fans of fast-paced, violent shoot 'em up science fiction starring rough-and-tumble antiheroes (such as Kieran Shea's Koko Takes a Holiday) should enjoy this opening installment of the Death's Head series, which continues with Maximum Offense and Day of the Damned |
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| The Forever War by Joe W. HaldemanMilitary SF. Drafted into the military to battle the Taurans in interstellar space, William Mandella rises through the ranks quickly -- or slowly, depending on one's perspective. For Mandella, his career spans mere months. To outsiders, he's been serving his planet for over 1,000 years, due to the wonders of faster-than-light travel. A millennium of combat leads to moving meditations on the nature of war in this thought-provoking novel, originally published in 1974, which won the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus awards. |
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| Germline by T.C. McCarthyNear-future/Military SF. U.S. and Russian troops grapple in vicious trench warfare among Kazakhstan's icy mountains, where rare precious metals -- essential to technology manufacture -- are mined. An embedded journalist's Pulitzer Prize dreams morph into a Full Metal Jacket nightmare when he learns that the combatants include genetically engineered super-soldiers who look like lovely teenage girls, move like killers, and physically decay by age 18 (a "fail safe" preventing capture and re-training by the enemy -- and their escape). Human and inhuman forces meet in hardcore battle action where the fate of "humanity" -- literally and existentially -- hangs in the balance. Germline, 1st in the Subterrene War trilogy, is followed by Exogene and Chimera. |
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| Trading in Danger by Elizabeth MoonMilitary SF. Kylara "Ky" Vatta, daughter of an interstellar transport magnate, dreams of being a military commander. Unfortunately, that dream is dashed when she's booted out of the space academy on Slotter's Key. Returning home in disgrace, Ky is surprised when her father gives her command of a spaceship, albeit one that is bound for the scrapyard. Entrepreneurial by nature, Ky wangles a delivery deal that might afford her enough profit to purchase and overhaul the ship -- that is, if she and her crew can survive an interplanetary war and attacks by mercenaries. Stalwart, intelligent, and creative, Ky is a protagonist that Honor Harrington fans can't help but admire. |
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