Space Station Down - Tor/Forge Blog

$2.99 eBook Sale: March 2021

March 1, 2021May 2, 2024Rachel Taylor

It’s the start of a new month and that means…NEW BOOKS ON SALE!!! Check out what ebooks you can snag for only $2.99 throughout the entire month of March here.

Space Station Down by Ben Bova and Doug Beason

When an ultra-rich space tourist visits the orbiting International Space Station, NASA expects a $100 million win-win: his visit will bring in much needed funding and publicity. But the tourist venture turns into a scheme of terror. Together with an extremist cosmonaut, the tourist slaughters all the astronauts on board the million-pound ISS—and prepares to crash it into New York City at 17,500 miles an hour, causing more devastation than a hundred atomic bombs. In doing so, they hope to annihilate the world’s financial system. All that stands between them and their deadly goal is the lone survivor aboard the ISS, Kimberly Hasid-Robinson, a newly divorced astronaut who has barricaded herself in a secure area.

Drop by Drop by Morgan Llywelyn

In this first book in the Step By Step trilogy, global catastrophe occurs as all plastic mysteriously liquefies. All the small components making many technologies possible—navigation systems, communications, medical equipment—fail. In Sycamore River, citizens find their lives disrupted as everything they’ve depended on melts around them, with sometimes fatal results. All they can rely upon is themselves. And this is only the beginning . . .

City of Broken Magic by Mirah Bolender

Five hundred years ago, magi created a weapon they couldn’t control. An infestation that ate magic—and anything else it came into contact with. Enemies and allies were equally filling. Only an elite team of non-magical humans, known as sweepers, can defuse and dispose of infestations before they spread. Most die before they finish training. Laura, a new team member, has stayed alive longer than most. Now, she’s the last—and only—sweeper standing between the city and a massive infestation.

Author Features / On Writing / What's New

Ben Bova and Doug Beason Answer: What’s It Like Collaborating on a Novel?

August 14, 2020August 7, 2020Rachel Taylor

Co-writing a novel with a collaborator is WAY easier than writing an entire novel by yourself…right? Ben Bova and Doug Beason, co-authors of Space Station Down, may disagree. Check out their take on writing a book together below!

By Ben Bova and Doug Beason

With the publication of Space Station Down, we’re often asked how one collaborates on a novel, and specifically how we collaborate. The answer of course is “exquisitely.”

But deeper than that, there are just as many ways to collaborate as there are to write a piece of fiction – literally thousands.

Most people think that collaborating with another person takes only 50% of the effort in writing your own, solo work; after all, you only have to do half the work, right? But in reality, it’s much harder and is closer to 200% harder.

The reason is that when writing with someone else, no matter how close you may be, there are a near-infinite number of ways a plot can turn, a character can change or a scene can develop. As such, it’s incredibly important that you both see eye to eye on every detail. You both must have a vision for what the novel is about. That vision may change, and the direction of the novel may vary, but starting out, you should both agree on where the novel will go.

One way is for the collaborators to outline in detail what happens, including the main characters, the major plot points, and the changes the characters undergo. When that general understanding of the novel occurs, then one person writes a rough draft, while the second person edits and rewrites as they wish. Then the novel is bounced back and forth between the collaborators until both writers are satisfied and a finished product results.

Another way to collaborate is for the writers to divide up the book into sections or chapters, based on an outline. Each person is responsible for writing those assigned parts, and when they are both finished, one person goes through the novel and changes what they wish; that person then gives the changed novel to the other person who does the same thing. The book is then bounced back and forth until both collaborators are satisfied.

Still another way is for each collaborator to be assigned a character, a period in time or even a locale – each having the responsibility of writing their parts. In all cases, when the pieces are put together to produce that first draft of a novel, then someone has to trudge through that draft and make changes; the second person goes through afterwards.

But even with these different ways of collaborating there may be times when issues arise and the writers cannot come to a consensus. This could be about the plot, the characters or even the outcome. In that case, one collaborator should have the duty of breaking any stalemates that occur. If the impasse is not broken, then the novel may never be published, just because the writers have dug in their heels and have refused to compromise.

The point of collaborating is for the finished product to be a much better novel than just a sum of the parts – written with “one voice” that may be indistinguishable from the individual writers.

That’s the beauty of collaborating on a novel – creating a finished product that is incredibly better than one person may produce, as it uses the strengths of each individual writer.

And it can succeed – if the writers can put their egos out of the way and always push for the best.

