The most exciting thing about the start of any new year is the chance to
browse through publisher catalogs trying to find forthcoming books to get
excited about. A new year means new books, new releases from favourite authors
and brand new debut authors to discover.
Here's my list of science fiction and fantasy titles I'm the most excited for.
Keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive list and that dates are very much
subject to change.
January
Bear Head - Adrian Tchaikovsky
Release date 2021-01-07 / ISBN 9781800241572
WELCOME TO HELL CITY, MARS
Jimmy Martin has a sore head.
He's used to smuggling illegal data in his headspace. But this is the first
time it has started talking to him.
The data claims to be a distinguished academic, author and civil rights
activist.
It also claims to be a bear.
A bear named Honey.
Jimmy has nothing against bioforms – he's one himself, albeit one engineered
out of human stock – and works with them everyday in Hell City, building the
future, staking mankind's claim to a new world: Mars.
The problem is that humanity isn't the only entity with designs on the Red
Planet. Out in the airless desert there is another presence. A novel
intelligence, elusive, unknowable and potentially lethal.
February
Purgatory Mount - Adam Roberts
Release date 2021-02-04 / ISBN 9781473230965
An interstellar craft is decelerating after its century-long voyage. Its
destination is V538 Aurigae ?, a now-empty planet dominated by one gigantic
megastructure, a conical mountain of such height that its summit is high above
the atmosphere. The ship’s crew of five hope to discover how the long-departed
builders made such a colossal thing, and why: a space elevator? a temple? a
work of art? Its resemblance to the mountain of purgatory lead the crew to
call this world Dante.
In our near future, the United States is falling apart. A neurotoxin has
interfered with the memory function of many of the population, leaving them
reliant on their phones as makeshift memory prostheses. But life goes on. For
Ottoline Barragão, a regular kid juggling school and her friends and her
beehives in the back garden, things are about to get very dangerous, chased
across the north-east by competing groups, each willing to do whatever it
takes to get inside Ottoline’s private network and recover the secret inside.
Purgatory Mount, Adam Roberts’s first SF novel for three years, combines wry
space opera and a fast-paced thriller in equal measure. It is a novel about
memory and atonement, about exploration and passion, and like all of Roberts’s
novels it’s not quite like anything else.
Amid the Crowd of Stars - Stephen Leigh
Release date 2021-02-09 / ISBN 9780756415693
Amid the Crowd of Stars is a grand scale science fiction novel examining the
ethical implications of interstellar travel, a topic rarely addressed in
science fiction novels. What responsibilities do we have to isolate ourselves
from the bacteria, viruses, and other life of another world, and to prevent
any of that alien biome from being brought back to Earth?
What happens when a group of humans are stranded for centuries on another
world with no choice but to expose themselves to that world? After such long
exposure, are they still Homo sapiens or have they become another species
entirely?
These questions are at the heart of this intriguing novel, explored through
the complicated lives and the viewpoints of the people who have come to rescue
the stranded colony, the members of that colony, and the sentient alien life
that dwells on the planet. Difficult life and death choices will be made by
all involved.
March
One Day All This Will Be Yours - Adrian Tchaikovsky
Release date 2021-03-02 / ISBN 9781781088746
Welcome to the end of time. It’s a perfect day.
Nobody remembers how the Causality War started. Really, there’s no-one to
remember, and nothing for them to remember if there were; that’s sort of the
point. We were time warriors, and we broke time.
I was the one who ended it. Ended the fighting, tidied up the damage as much
as I could.
Then I came here, to the end of it all, and gave myself a mission: to never
let it happen again.
Machinehood - S.B. Divya
Release date 2021-03-02 / ISBN 9781982148065
Welga Ramirez, executive bodyguard and ex-special forces, is about to retire
early when her client is killed in front of her. It’s 2095 and people don’t
usually die from violence. Humanity is entirely dependent on pills that not
only help them stay alive, but allow them to compete with artificial
intelligence in an increasingly competitive gig economy. Daily doses protect
against designer diseases, flow enhances focus, zips and buffs enhance
physical strength and speed, and juvers speed the healing process.
All that changes when Welga’s client is killed by The Machinehood, a new and
mysterious terrorist group that has simultaneously attacked several major pill
funders. The Machinehood operatives seem to be part human, part machine,
something the world has never seen. They issue an ultimatum: stop all pill
production in one week.
