Isaac Asimov’s novel uses a police-detective thriller structure, partnering a human and a robot to explore sf topics, chiefly the future city, artificial intelligence, and prejudice against the technological Other. It reminded me a good deal of The Caves of Steel, not only in the deadpan flatness of its style but also in its plot setup. But it beats staying in the city all summer.Part of the pleasure I got from the book is its unmocking assimilation of Golden Age traditions. And the increasing sense that reality has cracked beyond repair.
Of course, once they’re in Montauk with all of Jen’s real (rich) friends, all sort of fissures and class disparities begin to surface. When they bump into Jen IRL they’re shocked when she invites them out to the Hamptons with a group of her friends-but they have to go, right? You can’t say no to an opportunity like that. Soon Jen is the center of their social media, their conversation, and even their sex life. Their strongest bond is a shared obsession with Jen, an acquaintance of Remy’s who runs her own business and is steadily rising as an influencer. Remy and Alicia are scraping a life together in Brooklyn, each working at a different restaurant, and trying to keep their relationship fresh while sharing a place with a roommate. Millennial parasocial body horror? If you’re looking for horror that could only exist right now, Beth Morgan’s A Touch of Jen is the best read you’re going to find this summer. Now, with the first book in her Monk & Robot series, she’ll be looking at the intersection of joy, sentient robots, and tea. Hugo Award-winner Becky Chambers has already brightened up the SF genre with her hopepunk Wayfarers series. Are there other? Some last remnant of civilization? And even if there is something else out there-what will they do once they find it?Ī Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers Finally, he joins one lonely, desperate, sentient being who follows a homing beacon across an ice sheet that may have no end. As if the epoch-spanning timeline wasn’t ambitious enough, Bell also shifts points-of-view and writing styles to reflect each part of his epic, and moves from the bucolic story of a pair of brothers (one human, one not) seeding trees across North America, to a suspenseful tale of corporate eco-espionage as a resistance movement fights climate collapse. Bell, who hops from 1700s Ohio to the 2070s (spoiler alert, it’s um, not going too well, climate-wise) to the 3000s, when the continent has once again scraped clean by a massive glacier. One century apparently isn’t good enough for Mr.
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