Signal To Noise

That old black magic

Release Date: 12 February

271 pages | Paperback Author: Silvia Moreno- Garcia Publisher: Solaris

When it comes to

written science fiction, novels are only half the story. Many authors spend years honing their craft in short stories before their books appear in your local Waterstones; many continue producing short fiction throughout their careers, in magazines like Interzone, or websites like Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons and Tor. com. And some of the most celebrated genre writers of the past decade or more, like Ted Chiang and Kelly Link, have never published novels at all ( or yet, in Link’s case).

Silvia Moreno- Garcia has a plethora of short stories to her name, so while this is her debut novel, she certainly can’t be branded a novice writer. Signal To Noise centres on Meche, a software engineer who returns home to Mexico City for her father’s funeral, and comes face- to- face for the first time in several decades with the friends who – as we see in a series of lengthy flashbacks – once helped her experiment with dangerous magic.

As both teen and adult, Meche is a vividly drawn character: abrasive, passionate, and damaged, with a voice like “caramel- coated razors” ( one of several great turns of phrase) when she’s angry.

Suffused with the music – English- language and Spanish, pop and punk – that Meche and friends use to make their magic and soundtrack their lives, this is both a spiky coming- of- age tale and a charmingly sweet romance of making amends and starting again. Nic Clarke Moreno- Garcia has made a YouTube playlist of songs from Signal To Noise; you can find it at http:// bit. ly/ signalyoutube.