Science Fiction – Page 2 – The Warbler Books

Binti – Nnedi Okorafor

September 8, 2016 1 Comment

Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti just won best novella at the 2016 Hugo Awards, after having won the Nebula Award in the same category. I had no idea what the book was about, but based on the cover art alone, I knew I wanted to read it. It’s part of Tor’s new effort to publish shorter fiction through their Tor.com imprint, and they’d been advertising heavily on sites I frequent, so I’d seen the cover of Binti a few hundred times before I finally picked it up. It was a bit serendipitous, actually. I walked into a bookstore I’d never seen before near my house while my parents—who were visiting—explored shops nearby. I love going to local bookstores and scoping out their genre fiction sections. More often than not, sci-fi, fantasy, and horror are poorly represented, but Diesel books in Oakland had a lovely section in the back with a great selection.

Featured Author: Rebekka S. Leber

July 12, 2016 No Comments

As one of the hosts of Drinkshares: Last Call, Rebekka Leber (Facebook, Twitter) has cemented herself as an influential member of the Inkshares community. Her book, Proxy, is available for preorder now and if what I’ve read of it is any indication, it’s going to be gritty and dark, witty with snark, and … I can’t exactly think of a third pair rhyme that works. Long story short: it’s going to be a fantastic book. Learn more about Proxy and Rebekka below. About Proxy: Max Lucas only ever worried about one thing: how she was going to score her next bottle. She’s not proud, but it’s the only thing that ever gets the voices to shut up. When a horrific murder lifts the veil on her mysterious ancestry, she finally learns the reason why she can hear the thoughts of an entire city and why she can move objects with her mind. She’s

Ageless Spoilercast — Interviewing Paul Inman

June 30, 2016 No Comments

After reading and reviewing Paul Inman’s Ageless, I had the pleasurable opportunity to directly ask him several things about the novel. Our conversation meandered a bit, so I hope you’ll stick with it for its (rather lengthy) entirety. Enjoy!

Ageless – Paul Inman

June 17, 2016 1 Comment

We often try to classify writing by its elemental genre, the thing at the heart of the text that drives or emotional attachment to the story. These aren’t things like “fantasy,” “science fiction,” or “slipstream”; rather, it’s mystery, adventure, wonder, horror, relationship, and the like that connect us, on a human level, to what we read. At a first glance, Ageless seems to be a combination of mystery and wonder: we have the big “what if” of wonder— what if a person aged so slowly that they were essentially immortal?— and the puzzle-piece arrangement of our leap into the story, immediately eliciting questions of “how” that start off a mystery. But as Ageless progresses, it becomes clear that it is a character-driven story, unfolding across generations, and dealing with fundamental questions of love and loss, and the limits of human kindness and cruelty. It is a book about relationships. It’s

Draftshares: Young Adult Fiction

June 2, 2016 No Comments

Draftshares continues with YA novels as today’s focus. Take a look at these drafts and, as always, help out by offering feedback! Project Human: I, Robot meets Divergent meets Real Steel as a rogue android prototype joins forces with a human girl in a brewing political war. First in a YA speculative fiction/dystopian duology set in the year 2120. Sparked: What happens when mean girls get superpowers and have to save the world? The Artist and the Automaton: The fate of an automaton-inhabited utopia for artists ties to an unsuspecting, frustrated young woman and her mouthy assistant. At the same time, their tale is told to a young girl whose future ties to the story itself. Star Light, Star Bright: A falling mech. A comet. A thief wielding lightning. A team of teens with attitude. A dragon’s fury. A destiny that was never yours to have… Moving’s fun, right? The Sally Forth Intrigue: Janie’s a ghost, stuck quoting GHOSTBUSTERS, and

