Seattle Picks: Science Fiction 2024
A variety of recently published science fiction titles recommended by our librarians. Annotations by NoveList unless otherwise noted.
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This Great Hemisphere
When authorities claim her brother, who was presumed dead, is alive -- and the main suspect in the murder of the Chief Executive of Northwestern Hemisphere, Candace, a young invisible woman, must find him before it's too late in a world where no one and nothing is ever as it seems.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Navigational Entanglements
Jockeying navigator clans guide spaceships through the Hollows: an area of space populated by the mysterious but deadly creatures known as Tanglers. When a Tangler escapes the Hollows for the first time in living memory, each clan must send a representative to help capture it--but the mission may be doomed and the hearts of two clan juniors may be in danger too.
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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The Ministry of Time
A time travel romance, a spy thriller, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Rakesfall
Some stories take more than one lifetime to tell. There are wrongs that echo through the ages, friendships that outpace the claws of death, loves that leave their mark on civilization, and promises that nothing can break. This is one such story. Annelidand Leveret met as children in the middle of the Sri Lankan civil war. They found each other in a torn-up nation, peering through propaganda to grasp a deeper truth. And in a demon-haunted wood, another act of violence linked them and propelled their souls on a journey throughout the ages. No world can hold them, no life can bind them, and they'll never leave each other behind.
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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Continuum
This unique collection of newly translated short stories offers a taste of classic and contemporary French science fiction to English-language readers. These stories cover a range of fascinating topics including simulated reality, speciesism, ecology, and transhumanism—all while exploring universal themes of belonging, death, and identity. These nine stories showcase some of the brilliant mid- to late twentieth and twenty-first century French contributions to science fiction.
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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Weird Black Girls
A rural town finds itself under the authoritarian sway of a tree that punishes children. A pair of old friends navigate their fraught history as strange happenings escalate in a Mexican restaurant. A pair of narcissistic friends wreak havoc on an activist community. An aloof young man finds himself living through his lover’s memories. And a day of LARPing takes a cosmic turn. In each of the seven stories in this collection, characters pursue their obsessions on paths to glory and destruction while around them their worlds twist and warp, oscillating between reality and impossibility.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Floating Hotel
Tells a story of misfits, rebels, found family—and a mystery that spans the stars.
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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Deep Dream
Ten writers imagine the different ways in which art forms might evolve, devolve, shift, and transform in the decades and centuries to come. They consider how the rapid progress of technology will interact with different mediums of art or give rise to new ones, and what the lives and inner worlds of different kinds of artists might look like in the future as they adapt to rapidly shifting eras amidst anthropogenic global threats like climate change and fascism.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Exordia
A disaffected office worker has an unearthly close encounter and joins a team of civilians, soldiers and scientists to investigate a mysterious other-worldly broadcast in the new novel from the author of the Baru Cormorant novels.
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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Annie Bot
Annie Bot was created to be the perfect girlfriend for her human owner Doug. Designed to satisfy his emotional and physical needs, she has dinner ready for him, wears the outfits he orders for her, and adjusts her libido to suit his moods. She’s trying to please him and trying hard. She’s learning, too. Doug says he loves that Annie’s AI makes her seem more like a real woman, so Annie explores human traits such as curiosity, secrecy, and longing. But becoming more human also means becoming less perfect, and as their relationship grows more intricate and difficult, she starts to wonder: Does Doug desire what he says he wants? And in such an impossible paradox, what does Annie owe herself?
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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