What’s your best guess on how we collaborated on Space Station Down? Whichever way you guess, for us, we had an incredibly fun time and learned a lot.

Ben Bova and Doug Beason are the writers behind Space Station Down, on sale now through Tor Books.

Order Space Station Down Here

Excerpts / What's New

Excerpt: Space Station Down by Ben Bova and Doug Beason

June 22, 2020March 20, 2024Rachel Taylor

Hugo Award-winning author Ben Bova joins forces with Nebula Award finalist Doug Beason for an action packed technothriller with Space Station Down.

“Think Die Hard happening two hundred and fifty miles above the earth…Will have you watching the skies overhead much more closely.”—Steve Berry

All that stands between them and their deadly goal is the lone survivor aboard the ISS, Kimberly Hasid-Robinson, a newly divorced astronaut who has barricaded herself in a secure area.

Please enjoy this excerpt of Space Station Down, available 08/04/20.

JAPANESE MODULE (JPM)

Kimberly Hadid-Robinson floated upside down in the International Space Station’s Japanese module—or JPM, as she and the other astronauts called it.

Her wiry dark hair was frizzed out to the size of a football helmet, but that didn’t matter, she thought. Normally she’d tie it back into a ponytail if there as even the slightest chance that she’d appear on TV. And it didn’t matter if the live broadcast was being streamed down only to the Johnson Space Center, because invariably some PR genius at NASA Headquarters would decide to shoot a portion of the feed to the national news outlets. They loved to show the public that a female astronaut was serving as the senior ranking American on board the ISS—for the same reason that Public Affairs was using one of their up-and-coming women on the ground to narrate today’s docking. The “Voice of NASA” was usually some over-the-hill bureaucrat who should have retired years ago; Kimberly welcomed the young Hispanic addition, a minority like herself.

Kimberly was a slim, slight sylph of a woman with skin the color of burnt almonds, a little snub of a nose, big dark eyes, and a smile that could light up a room. She wasn’t smiling at the moment.

Much as she’d like to be on hand to meet the new arrivals, the experiments running in the JPM demanded Kimberly’s attention far more than greeting the crewmen coming on board.

The JPM was the farthest module from the docking port in the MRM-2, the Russian airlock, where the newbies were arriving. It was only a hundred yards away from the JPM, but she knew she couldn’t leave the module for more than a minute; it wasn’t worth the trouble—or the headache, for that matter—if she left the experiments just to be there to glad-hand the new arrivals.

After all, she reasoned to herself, support for the work we’re doing here on the ISS doesn’t really come from congressional funding: it comes from the public’s interest in what we’re doing, and that means completing the experiments that even high school kids had thought up. They’d won awards to fly their ideas on the ISS without worrying about the PR benefits of greeting another few space travelers who’re about to make a six-month stay on the station. She’d meet them soon enough.

And it wasn’t as if the incoming cosmonaut was a total stranger to the ISS. Kimberly knew that Farid Hazood was a retread, a Kazakhstani who’d flown aboard the station three years ago: one of those foreigners whom the Soviets . . . er, Russians . . . periodically granted a berth in the ISS. For the Kazakhstanis, it was a sort of repayment for allowing the Russian Soyuz and Vostok launchers to continue to lift off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

It also served a double purpose: the Russians retained a semi-free launch pad that took only thirty days to refurbish after one of their launches, and the Kazakhstanis maintained international stature as a space-faring nation—a pretty exclusive club numbering only 40 of 196 nations worldwide—well worth the payment and cost for both sides.

She’d never met Farid Hazood, and she knew he’d aced his first mission, so it was no surprise he was chosen to fly again. But even with Farid’s experience, Kimberly thought it was a little strange to have the Kazakhstani coming up with a total newbie. It had been three years since Farid had last flown, and a paying space tourist was accompanying him in the approaching Soyuz capsule; the station’s normal crew of six was being augmented for a nine-day period with this “taxi” crew carrying the tourist. At least the Soyuz’s pilot and commander, Colonel Yuri Zel’dovich, was a seasoned longtimer. This would be his fourth flight to the space station, so Farid and the tourist had some solid experience flying them.

But Russians were Russians, and as eagerly learning capitalists they were happy to accept cash from just about anybody. It cost tourists over sixty million dollars a pop for training, launching, and spending a week on board the ISS, where they were exempt from any responsibilities except to sightsee—and spend the rest of their lives back on Earth bragging about the experience.

