The Kaiju Preservation Society
{4.5/5} “First, understand that when we say KPS is an animal rights organization, we are actively engaged with these animals — very large, very wild, very dangerous animals. We will train you on how to interact with them, and we maintain stringent safety protocols at all times. But you can get injured, severely, and if […]
The New Moon’s Arms
{4.5/5} “Anybody who work in the sea around Cayaba will buck up one eventually. Fishermen, Coast Guard, Emergency Services. Not the doctors, for the most part. They scarcely do outcalls. Even the police know about this. We all know it. We just don’t talk it. But they real. The sea people? They real.” The New […]
The Age of Wood
{5/5} “Wood has actually played a central role in our history. It is the one material that has provided continuity in our long evolutionary and cultural story, from apes moving about the forest, through spear-throwing hunter-gatherers and ax-wielding farmers to roof-building carpenters and paper reading scholars.” The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material and […]
Elder Race
{5/5} “When I appear, everyone abruptly defers to me, and I realize that I, as the putative victim of their crimes, am expected to have some hand in the judicial process. This is, of course, just piling contamination on contamination. I am, frankly, not only the last but the worst anthropologist. I’m lucky nobody is […]
Activation Degradation
{4.5/5} “It hadn’t been tasked with reconnaissance. It had been tasked with termination. It was to kill, not study. Why did so many of Unit Four’s instincts contradict its direct orders?” Activation Degradation by Marina J. Lostetter, published in 2021 Unit Four is a robot who is periodically reassembled anew. It works at a mining […]
Project Hail Mary
{5/5} “They have some of the best supercomputers in the world. I needed their supercomputers and engineers to try all kinds of scenarios and propagation models for how Astrophage could get around in the galaxy. Back to the point: These local stars have been dimming for decades. And the rate of dimming increases exponentially — […]
The Future of Another Timeline
{5/5} “Watching women demure to men in public and suffer the consequences of their abuse in private, it was hard to believe we were at a transition point in history when women’s growing power could unsettle a long-established social order. But change is never linear or obvious. Often progress only becomes detectable when it inspires […]
Star Trek: Picard — The Dark Veil
{4.5/5} “For some time, Romulan ships have been coming across anonymous caches of survival resources and material, left near border worlds where the refugees have been relocated. Medicines, replicators, and the like. Deposited there by some unknown benefactors, who have diligently scrubbed out any evidence of their origin. Almost as if a handful of Starfleet […]
Star Trek: Discovery — Wonderlands
{4.5/5} “The enormity of this hit her at last when she transported onto the bridge of what was plainly an old science vessel. Even this far into her own future, something of the basic design remained familiar. The curve of the bridge, the various stations, the captain’s chair. Every console was dark, every system was […]
World Engines: Creator
{4.5/5} “This… this super Earth in a lifeless Solar System, stuffed with samples of lost life from the real Earth. To show us what we missed? This is clearly a comparative exercise. But I doubt very much it is for our benefit.” World Engines: Creator by Stephen Baxter, published in 2020 Reid Malenfant and his […]