In new sci-fi novels, artificial intelligence causes problems and the moon somehow turns into cheese
S.A. Barnes
Tor Nightfire, 304 pages, $38.99
S.A. Barnes has become the go-to name for creepy SF-horror, and 'Cold Eternity' follows previous books like 'Dead Silence' and 'Ghost Station' in going off-planet to tell a techno-ghost story.
The main character is a young woman named Halley who is on the run from the political powers-that-be, who are also her former employers. Desperate, she takes a job as a sort of security guard on board the Elysian Fields, an ancient spaceship filled with cryo-chambers. It's a lousy gig, but the ship makes a good place to hide from the authorities — at least until things start taking a turn for the weird and Halley finds herself facing off against a next-generation evil.
Barnes does this kind of thing very well, and there are parts of 'Cold Eternity' that are genuinely suspenseful and scary. Halley's backstory is complicated, though, and there are too many pages devoted to a romance angle with an AI. It's a chillingly effective read, but one that also makes you wish there was a little less of it.
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'Rose/House,' by Arkady Martine, Tordotcom, $27.99.
Rose/House
Arkady Martine
Tordotcom, 128 pages, $27.99
Rose House is the name of a structure built out in the Mojave Desert by a famous architect who designed it as both his masterpiece and the final repository of his crystallized remains. As things kick off, the resident AI that runs Rose House, and that 'is' Rose House in a deeper sense, calls the local police to let them know that there's a dead body inside, which is something that should be impossible since there's only one person who has been given access to the building and she's out of the country.
What follows is a spin on the classic 'locked room' murder mystery. It's also a ghost story, as the AI (which is 'not sane' in the best Hill House tradition) haunts Rose House in complicated ways. Multiple layers of what happened are revealed to the pair of women allowed inside: the detective investigating and the building's legal heir. This all makes for a great buildup, and if the payoff isn't quite on the same level, it's at least something different and unexpected.
'Where the Axe Is Buried,' by Ray Nayler, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $37.
Where the Axe Is Buried
Ray Nayler
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 336 pages, $37
Though this is only his third novel, Ray Nayler has already established himself as a must-read for intelligent, near-future speculative fiction.
'Where the Axe Is Buried' is a political thriller set in a New Cold War version of Europe where Russia is ruled by a president who can live forever in a series of new bodies into which his consciousness can be ported, and artificial intelligence programs called prime ministers run a 'rationalized' Western Europe.
Unfortunately, technology has not set us free, and both sides are post-ideological authoritarian surveillance states — places where insect-sized drones carry messages of hope or death, and when you look out into the streets, the street is always looking back at you. There are underground resistance movements, though, and scientists, spies and politicians trying to tear down the system and build something better.
It's a complicated story that hops around a lot among many characters in many places, but Nayler's world-building is top notch, creating a plausible and deeply realized vision of the future that also feels scarily close to home.
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'When the Moon Hits Your Eye,' by John Scalzi, Tor, $39.99.
When the Moon Hits Your Eye
John Scalzi
Tor, 336 pages, $39.99
The premise is everything: suddenly, and all at once, the moon turns into cheese.
Indeed, not only the moon itself, but all the moon rocks on display in museums and in private collections here on Earth.
Of course, Luna's transformation into Caseus (Latin for 'cheese') is ridiculous. At first, none of the characters in John Scalzi's latest can believe it's happened. But the novel works by taking the great cheesification event literally, though not seriously. If the moon were to turn into cheese, we're led to ask, what would happen next?
Each chapter tells the story of a different character, progressing daily until the book has covered a full lunar cycle. The question each section asks is how politicians, scientists, business leaders, the media and the broader public are affected, and how they might respond to such a bizarre event.
This is just an entertainment, with little hard science and not a lot of deep thinking behind it, but it's all good fun in Scalzi's typically playful hands.
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