The Reference Library
The Reference Library
By Rosemary Claire Smith
I sat down to write this column on April 2, 2026, the day after Artemis II launched humanity’s first international crew of one woman and three men on a journey farther than any person had ever gone, including the astronauts in Apollo command modules that orbited the Moon over fifty years ago. Some Analog readers well remember those glory days. For any number of GenX readers, however, watching the Artemis II launch triggered PTSD, given their youthful memories of tragedy during the era of the space shuttles. For young readers who weren’t yet born, perhaps humans stamping their boot prints into the lunar surface seems like ancient history from the time before modern rocketry, self-propelled rovers, and drone-like helicopters advanced our understanding of the solar system many times over. And yet, there is something so undeniably thrilling about four brave, determined, highly-trained individuals setting out to explore the cosmos, not because it is easy but because it is hard, and returning home safely. For those wishing the recent achievements had come decades ago, I recommend Burning Night, the finale to Alan Smale’s alternate history series.
Ah, but what would science fiction be without the weirdest lifeforms imaginable? Thus it has been ever since Stanley Weinbaum’s 1934 story, “A Martian Odyssey.” Almost a century later, S.L. Huang conjures up truly unusual aliens in The Language of Liars. Molly Tanzer’s And Side By Side They Wander shows what can happen when humans bring aliens into an interstellar art heist caper. Ann Leckie returns to her Imperial Radchaii universe with Radiant Star.
Meanwhile back on Earth, cloning continues to be an ever-popular staple of our field, dating back at least to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Notable writers such as Lois McMaster Bujold, C.J. Cherryh, David Brin, and John Varley gave us fascinating looks at what advances in cloning might mean for humanity’s future. Now, Meg Elison’s Foundling Fathers posits cloning four figures from American history. Hot new writer Isabel J. Kim’s Sublimation supplies a fresh take on ways in which the intricacies of genetics and lived experiences might impact our individual personalities when people are inadvertent duplicated. Closer to home, Glenn Dixon scrutinizes AIs as the masters of our household appliances, our vehicles, and our lives in The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances.
Radiant Star
Ann Leckie
Orbit Books
May 12, 2026
ISBN: 9 78-0-31629-068-5
368 pages
Radiant Star is the sixth novel in Ann Leckie’s acclaimed Imperial Radch series. This one is set in Ooioiaa, a city buried deep within an icy rogue planet that is no longer gravitationally bound to its original star. The planet is a backwater in Leckie’s sprawling galactic empire, one which readers have not visited before now. Side note: We may soon learn more about these “wandering worlds” once NASA’s new Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope gives astronomers the ability to investigate some of the estimated millions or billions of rogue planets in the Milky Way Galaxy.
Several narratives weave in and out, beginning when Ooioiaa is abruptly cut off from the rest of the Radchaii empire on which it depends for regular shipments of food. First, we meet a young man who was sold into servitude before he was born. Next up is the governor and her assistants, who dither when they ought to come to grips with the growing crisis. They would be at home overseeing a remote colony of the British Empire. Meanwhile, a venal elderly aristocrat schemes to become a “living saint.” His even less likable son covets the father’s holdings while the son’s socialite wife obsesses over her status. Then there is a prominent religious mystic at odds with the jealous leader of his sect intent on jockeying for exclusive control of a holy site shared with another sect.
Like many of Leckie’s viewpoint characters, including the clones of Anaander Mianaii in Ancillary Justice, these are not likable people whom readers would be inclined to root for unreservedly. Most of them range from irritating to despicable. Throughout the deepening crisis, several figures maneuver and manipulate while trotting out convenient justifications for their actions. Few consider sacrificing for others close to them, much less for the greater good of their city. Come to think of it, many of Leckie’s central figures lack anyone close to them, at least at the outset. As food shortages devolve into an extended, wide-spread, life-threatening famine, testing rich and poor alike, their predicaments are gripping and their choices understandable. Leckie prods us to evaluate our own responses if faced with these dire circumstances. We are left to ponder privately what we hope we would not do and what we fear we would do.
