The Reference Library
by Sean C.W. Korsgaard
Auld lang syne, dear Analog readers, it’s another new year!
While I’m sure I might not speak for everyone when I say this, for me at least, 2024 felt so much longer than it was.
NASA’s orbital projection is so diminished that as I’m writing this in August, two astronauts will be stuck in orbit until when you’re reading this in early 2025. While artificial intelligence might not have declared war on humanity, they’ve flooded the creative fields with terrible artwork and worse fiction. And for my fellow Yanks, it was an election year, and all I’ll say on that front is that I live in a swing state, so as exhausting as it may have been for you, I’ve more than had my fill by August.
There were some highlights and bright spots though. We got to watch the first successful landing of the Space X Starship rockets, with photos of the landing looking like old Analog covers come to life. We witnessed the first computer chip connected to the human brain and the roll out of potential drug treatments for obesity and heart disease. New discoveries of water on Mars may prove a game changer to future human exploration and settlement of the red planet.
And as always, we had an abundance of great science fiction published—no matter what the present brings, you can always count on this genre to give you something to look forward to.
So, let’s all agree to kick off 2025 by having a blast, shall we?
I bring before you today seven of the books from the past year that I hope help you kick off the new year with pep in your step, a smile on your face, and a story still buzzing in your brain long after you’ve put the book down.
We have space opera of nearly every conceivable type and stripe, ranging from throwbacks to the pulp era, Afrofuturist, anime influenced, and from hopepunk to cyberpunk. Some offer near-futures that feel just around the corner, others take us to far flung visions of space that reshape humanity and the Solar System itself. One marks the conclusion to a fan favorite series, two mark the debut of what may prove to be two new favorites, and all of them take the space opera subgenre in some bold, creative, and exciting new directions.
Then for good measure, we have a techno murder mystery that’s one part Agatha Christie and one-part Black Mirror, and to cap it all off, we’ve got a review of the most anticipated science fiction anthology of the past half century.
May a couple of these books help you start 2025 on the right note.
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Freelancers of Neptune
Jacob Holo
Baen Books, 368 pages, $28.00 (hardcover)
iBooks, Kindle, Nook: $9.99
ISBN: 978-1982193683
Series: Sol Blazers 1
Genre: Space Opera, Hard SF, Artificial Intelligence, Far Future/Clarke’s Law, Transhumanism
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Jabob Holo’s rise in the genre has been fascinating to watch happen in real time. He self-published the rollicking good Seraphim Revival trilogy before he coauthored the ongoing Gordian Division series with David Weber, and has established himself for a knack for hard science, grand cosmic scale mysteries, and high stakes that often imperil the known universe, if not several of them at once.
If Jacob Holo wasn’t already on your radar before, he will be after Freelancers of Neptune.
Tens of thousands of years in the future, the Solar System is a radically different place from the one we know. Earth is a distant memory, long broken up for material with the other terrestrial planets. Humanity now lives in massive orbital rings built around Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune, each under control of one of the Sol system’s primary powers, or one of the countless self-sustaining habitats whose tech levels, environments, and inhabitants vary wildly from hab to hab. Transhumanism has long since gone into strange new directions—in addition to baseline humans, you have cyborgs, people whose ancestors spliced their DNA with various animal features, and uploaded consciousness who each control clusters of multiple robot bodies.
All of this was achieved by five artificial intelligences, the Pentatheon, whose powers to reshape the cosmos and humanity itself like clay in their hands bordered on godlike, with understanding having long since given way to worship by humanity. Which became an issue when a mere few hundred years ago, they vanished, plunging the Solar System into a dark age it has only just begun to emerge from. Much of the religious and social strife in the Solar System and the various conflicts between the Jovian Everlife, Saturn Union, and Neptune Concord still center on the loss of the Pentatheon, the mystery of what happened, and attempts to salvage or reuse the technology they left behind.
Captain Nathaniel Kade, a freelancer who transports people and cargo between the habitats aboard his freighter, the Neptune Belle, wants none of that. He and his first mate, Aiko, a Jovian down to her last three bodies, just want a few gigs that pay well enough to repair some of the ship’s critical systems and get their finances back in order.
