Dystopian

Thrust, Lydia Yuknavitch

As rising waters–and an encroaching police state–endanger her life and family, a girl with the gifts of a carrier travels through water and time to rescue vulnerable figures from the margins of history

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Indie Corner – Aleksandar Nedeljkovic

Back to the Indie Corner series I’m happy to reboot our Indie Corner this month with a spotlight on Aleksandar Nedeljkovic and his novel ALT (Atmosphere Press, 2022). ALT offers a glimpse into a perilous near-future version of our world—one we feared would come for us but desperately tried to […]

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A House Between Earth and the Moon, Rebecca Scherm

A novel born out of speculation about climate change, this tale has the richest billionaire’s going to live on the moon while the rest suffer on an ecologically burnt Earth. Prescient and insightful, A House Between Earth and the Moon is at once a captivating epic about the machinations of big […]

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Scattered All Over the Earth, Yoko Tawada

Welcome to the not-too-distant future: Japan, having vanished from the face of the earth, is now remembered as “the land of sushi.” Hiruko, its former citizen and a climate refugee herself, has a job teaching immigrant children in Denmark with her invented language Panska (Pan-Scandinavian): “homemade language. no country to […]

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Grey Bees, Andrey Kurkov

Little Starhorodivka, a village of three streets, lies in Ukraine’s Grey Zone, the no-man’s-land between loyalist and separatist forces. Thanks to the lukewarm war of sporadic violence and constant propaganda that has been dragging on for years, only two residents remain: retired safety inspector turned beekeeper Sergey Sergeyich and Pashka, […]

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How High We Go in the Dark, Sequoia Nagamatsu

“Wondrous, and not just in the feats of imagination, which are so numerous it makes me dizzy to recall them, but also in the humanity and tenderness with which Sequoia Nagamatsu helps us navigate this landscape. . . . This is a truly amazing book, one to keep close as […]

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Skyseed, Bill McGuire

‎Thanks so much to the author for letting me know about his novel Skyseed. Skyseed is an eco-thriller about climate engineering gone wrong, and the awful consequences for humanity and our world. Reviews: ‘Skyseed has what good thrillers always need…..a world to save, characters with a bit of go in […]

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O Man of Clay, Eliza Mood (Review)

O Man of Clay by Eliza Mood ISBN: 978-1939269959 Publisher: Stairwell Books Publication date: December 2, 2019 Review by Mary Woodbury Ursula K. Le Guin once said that speculative fiction was more about the real world than we usually imagine, and that’s true when it comes to authors writing about […]

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Darklands, Arnav Das Sharma

India is reeling from an environmental catastrophe, water has replaced oil as the most valuable commodity, and our cities have become nightmarish places infested with gangs, secretive corporations, and powerful religious figures. Arnav Das Sharma’s coming-of-age novel in an all-too-real Indian dystopia falters But the promise of being a dystopic […]

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The Body Scout, Lincoln Michael

Diamond-sharp and savagely wry, The Body Scout is a timely science fiction thriller debut set in an all-too-possible future, perfect for readers of William Gibson. In Michel’s cyberpunk New York of the future, climate change and repeated pandemics have ravaged the city; meanwhile, cybernetic body modification is de rigeur, and […]

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Harrow, Joy Williams

In her first novel since The Quick and the Dead (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), the legendary writer takes us into an uncertain landscape after an environmental apocalypse, a world in which only the man-made has value, but some still wish to salvage the authentic.

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Ark of the Apocalypse, Tobin Marks (Review)

Ark of the Apocalypse by Tobin Marks ISBN: 978-1-63337-237-5 Publisher: Boyle & Dalton Publication date: March 14, 2021 Review by Mary Woodbury Review Tobin Marks’ Ark of the Apocalypse is, in part, a thrilling, page-turning journey into a fictionalized history of our world, with a look-back at some of our […]

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Terminal Boredom: Stories, Izumi Suzuki, et al.

In a future where men are contained in ghettoized isolation, women enjoy the fruits of a queer matriarchal utopia – until a boy escapes and a young woman’s perception of the world is violently interrupted. Thanks to Booknet Canada for the BiblioShare plugin.    

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Something New Under the Sun, Alexandra Kleeman

Set in a darkly unsettling near-future Hollywood, a novelist trying to fix his troubled marriage reckons with connectedness, ambition, and corruption in the age of ecological collapse in this piercing novel from the prize-winning author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine. Thanks to Booknet Canada for the […]

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