The Reference Library

Happy New Year, dear Analog readers, one and all.

In my last column, I spent a lot of time looking back at some of the predictions and trends in the first quarter of the 21st century, yet I feel I only barely touched on maybe the most important change within the genre: the rise and boom in independent publishing. What better theme for my first Reference Library column of the next quarter century than to highlight that scene in modern speculative fiction?

While there had been some early efforts at digital publishing—Stephen King released Riding the Bullet exclusively online and sold half a million copies in 2000, and Baen Books launched the Baen Free Library and included CDs with e-books starting in 1999—it cannot be overstated just how much the advent of the e-book and the proliferation of e-readers has changed publishing.

For longtime genre fans who grew up with the two options for publication being traditional publishers and the daunting path of pre-internet self/vanity publishing, the changes that online publishing has made must seem radical. Even for younger members of fandom like myself who came of age during the transition—I was still in high school when Amazon released the first Kindle e-reader—the pace can be breathtaking.

We’ve come a long way since Andy Weir self-published The Martian.

Not only do we see indie authors making the jump to traditional publishers, but we often see longtime traditionally-published authors now dabbling in independent publishing, as a new hybrid path for authors has become common. Subgenres often neglected by traditional publishers, from sci-fi comedy to sword and sorcery, have found new life in modern indie publishing, while others like litRPG are being invented entirely. Reviewers on apps like YouTube and TikTok have changed the way books are marketed and even who they are marketed towards.

We are even seeing long-term genre institutions adjust accordingly. After years of pressure, SFWA changed its admission standards to make it easier for indie authors to qualify for membership. Likewise, several of the genre awards and longtime magazines have started to allow stories that first ran on authors’ Patreon accounts to be eligible for awards and print publication.

I like to think Rosemary Claire Smith and I have done our best to give independently published books and authors a fair shake here in the Reference Library—more astute readers may have noticed I have included at least one book from an independent or small press in each of my review columns. Nevertheless, this time around, I am reviewing books exclusively from independent publishers and authors. Better, they’re ones that I think offer an interesting sampling of the modern indie publishing scene. We have:

The first in a new series from a military science fiction author who has already sold over a million books, which lets them explore the subgenre in some exciting and different directions.

A massive anthology that collects some wild visions of Afrofuturism and space exploration, and serves to highlight one of independent publishing’s hardest working members.

A tense thriller with a cast running from their pasts and their flaws, only to have to face them as events start to take new horrifying turns.

A collection of short fiction from an Analog regular that should offer some curveballs for readers, as well as some insight into his creative process.

A cyberpunk conspiracy thriller that hits all the rights notes, with a few clever twists on the usual beats of the genre thanks to its unconventional hero.

I hope a few of these books can help each of you start 2026 with gusto and an independent spirit.

 

 

Even by the standards of military science fiction, Rick Partlow writes with the intensity and reliability of a machine gun. I say that not only in relation to his gift for writing character-driven, pulse-pounding action, but because the man cranks out new books the way a Gatling gun cranks out bullets, producing them at a speed not seen since the Golden Age authors who cut their teeth writing for the pulps.

That’s not to say Partlow ever sacrifices quality for quantity, as he has remained remarkably consistent across the over 100 books he’s authored or co-authored in the past decade, and has been rewarded by having over a million books sold, a stunning threshold for any author to achieve, trad or indie. That said, it can be daunting for newcomers to know where to start—Partlow’s Drop Trooper series alone has 16 books, not counting the spin-offs—so having a brand-new series like Archangel is a boon to readers new to Rick Partlow.

Once an elite soldier, Brent Parthet has finally put the war behind him and is now working as a warden on a planetary nature reserve, with only his family and the introduced Terran wildlife to keep him company. That is, until a Southwinder, one of the terraforming workers so heavily genetically modified they’re no longer human, comes knocking on his doorstep, asking for aid in uncovering a conspiracy that took advantage of the war between them and humanity. Worse, it isn’t long before a Coalition black ops squad following the Southwinder blows up Parthat’s home and leaves him for dead.

