Aurora (Kim Stanley Robinson)

This is a massive, richly detailed, comprehensive science fiction story with an almost anti-SF theme. It begins on a generation ship that's almost reached its target planet, Aurora, which has enough similarities to Earth that it seems a likely place for humans to create a viable colony.. The ship is fascinating, a character in its own right, and the people living aboard are a complex set of people with a wide range of motivations and perspectives. Robinson does a great job representing the ethnic diversity of humanity in this miniature world. Of course, people face a spiraling series of cascading technological challenges before the story finally ends. The final scenes are as warm and uplifting as one could want, but the overall message is far from encouraging. This book does not flinch from the really hard challenges of life in space, and does not gloss them over with an ad astra! (to the stars!) optimism. There is also a deep and thoughtful consideration of questions relating to artificial intelligence and the nature of consciousness.

The Apocalypse Codex (Charles Stross)

Another in the Laundry Files series, which I love for its humor, its intelligence, and its willingness to twist genre boundaries into Moebius strips. Bob Howard is again the narrator, telling how he is threatened with promotion within the more-secret-than-secret British agency charged with protecting England and the world from Lovecraftian horrors that constantly try to breach the boundaries between the worlds and munch on our tasty human souls. In this version, the charismatic leader of a splinter faction of an evangelistic American church is demonstrating a distressingly effective ability to rally the faithful. It turns out that the Second Coming is not quite what they think it is, and Howard and a beautiful, powerful witch named Persephone have to shut them down. If you like humor and horror woven together, you'll love this one.

Living With a Wild God (Barbara Ehrenreich)

The author as a mature woman, veteran of marriages and illnesses and careers, looks back at a quest she began at age 14 to understand the real nature of the universe. Raised as a staunch atheist, she wondered what the purpose of life and the universe could have beyond reproduction and death. Was there some ineffable, inexpressible Other that gave the world its real nature? For most of her life, Ehrenreich has been subject to what can only be called mystical experiences, in which language and human labels are leached away, leaving only pure sensations and a strong sense of Presence. This book is her attempt to describe her experiences as accurately as she can and to determine what they might mean. My professional background and my scientific inclinations lead me to something like this: brain circuitry developed for the purpose of recognizing and predicting the behavior of the intelligent social creatures we lived with (other people) sometimes overshoots, leading to pariedolia and, in the case of temporal-lobe epilepsy, a strong sense of oneness with the divine. Ehrenreich dismisses these explanations too glibly, I believe, lumping them in the category of "mental illness." I will grant her that no evidence disproves the existence of Others that are invisible to any rational scientific investigation and can't even be approached in a rational linguistic frame, but I don't accept that she has provided any actual evidence in favor of its existence either. No matter--the book is a fascinating look at the really big questions, and will provoke anyone to think deeply about them.

An Impartial Witness (Charles Todd)

This second story of the intrepid WWI nurse Bess Crawford is as gentle and as strong as she is. Gentle, not in the sense that nothing bad ever happens, for there are murder and mayhem and life-and-death knife fights, but in the sense that Bess herself is a good soul, struggling to see that right triumphs in a dark world. There is an interesting mystery beginning with the murder of a young woman, where Bess is an impartial witness to some of her last hours. From there, the mystery spirals, taking in additional people and additional crimes. There were a few spots where I was annoyed at how much she pushed other people to accept her view of things because she knew she was right, only to have her view overturned moments later, and now she knows her new view is right. In the end she did wind up solving the mystery, so it all came to a satisfactory conclusion. I enjoyed the feeling of England during this bloody, heart-tearing war and the stoicism of the people determined to keep finding the best in life despite everything.

Echopraxia (Peter Watts)

I admired Watts's earlier Blindsight for its intelligence, its mind-blowing ideas, and its frequent reference to ideas that are square in the center of my own professional areas of interest. Echopraxia is more of the same, and even more so. It takes place in the same universe as the earlier book, focusing on what's going on back home while Humanity's heroes are engaging in a deeply mysterious first Contact. The main character, a biologist of the old school who eschews most forms of direct brain augmentation, gets caught up in an increasingly challenging set of circumstances as he fights to save himself and humanity from vampires, scientific mystics, military zombies, and alien slime mold. It's not clear whether or not he is successful. I admire the brilliance of his thinking and world-building. I love that I know about little bits of psychological research he tosses out. I was impressed with how he gave one character a unique voice, a sense of rapid delivery and impatience, simply by leaving out commas. Still, I can't say that I loved either book, and I'm afraid that it's because I'm not smart enough to read Peter Watts. I had the constant feeling that I didn't quite know what's actually happening, and kept going in the belief that it would become clear eventually, but it never did. If you loved Blindsight and you're smart enough to follow down the rabbit hole, you will probably love this one as well.