The Russians were so hungry for cash they’d even flown up three dozen multimission radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs, for the U.S. on the last Progress resupply mission; they’d temporarily placed them in MRM-1, at the Russian side of the station, until they could be moved outside the ISS during an extravehicular activity, or EVA, and stored at the end of a boom for safety.

The U.S. would never have been able to launch the plutonium RTGs to the ISS, as any mention of radioactivity ignited hysteria—even though the compact nuclear power sources were absolutely necessary for powering the sensors, rovers, and living areas needed for exploring Mars and beyond, where solar panels are impractical. But the Russians didn’t have environmental activists or an independent press to publicize a risky launch; they just didn’t tell anyone, and took NASA’s money without fanfare. So Kimberly had to admit, compared to the sexy role RTGs had in ISS’s next phase in the space program, some of her efforts at advancing humankind’s knowledge had more to do with the public relations side of NASA, looking after zero-gee ant farms, growing larger-than-life asparagus, and measuring the viscosity of weightless Jell-O.

But she kept that gripe to herself. The money they made from launching the RTGs and tourism was of particular interest to the Russians, especially since the U.S. would soon stop paying $82 million apiece for every American astronaut launched in a Russian Soyuz capsule to the ISS. The U.S. hadn’t had a human-rated spacecraft since the Space Shuttle retired, but thank goodness several newly licensed capsules—Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX’s Dragon—were just coming into service. Kimberly grimaced as she thought of her last return flight in the Soyuz: a horrific four- gee descent that squeezed your guts and usually hit the ground at some isolated farmland in the Kazakhstani wilderness.

If you were lucky.

She never complained about the landings, knowing that one of her more famous fellow astronauts had come down smack in the middle of the Iraq war zone some twenty years earlier.

So while she regretted not being present to meet Farid Hazood and the Qatari tourist, Adama Bakhet, at the docking port, Kimberly told herself she’d make it up soon enough after they’d entered the ISS and started integrating with the crew. Besides, two of the Russians and the other Americans aboard the station couldn’t make the docking, either; Al was manning the control center and Robert was with the Russians, who had just borrowed three of the four JPM laptops and were now readying a pair of EVA suits in the Joint Airlock.

So Kimberly kept one eye on the experiments percolating along, and the other on the webcast video she’d put on her lap- top as the basketball-shaped Soyuz slowly approached the Russian MRM-2 docking compartment, or DC. The capsule floated gently toward the ISS, no faster than one foot per second as the new female “Voice of NASA” spoke quietly over the comm link.

She could see in the background of her laptop’s monitor stars moving slowly, silently across the black infinity of space. Even though she had witnessed dozens of dockings, the scene still made a heart-stopping view: mating with the million-pound ISS while it and the Soyuz capsule both hurtled through space at 17,500 miles per hour brought a lump to her throat. It was an incredible human achievement, accomplished some 250 miles above the Earth’s surface.

Reluctantly, Kimberly turned away from the laptop and peered through the confocal microscope at the crystal she was monitoring. It was visibly growing, slowly but unmistakably, like a diamond glittering in the microscope’s glareless light. Floating in front of the experimental chamber, she was careful to position herself away from the portable microwave projector that was beaming its 98 GHz radiation into the crystal specimen.

The novel experiment was something she’d never expected to come from the Air Force Academy, but with Scott Robinson pushing heaven and earth to overcome the Academy’s trade- school reputation, his alma mater was evolving into a world-class research organization.

Now where did that come from? Kimberly hadn’t thought of Scott in what? Minutes?

Focus on the experiment, she commanded herself. Stop thinking about Scott: you’re divorced, it’s over.

But her ex-husband was CAPCOM today, serving as their astronaut lead at the mission control center, MCC at Houston, commanding the space station’s communications link with the ground. It’s been eighteen months since the divorce, Kimberly told herself, a near eternity in today’s stop-and-shop world of one-relationship-after-another. And besides, his ego was so large it probably filled every corner of the MCC.

Still, she saw Scott’s handsome, smiling face in her mind.

She shook her head to get clear of Scott’s memory and peered through the eyepiece while her right hand delicately adjusted the Helium-Neon Zeeman laser to measure the crystal’s growth. So far, so good. As the scientists had predicted, the 98 GHz waves from the microwave projector actually accelerated the crystal’s growth over what had been measured back on Earth in a one-gee environment. Score one for zero-gee, Kimberly thought. No, better. It was a hat trick: a home run for the science community, the Air Force Academy, and the ISS.

And for Scott Robinson, as well. Scott was the one who put his old alma mater in touch with NASA’s chief scientist and got the experiment onto the ISS.

