Inverarity is not a Scottish village

Fairwood Press, 2023, 264 pages

Beck Garrison lives on a seastead — an archipelago of constructed platforms and old cruise ships, assembled by libertarian separatists a generation ago. She's grown up comfortable and sheltered, but starts doing odd jobs for pocket money.

To her surprise, she finds that she's the only detective that a debt slave can afford to hire to track down the woman's missing sister. When she tackles this investigation, she learns things about life on the other side of the waterline — not to mention about herself and her father — that she did not expect. And that some people will stop at nothing to keep her from talking about . . .

W. W. Norton & Company, 2023, 368 pages

A funny, poignant, and thrilling debut novel that skewers billionaire-funded space travel in a love story of interplanetary proportions.

Amber Kivinen is moving to Mars. Or at least, she will be if she wins a chance to join MarsNow. She and 23 reality TV contestants from around the world—including attractive Israeli soldier Adam, endearing fellow Canadian Pichu, and an assortment of science nerds and wannabe influencers—are competing for two seats on the first human-led mission to Mars, sponsored by billionaire Geoff Task.

Meanwhile Kevin, Amber’s boyfriend of 14 years, was content going nowhere until Amber left him—and their hydroponic weed business—behind. As he tends to (and smokes) the plants growing in their absurdly overpriced Vancouver basement apartment, Kevin tunes in to find out why the love of his life is so determined to leave the planet with somebody else. On screen, Amber competes in globe-trotting, Survivor-meets-Star Trek challenges and seems like she might be falling for Adam. But is that real, or is it just a tactic to keep from being voted off? And since the technology to come home doesn’t exist yet, would Amber really leave everything behind to be a billionaire's Martian guinea pig? Sure, the rainforest is burning, Geoff Task has bought New Zealand, and Kevin might be a little depressed, but isn’t there some hope left for life on Earth?

An audacious debut from a “a dazzlingly smart and strikingly original writer” (Molly Antopol), Girlfriend on Mars is at once a satirical indictment of our pursuit of fame and wealth amid environmental crisis and an exploration of humanity’s deepest longing, greatest quest, and most enduring cliché: love.

Apex Books, 2021, 315 pages

Glowing red lines split their faces. Shock-red hair and clothes warn people to flee their approach. They are plague birds, the powerful merging of humans and artificial intelligences who serve as judges and executioners after the collapse of civilization.

And the plague birds’ judgement is swift and deadly, as Crista discovered as a child when she watched one kill her mother.

In a world of gene-modded humans constantly watched over by benevolent AIs, everyone hates and fears the plague birds. But to save her father and home village, Crista becomes the very creature she fears the most. And her first task as a plague bird is hunting down an ancient group of murderers wielding magic-like powers.

As Crista and her AI symbiote travel farther from home than she ever imagined, they are plunged into a strange world where she judges wrongdoers, befriends other outcasts, and uncovers an extremely personal conspiracy that threatens the lives of millions.

Plague Birds is a genre-bending mix of science fiction and dark fantasy and the epic story of a young woman who becomes one of the future’s most hated creatures, with a killer AI bonded to her very blood.

Tor Books, 2021, 194 pages

In Adrian Tchaikovsky's The Expert System's Champion, sometimes the ones you hate are the only ones who can save you.

It's been 10 years since Handry was wrenched away from his family and friends, forced to wander a world he no longer understood. But with the help of the Ancients, he has cobbled together a life, of sorts, for himself and his fellow outcasts.

Wandering from village to village, welcoming the folk that the townships abandon, fighting the monsters the villagers cannot - or dare not - his ever-growing band of misfits has become the stuff of legend, a story told by parents to keep unruly children in line.

But there is something new and dangerous in the world, and the beasts of the land are acting against their nature, destroying the towns they once left in peace.

And for the first time in memory, the Ancients have no wisdom to offer....

Tor.com, 2022, 340 pages

On a warm March night in 2083, Judy Wallach-Stevens wakes to a warning of unknown pollutants in the Chesapeake Bay. She heads out to check what she expects to be a false alarm—and stumbles upon the first alien visitors to Earth. These aliens have crossed the galaxy to save humanity, convinced that the people of Earth must leave their ecologically-ravaged planet behind and join them among the stars. And if humanity doesn't agree, they may need to be saved by force.