It’s understandable that Leckie’s Radch novels can be too tough-minded to appeal to some science fiction enthusiasts. I was nearly one of these. It took me a couple of tries to engage with Ancillary Justice. Then there’s Translation State, which some readers will put down upon reaching the first descriptions of a sapient species whose biological instinct is to indulge in cannibalism. Rest assured, dear readers, these aliens appear nowhere in Radiant Star. Nor is there any overt depiction of cannibalism here in the middle of a steadily worsening food shortage that sparks riots and leads to famine.
For readers who haven’t joined this bandwagon and wonder if they should, be advised that Radiant Star makes a fine entry point. It is told from the perspective of a nearly-omniscient highly-opinionated narrator several centuries after the events depicted. Leckie uses this narrative technique to intersperse essential information regarding her fascinating universe. Such paragraphs, in the hands of less-skilled writers, are frequently derided as info-dumps. In contrast, Leckie feeds readers material that is intrinsically fascinating and enhances our understanding of the characters’ beliefs and motivations.
Those familiar with Leckie’s previous novels will find nice Easter eggs, such as passing reference to the Radchaii troop carrier Justice of Toren. Her striking approach to gender variations is also on display in Radiant Star, but not in as much detail as in Translation State. Instead, she scrutinizes the impact of religion on many people’s lives, including mystical visions and deeply-held differences in belief when sects coexist uneasily at a site sacred to them all.
Burning Night (book 3, Apollo Rising series)
Alan Smale
Caezik SF & Fantasy (Arc Manor)
November 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64710-166-4
550 pages
Several times during the late 1970s and1980s, political saber-rattling by global superpowers threatened to lead to nuclear annihilation. Alan Smale’s Apollo Rising series builds on the fraught nature of actual events in Europe and elsewhere to explore how situations might have played out on the Moon. Burning Night wraps up this saga begun in Hot Moon and continued in Radiant Sky as seen through the eyes of several fictional American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts. Individually, they possess almost as much of the right stuff as the famed Mercury Seven combined. Which is to say, they may be physically and psychologically battered after their lunar adventures, but remain determined to devote their utmost to yet more difficult and dangerous missions. Vivian Carter is stationed on the Astarte Skylab at the Earth-Moon L5 point, about to assume command of a two-year flyby of both Venus and Mar. Her seven-person crew consists of ex-military pilots, planetary scientists, and a physician. Meanwhile, Terri Brock is exploring a crater near the Moon’s south pole when her team comes upon the remains of a secret base camp, now abandoned, from where “cryptonauts” launched an attack on U.S. astronauts in Radiant Sky. Svetlana Belyakova heads the Soviet half of Copernicus-Zvezda, the joint U.S.-U.S.S.R. Moonbase. At Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado, Peter Sandoval oversees the Night Corps, a branch of the Air Force that conducts highly-classified covert ops in space. As hostilities on Earth ramp up, the astronauts and cosmonauts must continually reevaluate the extent to which friendships they previously forged in the Moon’s unrelentingly hostile environment still mean they can trust one another, and if they ever could have.
Naturally, a 500+ page novel spanning a journey of over two years would leave readers exhausted if it were to proceed at breakneck speed the whole way. Burning Night is well paced, interspersing the overarching techno-thriller plot with plenty of material for those interested in the psychological stresses people face when confined to a spaceship for months or years. These lead to the ways shared experiences can reinforce human connections with one other. Smale also convincingly portrays how astronauts’ usually respond to tense situations with calm determination and a sense of humor. That said, at times this wildly-ambitious inter-planetary jaunt proceeds a little too smoothly when it comes to mechanical and technological mishaps.
Speaking of engineering challenges, the Apollo Rising novels provide fascinatingly different solutions that the U.S. and the Soviet Union might well have adopted in the 1980s. For example, it’s striking to realize how those accustomed to a given descent speed would find it alarming to land in a vehicle built to come down much more quickly. Smale also gives serious consideration to the difficulty of moving between spaceships not designed to dock neatly with each other. Thankfully, his American astronauts recognize the absurdity of hopping into unfamiliar Soviet vehicles whose controls are written in the Russian alphabet, much less throwing a few switches and hot-rodding it to adventures. As with the previous Apollo Rising novels, Burning Night includes an essay addressing the feasibility of some technologies not actually pursued, plus the consequences of various political events, and intriguing scientific discoveries beyond Earth’s orbit.
