Interworld: The Silver Dream

"The Silver Dream" is the long-awaited follow-up sequel to Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves' "Interworld" novel from 2007. Interworld was the story of a boy named Joey who always gets lost. One day he gets so lost that he walks right out of his world and into another dimension.

Adventures and sci-fi shenanigans ensue, and Joey turns out to be a dimensional Walker who is part of a team that fights to save the world from the evil Binary and HEX organizations. In The Silver Dream Michael Reaves and Mallory Reaves continue Joey's story. Joey is a cadet at Interworld Academy, along with countless other incarnations of himself. That's right - all the trainees and officers are other versions of Joey from alternate timelines and worlds. Joey and his teammates must fight evil organizations, rescue new recruits, and figure out mysteries of the universe while still trying to look cool and make friends

This is a series for boys who love adventure novels. Fans of The Lightning Thief and Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl and Ender's Game will enjoy this series the most. It reads like a movie - because it was originally conceived as one. It is action-packed, funny, and told from a typical teenage boy's perspective. The science fiction details get a little confusing at times, but it just adds to the cool factor. While it isn't the best plotted or well-written sci-fi adventure, it is definitely a fun and fast read.

New Old School Sci-Fi

Perhaps it's not fair to call Sergei Lukyanenko's The Genome (released today) "old school" sci-fi. But the book feels like it comes from another era. Not that that's a bad thing. Not at all.

Alex Romanov is a starship master-pilot with an animated tattoo on his shoulder that acts out his current emotional state. He's just been released from a hospital on a distant alien world called Quicksilver Pit. He's low on cash and without a job when he meets Kim, a teenage girl who is getting harassed by some unsavory characters on public transportation. Alex offers to help her out, but she declines and deals with the problem directly by smashing the head of one of her tormentors through the bus's window.

New Space Opera, but Don't Throw Out the Old

Peter F. Hamilton first explored the Void, an area at the center of the galaxy that defies typical laws of both physics and metaphysics, in his Dreaming Void trilogy. Hamilton's characters return to the Void in his new work, The Abyss Beyond Dreams, bringing with them a fresh perspective and a different range of ideas.

Nigel Sheldon, one of the founders of the technologically advanced human Commonwealth, is asked by the even more technologically advanced alien species, the Raiel, to infiltrate the Void to keep it from threatening the entire galaxy.

As far as anyone knows, nothing that enters the Void can leave it, though Nigel, equipped with massive enhancements to his human body and a few extra copies of psyche that he can load into computers or androids or clones of himself, hopes to find out otherwise.

"Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories," edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios

The recent debate around #WeNeedDiverseBooks highlighted the great shortage of - and hunger for - novels that speak to and from the experiences of writers of color, women writers, LGBTQI writers, differently-abled folks, and other voices outside the mainstream narrative.

And while it's true that mainstream publishing still has a diversity problem (which some folks frame as a white supremacy problem), it's also true that there are a ton of amazing diverse books and stories being written and published and celebrated.

Case in point: Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories.  This anthology highlights twenty stories that are creepy, funny, edgy, entertaining, and thought-provoking. There's all kinds of dazzling diversity on display here: the authors are diverse, the speculative concepts are diverse (stories about drugs that let you see the future, and ancient deities giving life lessons, and superpowers, and urban legends gone wrong) and the settings for the stories are diverse (Palestine, China, New Jersey).

Black Science # 1 by Rick Remender, Matteo Scalera & Dean White

The good news: Scientists have discovered a way to travel inter-dimensionally, forever changing science and the world that we know. The bad news: Most of the things that live in those other dimensions want us all dead.

That is the conundrum facing Grant McKay and his team of researchers, who get stranded "Lost in Space" style within multiple dimensions, most of them extremely dangerous.

McKay is a broken man, struggling with the fact that he's put his family in danger, he's cheating on his wife, and yes, he probably smokes too much weed. He has to put all of that behind him, however, if he's going to get them all home alive.

Shovel Ready by Adam Sternbergh

Imagine this: New York City has been hit with a dirty bomb. No, I'm not talking about a bomb that tells inappropriate nursery rhymes, I'm talking about a bomb that spreads radioactive waste, slowly killing everything in its wake. Throw in some climate change-related disasters, a super addictive online video game and you've got the perfect recipe for the dystopian sic-fi thriller that is Shovel Ready.