Unfortunately for them, Parthat survives, and he wasn’t just any soldier: he was an Archangel, a commando implanted with cutting-edge tech ranging from nanotech to neural implants, whose deadly precision earned them all codenames pulled from the Biblical heavenly host. None were deadlier than Parthat, formerly codenamed Michael. With his family killed in the crossfire, nothing will stand in his way as he hunts down the men who did it and uncovers the terrible truth his family died for: a truth that started a war between the Coalition and the Southwind and killed tens of millions of people; a truth that a number of shadowy intelligence agencies and their corporate masters will kill to keep concealed.

Longtime fans of Partlow will find an intriguing departure from his past work, with Archangel: Fallen taking a very different approach to military science fiction. They and newcomers will find a work that forces a hero used to fighting on the frontlines out of his depth in more ways than one, both for having to use more covert means as he uncovers a conspiracy, but also in that with each pull of those threads, Parthat has to confront some uncomfortable truths, including that he may well have been fighting for the wrong side.

Archangel: Fallen also brilliantly plays around with that discomfort by means of The Machine, the neural implant inside Parthat’s head that not only serves as a combat computer, but blocks off potentially damaging impulses and memories until it deems Parthat ready to handle them. This leaves Parthat to question his past and his memories in ways that add new twists to the unfolding mystery. Rick Partlow knows how to write terrific front-rank action, and with this new series, he proves he has the chops for gripping conspiracy thrillers too.

One thing I also liked is that Partlow approached Archangel: Fallen the same way one might approach a western, and not at all in the way most science fiction works appropriate the genre. Partlow describes alien landscapes and orbital stations with the same love and detail that Louis L’Amour might western vistas and shootouts, but its thematics are where this really shines. Like many a western outlaw hero, Brent Parthet finds himself pulled back into the violent life he thought he’d left behind, forced to find unusual allies, and branded an enemy by the same powerful federal forces he once fought for. The result is that Archangel: Fallen reads like a mix of The Outlaw Josey Wales and Unforgiven by way of The Forever War.

It’s a thrill ride that repeatedly finds new ways to leave even an elite super-soldier out of his depth and on his toes. Archangel: Fallen deftly navigates a number of tonal shifts, going from intimate to uncomfortable to thrilling with impressive ease. Brent Parthat makes for a great protagonist, and watching him peel back each layer of the mystery is a great read that leaves you ready for whatever his next adventure may be.

True to form, by the time you are reading this column in the new year, Partlow will have written three more books in the Archangel series, so for anyone looking for the next great conspiracy thriller from one of modern military science fiction’s best and boldest, it’ll be there before you know it.

 

 

When it comes time for genre historians to document the early, heady heyday of the indie publishing revolution over the past decade or so, Milton J. Davis needs to be among the foremost names mentioned. Over the past 20 years, Davis has been one of the hardest-working, relentlessly driven authors in an independent publishing scene where hard work and drive are the law of the jungle, tirelessly putting out his own work and building a small publishing house around the kind of fiction he wanted to see more of.

Through his Atlanta-based publisher, MVmedia, Davis has built a brand that you now see represented at every book show and convention in the American South. Well before the current boom in black literature, Davis saw an audience underserved by traditional publishing, and has now spent years finding new ways to sell books to them. Not only has he published his own outstanding sword and sorcery, he was an instrumental figure in preserving the work of Charles Saunders and has been the tip of the spear in the revival of the sword and soul subgenre. He has written or published everything from children’s literature to romance. In science fiction, he has written for several different anthologies and produced several of his own as an editor, Spacefunk! being the latest.

Coming in at just over 700 pages long and featuring 48 stories (not including an introduction from Davis), there’s an incredible variety of authors and approaches to space opera in the anthology, with a few surprises in store for nearly any reader.

Some of them are old favorites and familiar names—Analog readers should be familiar with Wole Talabi (“Blowout”, July/August 2023 issue) whose “Drift-Flux”, a caper aboard a mining vessel, has that same wonderful mix of engineering know-how, wry humor, and can-do spirit that won him an AnLab award. Maurice Broadus, no stranger to space opera with his Asta Black trilogy, is in top form with “Vade Retro Satana”, as is S.A. Cosby with “A Harvest Among the Stars”, a tale of diamond mining the skies of Jupiter that proves no less ethical or humane than those on Earth.