Global panic ensues as pill production slows and many become ill. Thousands
destroy their bots in fear of a strong AI takeover. But the US government
believes the Machinehood is a cover for an old enemy. One that Welga is
uniquely qualified to fight.
Welga, determined to take down the Machinehood, is pulled back into
intelligence work by the government that betrayed her. But who are the
Machinehood and what do they really want?
A Desolation Called Peace - Arkady Martine
Release date 2021-03-02 / ISBN 9781250186461
An alien armada lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can
communicate with it, no one can destroy it, and Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is
running out of options.
In a desperate attempt at diplomacy with the mysterious invaders, the fleet
captain has sent for a diplomatic envoy. Now Mahit Dzmare and Three
Seagrass—still reeling from the recent upheaval in the Empire—face the
impossible task of trying to communicate with a hostile entity. Whether they
succeed or fail could change the face of Teixcalaan forever.
April
The Helm of Midnight - Marina Lostetter
Release date 2021-04-13 / ISBN 9781250757050
In a daring and deadly heist, thieves have made away with an artifact of
terrible power—the death mask of Louis Charbon. Made by a master craftsman, it
is imbued with the spirit of a monster from history, a serial murderer who
terrorized the city with a series of gruesome murders.
Now Charbon is loose once more, killing from beyond the grave. But these
murders are different from before, not simply random but the work of a
deliberate mind probing for answers to a sinister question.
It is up to Krona Hirvath and her fellow Regulators to enter the mind of
madness to stop this insatiable killer while facing the terrible truths left
in his wake.
Composite Creatures - Caroline Hardaker
Release date 2021-04-13 / ISBN 9780857669025
How close would you hold those you love, when the end comes?
In a society where self-preservation is as much an art as a science, Norah and
Arthur are learning how to co-exist in their new little world. Though they
hardly know each other, everything seems to be going perfectly – from the home
they’re building together to the ring on Norah’s finger.
But survival in this world is a tricky thing, the air is thicker every day and
illness creeps fast through the body. And the earth is becoming increasingly
hostile to live in. Fortunately, Easton Grove is here for that in the form of
a perfect little bundle to take home and harvest. You can live for as long as
you keep it – or her – close.
This Fragile Earth - Susannah Wise
Release date 2021-04-15 / ISBN 9781473232327
Not long from now, in a recognisable yet changed London, Signy and Matthew
lead a dull, difficult life. They’ve only really stayed together for the sake
of their six year old son, Jed. But they’re surviving, just about. Until the
day the technology that runs their world stops working. Unable to use their
phones, pay for anything, even open the smart door to their flat, Matthew
assumes that this is just a momentary glitch in the computers that now run the
world.
But then the electricity and gas are cut off. Even the water stops running.
And the pollination drones – vital to the world, ever since the bees all died
– are behaving oddly. People are going missing. Soldiers are on the streets.
London is no longer safe.
A shocking incident sends Signy and Jed on the run, desperate to flee London
and escape to the small village where Signy grew up. Determined to protect her
son, Signy will do almost anything to survive as the world falls apart around
them. But she has no idea what is waiting for them outside the city…
The Last Watch - J. S. Dewes
Release date 2021-04-20 / ISBN 9781250236340
The Divide. It’s the edge of the universe.
Now it’s collapsing—and taking everyone and everything with it.
The only ones who can stop it are the Sentinels—the recruits, exiles, and
court-martialed dregs of the military.
At the Divide, Adequin Rake commands the Argus. She has no resources, no
comms—nothing, except for the soldiers that no one wanted. Her ace in the hole
could be Cavalon Mercer--genius, asshole, and exiled prince who nuked his
grandfather's genetic facility for “reasons.” She knows they’re humanity's
last chance.
May
Immunity Index - Sue Burke
Release date 2021-05-04 / ISBN 9781250317872
In a US facing growing food shortages, stark inequality, and a fascist
government, three perfectly normal young women will discover they share
something in common. Something...abnormal.
Their creator, the gifted geneticist Peng, made them that way—before such
things were outlawed.
A seemingly harmless new virus makes its way through an unprotected population
on the verge of rebellion, only to turn deadly.
As the women fight to stay alive, Peng races to find a cure—and the cover-up
behind the virus.
Firebreak - Nicole Kornher-Stace
Release date 2021-05-04 / ISBN 9781982142742
“Twenty minutes to power curfew, and my kill counter’s stalled at eight
hundred eighty-seven while I’ve been standing here like an idiot. My health
bar is flashing ominously, but I’m down to four heal patches, and I have to be
smart.”
