FATHER'S DAY FAST ONES: Two new Adrian Tchaikovsky novels, SHROUD and BEE SPEAKER

BEE SPEAKER (Dogs of War #3)
ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY
Head of Zeus—an AdAstra Book (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$29.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From the Arthur C. Clarke award winner, Adrian Tchaikovsky, comes the third instalment of the DOGS OF WAR science fiction series, a future where genetically engineered “Bioforms” have inherited not the Earth, but the Solar System.

The end of the world has been and gone.

There was no one great natural disaster, no all-consuming world war, no catastrophic pandemic. Only scores of storms, droughts, and selfish regional conflicts. Humanity was not granted a heroic end. Instead, it bled to death from a thousand cuts.

But where Earth fell apart, Mars pulled together. Engineered men and beasts, aided by Bees – an outlawed distributed intelligence—survived through co-operation, because there was simply no alternative.

Fast forward to today. A signal—'For the sake of what once was. We beg you. Help.'—reaches Mars.

How could they refuse? A consortium of Martian work crews gather the resources for a mission: a triumphal return to the blue-green world of their ancestors. And now here they are—three hundred million kilometres from home.

And it has all already gone horribly wrong.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: This one will require you to go to the bookstore. It is worth it. If Dad's already read the first two books, it's a no-brainer...of course he wants this one. If he is a fan of Author Adrian's work, getting all three is a slightly pricier alternative, but about 97% probability of being a huge hit.

If he hasn't read the first two novels, though, this is set in their medium-term future, and requires no knowledge not given in the narrative here to understand what's going on. I've read both previous books and didn't feel it was a huge advantage; more a mild fillip of some extra fun to be had.

Four Martians respond to the Old Homestead's pretty vague plea for help. The story has chapters the way a ham has calories...lots and lots and all distributed in tasty hunks of richly marbled language. There are multiple PoVs, nine in all. Each one is moving the story...about the way the kindest intentions get deeply enmeshed in very challenging realities of human fallibility...and oftentimes in ways that aren't supposed to be funny, but are.

If your Dad is like me, deeply suspicious of any kind of AGI that pretends to infallibility or omniscience, then this is a great series to hook him on. Nothing about Bees, the Martian distributed consciousness (AGI rebranded), long ago banished from the severely collapsing Earth, is infallible, though it is good-hearted. The crisis of climate collapse is one Bees can definitely help remediate, you'd think, that being part of Bees' memories; but centuries on Mars have overlaid a lot of unhelpful knowledge. The Martian bioforms are such a great idea, and you *know* I approve of intelligent dog-forms! Their terrestrial rescuees are the usual lot of mired-in-muck religious nuts, feudal static thinkers who need help but only want it to look like their idea of a perfect present, and passive whiners. Al the Martians are oddly indulgent IMO. I'd've kicked ass, banged heads...but these rescuers really seem to try to stay helpful.

Ultimately, I'd give this to Dad because the very human-Dadly thing of needing to Fix It, to Help and to Serve a Purpose, all get a strong run. I enjoyed the story, I didn't feel it was tacked onto the end of a duology (a critique I saw that I found particularly unfair...it's been two hundred years since Bear Head so of course things changed!), and the overarching critique of flawed, fallible humanity was challenging but not bleak.

A lot like being a Dad.

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SHROUD
ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY
Orbit Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$19.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: An utterly gripping story of alien encounter and survival from Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of the Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning Children of Time.

They looked into the darkness and the darkness looked back . . .

New planets are fair game to asset strippers and interplanetary opportunists—and a commercial mission to a distant star system discovers a moon that is pitch black, but alive with radio activity. Its high-gravity, high-pressure, zero-oxygen environment is anathema to human life, but ripe for exploitation. They named it Shroud.

Under no circumstances should a human end up on Shroud’s inhospitable surface. Except a catastrophic accident sees Juna Ceelander and Mai Ste Etienne doing just that. Forced to stage an emergency landing, in a small, barely adequate vehicle, they are unable to contact their ship and are running out of time. What follows is a gruelling journey across land, sea and air. During this time, Juna and Mai begin to understand Shroud’s dominant species. It also begins to understand them . . .