Draftshares: Science Fiction

May 30, 2016 No Comments

Greetings, friend of the Warbler! There’s a fun thing going on in the Inkshares community this week, wherein projects in the “draft” phase are being highlighted. I’m joining in this endeavor, and throughout the week you’ll see a few posts showcasing some of the exciting drafts on the platform. Today’s focus is Science Fiction. Part of the philosophy of Draftshares is to offer feedback on these drafts, so check out these drafts and let the authors know what you think One: I’d be remiss not to mention my own draft in the science fiction genre. A little boy in Gaza and a little girl in Sderot share a single consciousness. Military experiments, corporate greed, and religious extremism will permeate this novel. The Seventh Aspect: A compassionate alien scientist must prove humans are worthy of learning the truth about God – or be forced to exterminate us. The Cora Chronicles: Genesis:

Octavia’s Brood – Walida Imarisha & Adrienne Marie Brown

May 26, 2016 No Comments

A few weeks ago, I attended a rally in support of Bernie Sanders just north of Oakland, in Vallejo, California. At the rally, I heard a sentence that struck a deep chord within me: An idea does not have to be radical to be revolutionary. It’s a simple statement, sure, but it has legs. I imagine that, during the height of the civil rights movement, there was a portion of the American population that felt the idea of racial equality was radical. But thinking about it, were people asking for anything completely new? No. They were asking to have the rights of protection, access, and representation that already existed for a majority of Americans. I don’t mean to say that radical action wasn’t taken in the name of revolution. Rather, that the desires of the movement were not radical, though they were certainly revolutionary. I think that our current politics are

Central Station – Lavie Tidhar

May 20, 2016 No Comments

I thought it would be difficult to find a book at good as Hannu Rajaniemi’s Collected Fiction this year, but Lavie Tidhar’s Central Station, also published by Tachyon, has overtaken it for the top spot in my list this year. By a tiny margin. For me, Central Station was more than a good—or even great—book. It was an important book, for several reasons. The first is that it is some advanced science fiction that breaks through a number of barriers in the genre, which I’ll dig into below. The second is that it was written by an Israeli author and takes place in Tel Aviv. Representation in speculative fiction has been a hot topic for the last few years, and I’ve been rather appalled by the backlash in some areas of the community at the idea of diversity in sci-fi and fantasy. I love reading fiction precisely because of the extraordinary opportunity

Featured Author: Peter Ryan

April 15, 2016 1 Comment

Periodically, a book will come around that deserves some additional attention. While this one is not in the Geek & Sundry competition, it’s got eleven days remaining in its campaign. Time being of the essence, I felt it prudent to weave it in with this batch of featured author posts. Take a look at Peter Ryan‘s Sync City. About Sync City: Armed, surly and vulgar. Jack Trevayne is humanity’s best hope for the future. Just don’t tell him. Sync City is the first part of the Sync City cycle, a story set on Earth in a dystopian past, present and future. Jack Trevayne is a Keeper, a blunt, no-nonsense enforcer for a group of pacifist post-humans known as the Deacons. Jack’s responsibilities, with the help of his sentient motorbike and sometimes partner Vic, are to keep the timelines clean and protect humanity by killing the War Clans and the Scythers. He also doesn’t mind

The Life Engineered – JF Dubeau

March 1, 2016 No Comments

It takes courage-and perhaps audacity-to come out swinging, and I’d say JF Dubeau‘s debut novel, The Life Engineered, throws a few powerful punches that make his a book worth giving your undivided attention. In many ways, The Life Engineered is archetypical, but in other ways, it represents a novel approach to a classic medium: robot-focused science fiction. The Life Engineered, one of the Inkshares / Sword and Laser contest winners, is available today, at the end of a long and interesting road. Because of its publication through Inkshares, readers have had unprecedented access to information about the writing and publication process, and knowing Dubeau’s state of mind put some additional weight behind moments in the novel. But, as I’m learning in a wonderful book called Reading Like a Writer, it is important to look at the words themselves, rather than the extraneous meta-data of the circumstances surrounding their origin. So I

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