7 New Books That Carry the Torch of '1984'

The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain

From PEN Award winner Samatar (The White Mosque) comes a brutal, haunting, yet ultimately uplifting novella examining capitalism and labor exploitation through the lens of science fiction. “The boy,” 17 and one half of a duo of nameless protagonists, was born and raised in the hold of a mining ship, a place of chain gangs and forced labor. Through a scholarship program, he’s rescued to the world above by “the woman,” who implemented the program, and whose father, too, was raised in the hold. What at first appears to be a relatively familiar academic setting—the woman is a professor, the boy a tentative new student under her tutelage —slowly unravels, revealing the deep horrors underlying the reality these characters inhabit. Samatar unfurls worldbuilding details with masterful subtlety, making each shocking reveal all the more potent. Through what amounts to a meditative far-future allegory, Samatar highlights the power of collective action in the face of oppression. This packs a punch. (Apr.)

The Repeat Room

In the loosely sketched dystopian world of Ball’s blistering latest (after the memoir Autoportrait), trials are conducted by ordinary people who gain access to the mind of the accused. Several decades into the future, following the dissolution of an unnamed country’s “primitive” criminal justice system, garbageman Abel Cotter is chosen to act as judge and juror in the trial of a teenage boy for an unspecified capital crime. (One way the totalitarian government remains in control is by keeping its laws secret, so people never know whether they’re breaking them.) In the second of the book’s two parts, Ball switches to the unnamed boy’s point of view, telling the story of his life as it’s witnessed by Abel through a kind of consciousness-melding technology. It would be a spoiler to reveal the details of the boy’s lurid and painful story, which casts him as a victim of his circumstances. Ball’s tragic character study of the accused stands in stark relief to the chilling depiction of the court system and its low estimation of human life (“The more people think people have value, the worse they are at killing them,” an official explains to Abel). This strikes a chord. (Sept.)

The Other Valley

Howard debuts with a moving tale of time travel and teen friendship. Odile, 16, grows up in an unnamed valley town that serves as a kind of administrative buffer zone between the past and the future. Bordering to the west is an identical town that is 20 years behind her own, and to the east, Odile’s same town 20 years ahead. Residents of each iteration are only allowed to visit another timespace if they get approval from a governing body called the Conseil, which only grants permission to those grieving a loved one’s untimely death, so they can view the person from a distance while the person is still alive. Odile’s school offers an apprentice program for various trades, and she is vying for a coveted spot in the Conseil. One day on the schoolyard, she sees three masked people in the distance, looking at her classmate Edme, and realizes they are time travelers, which means that Edme will prematurely die. An unexpected friendship forms between the two, but when the Conseil learns of Odile’s discovery, they urge her not to intervene in Edme’s fate. She can’t help herself, however, and her actions lead to surprising and heartrending results. This will leave readers with plenty to chew on. Agent: Roz Foster, Frances Goldin Literary. (Feb.)

Mal Goes to War

Ashton (Antimatter Blues) shrewdly injects satire into a dystopian thriller helmed by Mal, an AI (though he prefers to be called a Silico-American). In the near future, debate around technological human augmentations has led to civil war. The conflict began with a paranoid rumor that the NIH developed a nanobot that, after being injected into a person, transformed them into a superhuman capable of infecting others, as part of a government scheme to control the population. That belief sparked riots in Maryland, which devolved into all-out war, with so-called Humanists dumping anyone suspected of being augmented into burn pits. Amid this violent chaos, Mal, who is untethered to any system, slips inside the body of an augmented female corpse which had the necessary hardware for him to “puppeteer” it. Mal finds himself with more than he’d bargained for, however, when the dead woman, Mika, turns out to have been the protector of Kayleigh, a genetically modified 18-year-old, who insists that Mal continue to serve as her bodyguard against the Humanists. Ashton’s vision of the future feels all too plausible and his blend of action and humor keeps the pages flying. This is sure to please the author’s fans. (Apr.)

Lost Ark Dreaming

In this powerhouse tale of social inequality from Okungbowa (the Nameless Republic series), survivors of the Second Deluge, an environmental catastrophe that destroyed the city-nation of Lagos, are now holed up in the Pinnacle, a self-sustainable high-rise surrounded by ocean. Rigid protocol ensures near-totalitarian order within the Pinnacle, limiting interaction between its three socioeconomic strata: the Uppers, the Midders, and the “paler, vitamin-D-deficient” Lowers, who are forced to reside below sea level. Chaos erupts when a sea monster, believed to be the offspring of the devil Yemoja, claws its way inside the building, infiltrating Lower level nine. Three Pinnacle residents—Tuoyo, the level nine foreman; Yekini, a special operative from the mid-level; and Ngozi, a high-ranking government official—are assigned to the case. Okungbowa skillfully probes the trio’s immediate distrust of each other, exposing their prejudices and ignorance, while ramping up the action to almost Dune-like intensity. The author packs this story with so many meaty themes—among them the power of history, gods, memory, and story-telling—that some inevitably get short shrift. Where the writing really shines, however, is in the small details, like the orange-peel necklace Ngozi wears in memory of his lost sister. Readers will be gratified. (May)

Hum

In this bracing speculative parable from Phillips (The Need), set in a near future devastated by climate change, a woman loses her job to the robots she helped build. The “hums,” as the AI bots are called, have become ubiquitous in every corner of society, rendering May Webb and her equally unemployable husband, Jem, increasingly desperate. As a result, May volunteers for a face-altering experiment, one that makes her identity undetectable to camera phones and security clearances. After the procedure, she takes her family to their unnamed city’s exotic botanical garden to spend three nights in a cottage, where lakes, forests, and streams still exist. She also forbids the children from using the devices they’ve grown reliant on, hoping for a brief respite from the selfies and hums flooding their feeds. During their stay, though, they’re surveilled by the hums, which capture May briefly losing track of the children in the park. When the family returns home, May discovers she has been canceled and may lose her children for good if the hums deem her guilty of negligence. This chilling vision of a near future, one where its dwellers “can’t avoid the void,” resonates unnervingly with the way things already are. Readers won’t be able to look away. Agent: Faye Bender, Book Group. (Aug.)

Toward Eternity

Translator Hur debuts with an ambitious and mostly successful story of human life transformed by technology. The novel begins in the near future, when a breakthrough treatment called nanotherapy replaces a terminally ill patient’s body with an immortal replica. In a journal, Dr. Mali Beeko, whose mother invented the procedure, records her misgivings after the first nanotherapy patient, a lover of 19th-century poetry named Yonghun Han, vanishes from a South African lab and reappears days later in the same place. Upon his return, Yonghun finds Mali’s journal and begins writing in it, confessing that he’s not the “real” Yonghun, even though he possesses Yonghun’s memories. Over the following decades nanodroids become common and AI is used for decision-making in military strategy. Though Hur’s worldbuilding occasionally feels unwieldy, the final sections are worth the wait, as nanodroids read Yonghun’s journal entries about poetry and consider the impact of art on humanity. Fans of Anthony Doerr and Emily St. John Mandel ought to take a look. (July)