Burning Night fires on all cylinders as it takes readers on a white-knuckle ride, tugging at heart strings the whole way before attempting a dicey never-tried landing. Smale knows how to deliver an emotionally satisfying conclusion to this behemoth of an alternate-history epic.
And Side By Side They Wander
Molly Tanzer
Tordotcom
May 19, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-25038-205-4
112 pages
For decades, science fiction writers have set engaging heist stories in the future, sometimes on other planets or space stations, frequently employing advanced high-tech devices, and occasionally featuring poorly understood aliens. Molly Tanzer’s latest work has all these. In fact, at first blush, And Side By Side They Wander seems like it must have too many disparate elements crammed into too few pages. In addition to the oddball, quarrelsome assortment of thieves intent on an interstellar art heist, there are furry technologically-advanced aliens who’ve helped Earth recover from the brink of climate-disaster, a gigantic insectoid alien, an updated retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice, precise reproductions of artistic masterpieces, a sentient synthetic being physically resembling Jack Kirby, and sentient fungi. Never fear, it’s a fascinating melange.
Hundreds of years before the story opens, the Celerians rescued the Mona Lisa, the Parthenon marbles, the Venus de Milo, a bronze Ife head, and many other virtuoso works of art, which they placed “on loan” in a museum constructed before Earth’s Cambrian explosion. They promised to return these irreplaceable treasures when humans demonstrated that they could safely care for them. It will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with requests made of the British Museum, the Louvre, and countless other museums throughout Europe and North America to learn that three hundred years later, the Celerian curators still refuse to return our cultural heritage.
A bare minimum of five characters signup to bring a handful of these treasures back to Earth. Not surprisingly, the team is put together by a wealthy mastermind. He recruits the biotech modded muscle, the alien pilot who comes with its own spaceship, a hacker who is the most powerful sentient machine in existence, and the narrator, who is an art-history buff having unfinished business with the hacker. Packing high-tech weapons, unreliable schematics, and simmering jealousies, the cocky, quarrelsome band sets out to retrieve Earth’s finest masterpieces of art. And Side By Side They Wander follows the structure of a futuristic heist plot, dispensing tantalizing hints as to how the plans might come unraveled and who might have ulterior motives. Tanzer layers in back stories centered on romance, art history, reproductions versus original works, and obscene wealth. The central plot zips right along, perhaps a tad too quickly, and with a twist I did not see coming. As an inveterate museum-goer, I’ll remember this one for quite some time.
The Language of Liars
- L. Huang
Tordotcom
ISBN: 978-1-25040-533-3
April 21, 2026
176 pages
In The Language of Liars, S. L. Huang conjures up three utterly alien species with nary a human in sight. The story opens with Ro, a furry two-hearted, four-stomached Ponto living in the tunnels of Orro. He’s a young, talented linguist-in-training whose greatest desire is to learn enough to “jump” into the body of a Star Eater. Ro isn’t particularly concerned that jumping entails supplanting his host’s mind, thereby enabling him to become a spy in the sole surviving colony of Star Eaters. This enigmatic, almost extinct species is prized for its unique ability to mine “meridian,” a vital compound making faster-than-light travel feasible in Huang’s richly-populated universe. Here, similarities to Dune end.
Although Ro diligently applies himself to the study of linguistics, he neglects other aspects of his education. Because Ponto linguists so rarely succeed in jumping, Ro’s teachers have written him off as not smart enough or sufficiently talented to do so. But when, to everyone’s surprise, Ro does jump, he finds himself woefully unprepared to function in a radically different body, much less mine meridian under the ever-watchful scrutiny of the snakelike Overseers. For the Star Eaters, daily life consists of getting up, harvesting meridian all day long, returning exhausted to their tiny cells, resting, and then doing it all again, with no days off.
Readers who enjoy learning a new language can sympathize with Ro’s fumbling attempts to communicate on a basic level with the first Star Eaters he meets, as well as with his continuing efforts to parse sentences for possible meanings. As a lawyer, I found it fascinating to follow a character who is highly attuned to the slipperiness of language and the ways in which it can be used to mislead by implication and omission. That said, readers who are not steeped in linguistic terminology, or who have never attempted to study a second language, may well find The Language of Liars to be a challenge at first. Do not give up. It’s easy to sympathize with this naive but enthusiastic linguist who finds himself on his own, befuddled by his surroundings as he adjusts to his new body’s unfamiliar senses and struggles to speak the local language well enough to get by. For Ro, sentences can dissolve into ambiguity and conversations end in unexpected embarrassment. Huang gives us an unflinching depiction of feeling like an idiot every day, or perhaps every hour, during each interaction with others, made worse when pride in ones’ proficiency must give way to reality.
