New Books In Science Fiction

The podcast New Books In Science Fiction, hosted by Rob Wolf, is possibly ineligible for a Hugo Award

Podcaster Rob Wolf interviews
authors about their new books.
(Image supplied)

for best fancast. And that’s a shame because it is one of the podcasts that consistently guide listeners to find deeper understanding and appreciation of genre works.

Every two or three weeks, Wolf sits down with an author who has a new novel (either upcoming or released in the past six months) and has an in-depth one-on-one chat with them about the book and their influences, about their career, and about the intellectual effort that went into the book.

Often, the result is revelatory.

An expert interviewer, Wolf approaches each author with an earnest enthusiasm that is frankly endearing. He asks thoughtful, succinct questions that drive at the heart of the matter, and gives his guests the time to respond fully and completely.

In the seven years he’s been hosting the podcast, Wolf has interviewed an all-star roster of science fiction authors such as Andy Weir, Tochi Onyebuchi, Rebecca Roanhorse, Kameron Hurley, Ken Liu, Megan O'Keefe, Malka Older, and many, many more. Many of his earlier episodes from 2014–2015 may seem a little choppier, but what amazes us is how much enduring value older episodes in the series have. And, to be fair, most podcasts were choppier five years ago.

By any measure, 2020 was an extraordinary year for New Books in Science Fiction. With Stealing Worlds author Karl Schroeder, Wolf interrogates the book’s politics. In an episode about Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Clark provides insights about historicity and the creation of authentic, believable historical fantasy. At the beginning of the pandemic, Beneath The Rising author Premee Mohamed’s episode examined the difficulty of launching a book during lockdown. There was not a bad episode this year.

All of the novels listed above were ones that we enjoyed. But Wolf’s strength is that his podcast is worth listening to even when you either haven’t read — or didn’t enjoy — the book he’s featuring. He brings intellectual grist and empathy to everything he works on.

For us, the real highlight of 2020 was an interview with Kim Stanley Robinson, who was speaking about his recent novel The Ministry For The Future. Wolf’s interview provided insight and context that helped members of our book club to appreciate the artfulness of a book that they had previously found pedantic and boring. A librarian in the book club says this makes him an honorary readers’ advisory librarian.

Although Wolf himself produces the podcast entirely on a volunteer basis, it is part of a larger “New Books Network” that has exactly one full-time professional employee who deals with a few technical matters such as hosting. This does raise questions about the Hugo eligibility of this podcast, despite the fact that everything that makes New Books In Science Fiction great is fannish, and fan-run.

Whether or not New Books In Science Fiction is Hugo-eligible, Rob Wolf’s work deserves to be celebrated. It’s a fancast that will be on our Hugo nominating ballots, just in case it makes a difference.

The Ebullient Imagination of Stealing Worlds

Optimistic and replete with ebullient imagination, Stealing Worlds is a compelling techno-thriller

Karl Schroeder's at his best
when proposing new ways to
organize political power.
(Image via Goodreads)

elevated by first-rate near-future world-building.

At one level, the plot is a fairly linear whodunnit; On the run from shadowy figures, protagonist Sura Neelin finds refuge in an augmented-reality game world that allows her to hide in plain sight. As she learns more about her new-found community, she investigates the circumstances around her father’s death.

But at another level, it is the story of revolutionary societal change. It is on this second level that the novel succeeds most fully.

Stealing Worlds is a highly political novel, not in a partisan sense, but because it offers thought experiments about how power structures can be organized. While the book depicts a global capitalist structure that continues to erode human freedom, Schroeder also envisions self-organizing communities that work in the interstices of the modern world. New technology and tools evolve to allow for the exploitation of idle and forgotten resources, to the benefit of those left behind or targeted maliciously by those in power.

The most interesting innovations in the novel, however, don’t come from the technology of augmented reality, but from cleverly imagined legal constructions. Schroeder’s idea of giving legal life to inanimate objects and abstract ideas is the most intriguing part of the story. To accomplish this, Artificial Intelligences (AI) are programmed to operate on behalf of eagles, forests, and other entities and to bargain with people to meet the needs of that legal entity. For example, an AI responsible for the legal personhood of a forest might negotiate the sale of lumber to pay for reclamation or protection. More complex ecosystems might comprise numerous, smaller AI actors that coordinate the survival of, for example, a boreal forest by ensuring the rivers are clean, the animals are not overhunted, and enough habitat remains to support life. Using markets to place value on natural resources isn’t a new idea but this agency provides the natural resources a mind-blowing role in the process.

