Sci-Fi

Tomorrowing
Terry Bisson
Duke University Press - 16.00€ -

For twenty years, Terry Bisson published a regular “This Month in History” column in the science fiction magazine Locus. Tomorrowing collects these two decades of memorable events, four per month, each set in a totally different imaginary yet possible, inevitable yet avoidable future. From the first AI president to the first dog on Mars to the funeral of Earth’s last glacier, these stories are speculative SF at its most (and least) serious.

Collected as a series for the first time, Tomorrowing will amuse, alarm, intrigue, entertain, and like all good science fiction, make readers think. Bisson’s short stories have won every major award in science fiction, including the Hugo and the Nebula, but never, ever anything for this series.

Little Sisters and Other Stories
Vonda N. McIntyre
Goldsmiths Press - 23.00€ -

Selected short stories by one of the most acclaimed voices in post-war US American science fiction.

This volume presents a selection of short fiction by Vonda Neel McIntyre (1948–2019), one of the most acclaimed writers of post-war US American science fiction, and the winner of multiple awards for both novels and short fiction.

These stories, which span the whole of McIntyre's career, show the broad range of her interests and her voice, taking us from bleak dystopian worlds on the verge of environmental collapse to baroque intergalactic civilizations populated by genetically modified humans, from cries for freedom to sharp-eyed satire to meditations on aging. Throughout run her distinctive themes of gender and power dynamics, human and species diversity, and a pragmatic utopianism that emphasises our mutual dependency.

The stories included in the volume are: "Breaking Point," "Thanatos," "Shadows, Moving," "Elfleda," "A Story for Eilonwy," "Malheur Maar," "The Adventure of the Field Theorems," "Little Faces", "Little Sisters," and "XYY" (previously unpublished).

Vonda Neel McIntyre (1948–2019) was one of the most acclaimed voices in US American science fiction from the 1960s onwards. A novelist, short story writer, essayist, and critic, she won her first Hugo Award in 1973 for her novella "Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand." This formed part of her ground-breaking feminist novel Dreamsnake (1978), which won both the Hugo and the Nebula Award. A later novel, The Moon and the Sun, won the Nebula in 1997. McIntyre contributed extensively to debates within the US sf community over the role of women in science fiction, and was instrumental in founding the Clarion West Writers Workshop for novice sf writers. A final novel, The Curve of the World, was completed shortly before her death.

Merchant
Alexandra Grunberg
Goldsmiths Press - 25.00€ -

A post-apocalyptic retelling of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

Who will survive when the world is destroyed? Can stories from the distant past teach us how to change a dismal present? Merchant shifts perspective between three survivors of a flooded world as they try to navigate the threat of mass starvation; Jessica, a patrilineal Jew from Venice (named after the Italian city but located on the mountain K2) who has memorized the complete works of Shakespeare; Cem, an orphan of Venice; and Shinobu, an advisor to the empress Ama in Fuji. Ama has been gifting edible algae blocks to nations worldwide, but Jessica's arrival in Fuji to beg for more food for Venice upsets the delicate international balance Shinobu has been maintaining. As a series of buried secrets and miscommunications carry consequences of potential global destruction, everyone must determine what they are willing to do to survive in a hopeless world.

Alexandra Grunberg attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts earning a BFA in Theatre. She earned her MLitt and DFA in Creative Writing at The University of Glasgow. Grunberg presented her research at various academic conferences in the UK, including “Once and Future Fantasies” at the University of Glasgow, “CRSF 2021 10th Anniversary Conference—Speculative Futures & Survival” by the University of Liverpool, “Beast Modernisms Conference 2019” at The University of Glasgow, “Creative Writing: Processes, Theory, and Influences” at The University of Edinburgh, and “The Literary Self: From Antiquity to the Digital Age” at The University of Edinburgh.

The Other Shore
Hoa Pham
Goldsmiths Press - 25.00€ -

When the dead begin speaking to sixteen-year-old Kim Nguyen, her peaceful childhood is over.

A delicate meditation on the nature of ghosts, belief, and how the future is shaped by the past. When the dead begin speaking to sixteen-year-old Kim Nguyen, her peaceful childhood is over. Suddenly everyone wants to exploit her new talent—her family, the Vietnamese government, and even the spirits themselves.

