A round-up of the best of the latest crop of science fiction, from end-of-earth escapades to mysterious viruses and fake news.
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SUNFALL
By Jim Al-Khalili
Bantam $32.99.
Sunfall, the debut novel from British quantum physicist and TV science communicator, Professor Jim Al-Khalili, is set in 2041, when the Earth's weakened magnetic field is impacted by coronal mass injections from the sun.
Satellite communication failures cause havoc, including air crashes, turbulent storms increase and the now omnipresent AI devices begin to falter. When high-energy protons increase radiation levels, the death rates soar into the millions, but global politicians do their best to play down the crisis. To make matters worse, an end of the world cult, the Purifiers, attempt, through murder and equipment destruction, to prevent the efforts of a group of international scientists to save the Earth.
The scientists, Odin project, becomes a race against time to avert Earth's destruction by reactivating the Earth's core using beams of dark matter. Al-Khalili's characterisation of the scientific team is not deep, but the plausible hard science detail, which will attract the fans of Stephen Baxter and Gregory Benfield, combined with a strong plot, ensures Sunfall is an enthralling and imaginative read.
DO YOU DREAM OF TERRA - TWO?
By Temi Oh
Simon & Schuster. $24.99.
British author Temi Oh has a degree in neuroscience and a Masters in creative writing, which she combines to great effect in her debut novel Do You Dream Of Terra-Two. In an alternative recent past, a British spaceship crew, is on its way, as are spaceships from other nations, to Terra-Two, an earthlike planet beyond the solar system.
The flight crew, who know that they will never see the Earth again, comprises four seasoned astronauts and six teenagers, the latter selected because the flight travel time will be 23 years and the astronauts will be old men by planet fall.
The seasoned astronauts are essentially side players in the narrative, as the teenager's story is followed both before and during the flight. Even with their years of training at the Dalton Space Academy, the teenagers, with different skill sets and personalities, struggle to adapt both individually and collectively.
Their physical and mental challenges grow even larger when technical malfunctions occur before they even leave the solar system and the mission seems doomed.
Do You Dream of Terra -Two is not a spaceship saga per se, but rather an empathetic novel which constructs a framework for the examination of character and the passage to maturity and adulthood.
THE DREAMERS
By Karen Thompson Walker
Scribner. $29.99.
Karen Thompson Walker's second novel, The Dreamers, follows the impact of a mysterious viral illness, which impacts a small Californian college town, Santa Lora. The virus either triggers death, or more particularly, long-term sleep for those affected. The National Guard cordon off the town as baffled medical authorities try to understand the nature of the virus.
Eventually most of those infected wake up, some after years, having experienced alternative lives. Have they been dreaming of the past or the future?
One of the last to wake up, college student Rebecca, gives birth to a daughter, but she can only all remember her sleeping years, where she had a son, is now old and her son is middle-aged. Walker ponders do we live a separate life when we are asleep?
Walker is here exploring the nature of sleep and dreams and what is reality, within the framework of the emotional and psychological responses to the crisis.
The Dreamers is itself somewhat dreamlike in its pace and ends too abruptly to be fully effective.
Eventually most of those infected wake up, some after years, having experienced alternative lives. Have they been dreaming of the past or the future?
GOLDEN STATE
By Ben H. Winters
Century. $32 99.
Edgar Award-winning author Ben H. Winters imagines an alternate dystopian California, in which every citizen has to tell the truth and nothing but the truth.Winters says he began writing Golden State after "the infamous incident of Trump's inauguration crowd-size debate " and the relationship of fake news to the truth.
Residents of the Golden State have to start conversations with absolute truths, such as "2 plus 2 is 4" , as even the smallest lie can result in imprisonment by the surveillance security police state.
The recording of adult personal activities echoes contemporary Chinese personal digital surveillance. The main character is grizzled truth detective Laszlo, whose role is to "detect and destroy the stuff of lies". He is partnered in solving a murder with a young rookie female detective, Aysa.
Their finding of a forbidden novel in a world were fiction can't exist, will ultimately lead them to expose the true reality of the Golden State. Winters effectively blends SF prediction with crime noir in a novel with echoes of Ray Bradbury and George Orwell.
- Colin Steele is a Canberra reviewer and sci-fi enthusiast.