A thoughtful and pertinent—if sometimes dry—look at a possible future for humanity.
Solomon limns a disturbing near future in this SF novel of ideas set on Mars, Earth, and in outer space.
The year is 2033: Humans have a colony on Mars. Life there is not so bad—a cultured meat factory provides food items like chicken, and vegetables are grown in a hydroponic garden. Settlers host small dinner parties, and a humanoid robot named Peggy helps to make life easier. But Mars resident and astrophysicist Aster Arvad is troubled by news from Earth reporting that a robot has killed a human. Aster wonders, “Are robots taking over our Earth civilization?” Perhaps this event indicates that the AI singularity has begun…the dawn of “a catastrophic point in time when AI technology gets out of human control.” Aster and her friends have additional concerns about technology, such as the dangers of genetic engineering. Still, the years go by, and human life rolls on. The narrative follows the lives of Aster and others as more settlers arrive on Mars and further developments occur on Earth. Technological advancements continue to be made, like deceased people being revived with after-death avatars; Peggy becomes more self-aware and reaches the point where she can have sex. The novel explores many sophisticated topics, most of which are relevant to the modern-day reader—the text includes a brief tale about a man who’s convinced by ChatGPT that he can create a levitation machine, illustrating how “chatbots stop providing accurate responses and become sycophantic and flattering.” Such details give the work an urgent appeal, but others tend to slow the story’s progress. While the dialogue is sometimes bogged down with flat jargon (“I’m going to start identifying key genes involved in PFC development through time-varying gene network analysis”), there’s fun to be had in following Solomon’s prognostications.
A thoughtful and pertinent—if sometimes dry—look at a possible future for humanity.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2026
ISBN: 9781969679292
Page Count: 434
Publisher: Munn Avenue Press
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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