Hoa Pham is the author of several books and two plays. Her most recent publication is Empathy, also published by Goldsmiths Press under the Gold SF imprint. She is also the founder of Peril Magazine, an Asian-Australian online arts and culture magazine. Hoa lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Autodrive
Jordan Crandall
Goldsmiths Press - 30.00€ -

A literary odyssey along the highways at a time when a new form of superintelligence has emerged.

Autodrive is a work of literary fiction that melds techno-scientific inquiry and storytelling, critical theory and comedy, speculative fiction and satire. It is a road novel of sorts, an odyssey along the highways at a time when a new form of superintelligence has emerged. This new form of artificial intelligence is not entirely distinct from the characters in the narrative—it is ingrained in the machines they already use, the vehicles they already take, the systems they are already part of, but cannot fully see. The human character who is typically at the center of the fictional world gives way to an eccentric cast of performers—an ensemble of people and machines.

The Dispossessed (Hainish Cycle)
Ursula K. Le Guin
Harper Perennial - 18.00€ -  out of stock

A bleak moon settled by utopian anarchists, Anarres has long been isolated from other worlds, including its mother planet, Urras, a civilization of warring nations, great poverty, and immense wealth. Now Shevek, a brilliant physicist, is determined to reunite the two planets, which have been divided by centuries of distrust. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have kept them apart.

To visit Urras, to learn, to teach, to share, will require great sacrifice and risks, which Shevek willingly accepts. But the ambitious scientist's gift is soon seen as a threat, and in the profound conflict that ensues, he must reexamine his beliefs even as he ignites the fires of change.

Dhalgren
Samuel R. Delany
Vintage - 22.00€ -  out of stock

A mysterious disaster has stricken the midwestern American city of Bellona, and its aftereffects are disturbing: a city block burns down and is intact a week later; clouds cover the sky for weeks, then part to reveal two moons; a week passes for one person when only a day passes for another. The catastrophe is confined to Bellona, and most of the inhabitants have fled. But others are drawn to the devastated city, among them the Kid, a white/American Indian man who can't remember his own name. The Kid is emblematic of those who live in the new Bellona, who are the young, the poor, the mad, the violent, the outcast—the marginalized.

The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century (UK edition)
Olga Ravn
Lolli Editions - 16.00€ -  out of stock

The crew of the Six-Thousand Ship consists of those who were born, and those who were made. Those who will die, and those who will not. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew is perplexed to find itself becoming deeply attached to them, and human and humanoid employees alike start aching for the same things: warmth and intimacy. Loved ones who have passed. Shopping and child-rearing. Our shared, far-away Earth, which now only persists in memory.

Gradually, the crew members come to see their work in a new light, and each employee is compelled to ask themselves whether they can carry on as before – and what it means to be truly living.

Structured as a series of witness statements compiled by a workplace commission, Ravn’s crackling prose is as chilling as it is moving, as exhilarating as it is foreboding. Wracked by all kinds of longing, The Employees probes into what it means to be human, while delivering an overdue critique of a life governed by the logic of productivity.

Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken

Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials
Reza Negarestani
Re.press - 23.00€ -  out of stock

At once a horror fiction, a work of speculative theology, an atlas of demonology, a political samizdat and a philosophic grimoire, Cyclonopedia is work of theory-fiction on the Middle East, where horror is restlessly heaped upon horror.

Reza Negarestani bridges the appalling vistas of contemporary world politics and the War on Terror with the archeologies of the Middle East and the natural history of the Earth itself. Cyclonopedia is a middle-eastern Odyssey, populated by archeologists, jihadis, oil smugglers, Delta Force officers, heresiarchs, corpses of ancient gods and other puppets. The journey to the Underworld begins with petroleum basins and the rotting Sun, continuing along the tentacled pipelines of oil, and at last unfolding in the desert, where monotheism meets the Earth's tarry dreams of insurrection against the Sun.

'The Middle East is a sentient entity - it is alive!' concludes renegade Iranian archeologist Dr. Hamid Parsani, before disappearing under mysterious circumstances. The disordered notes he leaves behind testify to an increasingly deranged preoccupation with oil as the 'lubricant' of historical and political narratives. A young American woman arrives in Istanbul to meet a pseudonymous online acquaintance who never arrives. Discovering a strange manuscript in her hotel room, she follows up its cryptic clues only to discover more plot-holes, and begins to wonder whether her friend was a fictional quantity all along. Meanwhile, as the War on Terror escalates, the US is dragged into an asymmetrical engagement with occultures whose principles are ancient, obscure, and saturated in oil. It is as if war itself is feeding upon the warmachines, leveling cities into the desert, seducing the aggressors into the dark heart of oil ...