Schroeder demands more than a passing level of technical knowledge. For example, basic levels of

A futurist by trade and
training, Schroeder brings
intellectual rigor to near-
future science fiction.
(Image via KarlSchroeder.com)

blockchain and cryptocurrency literacy help. While this may turn off some readers, it will make the work more engaging for others. Impressively, Schroeder doesn’t condescend, but builds and explores these concepts for a wide range of readers.

The novel has a clear separation between worldbuilding and adventure. Sura’s path weaves between investigating her father’s death and learning about the hidden world of augmented reality. While reading the thriller portions of the novel, we were left wanting more of the intellectual story and the sharp critique of our world. When delving into the world building, we occasionally forgot entirely about the narrative because we got lost in Schroeder’s irrepressible imagination.

Often, when reviewers focus their praise on a book’s worldbuilding, it is a sign that the book might have significant flaws in other areas. In the case of Stealing Worlds, it is an indication that the novel is possibly the crowning achievement of one of science fiction’s most accomplished — and optimistic — futurists.

The fact that Schroeder proposes a believable and positive vision of the future puts this among our favourite novels of 2019.

The value of Speculative Opinion

This spring, an exciting new series of short science fiction was launched in an improbable publication: The New York Times.

John Karborn has illustrated most
of the articles in the series with
evocative conceptual art.
(Image via New York Times)

Op-Eds From The Future is a feature in America’s paper of record that appears every second week, in which an academic or science fiction author tackles a political issue from the perspective of an editorialist writing in the not-too-distant future.

Given that the series has so far included submissions written by luminaries such as Cory Doctorow, Malka Older, Ted Chiang, and Brooke Bolander, it is unsurprising that the results of this experiment have been compelling.

Masterminded by the paper’s op-ed technology editor Susan Fowler, this project shows the integral connection between science fiction and politics, demonstrating the relevance of the genre to a wider (mundane) audience. Speculative opinion is not standard fare for the New York Times, but it is a very welcome addition.

“Science fiction is so powerful and effective because it takes the problems and issues we face today and puts them into new situations and contexts, allowing us to see them more clearly,” Fowler explained on Twitter. Put another way, the series provides a type of public service.

Every second Monday, the Times publishes a new piece, tackling issues as varied as the intersection of income inequality and genetic engineering, the possible effects of anti-hate speech legislation on internet discourse, and the rights of persons displaced by climate change.

Using the traditional structure of an op-ed to explore a science fictional idea lays bare the political nature of the genre. The futurist nature of these works connects the changing role of technology with the practicalities of policies elected officials might enact as a result.

The format and venue also forces authors to hew closely to constraints of hard science fiction; there is a level of solemnity to the Grey Lady that inspires seriousness in its authors. We suspect that this lean towards hard science is also the product of Fowler’s editorial vision, which we appreciate.

Though several luminaries of science fiction have been featured thus far, those invited to submit articles to the series are not limited to genre professionals — University of Connecticut professor Susan Schneider penned one on the nature of consciousness. 

One of the joys of this series is quickly becoming the Monday-morning anticipation of discovering who has penned the latest installment. Although we have a long list of thinkers we would love to see play in this particular sandbox (i.e. Vernor Vinge, Madeline Ashby, Karl Schroeder …), we suspect that we will be surprised and delighted by the people Fowler has lined up for the coming weeks.

Susan Fowler masterminded the new
series appearing in the New York Times.
(Image via BizJournals)

We would love to see this series included in next year's Hugo shortlist. But there isn’t an obvious category at the Hugo Awards to recognize the importance of this contribution. Susan Fowler is not eligible for Best Editor, nor would it be fair to compare her work to that of editors working on publications dedicated to the genre. The individual Op-Eds might technically fit into the Short Story category, but to us, the value of the overall project is greater than the sum of its parts. We are likely to suggest including the overall Op-Eds From The Future project in the Best Related Work category (though even that is a slightly odd fit that Hugo administrators might find reason to reject).

This is a series that we look forward to reading every week, and hope that the New York Times continues it over the long-term. Even better, we hope to see competitor pieces in other established dailies make this a staple of tomorrow’s newspapers.