Spademan is a hit-man, before that, when the world was still semi-normal, he was a garbage man. Then the terrorists dropped the bomb on New York, killing his wife and his will to carry on as he did before. 

He has specific rules about his job, he kills both men and women but he won't kill children because according to him that's "a different kind of psycho." Then, out of the blue, he's given a job with a very lucrative payoff. The catch? The target is an eighteen year-old pregnant girl.

Knightley and son by Rohan Gavin

Father son books are always interesting to read because depending on the age of their son there is always some subtle tension in the relationship. For young sons the father prods his progeny, trying to get him to be a better player, athlete etc. Older sons, in trying to carve their own niche and explore their individuality are often at loggerheads with their fathers. In this book, the relationship is somewhere in between.

Hurricane Fever by Tobias S. Buckell

Not the US cover, but I prefer this one.

Let's say there's something wrong with the planet's climate and hurricane season produces a steady flow of class 5 hurricanes. And suppose the Caribbean found itself the focus of international attention, the kind that pushes the island nations together to form their own unified political coalition, down to its own world-class spies. While we're at it, let's have the island still welcome tourists, but now we're talking major industrial players in high rises throwing hurricane parties.

And in the middle of all this someone has finally created the ultimate chemical weapon, one with a really nasty bigoted edge to it, that's about to be launched via the winds of the coming storm. There's only one lone, retired local ex-spy who has figured it all out... but can he stop it from happening?

Hurricane Fever is, for me, the perfect spy-thriller-action-adventure-beach-read. It's a summer movie in a book, well-written, and at just under 275 pages proof that the compelling story full of character and suspense can be achieved without the unnecessary bloat of, say, a Clancy doorstop.

Avalon by Mindee Arnett

Avalon starts off with a bang - Jeth and his crew of teenage thieves must steal a ship and get it back safely to their crime lord boss, Hammer. Then the action slows, and we learn about the crew, Jeth and Lizzie's past, their parents' deaths, and all about their ship - also their home - the "Avalon". Soon we're swept up in their newest job - collect a lost ship from the treacherous Belgrave Sector - like the Bermuda Triangle of space - and get back to their home station within 2 weeks. With faster-than-light metaspace travel, potential paranormal powers and aliens, a government conspiracy, budding romance, quirky/funny friends, and all kinds of action Avalon is one hell of a joyride.

Space Opera 101, or How to Cure Your Zombie Obsession and Learn to Love Humanity

Much of the new YA science fiction out lately is dystopian, portraying futures plagued by environmental disaster, totalitarian governments and technology misused to such a degree that it threatens human freedom if not human existence. Plus, there are zombies everywhere. Why do kids like this stuff so much? If I were a cultural theorist I might propose that when you grow up with persistent unemployment and a deadlocked government in the face of environmental crisis, rampant disease and ongoing devastating wars, you can get a tad pessimistic.

Ok, you can't be blamed for your lousy outlook. Not your fault. Still, as my mother used to say, if you keep making that sour face it will get stuck that way and if you keep reading this depressing stuff you are only going to sink deeper and deeper into gloom.

There's an alternative, a cure, for your mood, if not for the world. While little of it has found its way to YA, in adult sci-fi there is a concurrent trend with a more hopeful and longer range vision for humanity.

Book Review: World of Trouble by Ben H. Winters

World of Trouble by Ben H. Winters is the last book in a trilogy starring detective Hank Palace taking place when the world is about the end. The first two books The Last Policeman and Countdown City were a good read and I was looking forward to reading the ending of the trilogy.

Detective Hank Palace leaves the comfortable nest he shared with his friends in New England, waiting for an asteroid to hit Earth, to find his sister Nico. Nico has joined a group of revolutionaries who intend on freeing scientists out of jail so they can save the world.

During his investigation Palace meets a cast of characters and observes a world gone mad with anxious anticipation to its destruction.

 World of Trouble by Ben H. Winters is a fitting end to a wonderful trilogy. I really enjoyed the fact that Mr. Winters doesn’t back out of the doomsday scenario he has created for a sappy Disneyesque ending which I was expecting.

