Science Fiction
Star Wars. The High Republic
Cavan Scott
COMIC Star Wars High
Graphic Novels, Science Fiction
"A new era of Star Wars storytelling begins! Journey back to the High Republic -- the golden age of the Jedi! Centuries before the Empire and the Skywalker saga, the Jedi are at their height, protecting the galaxy as Republic pioneers push out into new territories. But as the frontier prepares for the dedication of the majestic Starlight Beacon, Padawan Keeve Trennis faces the ultimate choice -- will she complete her Jedi trials, or rescue the innocent from disaster? And can she trust her closest ally? Enter a rich and vast world of new Jedi! New worlds! New ships! And new evils to fight -- including the terrifying Nihil!"--Amazon.
Sea of Tranquility : a novel
Emily St. John Mandel
FICTION Mandel Emily
Science Fiction, Literary Fiction
"The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from an island off Vancouver in 1912 to a dark colony of the moon three hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and planets. Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal -- an experience that shocks him to his core. Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him. When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe. "--
Emily St. John Mandel seems to brilliantly encapsulate all of modern fears in the sum of 255 pages. Or are they just human fears? This book, spanning centuries, from the 1910's to the 2300's, takes on post-traumatic stress disorder, pandemics, technological shifts, and the fragility of Earth and its nations. And like always, St. John Mandel leaves me with more questions than answers. -Anne M
The time traveler's wife
Audrey Niffenegger
FICTION/Niffenegger, Audrey
Fiction, Romance, Science Fiction
A dazzling novel in the most untraditional fashion, this is the remarkable story of a passionate love affair that endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap.
Added by Alexander
The Kaiju Preservation Society
John Scalzi
SCIENCE FICTION Scalzi John
Science Fiction
"The Kaiju Preservation Society is John Scalzi's first standalone adventure since the conclusion of his New York Times bestselling Interdependency trilogy. When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls "an animal rights organization." Tom's team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on. What Tom doesn't tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world. They're the universe's largest and most dangerous panda and they're in trouble. It's not just the Kaiju Preservation Society whose found their way to the alternate world. Others have, too. And their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die"--
This was a fun and quick read. It's Scalzi being extremely Scalzi-ish with snarky, witty humor throughout. If you like his other books, you'll like this too. -Brian
Stolen skies
Tim Powers
SCIENCE FICTION Powers, Tim
Science Fiction
"Sebastian Vickery has learned something about UFOs that he shouldn't have-and Naval Intelligence, desperate to silence him, orders his old partner, Agent Ingrid Castine, to trap him. But Castine risks career, liberty, and maybe even life to warn Vickery-and now they're both fugitives, on the run from both the U.S. government and agents of the Russian GRU Directorate, which has its own uses for the UFO intelligence. With the unlikely aid of a renegade Russian agent, a homeless Hispanic boy, and an eccentric old Flat-Earther, Vickery and Castine must find an ancient relic that spells banishment to the alien species, and then summon the things and use it against them-in a Samson-like confrontation that looks likely to kill them as well. Sweeping from the Giant Rock monolith in the Mojave Desert to a cultist temple in the Hollywood Hills, from a monstrous apparition in the Los Angeles River to a harrowing midnight visitation on a boat off Long Beach Harbor, Stolen Skies is an alien-encounter novel like no other"--
More non-stop insanity involving 2 of my favorite Tim Power's characters, Vickery and Castine, who once again find themselves having enough adventures and things happen to them in three days than most people would experience in three lifetimes. Can Los Angeles and its surroundings get any more weird or dangerous? -Paul
The employees : a workplace novel of the 22nd century
Olga Ravn
FICTION Ravn Olga
Science Fiction
"Funny and doom-drenched, The Employees chronicles the fate of the Six-Thousand Ship. The human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks in a series of staff reports and memos. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew becomes strangely and deeply attached to them, even as tensions boil toward mutiny, especially among the humanoids. Olga Ravn's prose is chilling, crackling, exhilarating, and foreboding. The Employees probes into what makes us human, while delivering a hilariously stinging critique of life governed by the logic of productivity"--