They cross paths with a cat-eared hybrid named Vessani S’Kaari who puts an end to their hopes for another small job. Vessani, along with her partner Joshua, are on the trail of what could be a treasure trove of lost technology, and after a couple firefights, the crew of the Belle find themselves hired to transport them along the way. Together, they find there is no shortage of other, far more sinister parties interested in the same prize—and far darker mysteries lurking in space than any of them could have imagined.
The first few chapters of Freelancers of Neptune sets up the far future of Sol Blazers as this vibrant and strange setting that pulls you deeper the more you explore it, that even by the ending, you still desperately want to see more of. We get a grand tour of the major players and planets of this radically altered Solar System, and it still feels like we’ve barely scratched the surface.
As much as the universe pulls you in, the characters seal the deal. As many motley crews of scoundrels as we’ve seen in space opera over the years, Holo still found a way to assemble one that feels unique. Nathaniel Kade feels more akin to a Southerner seeking their fortune in an old western rather than yet another reskin of Han Solo or Mal Reynolds. Aiko and Vessani let us see firsthand the wildly different directions that transhumanism has taken here and make creative use of things like having multiple bodies. Joshua, being a scholar, offers a rather seamless way to drop some scientific exposition. Even the minor characters manage to have enough personality to leave an impression—a particular favorite of mine is the sentient coffee plant aboard the Neptune Belle, Beany.
The heavy influence of anime on the universe of Freelancers of Neptune is also apparent—if the cat girl on the cover wasn’t your first clue. While that’s increasingly common in genre fiction, especially for many younger authors to whom anime played as big a role as shows like Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica did for older ones, what makes its use so striking here is how the novel doesn’t sacrifice scientific accuracy or hard science in the process. Jacob Holo weds the wild and colorful universes like those in Cowboy Bebop and Outlaw Star to the kind of grounded hard science of Arthur C. Clarke, Ben Bova, or David Weber in a way that I don’t think any other author has yet achieved, certainly not on this level.
It’s one of the more remarkable things about Freelancers of Neptune, that it can delve into some of the hard science that makes a planetary superstructure possible or reflect on the nature of transhumanism with as much energy and ease as it sets up a colorful second act fight scene between gangs of cyborgs and cat people. That, and the universe and characters it introduces leave you desperately wanting to see more of them. This is the first in a planned series, and if Jacob Holo can deliver more books as good as this one, Captain Kade and his crew won’t be struggling for work for a very long time.
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Captain Future: Lost Apollo
Allen Steele
Amazing Stories, 167 pages, $12.99 (trade paperback)
iBooks, Kindle, Nook: $8.99
ISBN: 979-8328149266
Series: Edmond Hamilton’s Captain Future 6
Genre: Space Opera, Pulp Science
Fiction, Sword and Planet, To The Moon, Time Travel
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One of those formative moments for me as a reader of genre fiction was the first time I read Allen Steele’s “The Death of Captain Future” as a young teen. The story, which originally ran in our sister magazine Asimov’s and went on to win a Hugo Award, was a vision of a working-class era of space colonization crossing over with the kind of pulp adventure vision of the future popularized in Golden Age Science Fiction. If you’ve not read it yet, hunt down one of the many places it’s been reprinted; to my mind, it’s still as brilliant today as when I read it for the first time as a teen.
Some two decades later, I was delighted to see Allen Steele had been tapped to write an entirely new series of Captain Future stories, first for Tor with the novel Avengers of the Moon, and then for the revived Amazing Stories magazine with a series of novellas whose first overall arc reached a conclusion with the fourth serial, “Horror at Jupiter.” Now with Captain Future: Lost Apollo, the next great adventures of one of the original pulp heroes begins.
In the twenty-third century, Curtis Newton, better known as Captain Future, has earned some much-deserved rest and recuperation following his heroic actions to save the Solar Coalition from the machinations of his archrival, the Magician of Mars, Ul Quorn. Now he and his Futuremen—now joined by Newton’s new wife, Lt. Joan Randall—are debating their next move at their lunar base when a strange spacecraft that begins rapid approach to the Moon makes the decision for them.