Others are new to genre, or new to me. Dedren Snead, who I previously knew primarily for his work in fantasy, has “Collards and Codecs”, a semi-epistolary tale of First Contact and the struggle to maintain continuity of culture. “Kill the Moon” by Antoine Bandele is an at times comic and at times tragic story of an unconventional First Contact gone terribly wrong. “The Third Eye Manifester” by Ishola Abdulwasiu Ayodele opens with an absolutely brutal first line, then presents a number of ethical quandaries before an unforgettable finish,

There are some surreal poetry inclusions as well, such as “Space Children Dream of the Last Place” by Linda Addison, or “Cyberpunk” by Darrell Stover, a reprinted poem from 1990, colorful and wild, and certainly proof that Afrofuturism has been around long before its current boom period. “Canticle of the Cosmic Vampire” by Sumiko Saulson is as wild as you’d hope with that title, and Davis himself even contributes his own poem, “Leviathan.”

Above anything else, I think Spacefunk! is a perfect showcase not just for Afrofuturism or space opera, but for what a difference that one author can make in independent publishing. Milton Davis saw an underserved audience and not only built a small publishing empire serving that audience, but helped to mentor and uplift other authors along the way. There are dozens of authors, both traditionally published or independent, that trace their roots to him, and countless more that will follow the path he paved in independent publishing.

Every editor and author should be so lucky.

 

 

The more things change in genre fandom, the more they stay the same. In this case, I found this novel by that most cherished of fan traditions—from an author hand-selling their books at a science fiction convention. It’s a great way to support your local writers and get a feel for some of the more experimental or unusual approaches to the genre. Even by those standards, The Third Test and Alyssa Hazel are true standouts, proper diamonds in the rough.

It was supposed to be a simple, uneventful trip through space for the travelers aboard The Calico. Their destination wasn’t exciting, their reasons for going there even less so, but with the ongoing war between blocks of worlds aligned with either Kasian and its newly independent colony of Breccia, lack of excitement was part of the appeal. Colony 76 was a backwater that has lost contact with both sides since the conflict began, and the long journey there would serve as a tour of duty, or at least some reliable paychecks, for the passengers and crew.

At least until a raid by pirates leaves the ship wounded, cargo lost, a handful of passengers dead, and The Calico is more or less forced to crash-land at their destination. Colony 76 is an inhospitable milky white world, covered by sand and storms. The native and introduced plants and wildlife have taken a savage turn, and the colonists who have managed to eke out a living here in isolation even more so. The residents, forced to live underground, have fallen sway to some unsavory leadership, whose intentions towards visitors is proving anything but innocent. For the survivors of The Calico, leaving Colony 76 may prove even more dangerous than getting there.

The beating heart and soul of The Third Test are the characters we are introduced to aboard The Calico. The church acolyte Catina De Bacui, struggling with both her role as a young missionary sent to a hardship posting and as the young daughter of a prominent Kasian banking family. Simon Novac, a youth drafted to serve in the growing Breccian bureaucracy and sent to establish trade with the backwater colony. Dr. Yen, deep in debt after medical school and a bitter divorce, looking to leave his old life behind while also leaving the kids he never gets to see something for when they turn eighteen. Vazo and Tamri Malone, the twin siblings who crew The Calico, and much like their ship, have started to show their age, and are weighing retirement. We get to learn more about them, their pasts, their motivations, their personal failings, and the plot finds increasingly devious ways to turn those against them.

Which may well be the most clever thing about the book—it’s a science fiction horror novel that, until The Calico arrives on Colony 76, plays down the horror, reading more like a thriller or character drama. You get to know these people, get to care about them, which as the dread starts creeping up on you, makes it all the more painful. The Third Test lets the horror elements burn very slowly, and by the time you notice them, that spark has grown into an inferno, metaphorically and literally. I also liked how the horror elements were kept largely mundane—a lot of science fiction horror tends to make its source of terror alien or technological, but here, it’s very human.

