June’s new science fiction includes a space opera from Megan E. O’Keefe
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Do you like your world ravaged by unstoppable and deadly viruses or technologies? If so, then June is your month, because we have everything from a contagion that makes people lustful to a neural chip that lets us turn off sleep. We’ve also got an environmental apocalypse from Inga Simpson in The Thinning, and I’m definitely in the mood for a slice of feminist body horror from E.K. Sathue pitched as American Psycho meets The Substance. Elsewhere, we have Megan E. O’Keefe’s new space opera, which sounds intriguing, and Taylor Jenkins Reid’s look at the 1980s space shuttle programme, Atmosphere.
Those dastardly scientists are at it again, this time developing a neural chip that allows you to turn off sleep. Soon, everyone has one – and then it stops being possible to turn the chip off, and everyone in the world is deprived of the sanity that sleep brings. Marooned in the Tower of London, some surviving scientists are working on a cure… This sounds really fun, and pleasingly horrific: who in the world would ever want to turn off the ability to sleep?
We have suffered many a science-fictional apocalyptic virus before. In this latest, the deadly virus is making the infected “feral with lust”. Our protagonist Sophie is “a good Catholic girl” and is trying to find her family during these end times. Already out in the US, the novel is published in the UK this month.
This isn’t sci-fi as such, but more an alternate world with a backdrop of the 1980s Space Shuttle programme. Taylor Jenkins Reid has written excellent novels, including Daisy Jones & the Six and Malibu Rising, so I am pretty sure this book will provide good fodder for us sci-fi fans. This time, we’re following astrophysics professor Joan Goodwin as she begins her astronaut training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center in 1980, discovering love and passion as she prepares for her first flight. But on mission STS-LR9, in December 1984, everything changes…
Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Atmosphere is set during the 1980s Space Shuttle programme
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This standalone space opera follows Faven Sythe as she searches for her missing mentor. Sythe is “crystborn”, a near-human who charts starpaths around the galaxy. The only person who can help her in her quest is the pirate Bitter Amandine (great name), and the pair discover a “galaxy-spanning conspiracy” (there have been a few of those in sci-fi) as they search.
Fin lives with her mother Dianella deep off the grid, always ready to run. The world is not in good shape outside their enclave, with extinctions and a loss of diversity threatening what’s left of the environment. As disaster looms, Fin finds herself teaming up with an Incomplete, one of a new breed of evolved humans, in a quest to restore the natural world.
A virus has killed half the population of China and is heading for the UK, so the British government decides the only option is to distribute “Dignity Pills”, which send you to sleep forever. But Haruto Ikeda has found a way to mutate the virus, so that rather than killing people, it works its way into their brains and increases their ability to show compassion. Can this save the day?
Pitched as American Psycho meets The Substance, this body horror novel follows a young woman who joins the team at luxury skincare company HEBE. Although Sophia quickly realises something is deeply wrong at the firm, she soon becomes addicted to youthjuice, the company’s fatty and soothing moisturiser, which she is testing in secret. How far will she go to stay youthful forever?
This sounds thrilling: as humanity faces extinction, scientists use tech designed for interstellar travel to send someone 10 millennia into Earth’s future. Microbiologist Nicholas Hindman finds himself in an uninhabited wilderness, and searches for any remaining populations. Back in 2068, a hyperpandemic is threatening the future of humanity, and scientists set out across the post-apocalyptic globe to investigate rumours that a woman who can get pregnant has been found on a small island north of Sicily.
Enka and Mathilde become friends in art school, but when Mathilde’s fame makes her drift away, Enka is desperate not to lose her. Could a cutting-edge technology known as SCAFFOLD, which would allow Enka to inhabit Mathilde’s mind, be the answer? It would link the pair together forever – but is it a good idea? I’m guessing no, though I’ll be intrigued to find out.
Starting in present-day India and moving to the near future, this follows a populist campaign to reinstate the ancient and long-vanished Saraswati river. I’m told by the publisher that while this is “not exactly science fiction”, it “has a strong speculative fiction element, coming out of a political situation that is happening at the moment”. It’s being compared to the writing of David Mitchell, Zadie Smith and Eleanor Catton, and I’m certainly keen to give it a try.
Set in a near-future version of London where technology affects everything, from our bodies to our politics, Pels Badmus is a journalist who wants to solve the disappearances of a series of young Black children. Instead, her boss sends her to cover protests in Benin, where tourists are partaking in sacred Spirit Vine rituals. When she takes the Spirit Vine (commonly used as an ingredient of ayahuasca), she discovers an unfulfilled destiny that could change everything. This is pitched as perfect for fans of N.K. Jemisin and Supacell.
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