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Starred Review: A Second Chance for Yesterday by R.A. Sinn

May 242023
 

Publishers Weekly: Sinn, the pseudonym for siblings Rachel Hope Cleves (Unspeakable) and Aram Sinnreich (The Essential Guide to Intellectual Property), spin an insightful and emotional story of quantum time travel in their fiction debut. It’s 11:33 p.m. on Sept. 22, 2045, when coder Nev Bourne finalizes SavePoint 2.0, an upgrade to the cutting-edge brain implant that allows users to skip back in time by five seconds. She hits run—and wakes up the morning of September 22, reliving the same day. Then, at 11:33 p.m., the same glitch resets her to the morning of September 21. So it goes: every 24 hours she travels back in time by one additional day. When she runs into notorious hacker Airin Myx, she accuses them of causing the glitch—but instead they reveal that they’ve been working with her to fix it for weeks. On a “collision course with her past,” Nev sets out to mend relationships with her needy boyfriend, domineering mother, and estranged best friend—all while falling for Airin, who’s traveling through time in the opposite direction. The authors infuse this plausible near future with clever science and heartwarming explorations of love and second chances. At the heart of this brilliant sci-fi conundrum is a deeply human story.

 

2023 Locus Awards Finalists

May 192023
 

Congratulations to our DMLA authors who are finalists for the 2023 Locus Awards!

FANTASY NOVEL

  • The Grief of Stones, Katherine Addison (Tor; Solaris UK)
  • Nona the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tordotcom)

YOUNG ADULT NOVEL

  • The Scratch Daughters, H.A. Clarke (Erewhon)

NOVELLA

  • “Bishop’s Opening“, R.S.A Garcia (Clarkesworld 1/22)
  • Even Though I Knew the End, C.L. Polk (Tordotcom)

NOVELETTE

  • “Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold“, S.B. Divya (Uncanny 5-6/22)
  • “Incident at Bear Creek Lodge”, Tananarive Due (Other Terrors)

COLLECTION

  • Breakable Things, Cassandra Khaw (Undertow)

NON-FICTION

  • An Earnest Blackness, Eugen Bacon (Anti-Oedipus)

ILLUSTRATED AND ART BOOK

  • The Keeper, Tananarive Due & Steven Barnes, art by Marco Finnegan (Megascope)

2023 Aurora Award Nominations

May 172023
 

Congratulations to our DMLA authors who have been nominated for a 2023 Aurora Award!

Aurora Award for Best Novel

  • The Embroidered Book, Kate Heartfield, HarperVoyager
  • The Void Ascendant, Premee Mohamed, Solaris Books

Aurora Award for Best Novelette/Novella

  • Even Though I Knew the End, C.L. Polk, Tordotcom

Aurora Award for Best Short Story

  • “Douen”, Suzan Palumbo, The Dark, Issue 82

Review: Suborbital 7 by John Shirley

May 032023
 

Library Journal: Shirley’s (Stormland) exciting novel is an immersive near-future military adventure that proves that doing the job doesn’t count for much if you don’t make it home in one piece. The story follows a group of soldiers led by Lt. Art Burkett, U.S. Rangers Airborne, who is sent halfway around the world on an urgent rescue mission to save the life of a key scientist whose mind is filled with important information. Burkett and his team take off in an off-the-books rocket-turned-airplane, which is able to quickly bring the team into action. The mission goes smoothly until the team tries to get home and runs into trouble in space. The beauty of Shirley’s novel comes from its laser-focused attention to military tactics, which helps to sell its squad-level action. Its haunting near-future setting reads like a story that could be happening right now, giving the text a healthy dose of realism.

VERDICT This is a tight military procedural for fans looking for something like Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan transported to space, with rockets flying, ruthless Russians scheming, and unvarnished trust in the American way.

Review: Dual Memory by Sue Burke

Apr 042023
 

Publishers Weekly: Burke (Symbiosis) explores art and artificial intelligence in this clever near-future adventure. The dual narrators, one human and one computer, meet on the small arctic island of Thule, run by altruistic doctors. Antonio Moro is a Bronzewing mercenary defending the island from the Leviathon League raiders bent on enslaving its civilians when he is blasted from a rusty garbage barge. Injured, he’s left to recover ashore, and secretly ordered by Bronzewing Captain Soliana to root out raider infiltrators. He’s also linked to a personal assistant program, Par Augustus (or “Venerable Companion”), one of only four extant independent intelligent machines. Illiterate Antonio, a self-taught artist who is invariably polite to machines, and Par, a prickly manipulator capable of well-meant deceit, make an unlikely duo, but together they just might be able to save Thule from the Leviathon League. Burke loads the story with fascinating characters as she probes how humanity’s artistic capacity to inspire might interact with AI’s flexible intelligence. This playful glimpse of nonthreatening human-machine interaction is sure to charm. (May)