If they escape Shroud, they’ll face a crew only interested in profiteering from this extraordinary world. They’ll somehow have to explain the impossible and translate the incredible. That is, if they make it back at all.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A stand-alone story by a genre stalwart? Make the trip to the bookstore! A story where the aliens on a truly unnerving world are actually more humane than the humans' own bosses? Perfect for Dad on his special day, especially if he's not retired yet. Talk about living in hope....

Hope feels like a luxury to the women trying not to die on a moon whose every physical parameter seems purpose-built to kill them. (Of course it was—this is a novel.) These two women are put in a terrible place to determine if Shroud, the human name for their likely grave-place, has economic value to their corporation.

Author Adrian is not the biggest supporter of the capitalist world we live in. I knew I loved him for a reason.

As the constraints of Shroud bind their actions and options ever-tighther, their gynergy and their willingness to think outside the training and the constructs of their society coupled with Shroud's life form's desire to communicate with these utterly alien things meet and merge into true First Contact. One of my favorite plot devices, that.

I think it's clear I like Author Adrian's storytelling. I want to spoiler the hell out if why in this story's case more than in Bee Speaker's case. I'm really impressed this arachnid-fancyin' fantasy writer has bent his brain to the task of making Shroud make sense without showing too much of the gearshifting tech he used to get there. Author Adrian doesn't babble his techno, and doesn't imbibe a pint of handwavium before every chapter. I find the balance of fiction to science matches my preference in this story so perfectly you can't see the seam. Unless your Dad's a physicist by trade, I'm guessing he will quite probably enjoy this balance between story told and space-world built too.

I recommend it, and get one for yourself too. Borrowing Dad's might be tough to talk him into.

THE STEVEN KOTLER PAGE: LAST TANGO IN CYBERSPACE, cyberpunk about *empathy* of all things & THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY, the apotheosis of Lion Zorn

LAST TANGO IN CYBERSPACE
STEVEN KOTLER
St. Martin's Press
$11.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: It was a new skill…

One that might change the world.

What could a person do who could track empathy?

His friends call him Lion, he is the first of his kind. Some describe it as emotional foresight, but really, he can see cultural trends before they emerge. What he didn’t expect was for Big Pharma to come calling.

In 2025, technology has made massive leaps forward.

Not every group wants to use it for good.

Arctic Pharmaceuticals has a new drug and a bad idea. They call on Lion, because he is the key to getting the formula they need. But when he starts to sense their hidden agenda, will they take drastic action?

Then Lion discovers a decapitated human head…

Is he being hunted?

Can he stop a global disaster?

You’ll love this edge-of-your seat cyberpunk thriller, because it will keep you turning the pages late into the night.

Get it now.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The first paragraph reads:

He steps off the plane and into a shimmering world. They've hidden the airport beneath a thick coat of dazzle. A parade of razor-thin screens, angled atrium glass, and staccato mirror work. Everything scrolls, winks, and blinks, but softly, like Sunset Strip on mute.

I knew from the off that I was in for one of Those Reads, the ones I bore people with by shoving it in their faces despite innumerable social cues...sighs, eyerolls, signs scrawled in orange crayon on a Big Chief tablet reading "GO AWAY"...that they would greatly prefer I not.

A book with chapter titles like "The Double Tap of Holy Exclamations" and "Residual Goat Shit" and "Shut Your Mouth When You Talk to Me" simply must be read. A book that weaves Dune references throughout its text for the Fremen to follow. A book that centers empathy, that commercially rewards empathy, that perverts empathy into a product that enables empaths to resist and rebel and still get paid...that is, this is, a book that demands your eyeblinks. Demands, and rewards. Lion Zorn, he's just this guy, you know? About like Zaphod Beeblebrox was.

The early researchers described em-tracking as a hardware upgrade for the nervous system, maybe the result of a genetic shift, possibly a fast adaptation, Studies revealed an assortment of cognitive improvements: acute perceptual sensitivity, rapid data acquisition, high speed pattern recognition. The biggest change was in future prediction. Normally, the human brain is a selfish prognosticator, built to trace an individual’s path into the future. The em-tracker’s brain offers a wider oracle, capable of following a whole culture’s path into the future.

