For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] We live in a golden age of the armchair detective, a person who aims to help solve a real-life mystery without the official qualifications for such work. Global fascination with true crime has led to an explosion of documentaries, websites, online forums, and more; a 2023 Pew Research Center study1 found that true crime … Read more
[ad_1] Nathan Ballingrud’s The Strange is set on Mars in the early 20th century—not a scientifically accurate Mars, but one more like Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles or earlier planetary romance, with a breathable atmosphere and signs of earlier civilizations. Colonized by Americans, among others, this is a distinctly frontier-like Mars, with most of the main … Read more
[ad_1] Citizens are distraught to learn of the latest decree from their leaders: each person is to be evaluated as to whether they deserve to live. Those found “unnecessary for life” will be asked to “leave life within 24 hours.” Panic is alleviated when citizens learn that Ak, “a luminous person,” will be in charge … Read more
[ad_1] Before creating his world-beating radio program The Best Show, Tom Scharpling wrote punk zines, covered the NBA, produced the TV show Monk, and auditioned (unsuccessfully) for The New Monkees. Every indie musician’s favorite comic, Tom writes and performs with Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster and has directed videos for artists including Kurt Vile, Aimee Mann, … Read more
[ad_1] Set about 200 years in the future, Neil Sharpson’s When the Sparrow Falls is narrated by Nikolai Andreivich South, a low-ranking state security bureaucrat in the Caspian Republic. Earth has been transformed by the emergence of super-powerful artificial intelligences and technology allowing people to transfer their consciousness to the digital realm. The Caspian Republic … Read more
[ad_1] In Persephone Station, Stina Leicht negotiates the conflict between humanity and technology in a future universe. While many science fiction novels grapple with this central question of what exactly it means to be human, Leicht goes to great length to give us a wide array of characters with diverse gender identities, different planets of … Read more