Starred Review: Dual Memory by Sue Burke

Mar 022023
 

Booklist: Though the scale of Burke’s latest (after Immunity Index, 2021) is limited to the small island of Thule in the Arctic Circle, the conflict faced by the islanders takes on a large-scale feel. Antonio Moro is injured while firing missiles at war boats of the Leviathan League, recruited by mercenaries to be on the lookout for LL agents, and hired to create art for the chamber of commerce. He takes possession of the control cube of Par Augustus, an AI that has become independent, as a reward for his contest-winning sculpture. Because Moro is always polite to the various machine systems he encounters, Par Augustus introduces itself to him. Gradually this leads to befriending Chatelaine, the system that runs his employers’ home, and Prior Edifice, which runs the hospital. When the raiders threaten again, the merchants, who do a lot of trading of ExtraTs stored at the Xenological Gardens, and the Thules, pacifistic doctors who are the main government of the isle, differ on how to deal with them. Par Augustus has other ideas too, and Moro becomes his willing human accomplice. If Ursula LeGuin had written about AI machines, it would have looked a lot like this marvelous fable.

Locus 2022 Recommended Reading List

Feb 132023
 

Congratulations to all our authors included in the Locus 2022 Recommended Reading List!

NOVELS – SCIENCE FICTION

  • A Half-Built Garden, Ruthanna Emrys (Tordotcom)

NOVELS – FANTASY

  • The Grief of Stones, Katherine Addison (Tor; Solaris UK)
  • The Origin of Storms, Elizabeth Bear (Tor)
  • The Embroidered Book, Kate Heartfield (Harper Voyager UK)
  • Nona the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tordotcom)

COLLECTIONS

  • Breakable Things, Cassandra Khaw (Undertow)

ILLUSTRATED AND ART BOOKS

  • The Keeper, Tananarive Due & Steven Barnes, art by Marco Finnegan (Megascope)

NOVELLAS

  • “Bishop’s Opening“, R.S.A Garcia (Clarkesworld 1/22)
  • Even Though I Knew the End, C.L. Polk (Tordotcom)

NOVELETTES

  • “Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold“, S.B. Divya (Uncanny 5-6/22)
  • “Incident at Bear Creek Lodge”, Tananarive Due (Other Terrors)

SHORT STORIES

  • “12 Things a Trini Should Know Before Travelling to a Back in Times FeteTM”, R.S.A. Garcia (Strange Horizons 10/10/22)
  • “Have Mercy, My Love While We Wait for the Thaw”, Iori Kusano (Apex 7/22)
  • “Apolépisi: A De-Scaling”, Suzan Palumbo (Lightspeed 10/22)
  • “Douen”, Suzan Palumbo (The Dark 3/22)

Deal: Kate Heartfield

Dec 152022
 
Author photo of Kate Heartfield.

Photo courtesy of John W. MacDonald.

Author of THE EMBROIDERED BOOK Kate Heartfield’s THE VALKYRIE, pitched as retelling of the myth about the valkyrie Brynhild and her love for a Burgundian princess; THE CHATELAINE, a revised edition of the Aurora Award-winning ARMED IN HER FASHION; and THE SHARP SISTERS, about four sisters with the second sight during World War II, to Jane Johnson at Voyager UK, in a three-book deal, for publication in March 2023, May 2023, and 2025, by Jennie Goloboy.

Axle Bust Creek by John Shirley

Sep 272022
 

From the acclaimed author of Ralph Compton’s Prairie Fire, Kansas, the first in an action-packed new series starring Civil War veteran Cleveland Trewe, a master gunfighter, horseman, and lawman who’s looking to strike it rich in the gold fields of Axle Bust, Nevada…

From the battlefield of Shiloh to the prisoner camp at Slocum, former Union soldier Cleveland Trewe has seen more than enough carnage for one lifetime. Now that the war is over he’s found work as a peacekeeper and prospector—the perfect set of survival skills for a town like Axle Bust, Nevada, a place seething with danger.

Cleve’s uncle staked a claim in Axle Bust only to lose it to a murderous con-man partnered with Duncan Conroy, owner of the Golden Fleece Mine and a man determined to build an empire by means fair and foul. The only person keeping Conroy in check is his sister Berenice, a freethinker whose scientific education benefits the family interests—even while catching Cleve’s eye.

To reclaim his uncle’s mine, and bring justice to a town under tyranny, Cleve finds himself turning the streets into a bullet-riddled battlefield. Conroy is about to learn there just isn’t room for both men in a town like Axle Bust.

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