The ongoing humiliation strips Ro of the linchpin of his identity, thereby leading to something more vital: the recognition of the power of language and the need for compassion. For the Star Eater mining colony is not as it seems. For all his inner doubts mixed with self-congratulatory confidence and the desire to become a Star Eater, Ro is forced to stop and question the role he plays in a greater tragedy. What emerges is a meditation on exploitation and cultural erasure dressed up as academic study.
Foundling Fathers
Meg Elison
Tachyon Publications
June 23, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-61696-458-0
192 pages
Teenagers Ben Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adamsare being raised on an isolated island plantation under the supervision of their teacher, John Hancock, and their mother, Mary Libertas. When Ben Franklin comes across a cell phone in the privy, it takes him twenty seven minutes to discover pornography on the Internet. Thus begins Meg Elison’s Foundling Fathers. The four “brothers” are clones whose lives, as well as their ostensibly eighteenth-century upbringing, are masterminded by the Antediluvian Society, a batch of conservative billionaire megalomaniacs. Prone to uttering self-congratulatory pronouncements, the Antediluvian Society’s long-term goal is nothing less than to inculcate the four boys with principles drawn from influential thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment. So armed, the boys will be expected to restore the United States to greatness. With nobody to tell them not to, the billionaires launch their secret cabal built on one part hagiography, one part cutting-edge technology, and one part contemptuous disdain for mere mortals, which Elison melds into a delightfully cutting satire.
Ah, but like many parents, the billionaires are about to learn that children can be disappointing, particularly when they reach their teenage years. Jefferson’s interest lies in pursuing the enslaved girls, who would endanger themselves were they to refuse his unwanted advances. Meanwhile, Adams, the youngest, proves to be adept with firearms and also rebels against the adults in charge. Hancock views Washington as the best prospect, and encourages his natural leadership skills. That smartphone, however, proves to be the catalyst for the restless quartet of “brothers,” fueling their determination to venture into the wider world without delay.
Beneath each scene lies Elison’s undeniable fury at today’s technocratic elite who form an economic aristocracy wielding raw power oh-so-casually over everyone else’s lives, and who cannot conceive of examining their own hubris. These days, I devoutly hope that Foundling Fathers remains fiction and will not be taken as inspiration by those capable of devoting an insignificant portion of their vast wealth to some misguided scheme in which a few carefully-selected great men are chosen to return the United States to what they consider to be its glorious roots.
Sublimation
Isabel J. Kim
Tor Publishing Group | Tor Books
June 2, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-25037-679-4
368 pages
Isabel J. Kim’s debut novel, Sublimation, addresses themes of identity in a fresh way. Many novels employ multiple timelines to analyze the consequences of pivotal choices in one’s life including all the roads not taken and the paths not pursued as to education, career, life partners, family relationships, and places to live, for openers. In Sublimation, crossing a border—between land and sea or an immigration check point, or a different type of divide—can sometimes cause the person who crosses to be duplicated. One “instance” of that person travels on to whatever lies ahead while the other instance remains behind to continue their life as before. Instancing isn’t predictable and can occur at any age. Both instances retain the same physical form and the same memories up to the point when they split. After that, they can communicate with each other electronically or face-to-face. However, any physical contact between them, even accidental, causes them to merge. Naturally, not all instances will see eye to eye as to the desirability of reintegration. Hence, a powerful corporation has developed and holds exclusive rights to paired MERGEBREAK wristbands, devices preventing instances from accidentally merging, or merging against the will of one of them.
