Sellenria: The Starship and the Citadel

Chuck Boeheim, Daniel Elswit

Believing in the impossible may be my only chance of survival.

As a professor of archaeology at the University of Trondhjem, my life revolved around telepresence digs and simspace classroom lectures—stable and predictable, exactly as I preferred. But the discovery of a peculiar artifact — a gem owned by my ancestor — upended everything. Now I’m in a dire situation, stranded on a pre-technological planet hundreds of light-years from civilization. A fey swordswoman has made me her apprentice after saving me from a creature that couldn’t possibly exist. I became advisor to the king. And now all three of us are fleeing an assassination plot. It’s mad enough to be a fantasy simspace, but it’s deadly real.

The most confounding part is that these people think my ancestor was an ancient warlock and that I’ve returned with his gem to wield his magical powers in the fight against the Blight. I’m a man of science, of order, of logic; I don’t believe in magic.

But that’s not the way this world works.

The Lens of the World

R.A. MacAvoy

The outcast Nazhuret, obviously mixed-breed and of uncertain parentage, faces the end of his term at Sordaling military school and certain conscription. He is instead offered tutelage by the mysterious Powl, a self-described optician, who turns out to be much more. Nazhuret learns optics, mathematics, languages, and combat skills. He learns to think like a scientist and question his assumptions.

Then, Powl dismisses him without explanation and tells him to take a journey.

So Nazhuret sets out, finds a traveling companion in the annoying card-sharp Arlin, and encounters the King. He discovers what it means to fulfill Powl’s enjoinder to become “The Lens of the World.”

MacAvoy’s lyrical prose brings Nazhuret’s journey to life as he makes his way through the world, absorbing and reflecting the knowledge, wisdom, and follies of everyone he meets. I compare this favorably to The Name of the Wind in the scope of its world-building and the beauty of its prose.

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Knight Moves

Walter Jon Williams

Doran Falkner is the caretaker of a depopulated Earth, healing from overuse and humanity’s wars. He made the exodus possible; now he toils on an island in Greece, restoring crumbled temples and curating the species that he hopes will one day repopulate the Earth.

If this sounds like the beginning of Roger Zelazny’s classic novel This Immortal, it is indeed an homage to that novel, fully acknowledged and lovingly executed. Williams soon takes it in a very different direction, however. A non-sentient alien species has been discovered that appears to have the ability to spontaneously teleport. This could remove the light-speed shackles that keep humankind bottled in a mere handful of worlds reached by sleeper ships. Doran leaves his projects reluctantly, knowing it will be centuries before he can resume them.

On the mission, he confronts old relationships, jealousies, misunderstandings, and a love he thought he had lost to an old rival. But these are exactly the people who can help him transform humanity and himself if he can break out of patterns of thought that evolved over eight centuries. A Walter Jon Williams story always delivers innovative storytelling and breathtaking ideas, much as Roger Zelazny always did. A Williams story conceived as a Zelazny tribute brings you the best of both authors.

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Travel Light

Naomi Mitchison

Halla was born a princess, but her mother died. The King re-wed, as they do, and the new Queen told the nursemaid to take the princess out and kill her, as they do. Instead the nursemaid ran away with Halla to live with the Bears, where she grew and learned their ways. When the Bears hibernated, she went to live with the Dragons and learned their gift of languages and their love of gold. But she found it hard to leave the Dragons, having become burdened with treasure. Then she encountered Odin, who advised her to “travel light,” and gave her his cloak. Thus freed, she began to make her way across the continent, to Constantinople and beyond.

This is a delightful fairy tale that teaches the value of wisdom over possessions, the importance of making connections with people, and the importance of choosing the right path. I found it through the unconventional method of one fictional time traveler recommending it to another in the novel This is How You Lose the Time War. (If you haven’t read that, you should!)

I highly recommend this little tale.

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Sapience

Alexis Lantgen

What kind of life will we find in the depths of Europa’s oceans? What kind of life will we allow an AI with human level intelligence? The ten stories in Sapience: A Collection of Science Fiction Short Stories explore these questions and many more.

In the near future, humanity builds a colony on Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter. They tunnel into the ice to explore the dark oceans beneath the moon’s surface, searching for signs of extraterrestrial life. What they find will change them forever, setting humanity on a path to the stars. But the old conflicts and hatreds of Earth are not so easily escaped. Will human colonists on distant planets and moons create a paradise or a horrifying dystopia?

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Steam & Aether Books 1-5: Complete Series Box Set

Jaxon Reed

Sergeant Ripley Coulter heads up E-Squad, the US Army’s premiere online unit. Fighting in an advanced simulation, he gets pulled into a parallel universe and sent back to an earlier time.

Here, the timeline has changed slightly. London is Ethinium, and all the great European empires are still competing with one another. Technology is steam-based, and the vacuum tube reigns supreme. Magic exists, along with vampires and other creatures, and the Dar control massive underground vaults beneath the major cities.

With knowledge of our world’s history, and the assistance of his gaming implant, Coulter joins the king’s forces, fights against evil . . . and falls in love.

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Honeymoon Aboard The Mary Celeste

Jay Toney

Mr. Turner is well off owning his own tech company, and on the side, he is a popular paranormal investigator. He is furious with his son for eloping with a Hartwell of all people. Snobs, all of them!

Mrs. Hartwell is equally as mad at her daughter. How dare she marry for love. Marriage is family business, not for outsiders.

Mr. Turner meets with Mrs. Hartwell. He has a business proposition that will increase their wealth, and punish their children for defying them. How far will they go? They agree to give their children an all-expense paid tour of the solar system aboard the newly commissioned Mary Celeste for a wedding gift. It is a cruise that is doomed to end in failure before it begins.

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Rescue

Edita A. Petrick

Far, far on the galactic rim, planet Synoor lies deep in the heart of the frontier. It’s a world where tribal factions clash and the dominion of the gods looms impenetrable. It’s a world where a wall is all that separates the true rulers of the Galaxy from the galactic populations. The wall is also a barrier that separates the civilized world from the lawless Rimworlds. And within the walls of this barrier, a young girl named Miranda lives a simple life, unaware of the secrets that surround her. But when the blockade of the Rimworld passage is finally broken and the truth of her heritage is revealed, Miranda—or Kitaya, as she is known to her caretakers—is thrust into a dangerous journey to uncover the fate of her parents.

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