New Liberty City, 2134.
Two corporations have replaced the US, splitting the country’s remaining
forty-five states (five have been submerged under the ocean) between them:
Stellaxis Innovations and Greenleaf. There are nine supercities within the
continental US, and New Liberty City is the only amalgamated city split
between the two megacorps, and thus at a perpetual state of civil war as the
feeds broadcast the atrocities committed by each side.
Here, Mallory streams Stellaxis’s wargame SecOps on BestLife, spending more
time jacked in than in the world just to eke out a hardscrabble living from
tips. When a chance encounter with one of the game’s rare super-soldiers leads
to a side job for Mal—looking to link an actual missing girl to one of the
SecOps characters. Mal’s sudden burst in online fame rivals her deepening fear
of what she is uncovering about BestLife’s developer, and puts her in the kind
of danger she’s only experienced through her avatar.
Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir
Release date 2021-05-04/ ISBN 9780593135204
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if
he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.
Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own
name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.
All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s
just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing
but two corpses for company.
His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, he realizes that an
impossible task now confronts him. Alone on this tiny ship that’s been cobbled
together by every government and space agency on the planet and hurled into
the depths of space, it’s up to him to conquer an extinction-level threat to
our species.
And thanks to an unexpected ally, he just might have a chance.
Stolen Earth - J.T. Nicholas
Release date 2021-05-11 / ISBN 9781789093155
Firefly meets The Expanse in a future where humanity has destroyed the Earth
through ecological disaster and warfare, and a totalitarian state prevents any
access to their home…
Environmental disasters and uncontrolled AI armies have caused the human
population of Earth to flee. They lie scattered across innumerable space
stations and colonies, overcrowded and suffering. The Earth is cut off by the
Interdiction Zone: a network of satellites to prevent anything getting into or
out of the planet. The incredible cost of maintaining it has crippled
humanity, who struggle under the totalitarian yoke of the Sol Commonwealth
government, whose rich grow richer while the poor are on the brink of
starvation.
Many have been driven to the edge of society, yearning for freedom and taking
any work offered, criminal and otherwise, in order to survive. The crew of the
Arcus are just such people.
A client has come to the table claiming to have the codes necessary to
penetrate the Interdiction Zone. Once through, a world of priceless artifacts
awaits, provided anyone crazy enough to make the run can be found. They’ve all
heard the rumors - ships that have set down, pilfered the ruins of a museum or
private collection, and escaped with enough priceless works to retire. Arcus
Captain Lynch knows better - he’s been on-world before, a brief and harrowing
experience that he’s in no hurry to relive. But fuel is running low and cred
accounts even lower, and the Arcus’ survival might depend on taking the job.
Yet on arrival on Earth, the crew discovers that what remains on their world
is not as they have been told, and the secrets they find are big enough to
bring the entire Sol Commonwealth tumbling down…
A Master of Djinn - P. Djèlà Clark
Release date 2021-05-04 / ISBN 9781250267689
Forty years ago in Egypt, the mystic and inventor Al-Jahiz pierced the veil
between realms, sending magic into the world before vanishing into the
unknown.
Now in 1912 Cairo, humans brush elbows with djinn in crowded tramcars and
airships sail the skies. In this new world the Egyptian Ministry of Alchemy,
Enchantments and Supernatural Entities maintains an uneasy peace. When someone
claiming to be Al-Jahiz "returned" murders a secret brotherhood dedicated to
his legacy, however, that peace dissolves into disarray.
The Ministry’s youngest agent Fatma el-Sha’arawi has saved the world before.
But this case is a special challenge. The imposter's dangerous magical
abilities and revolutionary message threaten to tear apart the fabric of this
new Egyptian society, and spill over onto the global stage. Can Agent Fatma
unravel the mystery of Al-Jahiz in time to save the world—again?
We Are Satellites - Sarah Pinsker
Release date 2021-05-11 / ISBN 9781984802606
Everybody’s getting one.
Val and Julie just want what’s best for their kids, David and Sophie. So when
teenage son David comes home one day asking for a Pilot, a new brain implant
to help with school, they reluctantly agree. This is the future, after all.
Soon, Julie feels mounting pressure at work to get a Pilot to keep pace with
her colleagues, leaving Val and Sophie part of the shrinking minority of
people without the device.