What they find should be impossible—an Apollo era command module and lunar landing craft, along with three astronauts from 1974. Not just any Apollo mission astronauts either—they’re the crew of Apollo 20, a mission that did not happen, at least in this universe. The astronauts have been displaced not only through time, but into an entirely different universe. Now there is the challenge and many questions about how to get them home. And a bigger mystery than that looms—just what force or entity ripped Apollo 20 out of its universe?
While one might worry that bad superhero movies might have permanently soured using multiverses in fiction, especially where none previously existed, Captain Future: Lost Apollo manages to use the concept creatively without breaking things or gutting the stakes. There are a few subtle differences briefly touched on—Robert Kennedy and then George Wallace were elected president in 1968 and 1972, not Richard Nixon, and in a clever detail, either Michael Moorcock doesn’t exist or never wrote fiction, thus even the word “multiverse” is a new concept for the Apollo 20 crew—but most of the time, it’s used as an excuse to let readers see Apollo era astronauts explore an epoch of manned space flight straight from the pulps. Which, it turns out, is a lot of fun to watch unfold, as is the Captain Future crew getting a chance to interact with some of the men whom entire cities are named after on the Moon.
As always, Allen Steele’s prose is punchy and very much captures the feel and style of golden age science fiction. The book also has some great interior black-and-white artwork and includes a reprinted interview with Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett that was done by Darrel Schweitzer in the ’70s.
For those new to the series, Captain Future: Lost Apollo opens with a thorough summary of the past few adventures Steele has written, something I wish more ongoing series would make use of, so you can start with this novel with little issue. The new arc starting with Lost Apollo will be continued in the next serial, “The Multiverse War,” so this is a great jumping on point for newcomers.
In an age where so many of the classic pulp heroes like Doc Savage and The Shadow languish in obscurity, face copyright issues, or can’t stick the landing with their latest reboot, what Allen Steele has achieved with Captain Future continues to be a marvel, bringing back Edmond Hamilton’s classic character for a new generation while retaining the spirit of the original.
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Glass Houses
Madeline Ashby
Tor Books, 272 pages, $27.99
iBooks, Kindle, Nook: $14.99
ISBN: 978-1466889866
Genre: SF Horror, SF Mystery, Psychological/Sociological SF, Artificial Intelligence
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Locked room murder mysteries are very hard to pull off successfully, as is effective satire. To pull off both at once makes Glass Houses, a haunted house whodunit that skewers Silicon Valley tech culture, something very unique indeed.
The employees of red-hot Silicon Valley startup Wuv have at last achieved the dream of every startup: selling the entire company to an even bigger tech company who will scrap it for parts, as they all walk away as millionaires. The dream doesn’t last long—the self-flying plane they’ve chartered to take them to an opulent party to celebrate the sale has a critical malfunction en route, and crashes on a desert island.
Down to only ten survivors, they explore the island, where the only structure they find on the island is a lone, brutalist cube-shaped black house, seemingly impossible to enter—and once opened, will prove even harder to leave.
And even as the bodies continue to pile up, and the group begins to turn on each other, the questions continue to mount. Why did the plane crash here, and who owns this island? Why are women unable to open any of the fridges and drawers in the mysterious house? And why does whatever force is picking them off appear to be using the very same type of emotion-mapping AI that Wuv was developing?
The mystery of just what dangers are lurking on the island and by what actions Wuv might have earned them is slow burning and makes for pretty gripping stuff as the pieces get laid out on the board and we start to see more of the picture. The twists, even when you can see them coming, are still effective, and the deaths when they happen all pack a punch.
Adding another layer to some of the skewering of modern tech culture, are the main characters we follow in Glass Houses, Kristen Mara, the former “chief emotional manager” of Wuv, and essentially the chief of staff to her billionaire boss, Sumter William. They’re both representative of some of the worst aspects of modern tech culture, and the novel is interspersed with flashbacks to their work at Wuv, which could stand in for any number of real-life startups. Gone are the innovators with big dreams in garages; Silicon Valley has entered its loot and litigate phase, with rich people coming in to get richer, consequences be damned.