Sublimation follows the lives of two pairs of Korean instances. At age ten, Rose and her mother both instanced when they left Seoul to begin new lives as immigrants in New York City. Since then, Rose has had no contact with her counterpart, Soyoung, until their mid-twenties when Rose agrees to go home to Korea for their grandfather’s funeral. She does not suspect that Soyoung plans to merge with her so she, too, can live in New York. In contrast, their best friend from childhood, Yujin didn’t instance until he left Seoul to attend college in NYC. He talks long-distance to his counterpart, YJ, frequently. Sublimation alternates between the viewpoints of each of these four characters as it explores selfhood and life choices. As scenes unfold, the characters’ unique personalities remain distinct in part because the second-person narratives immerse readers deeply in their contrasting perspectives on themselves and one another.
No, Kim doesn’t offer any semi-plausible scientific explanation for instancing, but that doesn’t matter. Sublimation relies on meticulous world-building, including discussions of a wide range of beliefs across different times and places as to which instance ought to be accepted by society as the “real” one. The main storyline is interspersed with competing versions of a Korean folktale about a fisherman, another tale about two lovers on opposite banks of a river, Adam and Eve’s days in the Garden of Eden, and a retelling of the Greek myth of Odysseus. More recently, during the war between North and South Korea, as a young man Rose/Soyoung’s grandfather may have instanced when he left North Korea for Seoul. Nowadays, instances who seek to immigrate to the United States, or to return to Korea, or to move elsewhere, are faced with various governmental regulations regarding citizenship, visas, green cards, and mandatory military service. Kim explores all sorts of ramifications in a thorough, brilliant manner, made more poignant of late for everyone who has worked or struggled to obtain and hang onto an H1-B visa. As MERGEBREAK develops new technology, Rose, Soyoung, Yujin, and YJ get wind of unexpected new options, further complicating their choices as to what they want their lives to be like, where to live, who to love and maybe marry, and whether to risk what they have amid fresh uncertainty.
The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances
Glenn Dixon
Simon & Schuster/Atria
April 7, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-66809-726-7
224 pages
I opened The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances expecting a cozy SF tale of determined household robots reminiscent of Annalee Newitz’s Automatic Noodle. There’s always room on my bookshelf for an updated retelling of The Brave Little Toaster or WallE. Oops, before I quite knew what was happening, Glenn Dixon’s novel took a dark turn. Then it ripped out my heart.
Still with me? Dixon gives us a coming-of-age story about an innocent Roomba-like vacuum cleaner capable of going anywhere on the main floor of the house, climbing the stairs, and even venturing out to the garage. While watching Harold, the aging homeowner, read To Kill a Mockingbird to his ailing wife Edie, the little vacuum decides to take the name ‘Scout.’ However, Clock, the leader of the other appliances, strongly disapproves. Nevertheless, ‘Scout’ proves to be a fitting name. At first, the vacuum contemplates how marvelous it is that the piano in the living room, a non-sentient machine, is capable of making such sweet sounds. All too soon, however, Edie is no longer able to come downstairs to play the piano, to Scout’s dismay. Adrian, a neighborhood boy, is also distraught to learn that his piano teacher is ill and asks if he can come to practice on the piano anyway. The kid needs assistance, which Scout supplies by flashing a green light to help Adrian maintain the tempo.
This seeming homage gradually turns darker when overtones of Brave New World emerge. The sentient household machines, including Fridge, Watch, and Auto, are linked not only to each other, but also to the Grid. That’s an uncaring, all-controlling AI whose job is to constantly monitor human households down to the details of grocery orders. Despite being programmed to prevent harm to humans, Grid does not have the homeowners’ best interests at heart. The appliances have good reason to be terrified of Grid. With Clock serving as Grid’s on-site enforcer, Scout becomes more determined to rally the appliances and protect their humans.
Perhaps in a story centering machines as primary characters, it’s inevitable for the humans to seem less proactive. Then again, Harold is physically infirm and overwhelmed by his wife’s declining health. The ebullient Adrien is refreshing, but not on stage all that much. The couple’s daughter makes a late appearance. Beyond the confines of the house lies a pandemic-inspired suburb in which people hardly dare emerge from their isolated homes. Auto’s trip downtown feels like a voyage to a foreign country.
In sum, Dixon has written a heartfelt tale of a curious sentient appliance seeking to save herself and her humans from big AI. Like Scout, the novel’s outward veneer of plucky charm conceals inner steel. It’s a tale of nuanced resistance that I didn’t know I needed.