But the watershed networks that rose up to save the planet from corporate devastation aren't ready to give up on Earth. Decades ago, they reorganized humanity around the hope of keeping the world livable. By sharing the burden of decision-making, they've started to heal our wounded planet.

Now corporations, nation-states, and networks all vie to represent humanity to these powerful new beings, and if anyone accepts the aliens' offer, Earth may be lost. With everyone’s eyes turned skyward, the future hinges on Judy's effort to create understanding, both within and beyond her own species.

Inkshares, 2017, 421 pages

An AI cannot lie. An AI must obey human commands. An AI cannot kill. These are the laws SCARAB has broken, and only Mary knows.

The Tantalus 13 survey expedition went off the rails as soon as Mary Ketch and the crew of the Diamelen learned that the thing beneath their feet wasn’t a planet. An impossibly vast and ancient artificial structure lies below, hidden from the universe under a façade of cratered stone.

SCARAB arrived on Tantalus 13 two years ago. An artificially intelligent, self-constructing factory, it was supposed to aid the crew in their mission, to meet their every need. But when erratic behavior in the AI coincides with a series of deadly accidents among the crew, Mary faces the horrifying possibility that SCARAB has gone rogue.

With the AI watching her every move, any attempt to warn the crew could be disastrous. But SCARAB knows far more about the Tantalus 13 enigma than it lets on, and the secrets it’s willing to kill for may have dire implications for all humankind.

William Morrow, 2022, 304 pages

For fans of Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven, a spellbinding and profoundly prescient debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters over hundreds of years as humanity struggles to rebuild itself in the aftermath of a climate plague—a daring and deeply heartfelt work of mind-bending imagination from a singular new voice.

In 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika Crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus.

Once unleashed, the Arctic plague will reshape life on Earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy. In a theme park designed for terminally ill children, a cynical employee falls in love with a mother desperate to hold on to her infected son. A heartbroken scientist searching for a cure finds a second chance at fatherhood when one of his test subjects—a pig—develops the capacity for human speech. A widowed painter and her teenaged granddaughter embark on a cosmic quest to locate a new home planet. 

From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead to interstellar starships, Sequoia Nagamatsu takes readers on a wildly original and compassionate journey, spanning continents, centuries, and even celestial bodies to tell a story about the resilience of the human spirit, our infinite capacity to dream, and the connective threads that tie us all together in the universe.

Sky City, 2017, 419 pages

Five months to Titan. Four brave crew members. One incredible mystery.

Jeff Dolan always wanted to be an astronaut. After helping a private space company build a ship that can travel to Saturn's largest moon in five months, he gets his chance.

Shortly after launch, a devastating malfunction forces Jeff and the crew to make a choice: continue to Titan or go back home. As the truth about their mission unravels, one thing is clear: Someone on Earth knew about the system flaw and covered it up.

Yet surviving the journey isn't the crew's only concern. Even if they make it to Titan, they will face another problem: Something is already there.

Orbit, 2020, 408 pages

Caiden's planet is destroyed. His family gone. And, his only hope for survival is a crew of misfit aliens and a mysterious ship that seems to have a soul and a universe of its own. Together they will show him that the universe is much bigger, much more advanced, and much more mysterious than Caiden had ever imagined. But the universe hides dangers as well, and soon Caiden has his own plans.

He vows to do anything it takes to get revenge on the slavers who murdered his people and took away his home. To destroy their regime, he must infiltrate and dismantle them from the inside, or die trying.

Orbit, 2021, 528 pages

The Laconian Empire has fallen, setting the 1,300 solar systems free from the rule of Winston Duarte. But the ancient enemy that killed the gate builders is awake, and the war against our universe has begun again.

In the dead system of Adro, Elvi Okoye leads a desperate scientific mission to understand what the gate builders were and what destroyed them, even if it means compromising herself and the half-alien children who bear the weight of her investigation. Through the wide-flung systems of humanity, Colonel Aliana Tanaka hunts for Duarte’s missing daughter...and the shattered emperor himself. And on the Rocinante, James Holden and his crew struggle to build a future for humanity out of the shards and ruins of all that has come before.

As nearly unimaginable forces prepare to annihilate all human life, Holden and a group of unlikely allies discover a last, desperate chance to unite all of humanity, with the promise of a vast galactic civilization free from wars, factions, lies, and secrets if they win.

But the price of victory may be worse than the cost of defeat.