SCIENCE FICTION: ALEX GOOD
Volk, By David Nickle (ChiZine, 365 pages, $19.99)
David Nickle’s 2011 debut novel “Eutopia,” about a eugenicist community in early-20th century Idaho that’s infested by a mind-warping species of parasite known as the Juke, ended on a curious note.
Volk picks up the survivors of Eutopia some 20 years later as they are about to become enmeshed in another plot involving the Juke, only this time set among Nazis in Bavaria. That much seems a natural development, but what follows is a political, psychological and philosophical allegory of depth and ambition.
This is not a conventional monster story. Instead, Nickle dramatizes themes that have preoccupied him since his first collection of stories and, in particular, the dark process of self-seduction that informs everything from codependent relationships to our belief in God.
Provenance By Ann Leckie (Orbit, 448 pages, $34)
Ann Leckie had one of the most acclaimed debuts in SF history with “Ancillary Justice,” the first novel in her Imperial Radch trilogy. “Provenance” returns us to the same Imperial Radch universe to tell a new story about a rather stressed-out young woman named Ingray who is looking to impress her high-ranking mom with a crazy plan involving the release of a notorious criminal from a prison zone.
The plan starts to go wrong right from the novel’s first line. What follows is less space opera than space operetta, with Ingray becoming involved in a political comedy of errors that threatens to spiral into a major intergalactic-diplomatic incident.
“Provenance” is lighter fare than the Radch trilogy, but it introduces us to some interesting new characters, cultures and technologies.
Frankenstein Dreams: A Connoisseur’s Collection of Victorian Science Fiction Ed. by Michael Sims (Bloomsbury, 400 pages, $29)
The publication of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” in 1818 is usually regarded as the beginning of science fiction, but the genre then took another hundred years to arrive at its present form. In this anthology of stories and novel excerpts from the nineteenth century, editor Michael Sims tracks the process of this shaping, collecting some of the earliest explorations of what would become staple themes such as time travel, robotics and space exploration.
The major difference between SF then and now is perhaps not so much our greater knowledge of the universe as it is the evolution in style. It’s the flavour of the writing here, so distinct from our own, that makes this a collection for the connoisseur.
Machine Learning By Hugh Howey (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 352 pages, $22.50)
While self-publishing via Amazon hasn’t led to a total transformation of the book business, there have been some amazing success stories. Hugh Howey, author of the bestselling Silo series of novels, is one of the most notable of these.
The Silo novels are the work of an author skilled in long-form narrative, and it’s surprising to turn to the stories collected in “Machine Learning” and find them just as accomplished. Howey’s highly original take on such standard SF themes as aliens, artificial intelligence and virtual reality are lively and thoughtful, with several of the stories, including “The Walk Up Nameless Ridge” and “The Plagiarist” being real standouts. “Machine Learning” is a good place to catch Howey at his best.