There are also some subtle hints that Kristin might not be an entirely reliable narrator, and certainly is hiding details from the reader. Her parents may have died in a tragic house fire caused by bitcoin mining, and Silicon Valley tech companies may be an awful place to rise up through the ranks as a woman, but there are moments that make you wonder if she’s just another predator in the tech world pretending to be a victim. It’s how Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried tried to frame their stories too.
If I have to express a small disappointment, it’s that the science fiction elements weren’t nearly as prominent as I’d have liked. Madeline Ashby has shown a knack for wildly creative visions of the future that border on downright strange—her last novel, Company Town, centered on a cyberpunk ninja protecting unionized prostitutes on a city-sized oil rig—Glass Houses seems relatively mundane in comparison.
That doesn’t make the book any less entertaining however—so if you’re in the mood for a mystery, take a stab at Glass Houses.
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Theft of Fire
Devon Eriksen
Devon Eriksen LLC, 497 pages, $29.99 (hardcover)
iBooks, Kindle, Nook: $8.99
ISBN: 978-1962514019
Series: Orbital Space 1
Genre: Space Opera, Exploration & Discovery, Hard SF, Alien Beings, Space Travel
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Among other highlights in genre last year, 2024 saw maybe the strongest group of Prometheus Award finalists in years, including winner Critical Mass by Daniel Suarez, a terrific near future thriller that pulls no punches about the dangers of working in space, and Lord of a Shattered Land by Howard Andrew Jones, which kicked off what may well be the best fantasy series of the decade. However, it’s Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen that may be the dark horse contender of the bunch, especially since it shortly after became the first independently published novel nominated for the Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel since 2018.
In the not-too-distant future, mankind has finally made some tentative steps toward settling the Solar System, with asteroid mining and gas giant refineries fueling a new boom as more people, most of them technicians and laborers, decide to take their chances seeking their fortune in space, and off an increasingly repressive Earth.
Not that the stars offer that much more freedom—corporations have control over much of what makes this new settlement and industrial boom possible. For example, Space X (yes, that one) invented, patented, and tightly controls the fusion drive that nearly all spacers are forced to lease from the company for an exorbitant rate.
The result is that spacers like Marcus Warnoc are often in debt up to their eyeballs, and to keep his asteroid mining ship running and the leased fusion drive paid for, he has begun getting involved in some shady business—including what some might call it piracy—to make ends meet. Needless to say, his feelings on the corporate overlords breathing down his neck are less than positive, complete with a work accident that killed his father to make it personal.
Which is why it’s truly unfortunate that Miranda Foxgrove, one of the many competing heirs to the vast Space X fortune, selected him and his ship specifically to ferry her into the outer Solar System, extorting him via the debt her company holds over him. Their destination? Distant Sedna and a mysterious alien artifact that promises to upend life in the Solar System as much as the fusion drive, if not more so.
The journey will certainly upend both of their roles within it.
Despite action and stakes that promise to redefine mankind’s place in the cosmos, Theft of Fire keeps its cast and setting impressively small, focused largely on the two lead characters as they feud and exchange barbs with each other. The combative relationship between the two becomes less so as the novel progresses, and Marcus and Miranda both read as developed, complex, three-dimensional characters. Their contrasting circumstances offer a clever way to flesh out some of the world building and history, given the wildly different situations of a down on his luck spacer and a genetically modified corporate heiress, who despite their differences, are both scoundrels, if charming ones.
Eriksen has given a lot of attention and detail to the science in Theft of Fire, with all of the ships, colonies, and tech feeling like grounded progressions of the technology on the drawing board today, and all action is contained to the Solar System and the laws of physics as we know them. While the science is foundational, the characters and story feel much more like something from older science fiction, when all mankind needed to conquer the stars was his will and a spacesuit. The mesh between the more modern grounded science and classical heroics makes for an interesting read—think Leviathan Wakes, if written by Heinlein.