This novel ties up some loose ends which were introduced in the previous books, also the author concentrated on police procedural more than in the previous novels. That was a good call, I believe, since the first novel as well as part of the second, focused on how society has gone berserk in preparation of the impending doom.

In his investigation, Palace meets many characters, some take advantage of the situation for their own benefit, some just try to survive, and some (like Palace) hang on to their jobs for sanity. Palace even meets an Amish man who told his family and community that the outside world has contracted an epidemic and they must stay enclosed in their own village, with no outside contact, in order to stay protected. This way the man believes he will spare his family the curse of anticipation.
That, for me, was one of the highlights of the book.

In the same style of the first two novels, Mr. Winters keeps the pace quick and the plot moving. While the details of the world falling apart are not as evident as they were in the first two, this novel is a fitting end, I would, however, recommend reading the first two before reading this novel.

Article first published as Book Review: World of Trouble by Ben H. Winters on ManOfLaBook.com

Disclaimer: I got this book for free

Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson

It's impossible for me to write an intro to Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson without hearing the voice of the late, great voice actor Don Lafontaine in my head. So here we go: In a world where all superheroes are evil and all hope is lost, a small group of rebels must work together to save the Earth from total annihilation.

So that's Steelheart in a very small nutshell, although the actual story is a lot more complex and interesting: One day, something appears in the sky, people call it Calamity. It looks like a star or a comet, but nobody really knows what it is or where it came from. What they do know is that Calamity grants a random number of ordinary people super powers, they decide to call them "Epics." Also, for reasons unknown, the Epics are huge jerks.

Each Epic has a specific power, like the ability to fly, see the future, create life-like illusions, repel females without speaking a single word - wait, that last one is my superpower. Since there are no superheroes around to stop them, each Epic takes charge of a city of their choice, ruling without consequence and degrading the quality of life for everyone living there. Just imagine if every major city was run by Rob Ford and you'll get the picture.

The Second Triennial MrChompchomp Commencement Address

Three years ago I stood before you and complained. I complained that no one had ever asked me to deliver a commencement address. And because no one had ever asked me to deliver a commencement address, I took it upon myself to deliver one anyway. And you took as it was intended: as a lesson in self-bootstrap-pulling-uppedness.

And yet three years have gone by. That's plenty of time even for the most ardent of commencement-organizing procrastinators. I have been diligent, nay, obsessive about checking my email and answering my telephone and while I have had the most fascinating conversations with people selling some very interesting pharmaceuticals, I have not, even a little bit, been asked to deliver a commencement address. Not even for a preschool promotion or an Email for Seniors training class. No words preceding the certificating of a boating safety instruction group. No final thoughts before a leatherworking badge ceremony. Nothing. Nada.

And so I am emboldened to deliver my second commencement address to you, the ever-loyal readers of GuysLitWire.

As you sit out there beneath the cool protective shade of your mortar boards considering what comes next in your life, I know you aren't worried. You are thinking there's nothing I can do to screw up my life too bad. And even if someday I do, say, fail the bar exam or accidentally destroy a city by haphazardly messing with my pet lizard's DNA, I can always fix it. I can fix it because soon someone will invent time travel and I can buy a trip to the past or steal one or just crash a time travel party and I can return to the point of my mistake and do things differently this time around.

Do I have it right? It's as if I've read your minds, isn't it?

Noggin by John Corey Whaley

It’s the old, old story: boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, boy develops fatal illness, boy has head surgically removed and cryogenically frozen, boy is re-animated five years later with a donor body, girl has moved on.

Revolution 19 & Fugitive X

  
The next Revolution is happening now: Kevin, Nick, and Cass are lucky —they live with their parents in a secret human community in the woods, safe from the Bot City established after the robot revolution of 2071. Then their village is detected by bots and completely destroyed. Hopeful that their parents have been captured by bots --and not killed--, the teens risk everything to save the only people they have left in the world—by infiltrating a city controlled by their greatest enemies.
In Fugitive X, Nick, Cass, and their little brother Kevin are separated by warring forces in a dystopian world controled by robots. Nick ends up with a group of hostile rebels. Cass is captured and reeducated by the bots. Kevin is indoctrinated into a hidden encampment in the forest known as The Island, where he discovers secrets about the origin of the bots, and about his family.