Ripsnort through our world (almost) with Lion and see what things really look like when you drink the Water of Life. There's nothing specifically tech-SFnal about the world Lion roams, but the psychopharmacology is waaay trippy. Lion and his ladyfriend Penelope are always on the move because Lion's empathy skills are so useful...he can spot the newest tendrils of a social movement, he can pinpoint who's coming up with what and when and why that's a thing...Lion is, in other words, a bloody nightmare of a gifted and talented drug user. It's Sietch Tabr that expands him, and honestly I think I'd prefer the reality where he's shrunk back inside his skull. I'm already angry about surveillance capitalism.

“Buckminster Fuller said don’t try to change human behavior. It’s s a waste of time. Evolution doesn’t mess around; the patterns are too deep. Fuller said go after the tools. Better tools lead to better people. Arctic doesn’t develop products. We may cultivate them, occasionally, in our own particular way, but our business is change. Significant change.”

Only Lion's subversive....

Lion was the one who pointed out that naming hotels after Millennial values—the Truth, the Purpose, the Community—now that his generation had reached the age where the luxury of billboard ethics had been derailed by the verities of life, might be lucrative. "Aspirational nostalgia," he dubbed it.

Okay, cyberpunk, one expects that. But there's an AI involved in this picture that, well, it's AI so it's got to be bad. But somehow this isn't dystopian. There's a lot of interesting animal-rights activism information and action...there's a little bit of information about how pharmaceutical companies pharmaceut. There's a little bit about Penelope and her life; there's not a lot more about Lion. The characters are the weakest links in the story. They exist, they are differentiatable, they aren't very compelling. I found that, the longer I spent with them, the less that mattered to me. I don't know exactly what that says about the read or this reader. I'm not at all sure I want to find out.

Lots of people believe consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, like space and time. If that's the case, then it is turtles all the way down. We'll have this debate about our microbiome. About rocks and atoms and quarks. Until we have Gaia consciousness, there will always be an us-them divide, always a next frontier for empathy.

So find space on your Kindle, or order a used tree-book, but get this story inside you.

“Shifting culture requires a confluence of inciting incidents. Something directional that leads to a tribal fracturing and reknitting. Often shows up in language first. In music. Fashion. It can feel a little like hope.” He points at the images. “This doesn’t feel like hope.”

Oddly enough I felt more hope after the read than I did going in to it. I think you might, too.

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THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY
STEVEN KOTLER
St. Martin's Press
$27.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Hard to say exactly when the human species fractured. Harder to say when this new talent arrived. But Lion Zorn, protagonist of Last Tango in Cyberspace, is the first of his kind—an empathy tracker, an emotional forecaster, with a felt sense for how culture evolves and the future arrives.

It’s also a useful skill in today’s competitive business market.

In The Devil’s Dictionary, when a routine em-tracking job goes sideways and em-trackers themselves start disappearing, Lion finds himself not knowing who to trust in a life and death race to uncover the truth. And when the trail leads to the world’s first mega-linkage, a continent-wide national park advertised as the best way to stave off environmental collapse, and exotic animals unlike any on Earth start showing up—Lion’s quest for truth becomes a fight for the survival of the species.

Packed with intrigue and heart-pounding action, marked by unforgettable characters and vivid storytelling, filled with science-based brilliance and cult comic touches, The Devil’s Dictionary is Steven Kotler at his thrilling science fiction best.

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My Review: Okay, same drill:

"People," says Ramen, like they're some kind of disease.

He jabs the air with his chopsticks, pointing at something behind Lion's left shoulder.

Ramen is ancient, Asian, and given to blaring Billy Idol out of cheap speakers duct-taped to the top of his decrepit food cart. He wears an old chef's coat over a dirty t-shirt, the sleeves pushed back, revealing arms flecked with burns and scars. Still, there's truth in his adverstising. Ramen makes ramen. "Best in London," according to the sign, even if you have to sit in the cold rain, under a cheap plastic awning, on the rotting edge of Chinatown, to enjoy it.

Rotting—that is definitely the right word.

There's a reason, not an instantly obvious one, to begin this book in exactly this way at precisely that spot. I think a lot of y'all might not find that an easy sell...it means Author Kotler's work repays close attention. I hasten to add that it isn't *required* to undertand what's going on. It's a lot like the easter eggs in y'all's video games, or the post-credits scene in those Marvel movies. Laugh along, or howl until it hurts if you're in on the joke.

