This year we have a February 29th, also known as Leap Day! Why not embrace the day by taking a small leap forward in time? Check out one of these works of near future fiction--books that imagine what life might be like in the not-too-distant future.
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Africa risen : a new era of speculative fiction
by Sheree R. Thomas A team of editors present an anthology showcasing over 30 original stories that showcase fantasy and science fiction from Africa, including contributions by Sheree Renée Thomas, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and Zelda Knight. |
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Chain-Gang All-Stars
by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah The star of a popular, but controversial for-profit program in the private prison industry that basically turns prisoners into gladiators contemplates freedom, in the new novel from the New York Times best-selling author of Friday Black. |
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The Great transition : a novel
by Nick Fuller Googins When her mother, a suspect in the public assassination of a dozen climate criminals, disappears, Emi Vargas and her father, Larch, a part of a movement called The Great Transition, which had changed the world, arrive in New York City, a lightly populated storm-surge outpost, but they aren't the only ones looking for her. |
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Land of milk and honey
by C Pam Zhang Accepting a job at a decadent, mountaintop colony, a young chef, with the help of her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter, is awakened to the pleasures of taste, touch and her own body until she is pushed beyond her boundaries in a plot to reshape the world far beyond the plate. |
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Like thunder
by Nnedi Okorafor Reuniting with his best friend, a shadow speaker girl named Ejii Ubaid, to complete the epic and mystical quest they started years ago, rainmaker Dikéogu Obidimkpa, more powerful than ever, soon discovers that nothing will ever be the same again. |
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The Marigold
by Andrew F. Sullivan The Marigold melds ecofiction with body horror as it weaves disparate storylines around a crumbling condo tower, its foundation plagued by a grotesque infection, and illustrates the precarious role of community and the fragile designs that bind us together. |
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The marriage act : a novel
by John Marrs Britain. The near-future. A right-wing government believes it has the answer to society's ills--the Sanctity of Marriage Act, which actively encourages marriage as the norm, punishing those who choose to remain single. But four couples are about to discover just how impossible relationships can be when the government is monitoring every aspect of our personal lives--monitoring every word, every minor disagreement...and will use every tool in its arsenal to ensure everyone will love, honor and obey. |
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More perfect
by Temi Oh Using the myth of Eurydice as a structure, this riveting science fiction novel is set in a near-future London where it has become popular for folks to have a small implant that allows one access to a more robust social media experience directly as an augmented reality. However, the British government has taken oversight of this access to an extreme, slowly tilting towards a dystopian overreach, all in the name of safety. |
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My name is Iris : a novel
by Brando Skyhorse Newly divorced, Iris Prince moves to a new neighborhood where she, a proud second-generation Mexican American, is plunged into a climate of fear and hate-fueled violence after the launch of a mandatory identification wristband, forcing her to confront how far she'll go to protect what matters to her most. |
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Sordidez
by E.g Condé Vero has always felt at odds with his community. As a trans man in near-future Puerto Rico, he struggles to gain acceptance for his identity and his vision of an inclusive society. After a hurricane decimates the island and Puerto Rico is abandoned by the United States, Vero leaves his home to petition the centralized government for aid and seek the truth about new colonists arriving on the island. But in the Yucatan, Vero finds a landscape ravaged by an ecological disaster of humanity's own making - the Hydrophage, a climate technology warped into a weapon of war and released onto the land by the dictator Caudillo. |
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The ten percent thief
by Lavanya Lakshminarayan A bold, bitingly satirical near-future mosaic novel about a city run along 'meritocratic' lines, the injustice it creates, and the revolution that will destroy it. |
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You glow in the dark : stories
by Liliana Colanzi Serrate The seven stories of You Glow in the Dark unfold in a Latin America wrecked and poisoned by human greed, and yet Colanzi's writing-at once sleek and dense, otherworldly and intensely specific-casts an eerily bright spell over the wreckage. Some stories seem to be set in a near future; all are superbly executed and yet hard to pin down; they often leave the reader wondering: Was that realistic or fantastic? Colanzi draws power from Andean cyberpunk just as much as from classic horror writers, and this daring is matched by her energizing simultaneous use of multiplicity and fragmentation-the book's stylistic trademarks. |