Babel-17/Empire Star
Samuel R. Delany
Vintage - 17.00€ -  out of stock

Babel-17, winner of the Nebula Award for best novel of the year, is a fascinating tale of a famous poet bent on deciphering a secret language that is the key to the enemy's deadly force, a task that requires she travel with a splendidly improbable crew to the site of the next attack. For the first time, Babel-17 is published as the author intended with the short novel Empire Star, the tale of Comet Jo, a simple-minded teen thrust into a complex galaxy when he's entrusted to carry a vital message to a distant world. Spellbinding and smart, both novels are testimony to Delany's vast and singular talent.

Samuel R. Delany was born and raised in Harlem, where he still lives. He is a professor of English and Creative Writing at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Unreal Sex
So Mayer
Cipher Press - 14.00€ -  out of stock

An anthology of queer erotic sci-fi, fantasy, and horror.

In these ten stories, everything is sex: walls, wax, the past, your future, your neighbours, hankies, candles, circuit boards, petri dishes, scrap metal – and language itself. Conjuring experiences for which there are no words, our amazing queer authors generate new tongues from the heat of their communing with a wild variety of lifeforms.

From Diriye Osman’s spiritualised Peckham to Jem Nash’s time-travelling trans multiverse, these stories transport you to new ways of being and feeling. In a word, it’s CruiserShimmeringLipophilicNeckingerCircuitGirlboss.

Whether you get horny from aliens, ghosts, robots, utopia, possession, ritual, or the completely surreal, there’s a story here for you. But why stop at one when you can taste pleasure in each and every one?

Featuring stories from: Gracie Beswick, Swithun Cooper, Rachel Dawson, Rien Gray, Vivien Holmes, Jem Nash, Diriye Osman, Alison Rumfitt, Nicks Walker & Anna Walsh.

Published November 2021. 

The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century
Olga Ravn
New Directions Publishing - 22.00€ -  out of stock

Funny and doom-drenched, The Employees chronicles the fate of the Six-Thousand Ship. The human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks in a series of staff reports and memos. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew becomes strangely and deeply attached to them, even as tensions boil toward mutiny, especially among the humanoids. Olga Ravn's prose is chilling, crackling, exhilarating, and foreboding. The Employees probes into what makes us human, while delivering a hilariously stinging critique of life governed by the logic of productivity.

Olga Ravn (born 1986) is a Danish novelist and poet. Her debut poetry collection I Devour Myself Like Heather appeared to critical acclaim in 2012. Alongside Johanne Lykke Holm she ran the feminist performance group and writing school Hekseskolen from 2015 to 2019. In collaboration with Danish publisher Gyldendal she edited a selection of Tove Ditlevsen's texts and books that relaunched Ditlevsen readership worldwide.

On the Origin of Species and Other Stories
Bo-Young Kim
Kaya Press - 20.00€ -  out of stock

Straddling science fiction, fantasy and myth, the writings of award-winning author Bo-Young Kim have garnered a cult following in South Korea, where she is widely acknowledged as a pioneer and inspiration. On the Origin of Species makes available for the first time in English some of Kim's most acclaimed stories, as well as an essay on science fiction. Her strikingly original, thought-provoking work teems with human and non-human beings, all of whom are striving to survive through evolution, whether biologically, technologically or socially. Kim's literature of ideas offers some of the most rigorous and surprisingly poignant reflections on posthuman existence being written today.

Bo-Young Kim (born 1975) won the inaugural Korean Science & Technology Creative Writing Award with her first published novella in 2004 and has gone on to win the annual South Korean SF Novel Award three times. In addition to writing, she regularly serves as a lecturer, juror and editor of sci-fi anthologies, and served as a consultant to Parasite director Bong Joon Ho's earlier sci-fi film Snowpiercer. She has novellas forthcoming from HarperCollins in 2021. She lives in Gangwon Province, South Korea, with her family.

We Who Are About To...
Joanna Russ
Wesleyan - 15.00€ -

One woman's quest to die with dignity may doom them all. 

A multi-dimensional explosion hurls the starship's few passengers across the galaxies and onto an uncharted barren tundra. With no technical skills and scant supplies, the survivors face a bleak end in an alien world. One brave woman holds the daring answer, but it is the most desperate one possible. 

