If this is the future of science fiction, the genre is in very good hands.
Exploring critical issues impacting humankind—from climate change to racism to mass shootings—this timely and thematically profound anthology of the year’s best short-form science fiction is filled with thought-provoking gems.
Noteworthy stories from all over the globe are featured prominently in this collection, including Indian writer Indrapramit Das’ dark “Kali_Na,” which chronicles the unforeseen consequences of a megacorp developing an AI deity for the masses; Saleem Haddad’s “Song of the Birds,” about a 14-year-old girl living in Gaza City struggling to understand her brother’s inexplicable suicide; and Chinese writer Han Song’s metaphorical “Submarines,” in which the poor are forced to live in homemade habitats underwater. Peter Watt’s “Cyclopterus”—set in a near future ravaged by environmental collapse—is chillingly plausible, as is “Thoughts and Prayers” by Ken Liu, which chronicles a couple’s ordeal after their daughter is killed at a music festival by a shooter and their lives are destroyed by online trolls. “The Bookstore at the End of America” by Charlie Jane Anders is both disturbing and inspiring. Molly and her daughter, Phoebe, run a bookstore located on the border of California and the United States, which are at war. When the fighting begins and customers from both sides find shelter inside, the owners begin a mandatory book club—with glorious results. In an anthology full of powerful stories, perhaps the most memorable is “Emergency Skin” by N.K. Jemisin, about an explorer who returns to an Earth that his misogynist, racist, and elitist ancestors left generations earlier as it was dying—only to find not a barren, graveyard planet, as he expected, but one thriving and vastly advanced. In a sentence that exemplifies the tone of many of the anthology’s selections, Jemisin writes: “Sometimes that’s all it takes to save a world, you see. A new vision. A new way of thinking, appearing at just the right time.”
If this is the future of science fiction, the genre is in very good hands.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-4959-6
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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