New Sci-fi Books (October 2021)

Books

"Timeless and original...illuminating vast tracts of story with casual wrist-flicks of worldbuilding. The Body Scout is a wild ride, sad and funny, surreal and intelligent."—The New York Times"I devoured it." —Jonathan Lethem“Completely weird and still completely real. Delightful—I couldn't put it down."–Shea Serrano In the future you can have any body you want—as long as you can afford it. But in a New York ravaged by climate change and repeat pandemics, Kobo is barely scraping by. He scouts the latest in gene-edited talent for Big Pharma-owned baseball teams, but his own cybernetics are a decade out of date and twin sister loan sharks are banging down his door. Things couldn't get much worse.Then his brother—Monsanto Mets slugger J.J. Zunz—is murdered at home plate.Determined to find the killer, Kobo plunges into a world of genetically modified CEOs, philosophical Neanderthals, and back-alley body modification, only to quickly find he's in a game far bigger and more corrupt than he imagined. To keep himself together while the world is falling apart, he'll have to navigate a time where both body and soul are sold to the highest bidder. Diamond-sharp and savagely wry, The Body Scout is a timely science fiction thriller debut set in an all-too-possible future.

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How will artificial intelligence change our world within twenty years? A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - "This inspired collaboration between a pioneering technologist and a visionary writer of science fiction offers bold and urgent insights."--Yann LeCun, winner of the Turing Award; chief AI scientist, Facebook "Amazingly entertaining . . . Lee and Chen take us on an immersive trip through the future. . . . Eye-opening."--Mark Cuban AI will be the defining development of the twenty-first century. Within two decades, aspects of daily human life will be unrecognizable. AI will generate unprecedented wealth, revolutionize medicine and education through human-machine symbiosis, and create brand-new forms of communication and entertainment. In liberating us from routine work, however, AI will also challenge the organizing principles of our economic and social order. Meanwhile, AI will bring new risks in the form of autonomous weapons and smart technology that inherits human bias. AI is at a tipping point, and people need to wake up--both to AI's radiant pathways and its existential perils for life as we know it. In this provocative, utterly original work, Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China and bestselling author of AI Superpowers, teams up with celebrated novelist Chen Qiufan to imagine our world in 2041 and how it will be shaped by AI. In ten gripping short stories, they introduce readers to an array of eye-opening 2041 settings, such as: - In San Francisco, the "job reallocation" industry emerges as deep learning AI causes widespread job displacement- In Tokyo, a music fan is swept up in an immersive form of celebrity worship based on virtual reality and mixed reality- In Mumbai, a teenage girl rebels when AI's crunching of big data gets in the way of romance- In Seoul, virtual companions with perfected natural language processing (NLP) skills offer orphaned twins new ways to connect- In Munich, a rogue scientist draws on quantum computing, computer vision and other AI technologies in a revenge plot that imperils the world By gazing toward a not-so-distant horizon, AI 2041 offers urgent insights into our collective future--while reminding readers that, ultimately, humankind remains the author of its destiny.

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The final instalment in Ada Palmer's award-winning, critically acclaimed Terra Ignota series.The year is 2454The leaders of the Hive – nations without fixed locations, now the default arrangement of humanity on Earth – clandestinely committed terrible deeds in order to maintain an outward semblance of utopian stability. But the facade could last only so long. The comforts of effortless global travel and worldwide abundance may have tempered humanity's darkest inclinations, but conflict remains deeply rooted in the human psyche. All that was needed was a catalyst, in the form of a special little boy, to ignite half a millennium of repressed chaos.Now, war spreads across the globe, splintering old alliances and awakening sleeping enmities. All transportation systems are in danger. The return of the tyranny of distance fractures a long-united world and threatens to obliterate everything the Hive system built.With the archcriminal Mycroft Canner nowhere to be found, his successor, the Ninth Anonymous, must not only chronicle the discord of war but also attempt to restore order in a world spiralling closer to irreparable ruin.The fate of a broken society hangs in the balance. Is the key to salvation to remain Earth-bound or, perhaps, to continue aiming for the stars?'Incredibly ambitious and groundbreaking ... Palmer writes gloriously lush prose stuffed with asides, allusions and nods to the reader' Guardian

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A mysterious former Sith wanders the galaxy in this stunning Star Wars tale, an original novel inspired by the world of The Duel from the Star Wars Visions animated anthology. The Jedi are the most loyal servants of the Empire.  Two decades ago, Jedi clans clashed in service to feuding lords. Sickened by this endless cycle, a sect of Jedi rebelled, seeking to control their own destiny and claim power in service of no master. They called themselves Sith.  The Sith rebellion failed, succumbing to infighting and betrayal, and the once rival lords unified to create an Empire . . . but even an Empire at peace is not free from violence.  Far on the edge of the Outer Rim, one former Sith wanders, accompanied only by a faithful droid and the ghost of a less civilized age. He carries a lightsaber, but claims lineage to no Jedi clan, and pledges allegiance to no lord. Little is known about him, including his name, for he never speaks of his past, nor his regrets. His history is as guarded as the red blade of destruction he carries sheathed at his side. As the galaxy's perpetual cycle of violence continues to interrupt his self-imposed exile, and he is forced to duel an enigmatic bandit claiming the title of Sith, it becomes clear that no amount of wandering will ever let him outpace the specters of his former life.

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Set in the universe of Rory Thorne, this new sci-fi mystery follows an unlikely duo who must discover the motive behind an unusual murder. THE TEMPLAR: When Lieutenant Iari hears screams in the night, she expects to interrupt a robbery or break up a fight. Instead she discovers a murder with an impossible suspect: a riev, one of the battle-mecha decommissioned after the end of the last conflict, repurposed for manual labor. Riev don't kill people. And yet, clearly, one has. Iari sets out to find it.THE SPY: Officially, Gaer is an ambassador from the vakari. Unofficially, he's also a spy, sending information back to his government, unfiltered by diplomatic channels. Unlike Iari, Gaer isn't so sure the riev's behavior is just a malfunction, since the riev were created using an unstable mixture of alchemy and arithmancy.As Gaer and Iari search for the truth, they discover that the murderous riev is just a weapon in the hands of a wielder with wider ambitions than homicide--including releasing horrors not seen since the war, that make a rampaging riev seem insignificant...

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