I also appreciated the novel’s approach to religion, using faith, self-doubt, and tensions between different sects and interpretations for drama and added horror. While this has been used to great effect in science fiction by authors from Walter Miller to Wil McCarthy, I wish more modern science fiction approached religion the way The Third Test does, as clever background flavor that fits naturally with the storytelling, with a more personal touch rather than a thematic approach.

Hazel writes with a deliciously pulp sensibility, and is clearly an author well read and versed on the classics, who wears that on her sleeve. The Third Test reads like something that could have been serialized in one of the genre magazines of the Golden Age.

The Third Test does a wonderful job introducing its cast, and then an even better job keeping you on the edge of your seat as it places them in ever increasing peril. That touch of creeping, slow burn horror really makes it stand out, with even a tinge of heartbreak by the end. As of the time I’m writing this column, a sequel is in the works, and I’ll be curious to see what directions Hazel plans to go in exploring this universe in the future. If you’re looking for a wonderful character-driven horror thriller, catch a ride with The Calico yourself, and buckle in.

 

 

Among the more tragic shifts in traditional publishing over the past few years has been the dwindling numbers of short fiction collections. Where once they were a great way for writers who prefer penning short fiction to land a book deal, now they’re borderline extinct, as even collections by commercially successful authors are a hard sell.

It is fortunate then, that they survive in independent publishing, with Uncle Roy’s Computer Repairs and Used Robot Parts: and Other Stories being the latest such collection from Martin. L. Shoemaker. In my humble opinion, Shoemaker is one of the great unsung heroes of modern hard science fiction, with short stories appearing in Clarkesworld, Galaxy’s Edge, and Digital Science Fiction. His Nebula-nominated short story “Today I Am Paul,” was expanded into Today I am Carey, a moving look at artificial intelligence and elder care that is a dear favorite of mine.

Of course, if you’re a regular reader of Analog, you’re no doubt familiar with Shoemaker and his work already, with his most recent story in the magazine, the novella “Uncle Roy’s Computer Repairs and Used Robot Parts” from the May/June 2024 issue, winning the 2025 AnLab Award for Best Novella. That same story lends its name to this collection.

Along with “Uncle Roy,” two of the stories have previously been published in issues of Analog: “Early Warning” in the April 2016 issue, and “On Her Shoulders” in the September/October 2019 issue, with the rest republished from various anthologies, and a number of stories are entirely original to the collection.

One of my favorites was “Lunar Asylum Claim,” where a cat-and-mouse chase between assassins and a refugee on the Moon threatens war back on Earth. Another was “Meet the Landlord,” which reminded me very much of the Callahan’s Bar stories, where an alien with a Bronx accent wanders into a pub and claims legal ownership of the Earth, Maybe the funniest story in the collection is “The Many Lives of Max Peck,” which has the titular character meet multiple versions of himself from across the universe, trying to figure out who killed one of the versions of himself.

For those who missed Sean Patrick Hazlett’s Weird World War anthologies, two of the stories are reprinted from there, “The Ouroboros Arrangement,” in which entanglement theory may cause or prevent a nuclear war, and “A Line in the Stars,” which follows a gripping assault on a space station over control of orbital weaponry. On the more comic side of military science fiction, there’s “It’s Classified,” which once again proves military intelligence is an oxymoron.

As is often the case, one of the highlights of the collection are Shoemaker’s notes and behind the scenes details. His notes on his creative process and inspiration for each story are colorful, and as you’d expect for someone who mentors up-and-coming writers with Writers of the Future, offer some pearls of wisdom for any writers looking for tips.

Throughout it all, Shoemaker’s voice shines through, as does his optimistic, humanistic approach to science fiction. For those who love the work of authors like Spider Robinson or Robert Silverberg, Martin L. Shoemaker is very much a kindred spirit, penning stories that pose interesting problems requiring creative solutions—all with plenty of heart. If you’ve enjoyed his stories in Analog and want to get a better feel for his work or maybe to just learn what makes an AnLab winner tick, this is for you.