The way this book is laid out is like a collection of puzzle pieces of various sizes and depths that gradually bring the bigger picture of the tale into focus. Overall though, the individual entries noting the individual employee responses and reactions are quite relatable to anyone who works for a living. -Paul
The last cuentista
Donna Barba Higuera
jFICTION Higuera Donna
Science Fiction, Diverse Characters
"A girl named Petra Pena, who wanted nothing more than to be a storyteller, like her abuelita. But Petra's world is ending. Earth has been destroyed by a comet, and only a few hundred scientists and their children - among them Petra and her family - have been chosen to journey to a new planet. They are the ones who must carry on the human race. Hundreds of years later, Petra wakes to this new planet - and the discovery that she is the only person who remembers Earth. A sinister Collective has taken over the ship during its journey, bent on erasing the sins of humanity's past. They have systematically purged the memories of all aboard - or purged them altogether. Petra alone now carries the stories of our past, and with them, any hope for our future. Can she make them live again? " --
The winner of this year's Newbery Medal, awarded to the author for the most distinguished contribution to literature for children in the past year, goes to The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera! This is a wholly original book - a science fiction tale inspired by Latin American folklore! A young girl, Petra Pena, heads out on an evacuation spaceship when Earth is destroyed by a comet. But when she suddenly wakes aboard the ship to find hundreds of years have passed and she is the only one left who remembers Earth and the stories of her heritage and past, how will she use her knowledge to build the future and save her people? -Anne W
Last call at the Nightshade Lounge : a novel of magic and mixology
Paul Krueger
SCIENCE FICTION Krueger Paul
Science Fiction
Bailey Chen is fresh out of college with all the usual new-adult demons: no cash, no job offers, and an awkward relationship with Zane, the old friend she kinda-sorta hooked up with during high school. But when Zane introduces Bailey to his monster-fighting bartender friends, her demons become a lot more literal. It turns out that evil creatures stalk the city streets after hours, and they can be hunted only with the help of magically mixed cocktails: vodka grants super-strength, whiskey offers the power of telekinesis, and rum lets its drinker fire blasts of elemental energy. But will all these powers be enough for Bailey to halt a mysterious rash of gruesome deaths? And what will she do when the safety of a “real world” job beckons? This sharp and funny urban fantasy is perfect for fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, and grown-up readers of Harry Potter. Includes 14 recipes from a book of ancient cocktail lore.
Added by Beth
To say nothing of the dog, or, How we found the bishop's bird stump at last
Connie Willis
SCIENCE FICTION Willis, Connie
Science Fiction, Horror
Ned Henry is badly in need of a rest. He's been shuttling between the 21st century and the 1940's searching for a Victorian atrocity called the bishop's bird stump. It's part of a project to restore the famed Coventry Cathedral, destroyed by the Nazi air raid over a hundred years earlier. But then Verity Kindle , a fellow time traveler , inadvertently brings back something from the past. Now Ned must jump back to the Victorian era to help Verity put things right- not only to save the project but prevent altering history itself.
Added by Beth
The Eyre affair
Jasper Fforde
SCIENCE FICTION Fforde, Jasper
Science Fiction, Humor
Jasper Fforde's Great Britain, circa 1985, when time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously: it’s a bibliophile’s dream. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, a detective with SO-27, the LiteraTec division, who's job is to solve crimes related to literature. When the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens disappears under impossible circumstances, Thursday finds herself drawn into an investigation that is more deadly than anything she has experienced thus far in her career.
Added by Beth
I've been evangelical about The High Republic, though, I have to admit that the comic has been the weakest link so far. There seems to be a weird disconnect between what happens in the books vs. the comics. It seems like I wouldn't recommend it, but it features some of the best characters of the High Republic era and great art throughout. -Brian