Enough about Scott! she told herself. She looked over at her laptop and saw that the airlock hatch in the MRM-2 was swinging open. The newbies were arriving.

Floating between the crystal growth experiment and her laptop, Kimberly watched the inner airlock hatch swing open and the jumpsuited body of the Soyuz spacecraft’s commander, Colonel Yuri Zel’dovich, drift slowly into the ISS, headfirst. Smiling broadly, Cosmonaut Ivan Vasilev, the one-man welcoming committee, reached out for his approaching comrade.

Zel’dovich’s shoulder bumped gently against the hatch’s metal framework, making his feet slowly rotate upward in the zero-gee space. Small, vibrating globules of bright red blood pulsed in the air, more of them oozing out from a slashing wound in the colonel’s neck.

His eyes wide with shock, Vasilev grabbed at Zel’dovich’s lifeless body and started yelling hoarsely in Russian while Kimberly watched the scene on her laptop’s screen, frozen with sudden terror. Vasilev grabbed a handhold on the side of the module and pulled forward, toward the hatch.

Kimberly saw a knifelike object—it was actually thicker than a knife and looked as if it had a retractable blade—suddenly fly from the Soyuz and embed itself in Vasilev’s eye with a sickening thud.

The cosmonaut screamed and jerked away, pawing at his face, frantically trying to pull the blade from his eye, his body twisting in the air, spherules of blood spewing from his face.

A blue jumpsuited body shot out of the Soyuz from the airlock, hurtling toward Vasilev. Kimberly recognized the man from the publicity photos and media releases she’d seen: Farid!

She’d never met the Kazakhstani, and from everything she’d heard, three years ago he’d been a valuable member of the ISS crew. She’d been looking forward to getting a computer scientist up to the station, to help reduce her own brutal research schedule. But now, muttering something in a guttural language, Farid reached for Vasilev with outstretched hands and caught the Russian as he was trying to pull the blade from his eye. Farid put a hand to the back of Vasilev’s head and pushed as hard as he could against his chin, snapping his head back. Then he twisted Vasilev’s neck until Kimberly actually heard an audible pop as the spine snapped.

Vasilev went limp. Farid shoved him away. The dead cosmonaut spun slowly in midair and bumped into the metal structure of the compartment as he floated inertly in zero-gee.

In the Japanese module, Kimberly tightly grasped the hand-hold she’d been clinging to, too shocked to react to the murders she had just seen. As she started to unconsciously rotate around, her free hand suddenly felt an incredible searing pain, as though the hottest oven in the world had just opened in front of her and she’d stuck her hand smack into its middle. She jerked her hand back. The 98 GHz microwave beam, she realized. Even though her skin wasn’t even reddened, it hurt like hell. No wonder some Academy geeks were working on developing such microwaves to protect embassies overseas.

Wringing her hand in pain, Kimberly saw a second person emerging from the Soyuz airlock, wearing a blue jumpsuit identical to Farid’s. She recognized Adama Bakhet, the Qatari tourist. Bakhet floated out slowly, hesitantly, taking his time, obviously quite new to zero-gee.

Kimberly remembered watching a video about the young billionaire tourist from Qatar. He’d paid $60 million for the opportunity to stay aboard the ISS for nine days. But she didn’t focus on him. He was a newbie, and as a tourist he might not even adapt to the station’s zero-gee environment before it was time for him to leave.

To Kimberly, the real threat was Farid.

Farid moved out of the monitor’s view, disappeared from the screen. Where’s he heading? What was he going to do?

Kimberly jerked forward and slapped a hand on the emergency alert button on the caution and warning panel. Klaxons started blaring all through the station. The signal should not only get everyone’s attention, but the crew should rush to their emergency stations. Farid and the fake tourist would hear it, too, and know that they’d lost the element of surprise.

Gingerly, her hand still throbbing from its exposure to the microwave beam, she jabbed at the monitor control, her feet rotating in midair as she moved. In addition to warning the two Russians and the American in the Joint Airlock, she needed to quickly alert Al Sweeting to what she’d just seen. Al was one of her American colleagues who was manning the station’s control center, next door to the Russian SM module, during the docking. Unless he’d been watching the docking he wouldn’t know what had just happened.

Farid was probably heading for Al. Kimberly’s fingers flew over the controls and the monitor blinked and switched to Central Post. She turned up the volume—

And she saw Al and Farid grappling in the zero-gee compartment, rotating around in the air, bouncing off the metal shelving, monitors, computers, and white-sided insulation as they clawed at each other.