 

 

Cyberpunk is an interesting genre when it comes to striking a balance between hitting the familiar beats readers expect and still managing to strike new chords and push boundaries, “punk” being in the title of the subgenre after all. The strongest part of Falling Into Oblivion, the debut novel from book reviewer Aaron M. Payne, is how incredibly genre savvy it ends up being—it knows what beats to hit, but more impressively, the twists and spins it puts on the old formula are almost never the ones you’re expecting.

Nox City is everything we’ve come to expect from a dystopian techno cityscape. At its richest ends, it is a decadent and gaudy playground for the rich; at its poorest, a dirty and crime-ridden gutter where making a living is hard and life is cheap. The police tasked with keeping the peace are struggling to keep things together, even with a bounty system that makes bringing wrongdoers to justice a reliable way to earn cash if you’re lucky—and given many of these criminals sport cybernetic enhancements, from hologram projectors to super strength, it can be deadly work even if you are very lucky.

Detective Sol Harkones has certainly been luckier. The low-level crook he has been chasing keeps managing to stay one step ahead of him, and the various bill collectors he needs this bounty to pay off are just one step behind. Sol is also something of an oddity in Nox City, a place where even street thugs have implanted cybernetics: he refuses any such modifications himself, a mundane man in a modified world. He relies on old tech and sharp wit to stay ahead and alive so he can get home to his family.

Which is why it’s so unexpected that he of all people stumbles upon a conspiracy while chasing his suspect. A batch of implants has been causing permanent brain damage in their users. Sinister forces are at work and body count is rising. Now neck-deep in it himself, Sol is an analog man in a digital city, forced to solve a deadly mystery and above it all, answer a lingering question—what is Oblivion?

By far the biggest departure from cyberpunk subgenre norms in Falling Into Oblivion is without a doubt its protagonist Sol Harkones. Hiro Protagonist or Morgan Blackhand he is not—in a genre where often its heroes are as wrapped in the technology as everything else about their world, Sol seems to actively rebel against a world of robots, cybernetics, and virtual reality. He voices disgust for the tech and what it’s done to the world around him, a cyberpunk hero who actively hates cyberpunk. This curmudgeonly attitude is paired with a reliance on increasingly unreliable analog tech and his own wit and will.

Yet the cleverest detail about Sol isn’t what he is struggling against, but what he puts up with it all for: his family. Maybe it’s just because I’m a new father myself, but I found it immediately relatable how Sol does mental calculations on the job for when he needs to collect his bounties to pay for his kid’s school, or blocks out his casework so he can still make it home to read to them, or is frustrated when something in the field means taking him away longer from home. It adds an unconventional ticking clock to the cases as well, something every working parent has had to juggle, and making Sol a dedicated and doting family man adds some very human heart to the character. This, combined with his reliance on his wit and rebellion against norms, makes Sol Harkones a cyberpunk Columbo of sorts.

The pace of Falling Into Oblivion is frenetic, and even as each new development in the ongoing mystery throws you for a curveball, it doesn’t let up until the crescendo. For a debut novelist, Payne also deserves a lot of credit for weaving in the worldbuilding naturally, and for staging some genuinely engaging action scenes. Not only do they keep you on the edge of your seat, but given the nature of regularly putting an everyman hero like Sol against often heavily enhanced cyborgs and robots, he is nearly always out of his depth, outgunned, and knocked around, making each fight a puzzle that needs to be solved to come out on top.

The end result is an impressive balancing act. It reads like an action thriller, the central conspiracy takes some wild turns, and at the center of it all, a stiff-collared gumshoe who always does his darndest to get his man, rebel against the society in which he lives, and get home to tuck his kids into bed every night.

A tie-in novella and the second book in the series are both due out in early 2026, so hopefully by the time you are reading this, we’ll have more Sol Harkones mysteries to enjoy. In the meantime, for those seeking out a cyberpunk murder mystery that goes full throttle from the first page and never lets go, dive into Falling Into Oblivion and hang on tight.

 

 

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.