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The novel does feel a tad overlong in parts but never actually drags. Some may also raise eyebrows at the mention and use of some modern brands—Space X is far from the only one featured prominently—but I found it noninvasive in Theft of Fire, though as always the book runs the risk of hindsight bias coming back to bite, like having Pan American Airways prominently featured in 2001: A Space Odyssey, or the countless works that predicted everything of the future but the fall of the Soviet Union.
There is a reason that Theft of Fire is rising to heights unseen by a self-published title in years. It’s no small feat for an author to achieve most of what it offers in their debut novel, an engaging character study, some brilliant action, and threading the needle between classical and more modern styles of the genre. Erikson and Theft of Fire both burn brightly, and I’m excited to see where both go from here.
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Ghostdrift
Suzanne Palmer
DAW Books, 386 pages, $28.00
iBooks, Kindle, Nook: $16.99
ISBN: 978-0756418878
Series: Finder Chronicles 4
Genre: Space Opera, Exploration & Discovery, Alien Beings, Military SF
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Regular readers of our sister magazine Asimov’s should be very familiar with the work of Suzanne Palmer, her most recent story being “Falling Off the Edge of the World” from the November/December 2022 issue. She has also graced these pages with “Detroit Hammersmith, Zero-Gravity Toilet Repairman (Retired)” (September 2016) and “Streaming Man” (March/April 2018). She has a true knack for fun, inventive space opera, something that certainly has carried over to her Finder Chronicles series. Following the misadventures of Fergus Ferguson a self-described “finder,” an interstellar repo man with a knack for finding himself in unbelievably messy situations while carrying out his job, the fourth novel in the series, Ghostdrift, was published late last year.
In self-imposed exile following his last gig as a finder, where he both saved the galaxy and barely escaped with his life, Fergus Ferguson has no intention of taking another, content living in isolation on an alien beach with his cat Mister Feefs, and having found something that passes for peace. At least until one of his old friends kidnaps him and delivers him to one of the most ruthless pirates in known space, Bas Belos. Bas as it turns out has a job offer he’s not going to let Fergus refuse. He needs help finding his twin sister Bel, who went missing sixteen years ago under mysterious circumstances on the edge of the galaxy.
As always, that one last job before retirement comes with a lot of strings attached and more danger than could possibly be imagined ahead of them. The trail leads to a “ghostdrift,” a jump point that leads to a solar system in the middle of the interstellar void between two galactic arms that is a graveyard for lost ships. He’ll also find himself smack dab in the middle of a war between two warring alien species, and the Human Alliance is hot on his trail, seeking justice for past actions.
Fergus will need every skill at his disposal, every connection he’s made over the course of his career, and more luck than ever if he wants to find his way back to sipping tea on a nice beach.
A large part of the appeal of the Finder Chronicles, and Ghostdrift being no exception, is that protagonist Fergus Ferguson has as much a knack for coming up with clever solutions to solve the puzzles and problems facing him as much as he does for getting himself in those messes in the first place. Palmer rounds out the supporting cast with a lot of charm, even the ship full of renegade pirates having some moments. Throw in a wry sense of humor and some nice touches of worldbuilding, and the central mystery of the novel is a fun one to watch unfold.
Palmer also manages to wrap up a lot of the lingering plot threads and absolutely delivers on giving the series a satisfying conclusion and its weary hero a proper send off. Now that the series has reached its conclusion, if you haven’t given the Finder Chronicles a try yet, there’s never been a better time to find a new favorite.
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The Last Dangerous Visions
Edited by Harlan Ellison
Blackstone Publishing, 435 pages, $27.99
iBooks, Kindle, Nook: $9.99
ISBN: 979-8212183796
Series: Dangerous Visions 3
Genre: Theme Anthologies, Psychological/Sociological SF, Dark SF, Dystopian SF
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The thought occurs that I will be the first Reference Library columnist at Analog to review a Dangerous Visions anthology since the original columnist, P. Schuyler Miller, reviewed the first two over fifty years ago. Some small measure of what J. Michael Straczynski must have felt taking this on.
