Sci-fi + Fantasy
THE CALCULATING STARS / THE FATED SKY by Mary Robinette Kowal (St Martin’s Press, $41 & $28)
In 2014 the novella The Lady Astronaut of Mars, a moving tale of Elma, an astronaut living in forced retirement on Mars, won the Hugo award. Now these two books fill in that alternate backstory, beginning with a disastrous event in 1952 that jumpstarts a planet-wide push to get humans into space and ending with her arrival at Mars in 1963. Kowal’s carefully researched story is engaging whether she is chronicling the project’s technical challenges or laying out the political barriers Elma has to overcome to get women included as astronauts. Inspired by the women who worked as Nasa’s computers and Project Mercury, this is a compelling, very human story about reaching for the stars.
TERRA NULLIUS by Claire G. Coleman (Hachette, $38)
This is an intelligent, confronting novel where every word and scene has been carefully selected and it deserves the accolades it has won. Coleman is of the South Coast Noongar people of Western Australia; this is her first novel. The boy Jacky runs from a farm where he was a slave, searching the outback for a family he does not remember; the mother superior in a Mission School imprisons native children without water; Johnny Star, a trooper, goes awol and outlaw, sickened by the massacre he participated in, while Esperance lives in a camp with her grandfather, an elder — they’ve been pushed from their lands to marginal space on the edge of a desert; even here alcohol disrupts their lives. The horrible histories in Terra Nullius feel all too familiar, known to us from stories like Rabbit Proof Fence, The Sweet Country and
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. But midway through, Coleman flips not just the story but the reader’s perception of everything in it, then continues it to a conclusion that, while inevitable, still offers bittersweet hope.
SPINNING SILVER by Naomi Novik (Pan Macmillan $35)
Spinning Silver is a delight. As she did for her previous standalone fantasy, Uprooted, Novik takes a fairy tale and weaves a magical tale set in an imaginary Lithuania inspired by the family stories she grew up with. Tired of being poor and looked down on, Miryem takes over her tookindhearted father’s moneylending business. When the Staryek (fairy folk) overhear her boasting of her success, their King leaves her fairy silver to exchange for mortal gold. The depictions of magic are lovely: the Staryek believe proving something thrice makes it true, a witch’s house grows to fulfills needs and a fire demon makes dangerous bargains. A thoroughly satisfying read.
BANNERLESS / THE WILD DEAD by Carrie Vaughn
(John Joseph Adams, $29 & $28.50)
The books in Vaughn’s Bannerless Saga are cosy, low-stake murder mysteries set three generations after an ecological disaster. The communities scattered along the Coastal Road, in what was once Northern California, live peacefully and sustainably. Long interested in the world beyond the household she grew up in, Eden travels as an inspector, mediating disputes and hoping she won’t have to adjudicate a “bannerless pregnancy” — no household is allowed to reproduce without showing they have capacity and approval. I’m not completely convinced of the demographics as Vaughn describes them, but she sets up an interesting communal system that prizes some of what they saved from the collapse — limited solar power, heirloom power tools and contraceptives — while rejecting many of our excesses. There are downsides to this way of life and both books explore this by focusing on those who may not legally belong to the community. The thoughtful, humane stories deserve a wider audience.