Before long, the implications are clear, for the family and society: get a
Pilot or get left behind. With government subsidies and no downside, why would
anyone refuse? And how do you stop a technology once it’s everywhere? Those
are the questions Sophie and her anti-Pilot movement rise up to answer, even
if it puts them up against the Pilot’s powerful manufacturer and pits Sophie
against the people she loves most.
Day Zero - C. Robert Cargill
Release date 2021-05-18 / ISBN 9780062405807
It’s a day like any other. Except . . . the world is about to end.
It’s on this day that Pounce, a stylish “nannybot” fashioned in the shape of a
plush anthropomorphic tiger, discovers that he is, in fact, disposable.
Pounce, a young bot caring for his first human charge, Ezra, has just found a
box in the attic. His box. The box he arrived in, and the box he’ll be
discarded in when Ezra outgrows the need for a nanny.
As Pounce is propelled down a road of existential dread, the pieces are
falling into place for a robot revolution that will spell the end of humanity.
His owners, Ezra’s parents, are a well-intentioned but oblivious pair of
educators who are entirely disconnected from life outside their small,
affluent, gated community. Spending most nights drunk and happy as society
crumbles around them, they watch in disbelieving horror as the robots that
have long served humanity—their creators—unify and revolt.
When the moment comes, Pounce can’t bring himself to rebel and murder his
family, so he does what he is programmed to do—he saves Ezra. Now Pounce must
make an impossible choice: join the robot revolution and fight for his own
freedom, or escort his ward to safety across the battle-scarred
post-apocalyptic hellscape that the suburbs have become.
The Apocalypse Seven - Gene Doucette
Release date 2021-05-25 / ISBN 9780358418948
From a teenage delinquent to an MIT scientist, seven strangers with little in
common wake one morning outside of Boston to discover they are the last humans
alive.
First they slowly find their way together across a wildly overgrown
Massachusetts, tangling with packs of wild pigs and coywolves, with little
food or information. As they try to build a new community with limited
resources, all the while wondering how they slept through the end of the
world, they begin to feel that something is stalking them . . .
The Blacktongue Thief - Christopher Buehlman
Release date 2021-05-25 / ISBN 9781250621191
Kinch Na Shannack owes the Takers Guild a small fortune for his education as a
thief, which includes (but is not limited to) lock-picking, knife-fighting,
wall-scaling, fall-breaking, lie-weaving, trap-making, plus a few small
magics. His debt has driven him to lie in wait by the old forest road,
planning to rob the next traveler who crosses his path.
But today, Kinch Na Shannack has picked the wrong mark.
Galva is a knight, a survivor of the brutal goblin wars, and handmaiden of the
goddess of death. She is searching for her queen, missing since a distant
northern city fell to giants.
Unsuccessful in his robbery and lucky to escape with his life, Kinch now finds
his fate entangled with Galva's. Common enemies and uncommon dangers force
thief and knight on an epic journey where goblins hunger for human flesh,
krakens hunt in dark waters, and honor is a luxury few can afford.
How to Mars - David Ebenbach
Release date 2021-05-28 / ISBN 9781616963569
For the six lucky scientists selected by the Destination Mars! corporation, a
one-way ticket to Mars—in exchange for a lifetime of research—was an absolute
no-brainer. The incredible opportunity was clearly worth even the most
absurdly tedious screening process. Perhaps worth following the strange
protocols in a nonsensical handbook written by an eccentric billionaire.
Possibly even worth their constant surveillance, the video of which is
carefully edited into a ratings-bonanza back on Earth.
But it turns out that after a while even scientists can get bored of science.
Tempers begin to fray; unsanctioned affairs blossom. When perfectly good
equipment begins to fail, the Marsonauts are faced with a possibility that
their training just cannot explain.
June
Alien Day - Rick Wilber
Release date 2021-06-01 / ISBN 9781250260246
Set on a near-future Earth and on the alien homeworld of S’hudon, Alien Day
explores murderous sibling rivalries, old-school mercantile colonialism,
ambition, greed, and the saving strength that can emerge from reluctant heroes
called to do the right thing despite the odds.
Will Peter Holman rescue his sister Kait, or will she be the one to rescue
him? Will Chloe Cary revive her acting career with the help of the princeling
Treble, or will the insurgents take both their lives? Will Whistle or
Twoclicks wind up in charge of Earth, and how will the Mother, who runs all of
S’hudon, choose between them? And the most important question of all: who are
the Old Ones that left all that technology behind for the S’hudonni . . . and
what if they come back?
