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Obsession with work, the economy and plain old love take center stage in this month’s science fiction and fantasy selections.

While preparing for a documentary about his life in The Atlantis Code, linguist Thomas Lourds is shown a strange artifact featuring a language that even he, the foremost authority on ancient languages, cannot identify. Almost immediately, he is attacked and were it not for the fact that Leslie, the producer of the documentary, is a crack shot, Lourds’ life might have reached its untimely conclusion. Now, the race is on! Lourds and Leslie must outrace and outwit the psychopathic mercenaries hired by one Cardinal Murani, a member of a secret society dedicated to preserving the true history of Eden and Atlantis as well as resurrecting the power of the papacy. The characters rarely move beyond stereotypes—impossibly attractive, impossibly gifted at their chosen vocations, impossibly good or evil—and the scenes often feel reminiscent of other novels and movies; but the linguistics aspect of the novel is new and well-researched and has the potential to do for the field what Indiana Jones did for archeology. A captivating and fun read with a plethora of literary and cinematic antecedents, The Atlantis Code is best read with a big bowl of popcorn and enormous soda close at hand.

The price of success

The embers of the U.S. economy, the evils of giant corporations and the absurd notion of a fat-curing pill are just three of the targets in Cory Doctorow’s Makers. Oddballs Perry and Lester are two down-and-out, on-the-edge and off-the-grid inventors/hackers who create novel products, such as a robotic car driven by Tickle Me Elmos, as well as revolutionary economic systems such as the “New Work.” Slavishly following its basic tenets of capitalism, the New Work explodes, only to implode much as the dot-com bubble did. Rather than admitting defeat, Lester and Perry exploit the New Work bust by developing user-altered theme park rides (built in abandoned Wal-Marts) that revel in the boom of the New Work. But when the rides infringe on trademark law, lawsuits abound and things spiral woefully out of control (including Lester’s weight). Makers is the essence of good science fiction: extrapolating from today to tomorrow, though there is an inherent awareness in the book of the fragility of predicting the future, as evidenced by Disney’s Tomorrowland, which is laughably dated. That said, Makers is a wild ride through capitalism and American obsessions. Even if its praise of individual productivity and creativity while simultaneously condemning corporate America appears contradictory, the book does offer a possible, if not probable, escape from this dilemma. This is Cory Doctorow and science fiction at its purest and its best.

Fantasy pick of the month

In a field known for padding, A.M. Dellamonica’s debut novel Indigo Springs features exceptionally tight and evocative prose, without a wasted word or scene. It is a demanding novel, expecting readers to extrapolate important information regarding the past merely from textual clues, but it is well worth the effort. Like the reader, Dellamonica’s heroine, Astrid, cannot recall the past and must assemble it from the present. Returning home after her father’s death, she realizes that her father had discovered magic and was enchanting items for those most in need. Naturally, Astrid also has this ability. Her best friend Sahara wants to use the power for greater purposes despite the inherent risks, and this desire ultimately leads to a dark future for the young women. With rare subtlety, Indigo Springs explores gender and sexuality and power; Astrid is bisexual and in love with Sahara, while Sahara uses sexuality (and later magic) as a means of achieving power and control. Astrid’s mother’s sexual identity is perhaps the clearest indicator of the novel’s strengths, for it is only through careful reading that her identity becomes clear, and while not critical to the story, it is a playful take on the standard reader’s guide question of ‘Who do you identify with and why?’ This is a gentle and sharp novel for any serious, thoughtful reader.

In alphabetical order, Sean Melican is a chemist, father, husband and writer.

It’s only fitting that our selections at year’s end showcase the very best writing that fantasy and science fiction has to offer. All three of this month’s novels invoke traditional genre concepts, but these outstanding works build their narrative drive and emotional power from exceptionally well-drawn characters.

Returning home after the apparent suicide of a childhood friend with whom he hasn’t spoken to in years, Paxton Martin discovers the tiny town of Switchcreek, Tennessee, isn’t the same place he left. Oh, sure, the three new species of people which hyper-evolved through Transcription Divergence Syndrome (TDS)—the Goliath-like argos, the parthenogenic betas and the super-muscular charlies—are still very much alive (though largely forgotten by the outside world once TDS was determined to be non-transmissible). But the older charlies, including Pax’s father, a former preacher, are excreting a strange, hallucinogenic substance; a cult and a schism are brewing in the beta community; and the argos cannot bear children. Pax’s best friend Deke is an argo and the de facto Chief, and Aunt Rhonda is a corrupt, scheming mayor (and a Charlie). Paxton does his best to come to terms with his father, with Deke, with his abandonment of family and friends and with his friend Jo Lynn’s death, which brought him home in the first place in Daryl Gregory’s The Devil’s Alphabet. More subtle than some SF novels, The Devil’s Alphabet is an absolutely stunning, intoxicating blend of vintage mystery, science fiction and intergenerational saga which artfully questions the meaning of what it is to be ‘human.’ Despite the strange occurrence of three new branches of our family tree, the heart of this novel is the deeply human, deeply important meaning of love.