Wolverton Station / Sleep Donation

As much as I wanted to review something poetic this month the closest I'm going to get is the pair of rhyming digital-only book titles listed above!

First up, a delightful appetizer of a short story called "Wolverton Station" by Joe Hill, where an unctuous American businessman suddenly realizes between stations on a British train that he is surrounded by wolves. Literally. Not werewolves, but human-sized, clothes-wearing canis lupus. Casual as he can our businessman tries to pretend that its a prank, a hoax, a protest against The Man, but toward the end there's no denying these wolves are real, and so is the danger.

"Wolverton Station" is the kind of story that plays out like an episode of The Twilight Zone by keeping the action claustrophobic and as close to the main character as possible. Why are there wolves, why is he the only human, how did he end up in the situation... questions for which there is no answer, and none is really necessary. It's a breezy read, the kind its easy to get caught up while traveling and short enough to gobble down in one sitting.

For Karen Russell's e-novella Sleep Donation I don't know whether to recommend being well-rested before diving in or to try and time it so you drop off immediately after reading. Either way, you're going to want to be sure you can sleep afterward.

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

Pierce Brown's Red Rising is a little like Ender's Game in that it involves children's brutal training for war. It's also like the Percy Jackson series in its obsession with Greek and Roman myth and history. It's also like The Hunger Games in that it pits children against each other in deadly games and it's like Game of Thrones with its rivalries between powerful families and it's like Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series in its exploration of power and body modification. If someone accused Pierce Brown and his publisher of trying to capitalize on every trend in YA fiction this side of wizards and werewolves, you might just have to concede the point.

Yet, while the book is somewhat like all of these other books and is a bit jumbled as a result, it's not exactly like any of them. After a somewhat rough opening, the novel settles in and ultimately works better than expected. It also sets up a series that promises to be intriguing.

Interworld & The Silver Dream

The Silver Dream is the long-awaited follow-up sequel to Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves' Interworld from 2007. Interworld is the story of a boy named Joey who always gets lost. One day, on a school outing, he gets so lost that he Walks right out of our world and into another dimension. Adventures and sci-fi shenanigans ensue, and Joey turns out to be a dimensional Walker who is part of a team that fights to save the world from the evil Binary and HEX organizations.


In The Silver Dream Michael Reaves and Mallory Reaves continue Joey's story.

Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

I haven't finished this yet.

It just released yesterday, under my radar, and I'm deep into it. What it's got is two hormonal 16 year old boys, an empty Iowa town after the local factory picks up and leaves, and end-of-the-world devastation brought about by giant insects and genetically modified food. Here's how it opens:

I read somewhere that human beings are genetically predisposed to record history.
We believe it will prevent us from doing stupid things in the future.
But even though we dutifully archived elaborate records of everything we've ever done, we also managed to keep on doing dumber and dumber shit.
This is my history.
There are things in here: babies with two heads, insects as big as refrigerators, God, the devil, limbless warriors, rocket ships, sex, diving bells, theft, war, monsters, internal combustion engines, love, cigarettes, joy, bomb shelters, pizza, and cruelty.
Just like it's always been.

I'll be back with a full report when I'm done because I haven't had this much fun with an out-there premise since Tim, the Defender of Earth, and that had a Yoda-like Kraken, a T-Rex and a nanoswarm leveling London like something out of a 60s monster movie.

So my apologies for being late here, but I really need to get back to it. Knock me down a grade or two if you must, but I gotta find out what's on the minds of two hungry, horny six-foot praying mantises.

Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow

How important is access to the internet for you and your family? For Trent McCauley, a.k.a. Cecil B. DeVil, and his family - it means nearly everything.

Cecil is a film maker. Not a traditional film maker using a camera and crew to create his art, but a film maker who uses films already made and remixes them to create his something new. The only problem is, doing so is illegal. As Cecil works at his art, he
gets caught downloading video protected under copyright laws, thus getting his
entire family cut off from the internet for an entire year! As a result, his
dad loses his job, his mom has difficulties getting the medications she needs,
and his sister is unable to use the internet for her school work.