The WhistlePig? The snow snake? No, explaining isn't necessary now. You just need to see the words, parse them, slot their shapes into a spot in your brain. Just take it easy, read one chapter at a time, and always be prepared to go with the flow.

Unlike the Humans-First scumbags, who are serious major buzz-kill nasties after shutting down the entire existence of Sietch Tabr, the huge empathy uptake of humanity, and the inevitable knock-on effect of people and animals coming to realize we're all one big Gaia. And their (I think) creation, the anti-Sietch Tabr, EVO. It harshes everyone's buzz and it is brutal about it.

But this book, second Lion's Story, gets more in its own way by making a bit too little effort to connect me to more of the cast than even the first one, light on character attachment, did. People are labeled, not named, and the ability to invest in them as more than handy props is limited. So I took a half-star off the ratine because I really want to be swept up in the reasons the story's being told. That doesn't happen for me unless I can invest in the characters...postively or negatively.

That is the big gritch. The smaller ones are really not important to me, so definitely not likely to be to you...I'm pretty sure anyone who's read Last Tango in Cyberspace will be eager to get to this one, and I won't say don't. I will say adjust your speed to match the bumps...if technospeak is not for you, these stories aren't either. But, and this is important, taking the story in slowly is a very successful reading strategy with Author Kotler's books. It allows you to marinate his ideas in your head without being bombarded with too much verbiage. Try the stories. This storyverse feels predictive to me, and I suspect we'll be back in Lion's head willy-nilly as the years fly by.

Science Fiction for your Kindle to beguile this #Booksgiving Eve

ESCAPING EXODUS
NICKY DRAYDEN (Escaping Exodus #1)
HarperVoyager
$10.99 on Kindle, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

Many thanks to the author and HarperVoyager for my ARC.

I know the author of this book for like fifteen years now. She's got a dry wit, a generous heart, and a deeply subversive soul. This is by way of explaining how I know that, in this twisty and turny story of siblings very much at odds with each other and very deeply enmeshed in each others' psyches, she's explained us to ourselves.

What happens when your intimate enemy, the charismatic and popular one to your quieter, more thorough self, challenges your position? As with all stories of intimate enemies, this is the beginning of the end, and the series of books that will follow depends on hooking you with this cataclysm. Like every blockbuster series in fantasy, Author Drayden sets the stakes high, limns the characters indelibly and economically, and gets you ready for an action-packed ride through a world you'd swear was real.

As book two, Symbiosis (non-affiliate Amazon link), expands the story of how love screws things up for everyone, becomes available on 23 February 2021, it's time to take advantage of this book's sale price to decide if you need to preorder the next. I'm pretty confident a lot of you will need to know how this plays out.

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THE END OF ORDINARY
EDWARD ASHTON
HarperVoyager
$8.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

Human beings hate people who don't look like themselves, don't pray like themselves, and don't eat like themselves. Imagine, then, what an *actual* difference, like a gene-manipulated extra strength or ability, would cause. You don't need to, Author Ashton has done the work for you. In this fast-paced book, I was eager to get to the next set-piece; but then realized that was what I was doing, waiting for the next Scene while being irked at the clueless-Dad-unworldly-Engineer interacting with people more generally capable than he is. Since it's a very good book to read at a moment in history when we need to take stock of how we cope with Otherness, I'd say any SF fan would do a lot worse than picking this up for #Booksgiving reading.

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WHEN GRAVITY FAILS
GEORGE ALEC EFFINGER (The Budayeen Cycle #1)
Open Road Media
$8.99 edbook editions, available now

Rating: 4* of five

I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked awful, but I always look awful in the mirror. I keep myself going with the firm belief that my real face is much better looking.

That is a very trenchant sentence. That is exactly what you're signing up for when you get this book. A rarity now, in the 1980s this book was a unicorn for dealing with Muslim culture in any way, and using near-future SF to highlight the way whites are colonizing the world was still cutting-edge stuff. Digging deeper into themes of identity with transgender characters, refugees from dying Europe, and pharmacological solutions that become terrible problems, the book prefigures the 21st century's obsessions. Readers of transgressive fiction need to rediscover what amazed us in the 1980s because it will amaze and delight you, too.