The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi

September 4, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Knopf, 2015. 371 pgs. Library copy. Set in the not-too-distant-future, Bacugalupi’s novel finds the southwestern United States desolate and abandoned after a series of Category 6 hurricanes – a new categorization on our 1 to 5 scale – flattens coastal Texas and a massive, continuous drought has stopped the Colorado River from flowing downstream at the rate required by the Colorado River Compact of 1922. The details are sketchy as the story largely takes place in the […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Book Club, Dystopia, Fiction, Mountain West, North America, Science Fiction, United States • Tags: Paolo Bacigalupi

The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon

June 14, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Davina Porter. Recorded Books, 2002. Originally published 2001. 55 hours, 30 minutes. Library copy. The fifth book in Gabaldon’s Outlander series opens right at the conclusion of the proceeding book: Brianna and Roger have reconciled at the clan gathering in the colony of North Carolina where the Frasers have traveled to see Jamie’s Aunt Jocasta marry Jamie’s co-revolutionist from Culloden. The wedding, however, is interrupted by the arrival of the local magistrate, who proceeds to arrest […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Chunkster, Fiction, North America, Science Fiction, United States • Tags: Davina Porter, Diana Gabaldon

Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan

May 24, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Nan A. Talese, 2019. 337 pgs. Purchased. In McEwan’s alternative 1980s London, the British lose the Falkland War and Margaret Thatcher is pushed out of a power by a resurgent Labour Party led by Tony Benn. These events are minor, though, to the fact that Alan Turing, the father of modern computing, was never subjected to chemical castration for being a homosexual in the 1950s. As a result, Turning never committed suicide and the computer revolution of […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Science Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Ian McEwan

Tell the Machine Goodnight by Katie Williams

February 8, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Riverhead Books, 2018. 304 pgs. Library copy. Apricity is happiness, proclaims the company’s advertising slogan for a machine that reads your DNA from a cheek swab and provides three recommendations that will enhance your happiness. Its suggestions run the gambit; everything from arrange fresh flowers to cut off the tip of your middle finger, “Pearl had always marveled at this: to think that the solution to one’s happiness lay next to the residue of the bagel […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Book Club, Dystopia, Fiction, North America, Science Fiction, United States • Tags: Katie Williams

The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi

November 29, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Tor Books, 2017. 333 pgs. Library copy. In the generations since humans left Earth and settled across the galaxy, an empire known as the Interdependency has formed. Headed by the Emporx, the galaxy is economically ruled by a series of Houses — or families — who control certain segments of inter-galactic trade and rely heavily upon the Flow to move their goods. Except the Flow, an anomaly that allows for travel between planets in a matter of […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Book Club, Fiction, Science Fiction, Space • Tags: John Scalzi

The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman

July 31, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Roc, 2016. Originally published 2015. 341 pgs. Library copy. Irene is a librarian; she retrieves books from alternate worlds that are unique versions or hold prominence in another culture. After successfully completing a mission, she returns to the Library — a mysterious, shadow organization that straddles worlds — planning to enjoy a cup of tea and a good book. Her plans at shot immediately, though, when her supervisor informs Irene that she must leave immediately to retrieve […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Book Club, Europe, Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Genevieve Cogman

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

July 5, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Candlewick Press, 2009. Originally published 2008. 479 pgs. Purchased. Soon after arriving on the New World, all the settlers were infected with the Noise germ, allowing them to hear everything each other thinks. As the last remaining boy in a town full of men, Todd Hewitt isn’t allowed to converse with those who have become men, and he longs for the day he can become a man and join the ranks of those living in Prentisstown. “Everything on […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Book Club, Chunkster, Dystopia, Science Fiction, Young Adult • Tags: Patrick Ness

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

May 6, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Doubleday, 2016. 322 pages. Purchased. Whitehead’s novel won both the 2017 Pulitzer Prize and the 2016 National Book Award, the first novel to do so since 1993. It also won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, and was longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize. Given this lavishing of praise and accolades, I added Whitehead’s novel to my to-read list but shied away from picking up the novel until I […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Fiction, North America, ReadDiverse, Science Fiction, United States • Tags: Colson Whitehead

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

April 18, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Jeff Cummings. Brilliance Audio, 2015. Originally published 1962. 9 hours, 58 minutes. Purchased.  In 1962, fifteen years after the end of World War II, a defeated America has been split into three zones — the Pacific States ruled by Japan, the East Coast colonized by Nazi Germany, and a demilitarized zone comprised of the Rocky Mountain states. In Colorado and Wyoming, individuals who once (and still) identified as Americans live far freer than those on either […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Asia, Audiobook, Awards and Prizes, Dystopia, Europe, Fiction, Germany, Japan, North America, Science Fiction, United States • Tags: Philip K. Dick

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

January 24, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by George Guidall. Recorded Books, 2016. Originally published 1969. 9 hours, 39 minutes. Purchased. The sixth book in the Hainish Cycle series follows a human emissary from Earth (also known as Terra) on behalf of the planetary confederation of Ekumen to a planet roughly seventeen light years away from the previously known boundary of the universe.  The Ekumen refer to the planet as Winter because of its observed climate and landscape, but the inhabitants of the […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Audiobook, Awards and Prizes, Book Club, Classics, Fiction, Science Fiction • Tags: George Guidall, Ursula K Le Guin

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan

September 4, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Heather Corrigan. HighBridge Audio, 2011. 10 hours, 42 minutes. Library copy. In this imaginative retelling of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Hannah Payne awakens to find her skin is now the red — the color of blood. She is a convicted criminal sentenced by the State of Texas, who criminalized abortion as murder, to be “chromed”, and her skin color has been genetically modified to broadcast to the world her crime. Hannah devoted her life […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Audiobook, Dystopia, Fiction, North America, Science Fiction, United States • Tags: Heather Corrigan, Hillary Jordan

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

July 25, 2009 by Christina

Fiction — print. Harcourt, 2006. 336 pgs. Library copy. It’s a sign of a good book — especially a good science fiction novel — when the reader begins to panic and worry about their location relative to the action in the book and how much food is in their pantry. Because Life As We Knew It focuses on the moon getting knocked closer Earth and the ramifications of a closer lunar force — changing of the tides causes massive flooding, […]

Categories: 2009 Reads, Dystopia, Fiction, North America, Science Fiction, United States • Tags: Susan Beth Pfeffer