I’ve got to do something! Kimberly knew. But what? NASA couldn’t even help, as this view was internal to the ISS, and not being broadcast.

The SM was at the far end of the ISS, and the Russians or the remaining American should be able to get to it faster than she could. Still, Kimberly couldn’t just stay in the JPM and watch. She flicked her eyes from the monitor to the array of white cloth bags Velcroed to the compartment’s wall; they held tools and equipment that she might be able to grab and use.

With the Klaxon continuing to hoot throughout the station, she turned back to the laptop’s monitor, her breath quickening as she watched Al and Farid battling. Al fought furiously, arms pummeling wildly, but Farid was bigger, more solidly built, obviously more experienced.

A scientist like Kimberly herself, Al was small in stature and had a feral appearance: the other astronauts called him Rat, al- though Kimberly kept their relationship strictly professional and always referred to him as Al.

But that didn’t do anything to help Al now.

Farid was holding Al in a choke hold with his left arm. Kimberly could see the dark hair on his wrist in the high-resolution clarity of the laptop’s monitor. His arms bulged in his cosmonaut’s blue uniform. It looked as though the man had spent the three years since his last ISS mission lifting weights and working out. This certainly wasn’t the quiet Kazakhstani that the psychological profilers had analyzed. Had he undergone some sort of physical training for this radically different behavior?

As they gyrated in zero gravity, Farid twisted Al to the left and brought his right hand up and placed it against the back of Al’s head.

Al’s face turned beet red as he struggled for breath. Gasping, he used both hands to try to pry Farid’s massive left arm off his throat. He thrashed and kicked with both his legs, jerking violently back and forth, desperately trying to work free. The two started rotating in midair, bouncing off the consoles. Just as they floated out of sight of the video, Farid viciously twisted Al’s neck . . . and he went limp.

Kimberly pounded at the comm link to NASA, wanting to make sure that the ground was aware of what was happening. How much had they seen? They should have seen Colonel Zel’dovich’s dead body floating from the Soyuz and Vasilev being murdered, but they hadn’t responded in any way. She was sure they were shocked, probably too stunned to respond. She knew they wouldn’t be able to do anything from the ground to help her at this moment, but they had access to the most creative minds in the world: somebody should be able to come up with a workable countermeasure.

But Kimberly realized that at this moment it was up to her, the two Russians, and one other American. They couldn’t rely on NASA to do anything in the station that they couldn’t do for themselves.

The comm link to NASA Headquarters was out, she realized. Not responding. Then she remembered that the link had been working just moments before, when Scott’s voice had been broadcasting over the monitor in his official duty as today’s CAPCOM while the Soyuz had docked.

She knew that the feed was being sent out over NASA TV, and in addition to being picked up by the Russian space program, every major network and news channel back on Earth would have someone watching the feed, even if it was only a lowly summer intern. Their only job was to watch for anything that might occur aboard the ISS that might be worthy of shooting to the newsroom—or even breaking into their regularly scheduled broadcast, if it was important enough.

None of the big guys wanted to be scooped with breaking news by their competitors. Being first meant being able to charge more for commercial airtime, and that meant more bucks. Which was the real name of the game, not news just for the altruistic sake of news.

Kimberly quickly ran through the alternate links emanating from the ISS. One after another they showed that nothing was being transmitted or received. Running her fingers over the touchscreen, she called up the backup satellite-to-satellite relay. That too was dead.

This wasn’t just a technical malfunction; it was a deliberate severing of the entire station-to-ground communication links.

She felt her pulse racing faster, her heart beating so hard it seemed to be trying to burst out of her ribs. Farid. He must have cut the links. He was a computer scientist; he knew exactly how to do it. With his past six-month tour on the ISS he had more than enough experience to control the entire station.

Looking around the crowded compartment, Kimberly kicked out and shot through the air, reaching for one of the white cloth bags secured to the JPM wall that held a potpourri of tools. Her feet glided upward as she grabbed the bag and unfastened its Velcro strap. Fumbling inside, she pulled out two foot-long wrenches and an oversized screwdriver.

Guns were prohibited aboard the ISS. The purpose was to prevent any violence that might occur from people crowded together in an inescapable environment for months—even years—at a time. Bullets would only punch holes in the station’s thin aluminum siding, letting the air escape and killing everyone inside.