The third and final volume of Harlan Ellison’s game changing and boundary pushing anthology series, for decades The Last Dangerous Visions has lingered as one of those projects that’s always just around the corner, yet forever out of reach. Originally announced for publication in 1973, and with 122 known contributed stories from 111 authors, with a final total word count of 644,977 split across three volumes. It was bold, it was ambitious, and would remain unpublished for decades, outliving its primary editor, its original publisher, and at least 55 of the authors who’d submitted stories for it.
Last Dangerous Visions has long been genre literature’s answer to Coppola’s Megalopolis or Guns and Roses’ Chinese Democracy, a fabled passion project too troubled or too ambitious to ever see the light of day. Now, like those other two works did before it, thanks to one can only assume some titanic effort from Straczynski, The Last Dangerous Visions has, at least in some form, been released.
The stories contained are bold and evocative; a few push boundaries, and all hit their marks. Several, such as “Falling from Grace” by Ward Moore and “The Time of the Skin” by A. E. van Vogt, are the last new works we’ll ever see from some of our genre’s grandmasters. A personal favorite of mine was “War Stories” by the late great Edward Bryant, a wonderful little novelette that features weaponized sharks and biting ruminations on the nature of warfare.
Among the original fiction, there are a number of stories that leave lasting impressions. In Max Brooks’ “Hunger,” the Chinese beat America without firing a shot thanks to copyright law and GMO crops. Dan Simmons pulls absolutely no punches with “The Final Pogrom,” a tragically timely tale of anti-Semitism, and how quickly mass media and new technology could be used to make even the Holocaust pale in comparison. “After Taste” by Cecil Castellucci takes her protagonist, an interstellar food critic, through a deliciously delirious journey through alien cuisines and cultures, down to the last twisted bite. All I’ll say about “Judas Iscariot Didn’t Kill Himself: A Story in Fragments” by James S. A. Corey is that even by the standards of Dangerous Visions for pushing boundaries and buttons, they floored the gas pedal for this one.
Yet it may be Straczynski’s own contributions that cement the anthology as a must-own for genre fans. His opening essay, “Ellison Exegesis,” is a deeply personal reflection upon the life and work of Harlan Ellison and a very open examination of some of the personal demons Ellison spent most of his life fighting. I do not exaggerate when I say that the essay kept me on my seat as much as the stories, and it needs to be a part of any conversation about the life and legacy of Harlan Ellison moving forward—and should be in conversation for the Hugo Award for Best Related Work.
His editor’s note at the end of the anthology, which true to the tradition of Dangerous Visions, has ignited some controversy over the level of detail given to the selection process, revealing which authors were approached for new stories, who declined, who accepted, and the review process for the stories Harlan Ellison had previously selected. While this would be gauche for nearly any other anthology, Last Dangerous Visions isn’t just another anthology—after five decades, some answers and openness about the process were owed to readers, and Straczynski is incredibly forthright. To offer one heartbreaking example, Vonda McIntyre’s story “XYZ” was one that she, until her dying day, would gush at conventions about being included in Last Dangerous Visions—and against her dying wishes, her estate pulled permission to publish it.
I’ll also point out, by my count, there are still at least 69 short stories collected by Harlan Ellison from some of the best writers of the past century that are, at the time of this writing, still unpublished. As a fan and an anthologist, I do hope we see them all in print someday, in one place or another.
For now, though, The Last Dangerous Visions has its time in the sun, now that its long-awaited publication has seen the light of day. Time will tell if LDV will be as fondly remembered as its predecessors. For now, it more than carries on their spirit.
Sean CW Korsgaard is a U.S. Army veteran, award-winning freelance journalist, author, editor, and publicist who has worked with Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Baen Books, and Writers of the Future, and recently became the editor of Anvil and Battleborn magazines. His first anthology, Worlds Long Lost, was released in December 2022, as was his debut short story, “Black Box.” He lives in Richmond, Virginia with his wife and child, along with, depending on who you ask, either far too many or far too few books.