This is the most laugh-out-loud alien kidnapping adventure you’ll ever read! Science-fiction fan Lem and her dog Spock awake to find themselves trapped in the Spaceship Teapot by a gang of bunnies that are intergalactic bounty hunters. To escape, Lem makes friends with the unlikeliest group of alien fellow inmates. A talking horse, a sarcastic robot, an anxious big bird, and a sentient gas cloud, all have mind-boggling forms of gender. They communicate through a “figurative translator,” an ingenious AI device that names unfamiliar objects based on the most similar thing in the listener’s mind. The device draws on Lem’s knowledge of science fiction for all kinds of references from Spock’s brain to Magrathea. This cozy space opera was my favorite for a weekend read.
Escaping intergalactic kidnappers has never been quite so ridiculous.
When Lem and her faithful dog, Spock, retreat from the city for a few days of hiking in Algonquin Park, the last thing they expect is to be kidnapped by aliens. No, scratch that. The last thing they expect is to be kidnapped by a bunch of strangely adorable intergalactic bounty hunters aboard a ship called the Teapot.
After Lem falls in with an unlikely group of allies – including a talking horse, a sarcastic robot, an overly anxious giant parrot, and a cloud of sentient glitter gas – the gang…
Everyone loves Murderbot, the part-organic security unit that famously hacked its own governor module to grant its mind freedom. But the sec-unit is still enslaved; if discovered, it gets melted down and recycled for parts. So it goes on serving its human clients while spending its spare time watching endless media serials. On a planetary survey, it faithfully jumps into the monster’s jaws after pulling the hapless scientist out. Wish I had Murderbot on my Antarctic expedition! We laugh and cry with Murderbot’s selfless dedication, and we applaud its determination to strike out on its own (after all its clients get home safe). We share the sec-unit’s disdain for a corporate-controlled society that views sentient beings as disposable property. Worth yet another reread after watching the hilarious Apple miniseries.
All Systems Red by Martha Wells begins The Murderbot Diaries, a new science fiction action and adventure series that tackles questions of the ethics of sentient robotics. It appeals to fans of Westworld, Ex Machina, Ann Leckie's Imperial Raadch series, or lain M. Banks' Culture novels. The main character is a deadly security droid that has bucked its restrictive programming and is balanced between contemplative self discovery and an idle instinct to kill all humans. In a corporate dominated s pa cef a ring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by…
Science teacher Ryland Grace wakes up on alone on a space ship and finds his job is to save the Earth from an interstellar, sun-eating virus called Astrophage. This over-the-top space adventure takes an amazing turn as we find out how the Earth got endangered and all the problems Grace will now have to solve. Luckily he won’t be alone for long, as he meets up with Rocky, a sentient ammonia-breathing rock of an alien trying to save his own species from the same virus eating his own home star. Grace and Rocky make contact by jazz hands, then figure out each other’s language together and bond over head-scratching experiments. I particularly liked the part where they wonder how two such different kinds of beings find themselves in this shared predicament: Their respective civilizations each had just enough advanced technology for space travel, yet not enough to fix Astrophage easily. I loved seeing how wildly different minds can cooperate to complete a life-or-death mission. A page turner full of fascinating ideas!
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.
Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.
All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through…
What kind of minds get human rights? A million alien microbes within your brain? Or a world-size transit network? What about self-aware entangled qubits in your blood? Do universal rights begin within our own bodies—One microbe, one vote? These questions hurtle through a mind-spinning adventure through a city of a hundred levels, whose rulers recycle diamonds down to the underworld where drone outlaws terrorize the streets. In Minds in Transit, Chrysoberyl is an artist whose brain hosts a million microbial minds. Chrysoberyl’s microbes design fantastic buildings and a whole new city for her world-sized AI patron, Transit Cross. Her sentient home, Xenon, markets her designs while printing six-course meals she has no time to eat. But her design blows up with a fatal flaw. Before she can fix it, microbial criminal gangs invade her brain to kill off her own microbes and take control. The city’s building roots grow cancers that escape and cause earthquakes. Rulers ignore the signs of collapse, then face a new threat that no mind foresaw. Hold on for the ride!
