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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Jamaica Ginger
In Nalo Hopkinson’s first collection of stories since 2015, a woman and her cyborg pig eke out a living in a future waterworld; two scientists contemplate the cavernous remains of an alien life-form; a trans woman at a funeral might be haunted by more than just bad memories; and an artist creates nanotechnology that asserts Blackness where it is least welcome and most needed. Hopkinson and her Afro-Caribbean, Canadian, and American influences shine in truly unique stories that are gorgeously strange, inventively subversive, and vividly beautiful.
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The Other Valley
A novel about an isolated town neighbored by its own past and future, and a young girl who spots two elderly visitors from across the border: the grieving parents of the boy she loves.
Format: Book
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The Inhumans and Other Stories
Kalpavigyan—science fiction written to excite Bengali speakers about science, as well as to persuade them to evolve beyond the limitations of religion, caste, and class—became popular in the early years of the twentieth century. Translated into English for the first time, in this collection you’ll discover The Inhumans (1935), Hemendrakumar Roy’s satirical novella about a lost race of Bengali supermen in Uganda. Also included are Jagadananda Ray’s “Voyage to Venus” (1895), Nanigopal Majumdar’s “The Mystery of the Giant” (1931), and Manoranjan Bhattacharya’s “The Martian Purana” (1931).
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The Stardust Grail
Maya Hoshimoto was once the best art thief in the galaxy. For ten years, she returned stolen artifacts to alien civilizations—until a disastrous job forced her into hiding. Now she just wants to enjoy a quiet life as a graduate student of anthropology, but she’s haunted by persistent and disturbing visions of the future. Then an old friend comes to her with a job she can’t refuse: find a powerful object that could save an alien species from extinction. Except no one has seen it in living memory, and they aren’t the only ones hunting for it.
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A View From the Stars
This new book from Liu (The Three-Body Problem, 2014) explores his craft and his visions of what sf is and could be. The format, mixing nonfiction with short stories, all translated by multiple contributors, will give new context to old fans while introducing new readers to a true genius of the genre. (Booklist)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Wings Upon Her Back
A Winged Zemolai, Zenya, after 26 years of service, is disillusioned with being an enforcer in an increasingly fascist state, and when a tragic act of mercy costs her everything, she fights for her life and begins to understand the true nature of her sect, her leader and the gods themselves.
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The Siege of Burning Grass
The Empires of Varkal and Med’ariz have always been at war. Alefret, the founder of Varkal’s pacifist resistance, was bombed and maimed by his own government, locked up in a secret prison and tortured by a ‘visionary’ scientist. But now they’re offering him a chance of freedom. Ordered to infiltrate one of Med’ariz’s flying cities, obeying the bloodthirsty zealot Qhudur, he must find fellow anti-war activists in the enemy’s population and provoke them into an uprising against their rulers.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Tusks of Extinction
When her digitized consciousness is downloaded into the mind of a mammoth, which have been resurrected, Dr. Damira Khismatullina, who was brutally murdered trying to defend the world’s last elephants, must teach them how to be mammoths to avoid dooming them to a new extinction.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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In Universes
A profoundly imaginative debut novel set in numerous universes, which follows a queer physicist’s search for belonging across time and space.
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Lost Ark Dreaming
After the dangerous rise of the Atlantic Ocean, the survivors live inside partially submerged, kilometers-high towers where the rich rule from the top while the rest are crammed into the dark, fetid floors below sea level until the dead, reawakened by ancient power, seek vengeance on those who offered them up to the waves.
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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