For the same reason the Russians had decreed that knives were not allowed on the ISS either, although Kimberly knew there was an ultrasharp utility knife stowed away in Shep’s toolkit—the grab bag of various odd tools Bill Shepherd had brought up with him when he had served on the ISS. Nobody but Shepherd, a free-spirited ex-Navy SEAL, could have gotten away with such a flouting of the rules. Several crew members had used the knife when they needed it. Nobody complained about it and HQ didn’t know it existed. Kimberly was pretty certain Shep’s bag—and the knife—were still in the JPM where Shepherd had stored it, but she couldn’t find it.

From what she’d just seen, Kimberly wasn’t thinking about using an approved, standardized weapon to defend herself, or following any international rules that had been negotiated and talked to death by chair-bound bureaucrats. These madmen would be coming after her. She was totally focused on survival.

Kimberly knew she didn’t have time for discussions or new age, touchy-feely, get-in-touch-with-your-emotions, hand-holding séances. These bastards were coming for her, and she had to be able to defend herself. They’d already murdered three men; what were they going to do next?

She thought she knew. Farid and his companion were out to kill everyone on the station.

Sooner or later they would come for her. Sooner, she realized. Not later.

She began to tremble. They want to kill me!

But then she remembered her father, all those years ago. And the fear inside her subsided. It did not disappear altogether, but now it was overlaid by an icy, pitiless resolve.

Those murdering sons of bitches, she thought. I’ll kill them.

Both of them. But how?

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Lists / New Releases / What's New

Every Tor Book Coming This Summer

June 3, 2020May 6, 2024Rachel Taylor

It’s almost time for summer weather and that means…SUMMER BOOKS! Due to COVID-19, we shuffled some of our on sale dates around, so check here for the most up to date list of when you can get your hands on some of the most highly anticipated books of the season:

June 16

The Unconquered City by K. A. Doore

Seven years have passed since the Siege—a time when the hungry dead had risen—but the memories still haunt Illi Basbowen. Though she was trained to be an elite assassin, now the Basbowen clan act as Ghadid’s militia force protecting the resurrected city against a growing tide of monstrous guul that travel across the dunes. Illi’s worst fears are confirmed when General Barca arrives, bearing news that her fledgling nation, Hathage, also faces this mounting danger. How much can she sacrifice to protect everything she knows from devastation?

Glorious by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven

Audacious astronauts encounter bizarre, sometimes deadly life forms, and strange, exotic, cosmic phenomena, including miniature black holes, dense fields of interstellar plasma, powerful gravity-emitters, and spectacularly massive space-based, alien-built labyrinths. Tasked with exploring this brave, new, highly dangerous world, they must also deal with their own personal triumphs and conflicts.

June 23

The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison

In an alternate 1880s London, angels inhabit every public building, and vampires and werewolves walk the streets with human beings in a well-regulated truce. A fantastic utopia, except for a few things: Angels can Fall, and that Fall is like a nuclear bomb in both the physical and metaphysical worlds. And human beings remain human, with all their kindness and greed and passions and murderous intent. Jack the Ripper stalks the streets of this London too. But this London has an Angel. The Angel of the Crows.

June 30

Interlibrary Loan by Gene Wolfe

E. A. Smithe is a borrowed person, his personality an uploaded recording of a deceased mystery writer. Smithe is a piece of property, not a legal human. As such, Smithe can be loaned to other branches. Which he is. Along with two fellow reclones, a cookbook and romance writer, they are shipped to Polly’s Cove, where Smithe meets a little girl who wants to save her mother, a father who is dead but perhaps not. And another E.A. Smithe… who definitely is.

July 7

Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott

Princess Sun has finally come of age. Growing up in the shadow of her mother, Eirene, has been no easy task. The legendary queen-marshal did what everyone thought impossible: expel the invaders and build Chaonia into a magnificent republic, one to be respected—and feared. But the cutthroat ambassador corps and conniving noble houses have never ceased to scheme—and they have plans that need Sun to be removed as heir, or better yet, dead.

Or What You Will by Jo Walton

He has been too many things to count. He has been a dragon with a boy on his back. He has been a scholar, a warrior, a lover, and a thief. He has been dream and dreamer. He has been a god. But “he” is in fact nothing more than a spark of idea, a character in the mind of Sylvia Harrison, 73, award-winning author of thirty novels over forty years. But Sylvia won’t live forever, any more than any human does. And he’s trapped inside her cave of bone, her hollow of skull. When she dies, so will he.