Family secrets
Pure, old-fashioned science fiction is perfectly blended with human frailties in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s recursive Diving Into the Wreck. The first of three stories (two of which were previously published in Asimov’s) introduces us to Boss, a deep-space wreck diver and amateur historian who has found a ship containing lost stealth technology. Boss hires a team to dive it, chart it and claim the prize, but the technology is predictably fatal. Nobody is quite who they appear, particularly Squishy, who abruptly quits the team and loses her partner over an ethical issue. The second story dives into Boss’ past—the loss of her mother to the artifact known as the Room of Lost Souls, her father’s military efforts and Boss’ own genetics. The third story returns to the story of Squishy and the devastating effects of stealth technology. Though slender, the volume contains an emotional depth rarely found in SF. It focuses on the lives, deaths and moral quandaries of the characters rather than the technology—particularly the father-son team whose tragedy is brilliantly understated and emotional, and through Squishy who returns home to atone for her sins. Diving Into the Wreck is highly recommended not only for the inveterate science fiction fan, but for any reader looking for an excellent character study.

Fantasy pick of the month
Total Oblivion, More or Less is Alan DeNiro’s excellent debut novel, and an inversion and analysis of genre tropes. Instead of transporting our heroes and heroines to a fantastic world, the fantastic world is brought to our present day. The Scythians (nomadic horseman from the Middle East) and their antagonists, the Empire, appear and quickly dispatch modern nations, politics, economies and militaries. The Palmer family from Minnesota travels downriver to escape, only to discover that escape is impossible, and other choices limited. Macy Palmer is an deliberately naïve teenage girl who loves her father, a displaced astronomy professor; her sister Sophia (shades of Red Sonya) pursues freedom and love only to discover slavery and abuse; her brother, Ciaran, carries The Children’s Book of Heroes and seeks to be a child-hero like Peter Pevensie, Harry Potter, or Sir Abel but finds that fantasy is not reality. Throughout, the novel seems acutely aware of itself as a narrative. Macy identifies characters she is sure she will share many adventures with; young former World of Warfare gamers discover how very different fantasy worlds are from this world; and villains admit to being involved in crime only for the money. Then there is Em, the wooden submarine captain about whom three contradictory stories are told—none of which completely satisfy the characters or the reader. But this is brilliantly deliberate, informing the reader that this narrative is somehow self-aware of the narrative confines, and (like its teenage non-heroes) it is unwilling to do the expected. This is the very rare novel that satisfies on a multiple of levels.

In alphabetical order, Sean Melican is a chemist, father, husband and writer.

With two mysteries-cum-morality tales featured in this month’s science fiction and fantasy selections, the themes for our New Year’s picks are clear—even though the characters and their actions may be questionable.

Mike Resnick’s Starship series has taken Captain Wilson Cole and his crew from mutineers to a navy capable of fighting the Republic’s multi-million-ship Navy. Throughout, Resnick has kept the story narrowly focused on the behavior and morality of the crew: the level of weapons are described only by numbers, the power of starships by letters. The previous novel in the series considerably raised the consequences and the seriousness of Resnick’s plot as the captain’s best friend was tortured to death. Now, in Starship: Flagship, Resnick directly confronts the issue of whether torture is ever morally acceptable and concludes that indeed it is (provided that the victim is not seriously physically harmed), psychological damage be damned. While the novels are enjoyable and Resnick should be lauded for bringing cold logic to a genre that sometimes emphasizes force over diplomacy, this last novel suffers slightly from a lack of perspective (Wilson Cole is clearly a mouthpiece). However, the series and this novel are highly recommended, developing a hero that is the antithesis of most heroes and a Republic that is in stark contrast to most utopian federations, and confronting a moral issue in a manner that should nonetheless generate a serious, thoughtful response worthy of Wilson Cole’s hard logic.

The weaknesses of man
Many fantasy novels portray magic as an unquestioned fact of life for the characters, but Carol Berg’s The Spirit Lens builds a medieval world where magic is indeed real, even as natural science and its practitioners successfully argue that magic is nothing more than, well, smoke and mirrors. The king is a proponent of natural science, but the queen, who has lost a child, employs sorcerers to explore the possibility of bridging the gap between her world and the afterworld. When a murder is committed that potentially involves blood magic and implicates the queen, the king employs failed magician Portier de Savin-Duplais to solve the crime and exonerate his wife, failing to realize that unmasking the murder may unleash an even greater evil. Aiding Portier are a Shakespearean fop and a brilliant but unsophisticated sorcerer. In an ever-shifting landscape of alliances and betrayals, half-truths, lies, violence, cruelty and evil magic, Berg builds a unique world of science, magic and divinity, cumulating in a disturbing conspiracy. This is a unique world in the fantasy genre, an excellent story and a morality play that bases the threat to order not on the embodiment of evil, but on the familiar weaknesses of women and men.

Science fiction pick of the month
In the fourth installment of Timothy Zahn’s detective series, Frank Compton and his partner Bayta are aboard a galactic train, the Quadrail, continuing their search for the mind-controlling alien known as the Modhri. They are sidetracked when, despite the supposed impossibility of bringing weapons or poisons aboard, passengers are inexplicably turning up dead. The Domino Pattern is a pitch-perfect blend of mystery and technology that owes as much to Agatha Christie as Larry Niven. Borrowing from the English mystery genre, the novel is populated with numerous fully developed characters harboring believable secrets. Full of red herrings, false leads and dead ends, the complex novel is driven by terse dialogue. While the set-piece climax is a little too long and elaborate, Zahn redeems himself with an ending that uses the carefully drawn backstory to propel his characters into the next novel—all the while raising the stakes from the relatively slow Modhri to a much more immediate and inhuman danger. This is an exceptionally enjoyable series that will appeal to both science fiction and mystery fans.

In alphabetical order, Sean Melican is a chemist, father, husband and writer.