Lina Rather’s debut novella, Sisters of the Vast Black is a beautiful little story of faith, love and hope in the midst of endless, cold space, featuring secret-keeping nuns, living spaceships and a sinister government trying to reclaim power. The sisters of the Order of Saint Rita travel the edge of space in their sentient ship Our Lady of Impossible Constellations, offering medical aid and religious comfort to scattered colonists far from the main systems. After answering the call of a brand new colony, the sisters find their peaceful lives threatened by the shadow of a war long thought over.
Tag Archives: Science Fiction
Bigger Than Biggs – Danie Ware
Danie Ware’s Judge Anderson novella Bigger Than Biggs follows on from Alec Worley’s three Year One novellas, and sees the Psi-Judge tackling biker gangs and delving into dark secrets in the Big Meg. On secondment to the uncompromising Chief Johnson in Sector-19, Anderson stumbles upon something big when the rescue of a kidnap victim leads to hints of sinister goings-on beneath the Eee-Zee Rest block. Johnson won’t sanction an investigation due to the political connections of the block’s owner, but Anderson’s gifts tell her something terrible is about to happen, and it’ll take someone with her talents to stop it.
Dark Run – Mike Brooks
Mike Brooks’ debut novel, and the first in the Keiko trilogy, Dark Run is a characterful, fast-paced sci-fi adventure featuring smugglers, pirates, hitmen and hackers, in a not-so distant future where people travel fast, information travels slow, and if you’re lucky you can keep moving and stay ahead of your past. To the crew of the Keiko, Captain Ichabod Drift is a rogue and a scoundrel, but also a largely reliable and usually friendly face. When Drift’s history finally catches up with him, however, he’s forced to take on a mission which endangers everyone’s lives and risks revealing some dark secrets from his past.
The Quantum Garden – Derek Künsken
The Quantum Garden, Derek Künsken’s second novel, picks up directly after the conclusion of The Quantum Magician and offers another compelling and thought-provoking hard sci-fi adventure. Having pulled off the con of a lifetime and escaped with the time gates, Belisarius and Cassie are quickly thrown back into danger when the lives of the entire homo quantus population are threatened. Enlisting the sceptical assistance of Colonel Iekanjika and risking an irreparable paradox, they put the time gates to hazardous use and travel back in time to search for answers in the history of the Sixth Expeditionary Force, while the implacable Scarecrow dogs them every step of the way.
The Quantum Magician – Derek Künsken
Derek Künsken’s debut novel The Quantum Magician wraps a classic heist story up in hard sci-fi stylings, and delivers everything you’d want from both of those elements. In a distant future where competing Earth nations have expanded into the stars, engineering strange new branches of humanity, opportunities are still rife for hustlers. Belisarius Arjona is homo quantus, engineered to see into the quantum realm without disturbing it, which makes him a superlative con man. When he’s commissioned for a complex job requiring some very specialised help, he recognises the dangers but his pattern-seeking brain can’t resist the intricacy of the challenge.