Elegant and electric, We Who Are About To... brings us face to face with our basic assumptions about our will to live. While most of the stranded tourists decide to defy the odds and insist on colonizing the planet and creating life, the narrator decides to practice the art of dying. When she is threatened with compulsory reproduction, she defends herself with lethal force. Originally published in 1977, this is one of the most subtle, complex, and exciting science fiction novels ever written about the attempt to survive a hostile alien environment. It is characteristic of Russ's genius that such a readable novel is also one of her most intellectually intricate.

The Einstein Intersection
Samuel R. Delany
Wesleyan - 15.00€ -  out of stock

A nonhuman race reimagines human mythology. 

The Einstein Intersection won the Nebula Award for best science fiction novel of 1967. The surface story tells of the problems a member of an alien race, Lo Lobey, has assimilating the mythology of earth, where his kind have settled among the leftover artifacts of humanity. The deeper tale concerns, however, the way those who are different must deal with the dominant cultural ideology. The tale follows Lobey's mythic quest for his lost love, Friza. In luminous and hallucinated language, it explores what new myths might emerge from the detritus of the human world as those who are different try to seize history and the day.

The Virosexuals
Orion J. Facey
PSS Editions - 23.00€ -  out of stock

Manchester, UK. 2080.
It is a subculture whereby people are sexually attracted to the idea of transmitting and receiving STI’s. It started as a counter-culture against computer algorithms that determine every aspect of people’s lives, from careers to romantic interests, where they live, all over the world. The Virosexuals decided to alter their own bodies in order to subvert the algorithm. Now treated as non humans and thus ignored, Virosexuals like Amygdala are left to survive on their own…

Amygdala’s world consists of: her open relationship with Cel, her philosophical musings and drugged-up rants with her best friend Skunk/Winny, as well as her pursuit of all the completely curable (and thus fetishised) meatspace ‘zeases the club scene can offer. She tries to negotiate her body, her sexuality and her desires and find the source of the ‘Petitmort' threat…!

Amygdala’s dealer ran off on her. She’s out of estrogen, and so when Alejandro offers her a bountiful supply of ‘mones if she works for him – doing what? – she’s not super sure… What she does know: ESCHATOS 2.0 is trying to kill her. There’s a rumour buzzing on The Chat. A deadly virus, nicknamed ‘Petitmort’, is going around. It was manufactured by ESCHATOS 2.0, and maybe only those who have installed the latest update of the Treehouse Link are susceptible. Could Alejandro’s mission for Amygdala be connected to this virus sweeping the underground kink and BDSM scene?

Orion J. Facey's The Virosexuals, the author’s first novel, is a science-fantasy you won’t regret plugging into.

The Book Cover is Artwork by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley
Design and Typeface by Atelier Carvalho Bernau
Editing by Taylor Le Melle
Copy Editing by Natasha Lall
Production by Daniella Valz Gen, Ima-Abasi Okon and Rehana Zaman
Pages: 280
Dimensions: mm × mm
Published: 30 June 2021

Le Gabion
Théo Robine-Langlois
After 8 Books - 16.00€ -  out of stock

Au départ, une simple anecdote: un gabion de chasse typique des marais normands se détache de son ancrage pour dériver dans l’Océan Atlantique, avec des chasseurs incapables de nager à son bord. Théo Robine-Langlois transpose cette histoire à une échelle interstellaire: le Gabion, vaisseau spatial chasseur d’astéroïdes conçu pour être attaché à la Terre, dérive dans l’espace. À la suite d’Anton, on traverse les différentes communautés qui peuplent le bâtiment, monde en soi où se côtoient et s’affrontent des mœurs, des modèles de société, et surtout des formes de langage. Anton, lui, tente d’échapper à celui qui prétend régir le vaisseau, en récoltant des photocopies éparpillées dans ses méandres, jusqu’à son mystérieux cœur...

Empruntant au roman d’apprentissage autant qu’à la science-fiction, Le Gabion est aussi une chanson de geste: une odyssée symbolique où la langue et la figure de l’auteur sont traités de manière expérimentale, comme faisant partie du récit lui-même. Les langues que parlent les personnages contaminent le livre, qui se construit comme un montage où poésie, philosophie, histoire littéraire, hip hop et échanges SMS se rejoignent. En parcourant le Gabion, les lecteur.trice.s rencontrent différents rapports au langage, qui se concrétisent à la fin du livre par l’élection d’un maire de banlieue parisienne.