Rooms (Lauren Oliver)

Part ghost story, part mystery, this novel bounces between several points of view. After Richard Walker dies, his estranged wife, their two adult children, and their daughter's little girl come to the old house to clean up and hold his memorial service. They don't know that the house is the home, in fact the body, of a collection of ghosts. As the story unfolds, we learn about who the ghosts are and why they are still here, and we learn about the broken lives of the people moving through the old place. At times the people, living and dead, felt more like symbols than real people, but the author's language is seductive and the tale draws you in.

The Leftovers (Tom Perrotta)

At one moment, all over the world, people suddenly vanish. Cars careen driverless, dinners burn on the stove, babies stop crying between one breath and the next. Some folks immediately think it's the Rapture, but there is no rhyme or reason as to who goes and who stays: old, young, Christian, Muslim, atheist, kind, abusive. No explanation is every uncovered for the Great Departure. This book is about what happens to those who are left. Everyone is knocked off-kilter, either because of their own loved ones gone, or because of the disruption to society and to their sense of the stability of the world. A woman tries to find a life after her whole family is taken, a mother retreats from her own fully-intact family out of a sense that the world has lost something that can't be regained, a boy leaves college to follow a charismatic guru. These characters are real and their pain, and their heroism, call out to all of us. Tender and wrenching, this book draws you in and won't let go.

Three Days to Never (Tim Powers)

This intricate time travel story deals starts with an old woman dying in the mountains miles from where she was moments ago. It turns out that she had links with Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein, and these links bring her to the attention of Mossad, the Israeli security agency, as well as a rival group of spies. The woman's son and granddaughter wind up under attack from both groups because they found some mysterious artifacts in the old woman's shed, including a videocassette of Pee-wee's Big Adventure that turns out to be something else entirely. The story is complex and at many times confusing, but I really cared about the central characters and I loved how it expanded my mind.

Case Histories (Kate Atkinson)

This mystery has an unusual structure. It starts by describing three crimes that took place over a 30-year period (a little girl vanishes, an overwhelmed new mother murders her husband, a teen is killed in a random workplace attack). It then jumps to a present-day detective who winds up looking into all three cases, while dealing with the divorce-drinking-angst difficulties that fictional detectives often seem to deal with. I expected that the three cases would wind up linked somehow, but that's not what happens; their only real link is that the detective is investigating them. I enjoyed figuring out what was happening or had happened, and there were some surprising twists and turns along the way, but I can't say that I loved this book. Some of the threads remain too loose for me, and some of the events too coincidental to be convincing. So while the characters and settings were generally well drawn, and the mysteries mysterious, I didn't quite click with this book.

Dear Committee Members (Julie Schumacher)

This is a tiny jewel of a novel, made entirely of letters of recommendation written by an irascible, acerbic professor of English at a small university. His letters tell, in pointed prose, stories of financial challenges, boneheaded administrators, past loves, present feuds, and the full range of students: clueless, ambitious, timid, gifted, and poignant. It felt perfectly real next to my own academic experience, and while I more than once literally laughed out loud (and I do know what literally means), there is more to the story than comedy. I recommend it to anyone, particularly to all who toil in the ivory tower.

The Signature of All Things (Elizabeth Gilbert)

This novel traces the long and complex life of Alma Whittaker throughout the 1800s. She was born to wealth, with parents who made their fame and fortune with plants, and developed from early childhood a strong mind with a love of science, languages, and most of all plants. In this leisurely, richly detailed book we see her childhood relationship with her parents and her adopted sister, her various unlucky loves, her travels to exotic lands, and her brilliance as a botanist. Alma is a complex person with layers and layers of strengths and weaknesses, and it is wonderful to watch her make her way in the world, sometimes battered, sometimes doing the battering herself. All the characters, settings, and events are vivid and three-dimensional. This book will disappoint those looking for action, but there is adventure in plenty of a quieter sort.

The Fold (Peter Clines)

This story features a likeable hero with an unusual ability: a truly intensely photographic memory and a sky-high IQ. Mike remembers effortlessly everything he's ever seen, in perfect detail, and can link any memory with any other to uncover patterns no one else can find. He wants to live an ordinary life teaching high school English, but is drafted by a friend in the defense department to investigate a remarkable project and determine whether its funding should be continued. A group of researchers have apparently developed the ability to transfer matter instantaneously across space, but they maintain absolute secrecy about how the trick works, refusing even to let the DoD know any details until they are ready to go public. When Mike goes in to investigate he finds that they can indeed move things, including people, from here to there as simply as taking a step, but there is something wrong. By the time he tracks it down, it's save-the-world time. A few details got rattled my belief, but by and large the story works well on all levels. I did figure out the main mystery pretty early because it triggered the memory of an old SF story with much the same idea, but that didn't spoil it for me. I recommend it.