Books to Look For (May): Science Fiction

Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction by Hannu Rajaniemi (Tachyon Publications, 240 pages, May 19)

If you haven't read any Rajaniemi, it's time to start. Winner of Finland's top sci-fi award and the John W. Campbell award, this Ph.D in string theory and quantum gravity offers us "postapocalyptic, postcyberpunk, and posthuman" stories that will make us think more about the future of humanity and technology.






My Real Children by Jo Walton (Tor Books, 336 pages, May 19)

My Real Children was one of the winners of the 2014 Tiptree Award and reminds us just how versatile and wide-ranging Jo Walton really is. Here she tells the story of an old woman who has memories of two different lives. Did she actually marry this man or that other man? Who are her "real" children? And ultimately, what is real?

Review: Red Girls: The Legend of the Akakuchibas by Kazuki Sakuraba, translated by Jocelyne Allen

Red Girls: The Legend of the Akakuchibas by Kazuki Sakuraba, translated by Jocelyne Allen (Haikasoru, 450 pages, 2015)


There are a ton of reasons why you should be excited about/immediately grab a copy of Red Girls (I’ll tell you those reasons below), but what makes Sakuraba’s novel stand out is that it’s the ONLY SFF novel by a woman translated into English this year (at least, that I’ve found). We know that women all over the world are writing SFF, and it’s time more of their books were translated into English.

But back to Red Girls. At just over 450 pages, it is a multi-generational saga, focusing on three women in the Akakuchiba family (the “red” in the title refers to the “Aka” of the family name). Sakuraba links the passing of each generation to Japan’s quickly-changing post-war society, and asks us to consider how each matriarch deals with the expectations and hardships of her particular cultural moment.

Books to Look For (May): History

Darjeeling: A History of the World's Greatest Tea by Jeff Koehler (Bloomsbury USA, 304 pages, May 12)


Considered to be the finest tea in the world, Darjeeling is "planted at high elevation in the heart of the Eastern Himalayas in an area of northern India bound by Nepal to the west, Bhutan to the east, and Sikkim to the north." In this tea history, Koehler explores the colonial and economic history and implications of Darjeeling, a fascinating journey indeed.



1920: The Year that Made the Decade Roar by Eric Burns (Pegasus, 400 pages, May 15)

Of course, 1920 is the beginning of what we still call the "Roaring Twenties," but Eric Burns insists that we focus on this particular year as a watershed moment in its own right. The twenties may be known for extravagance and subsequent economic disaster, but the beginning of the decade was much more complicated (and fascinating) than that.

Random Recommendation Guest Post: The Sisters Weiss by Naomi Ragen

This recommendation comes from Geoff. Lamb. You can follow him on twitter @Onceatenor.


The Sisters Weiss (2013) by Naomi Ragen

"In 1950s Brooklyn, sisters Rose and Pearl Weiss grow up in a loving but strict ultra-Orthodox Jewish family, never dreaming of defying their parents or their community's unbending and intrusive demands. Then, a chance meeting with a young French immigrant turns Rose's world upside down, its once bearable strictures suddenly tightening like a noose around her neck. Defiantly, she begins to live a secret life that shocks her family when it is discovered. Out of guilt and an overwhelming desire to be reconciled with those she loves, she finally bows to her parents' demands that she agree to an arranged marriage. But the night before her wedding, she commits an act of defiance so unforgivable it will exile her forever from her innocent young sister, her family, and all she has ever known. Forty years later, pious Pearl's sheltered young daughter Rivka suddenly discovers the truth about the family outcast, her Aunt Rose, now a successful photographer. Inspired, but naïve and reckless, she sets off on a dangerous adventure that will stir up the ghosts of the past and alter the future in unimaginable ways for all involved."

Books to Look For (May): Literary Fiction

Burning Down George Orwell's House by Andrew Ervin (Soho Press, 288 pages, May 5)

This promises to be a pretty hilarious novel. When Ray Welter leaves his ad exec job and runs off to Scotland (specifically the Isle of Jura) to live in the cottage where Orwell wrote most of Nineteen Eighty-Four, he finds himself surrounded by suspicious and eccentric fellow islanders. Apparently, at one point he joins them on a werewolf hunt on the summer solstice. Yep.




The Love Object: Selected Stories by Edna O'Brien (Little, Brown and Company, 544 pages, May 5)

If you've loved Edna O'Brien's work, you'll be crazy-excited for this collection of thirty-one stories focusing on the people and culture of Ireland, as well as such themes as nostalgia, class, and coming-of-age issues. O'Brien won the Frank O'Connor Short Story Award in 2011.

Review: The Old Axolotl: Hardware Dreams by Jacek Dukaj, translated by Stanley Bill

The Old Axolotl: Hardware Dreams by Jacek Dukaj, translated by Stanley Bill (Allegro, 160 pages, 2015)


This isn’t your grandfather’s reading experience, and that’s the point. Jacek Dukaj, Poland’s most famous living sci-fi writer, has created a multi-dimensional text that explores what it means to be a human versus a machine with a human consciousness. The Old Axolotl is only being released as an e-book (from Allegro), mostly because it includes layers of hypertext and other digital elements, including diagrams of robots that can be printed on 3D printers. (see the Culture.pl article for more details about the book and Dukaj’s intentions). Dukaj is interested not just in telling a story about human extermination and the rise of robots, but also in how the digital experience is shaping us as humans and how we will read in the future.

In a recent piece that he wrote for the magazine Książki, Dukaj argued that “[t]o read an e-book when everyday one is surrounded by [a] million virtual distractions, is like walking on a tightrope suspended over an abyss during a thunderstorm.” (“Bibliomachia”). We are constantly bombarded with images and information, but what happens when humans have disappeared and only the technology remains?

From the TBR Shelf #43: The Last Gunfight by Jeff Guinn

The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral and How it Changed the American West (2011) by Jeff Guinn

Thanks to tv, radio, and film, many Americans born after 1950 have a specific image of the "Wild West" as a lawless, violent place, where "good cowboys" and "bad cowboys" had shoot-outs on Main Street every other day. Even opera has perpetuated this myth- see Puccini's The Girl of the Golden West.

Because of Jeff Guinn and other historians of frontier America, though, we can learn what the West was actually like: filled with optimists who poured out of the overcrowded East and were interested in building up towns around gold and silver strikes. Contrary to the myths, violence (especially gun violence) was relatively rare and actively dissuaded. In places like Tombstone (Arizona Territory), for instance, men weren't allowed to carry concealed weapons, and even had to check their guns in saloons and other establishments like we check our coats today. After all, bloody shoot-outs and violence scared would-be investors away from burgeoning frontier towns, and when the gold and silver discoveries ended, the towns needed some kind of economic stability.