Beneath the World, a Sea by Chris Beckett; From the Wreck by Jane Rawson; Zero Bomb by MT Hill; Poster Boy by NJ Crosskey; and A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
Chris Beckett brings literary flair and sociological insight to his award-winning science fiction, and his seventh novel, Beneath the World, a Sea (Corvus, £17.99), is no exception. Repressed London policeman Ben Ronson, a specialist in “culturally sanctioned crimes”, is sent by the UN to the strange realm of the Submundo Delta, in South America. With its own flora and fauna and a zone that induces amnesia, the Delta is unlike anywhere else on Earth: visitors find themselves stranded in an affectless psychological Sargasso. Creole settlers have been killing the native lifeforms known as duendes, humanoid creatures who have a destabilising psychic effect on the minds of observers. Ronson is tasked with bringing an end to the killings, but his interactions with the residents, tourists and scientists – who have their own shady reasons for visiting the Delta – lead to a Kafkaesque rite of passage in which he must come to terms with his dark inner self. Beckett is superb at undercutting reader assumptions with a casual line of dialogue or acute psychological observation: the book reads like Conrad’s Heart of Darkness reimagined by JG Ballard.
Continue reading...via Science fiction books | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2v2FeWu
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