Little Brother & Homeland by Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow’s two New York Times-bestselling novels of youthful rebellion against the torture-and-surveillance state – now available in a softcover omnibus

July 14

In the Kingdom of All Tomorrows by Stephen R. Lawhead

Conor mac Ardan is now clan chief of the Darini. Tara’s Hill has become a haven and refuge for all those who were made homeless by the barbarian Scálda. A large fleet of the Scálda’s Black Ships has now arrived and Conor joins Eirlandia’s lords to defeat the monsters. He finds treachery in their midst…and a betrayal that is blood deep. And so begins a final battle to win the soul of a nation.

The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowl

Elma York is on her way to Mars, but the Moon colony is still being established. Her friend and fellow Lady Astronaut Nicole Wargin is thrilled to be one of those pioneer settlers, using her considerable flight and political skills to keep the program on track. But she is less happy that her husband, the Governor of Kansas, is considering a run for President.

July 21

Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Phyllis LeBlanc has given up everything—not just her own past, and Dev, the man she loved, but even her own dreams. Still, the ghosts from her past are always by her side—and history has appeared on her doorstep to threaten the people she keeps in her heart. And so Phyllis will have to make a harrowing choice, before it’s too late—is there ever enough blood in the world to wash clean generations of injustice?

The Sin in the Steel by Ryan Van Loan

Buc and Eld are the first private detectives in a world where pirates roam the seas, mages speak to each other across oceans, mechanical devices change the tide of battle, and earthly wealth is concentrated in the hands of a powerful few. It’s been weeks since ships last returned to the magnificent city of Servenza with bounty from the Shattered Coast. Disaster threatens not just the city’s trading companies but the empire itself. When Buc and Eld are hired to investigate, Buc swiftly discovers that the trade routes have become the domain of a sharp-eyed pirate queen who sinks all who defy her.

Quantum Shadows by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

On a world called Heaven, the ten major religions of mankind each have its own land governed by a capital city and ruled by a Hegemon. That Hegemon may be a god, or a prophet of a god. Smaller religions have their own towns or villages of belief. Corvyn, known as the Shadow of the Raven, contains the collective memory of humanity’s Falls from Grace. With this knowledge comes enormous power. When unknown power burns a mysterious black image into the holy place of each House of the Decalivre, Corvyn must discover what entity could possibly have that much power. The stakes are nothing less than another Fall, and if he doesn’t stop it, mankind will not rise from the ashes.

Uranus by Ben Bova

Humans can’t live on the gas giants, making instead a life in orbit. Kyle Umber, a religious idealist, has built Haven, a sanctuary above the distant planet Uranus. He invites ”the tired, the sick, the poor“ of Earth to his orbital retreat where men and women can find spiritual peace and refuge from the world. The billionaire who financed Haven, however, has his own designs: beyond the reach of the laws of the inner planets Haven could become the center for an interplanetary web of narcotics, prostitution, even hunting human prey.

I Come With Knives by S. A. Hunt

Robin – now armed with new knowledge about mysterious demon terrorizing her around town, the support of her friends, and the assistance of her old witch-hunter mentor – plots to confront the Lazenbury coven and destroy them once and for all. Robin must handle new threats on top of the menace from the Lazenbury coven, but a secret about Robin’s past may throw all of her plans into jeopardy.

July 28

Deal with the Devil by Kit Rocha

Nina is an information broker with a mission—she and her team of mercenary librarians use their knowledge to save the hopeless in a crumbling America. Knox is the bitter, battle-weary captain of the Silver Devils. His squad of supersoldiers went AWOL to avoid slaughtering innocents, and now he’s fighting to survive. They’re on a deadly collision course, and the passion that flares between them only makes it more dangerous. They could burn down the world, destroying each other in the process…Or they could do the impossible: team up.

The Baron of Magister Valley by Steven Brust

The salacious claims that The Baron of Magister Valley bears any resemblance to a certain nearly fictional narrative about an infamous count are unfounded (we do not dabble in tall tales. The occasional moderately stretched? Yes. But never tall). Our tale is that of a nobleman who is betrayed by those he trusted, and subsequently imprisoned. After centuries of confinement, he contrives to escape and prepares to avenge himself against his betrayers. A mirror image of The Count of Monte Cristo, vitrolic naysayers still grouse? Well, that is nearly and utterly false.

Automatic Reload by Ferrett Steinmetz

Meet Mat, a tortured mercenary who has become the perfect shot, and Silvia, and idealistic woman genetically engineered to murder you to death. Together they run for the shadiest corporation in the world… and realize their messed-up brain chemistry cannot overpower their very real chemistry.