Le Gabion poursuit le travail entamé par Théo Robine-Langlois dans son premier livre, [...], où le subterfuge typographique des points de suspension entre crochets signifiait à la fois l’existence de trous dans la langue, d’échappatoires dans l’imaginaire, et de nuages dans le ciel. Dans Le Gabion, on peut se cacher dans un paragraphe, lire entre les lignes d’un manuel de photocopieuse, se battre avec des missiles-poèmes, rencontrer des enfants sanguinaires et des sororités féministes. On traverse également plusieurs siècles de poésie française, des troubadours à Henri Chopin ou Hélène Bessette.

Texte en Français

Speculative Facts
Department of Speculative Facts
Onomatopee - 20.00€ -  out of stock

The Department of Speculative Facts connects two seemingly contradictory approaches: Speculation which attempts to think and act beyond existing knowledge and structures, and fact-checkers in search for a solid consensus on which our reality can be built. When stretching knowledge and speculating with fiction, what sense of responsibility is needed in times of democratized opinions and fake news? Learning from the other SF—Science Fiction—we think of speculation through facts, and facts through speculation, to situate truth culturally.

The backbone of this book is an e-mail exchange between two fact-checkers from the New York Times Magazine, which we handed over to artists to re-write, re-perform, and re-design. The publication includes the original letters, workshop scripts, as well as additional texts by philosophers, journalists, writers, and artists looking at new social contracts, with which we can anchor ourselves in the present.

Department of Speculative Facts is Lietje Bauwens, Quenton Miller, Karoline Świeżyński.

Contributions by Sepake Angiama, Lietje Bauwens (DoSF), Kate Briggs, Federico Campagna, Alex Carp & Jamie Fisher (NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE), Mette Edvardsen, Tristan Garcia, Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, Nicoline van Harskamp, Quenton Miller DoSF, Ingo Niermann, Michael Portnoy, Achal Prabhala with WIKIAFRICA, FACT FACTORIES, AFRICA CHECK, CHIMURENGA, Wolfgang Tillmans, Bob Trafford (FORENSIC ARCHITECTURE).

Design by Karoline Świeżyński

The City We Became (paperback)
N.K. Jemisin
Orbit Books - 18.50€ -  out of stock

Three-time Hugo Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author N.K. Jemisin crafts her most incredible novel yet, a story of culture, identity, magic, and myths in contemporary New York City. In Manhattan, a young grad student gets off the train and realizes he doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can sense the beating heart of the city, see its history, and feel its power. In the Bronx, a Lenape gallery director discovers strange graffiti scattered throughout the city, so beautiful and powerful it's as if the paint is literally calling to her. In Brooklyn, a politician and mother finds she can hear the songs of her city, pulsing to the beat of her Louboutin heels. And they're not the only ones. Every great city has a soul. Some are ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York? She's got six.

N. K. Jemisin is the first author in history to win three consecutive Best Novel Hugo Awards, all for her Broken Earth trilogy. Her work has also won the Nebula, Locus, and Goodreads Choice Awards. She has been a reviewer for the New York Times Book Review, and an instructor for the Clarion and Clarion West writing workshops. In her spare time, she is a gamer and gardener, and she is also single-handedly responsible for saving the world from King Ozzymandias, her dangerously intelligent ginger cat, and his phenomenally destructive sidekick Magpie.

Published July 2021

Parable of the Talents
Octavia E. Butler
Grand Central Publishing - 17.50€ -

Originally published in 1998, this shockingly prescient novel's timely message of hope and resistance in the face of fanaticism is more relevant than ever. 

In 2032, Lauren Olamina has survived the destruction of her home and family, and realized her vision of a peaceful community in northern California based on her newly founded faith, Earthseed. The fledgling community provides refuge for outcasts facing persecution after the election of an ultra-conservative president who vows to make America great again. In an increasingly divided and dangerous nation, Lauren's subversive colony, a minority religious faction led by a young black woman, becomes a target for President Jarret's reign of terror and oppression.  

Years later, Asha Vere reads the journals of a mother she never knew, Lauren Olamina. As she searches for answers about her own past, she also struggles to reconcile with the legacy of a mother caught between her duty to her chosen family and her calling to lead humankind into a better future.

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