It appears as though one of my favorites, The Book of Strange New Things, has been adapted into an Amazon series pilot: Oasis. The single episode offering has already diverted pretty sharply from Michel Faber’s novel, but at the risk of being That Guy, you know the one who moans “The book was better”, I’ll just say it’s a great book and you should check it out.

Moving on, there have been some fantastic and fun new additions to the world of science fiction recently:

All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai: This was a highly entertaining time travelin’ romance about a sort of likeable loser from the future who accidentally travels to the past and ruins everything. Time travel as a premise is going to have some pretty huge plot holes but this story does a good job of working the theoretical mishaps involved in bending time and space into the plot in such a way that propels the narrative, rather than bogging it down. It also does an excellent job of developing Tom/John in all of his respective dimensions.

Normal by Warren Ellis: If you aren’t already sold on the novel’s paranoid premise of surveillance culture and an unfolding conspiracy at an asylum for “broken futurologists”, try the audiobook version. John Hodgeman’s reading takes this hilarious and wild story to the next level. It’s under 200 pages too so if you just need a quick listen while you garden on a Saturday, this is perfect.

Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty is super fun, cheeky-geeky science fiction murder mystery about six clones trying to figure who or what murdered their previous iterations, the only six living beings on board, on a centuries-long intergalactic settlement mission. The dialogue got a little cutesy towards the last act but overall the banter between the six very old clones was the right amount of levity to balance the claustrophobic space terror.

The Wanderers was a poignant exploration of the internal lives and personal struggles of three astronauts, and their families, while preparing to embark on a journey to Mars. I was especially intrigued by how the book presented the psychological demands of training for long journeys in space and how the line between what is real and imaginary could be blurred.

There you have it! New and coming soon brave new worlds to explore @ your library.