August 4

The Living Dead by George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus

In a Midwestern trailer park, a Black teenage girl and a Muslim immigrant battle newly-risen friends and family. On a US aircraft carrier, living sailors hide from dead ones while a fanatic makes a new religion out of death. At a cable news station, a surviving anchor keeps broadcasting while his undead colleagues try to devour him. In DC, an autistic federal employee charts the outbreak, preserving data for a future that may never come. Everywhere, people are targeted by both the living and the dead. We think we know how this story ends. We. Are. Wrong.

Space Station Down by Ben Bova and Doug Beason

Sorcery of a Queen by Brian Naslund

Driven from her kingdom, the would-be queen now seeks haven in the land of her mother, but Ashlyn will not stop until justice has been done. Determined to unlock the secret of powers long thought impossible, Ashlyn bends her will and intelligence to mastering the one thing people always accused her of, sorcery. Meanwhile, having learned the truth of his mutation, Bershad is a man on borrowed time. Never knowing when his healing powers will drive him to a self-destruction, he is determined to see Ashlyn restored to her throne and the creatures they both love safe.

A Chorus of Fire by Brian D. Anderson

A shadow has moved across Lamoria. Whispers of the coming conflict are growing louder; the enemy becoming bolder. Belkar’s reach has extended far into the heart of Ralmarstad and war now seems inevitable. Mariyah, clinging to the hope of one day being reunited with Lem, struggles to attain the power she will need to make the world safe again.Lem continues his descent into darkness, serving a man he does not trust in the name of a faith which is not his own. Only Shemi keeps his heart from succumbing to despair, along with the knowledge that he has finally found Mariyah. But Lem is convinced she is being held against her will, and is determined to free her, regardless the cost.

August 11

The Tyrant Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

Baru’s enemies close in from all sides. Baru’s own mind teeters on the edge of madness or shattering revelation. Now she must choose between genocidal revenge and a far more difficult path—a conspiracy of judges, kings, spies and immortals, puppeteering the world’s riches and two great wars in a gambit for the ultimate prize. If Baru had absolute power over the Imperial Republic, she could force Falcrest to abandon its colonies and make right its crimes.

The Last Uncharted Sky by Curtis Craddock

Isabelle and Jean-Claude undertake an airship expedition to recover a fabled treasure and claim a hitherto undiscovered craton for l’Empire Celeste. But Isabelle, as a result from a previous attack that tried to subsume her body and soul, suffers from increasingly disturbing and disruptive hallucinations. Disasters are compounded when the ship is sabotaged by an enemy agent, and Jean-Claude is separated from the expedition.

By Force Alone by Lavie Tidhar

Everyone thinks they know the story of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. The fact is they don’t know sh*t.

Arthur? An over-promoted gangster. Merlin? An eldritch parasite. Excalibur? A shady deal with a watery arms dealer. Britain? A clogged sewer that Rome abandoned just as soon as it could.

The Shadow Commission by David Mack

November 1963. Cade and Anja have lived in hiding for a decade, training new mages. Then the assassination of President Kennedy trigger a series of murders whose victims are all magicians—with Cade, Anja, and their allies as its prime targets. Their only hope of survival: learning how to fight back against the sinister cabal known as the Shadow Commission.

The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe

A young man in his teens is transported from our world to a magical realm consisting of seven levels of reality. Transformed by magic into a grown man of heroic proportions, he takes the name Sir Able of the High Heart and sets out on a quest to find the sword that has been promised to him, the blade that will help him fulfill his ambition to become a true hero—a true knight. Inside, however, Sir Able remains a boy, and he must grow in every sense to survive what lies ahead…

August 25

The Memory of Souls by Jenn Lyons

Now that Relos Var’s plans have been revealed and demons are free to rampage across the empire, the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies—and the end of the world—is closer than ever. To buy time for humanity, Kihrin needs to convince the king of the Manol vané to perform an ancient ritual which will strip the entire race of their immortality, but it’s a ritual which certain vané will do anything to prevent. Including assassinating the messengers.

Architects of Memory by Karen Osborne

Terminally ill salvage pilot Ash Jackson lost everything in the war with the alien Vai, but she’ll be damned if she loses her future. Her plan: to buy, beg, or lie her way out of corporate indenture and find a cure. When her crew salvages a genocidal weapon from a ravaged starship above a dead colony, Ash uncovers a conspiracy of corporate intrigue and betrayal that threatens to turn her into a living weapon.