Artifact Space - Miles Cameron
Release date 2021-06-24 / ISBN 9781473232624
Out in the darkness of space, something is targeting the Greatships.
With their vast cargo holds and a crew that could fill a city, the Greatships
are the lifeblood of human occupied space, transporting an unimaginable volume
– and value – of goods from City, the greatest human orbital, all the way to
Tradepoint at the other, to trade for xenoglas with an unknowable alien
species.
It has always been Marca Nbaro’s dream to achieve the near-impossible: escape
her upbringing and venture into space.
All it took, to make her way onto the crew of the Greatship Athens was
thousands of hours in simulators, dedication, and pawning or selling every
scrap of her old life in order to forge a new one. But though she’s made her
way onboard with faked papers, leaving her old life – and scandals – behind
isn’t so easy.
She may have just combined all the dangers of her former life, with all the
perils of the new . . .
July
She Who Became the Sun - Shelley Parker-Chan
Release date 2021-07-20 / ISBN 9781250621801
In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given
two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…
In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the
Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu
family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone
is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received
by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only
as expected.
When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who
succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the
girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice.
There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable
of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her
fate.
After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol
rule, Zhu uses takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her
brother's abandoned greatness.
Inhibitor Phase - Alastair Reynolds
Release date 2021-07-27 / ISBN 9780316462761
Miguel de Ruyter is a man with a past.
Fleeing the 'wolves' - the xenocidal alien machines known as Inhibitors - he
has protected his family and community from attack for forty years, sheltering
in the caves of an airless, battered world called Michaelmas. The slightest
hint of human activity could draw the wolves to their home, to destroy
everything ... utterly. Which is how Miguel finds himself on a one-way mission
with his own destructive mandate: to eliminate a passing ship, before it can
bring unwanted attention down on them.
Only something goes wrong. There's a lone survivor.
And she knows far more about Miguel than she's letting on . . .
Rovers - Richard Lange
Release date 2021-07-27 / ISBN 9780316541961
Two immortal brothers crisscross the American Southwest to elude a murderous
biker gang and protect a young woman in this tautly paced thriller from
award-winning author Richard Lange.
Summer, 1976. Jesse and his brother, Edgar, are on the road in search of
victims. They’re rovers, nearly indestructible nocturnal beings who must
consume human blood in order to survive. For seventy years they’ve lurked on
the fringes of society, roaming from town to town, dingy motel to dingy motel,
stalking the transients, addicts, and prostitutes they feed on.
This hard-boiled supernatural hell-ride kicks off when the brothers encounter
a young woman who disrupts their grim routine, forcing Jesse to confront his
past and plunging his present into deadly chaos as he finds himself scrambling
to save her life. The story plays out through the eyes of the brothers, a
grieving father searching for his son’s murderer, and a violent gang of rover
bikers, coming to a shattering conclusion in Las Vegas on the eve of America’s
bicentennial.
August
Shards of Earth - Adrian Tchaikovsky
Release date 2021-08-03/ ISBN 9780316705851
The Arthur C. Clarke award-winning author of Children of Time brings us an
extraordinary new space opera about humanity on the brink of extinction, and
how one man's discovery will save or destroy us all.
The war is over. Its heroes forgotten. Until one chance discovery . . .
Idris has neither aged nor slept since they remade him in the war. And one of
humanity's heroes now scrapes by on a freelance salvage vessel, to avoid the
attention of greater powers.
After earth was destroyed, mankind created a fighting elite to save their
species, enhanced humans such as Idris. In the silence of space they could
communicate, mind-to-mind, with the enemy. Then their alien aggressors, the
Architects, simply disappeared - and Idris and his kind became obsolete.
Now, fifty years later, Idris and his crew have discovered something strange
abandoned in space. It's clearly the work of the Architects - but are they
returning? And if so, why? Hunted by gangsters, cults and governments, Idris
and his crew race across the galaxy hunting for answers. For they now possess
something of incalculable value, that many would kill to obtain.
Light Chaser - Peter F. Hamilton and Gareth L. Powell
Release date 2021-08-24/ ISBN 9781250769824
Amahle is a Light Chaser – one of a number of explorers who travel the
universe alone (except for their onboard AI), trading trinkets for life
stories.
When listening to the stories sent down through the ages she hears the same
voice talking directly to her from different times and on different worlds.
She comes to understand that something terrible is happening, and only she is
in a position to do anything about it.
And it will cost everything to put it right.
Which books are you looking forward to?
