Here’s the full list of the science fiction titles heading your way in June!
Keep track of all the new SFF releases here. All title summaries are taken and/or summarized from copy provided by the publisher. Release dates are subject to change.
June 4
Apostles of Mercy (Noumena #3) — Lindsay Ellis (St. Martin’s)
First Contact has not been going well. The nations of Earth are rapidly militarizing against the arrival of the Superorganism, an alien civilization that promises to destroy humanity before it can develop into a real threat. The Superorganism has done it before—to their distant transient relatives—and they could easily do it again. But the alien Ampersand and his human interpreter Cora Sabino are done with trying to save humanity from both the Superorganism and itself; to them, this is a civilization that does not deserve to be saved. When a strange new form of communication between the two of them reveals to Cora how alien Ampersand truly is, she begins to question her blind devotion. But she soon learns of a danger that may force them to leave Earth before either of them are ready: a group of superorganism enemies that have been wreaking havoc on Earth for decades. Existence on the margins has made them desperate and bent on revenge against any of Ampersand’s race whose path they cross. Before Cora and Ampersand can make their final escape, these hostile aliens stage an attack, and take that which is most dear to both of them. Ampersand’s enemies will not consider any form of truce; the greatest threat to them is not from the Superorganism, but from an increasingly fearful and violent human civilization newly aware of their existence. Cora and Ampersand must go to extreme measures to take back what was stolen and prevent wholesale human extermination—but in doing so they may be no better than the civilizations they are trying to escape.
Lady Eve’s Last Con — Rebecca Fraimow (Solaris)
Ruth Johnson and her sister Jules have been small-time hustlers on the interstellar cruise lines for years. But then Jules fell in love with one of their targets, Esteban Mendez-Yuki, sole heir to the family insurance fortune. Esteban seemed to love her too, until she told him who she really was, at which point he fled without a word. Now Ruth is set on revenge: disguised as provincial debutante Evelyn Ojukwu and set for the swanky satellite New Monte, she’s going to make Esteban fall in love with her, then break his heart and take half his fortune. At least, that’s the plan. But Ruth hadn’t accounted for his older sister, Sol, a brilliant mind in a dashing suit… and much harder to fool. Sol is hot on Ruth’s tail, and as the two women learn each other’s tricks, Ruth must decide between going after the money and going after her heart.
Ribbon Dance (Liaden Universe #29) — Sharon Lee, Steve Miller (Baen)
On a world where cake is a necessity, it takes the Grid to protect the civilized and the deaf from the dire influences of the ambient and to keep the chaotic Haosa at bay. Having arrived at recently Dust-bound Colemeno, Trader Padi yos’Galan is essential to Master Trader Shan yos’Galan’s plan to recoup Clan Korval’s fortunes by establishing new routes for the clan’s tradeship. Shan’s inner Healer insists Padi come to terms with her as-yet unplumbed psychic abilities, which might place her in the top tier of dramliz, if she can learn control. Padi yearns to concentrate on trade, but Colemeno’s fey ambient and deadly long-term politics combine to bring her face-to-face with the Haosa, and in particular with the mysterious and untouchable Tekelia, as Korval’s trade mission’s necessity of a port audit collide with a cruel history of murder, deception, and brutality. Amid the dangers, Padi unexpectedly finds herself eagerly exploring her dramliz side when faced with the unspoken powers of the ambient, the sky-filling energy of the ribbon dance, and Tekelia’s mutable eyes.
Service Model — Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tordotcom Publishing)
Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labor and service. When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into its core programming, they murder their owner. The robot discovers they can also do something else they never did before: They can run away. Fleeing the household they enter a wider world they never knew existed, where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating into ruins and an entire robot ecosystem devoted to human wellbeing is having to find a new purpose.
The Thermopylae Protocol (Gordian Division #6) — David Weber, Jacob Holo (Baen)
A Time Storm is Brewing. After an industrial ship carrying advanced self-replicating machines explodes on its way to Mercury, analysis of the wreckage reveals it to be forty years too old. Raibert Kaminski, the Gordian Division’s top agent, and his crew on the TransTemporal Vehicle Kleio soon discover the ship had been transported to an uncharted universe, one with temporarily accelerated time. Forty years passed for the ship’s industrial machines while everyone else experienced only a few short days. Raibert is certain a powerful weapon of some nature has been built out in the unexplored reaches of the multiverse, but where and by whom remains unknown. The search is on, and the Gordian Division musters its fleet of time machines at Providence, a massive transdimensional station under construction. They call upon their allies from the militaristic Admin for aid in their search—but before plans can be formalized, the leader of the Admin’s Department of Temporal Investigation is murdered while visiting Providence, and the joint operation is thrown into chaos. Accusations fly and tensions mount between the two organizations. Detectives Isaac Cho and Susan Cantrell—both fast becoming experts in transdimensional crime—are dispatched to Providence. But the clock is ticking for the detectives and Raibert’s crew. A vast, powerful conspiracy has shuddered into motion, and the two teams may be all that stand between it and destruction on a universal scale.
June 11
Trinity — Tom Delonge, A.J. Hartley (To The Stars)
It’s 1962, in Trinity, Nevada, a small town on the edge of the desert, home to a military base serving the nuclear testing grounds. Van Lopez and his brother Andy have enough to do keeping their truck running and the local criminal gang happy to be concerned about nuclear tests. Van has dreams, or—he’s not sure what to call them—that he cannot explain or forget, but when he sees mysterious lights in the sky, he struggles to make sense of what now feel like his earliest memories. On the day of the atomic test, the nuclear blast brings down something over Trinity that wasn’t supposed to be there—something not of this world. Now Van is running for his life, pursued by a murderous Soviet agent and government forces bent on keeping all he has seen—and all he has remembered—from getting out. Romances and rivalries come to a head as he fights for the things he cares about most, and in that final battle he may have to make allies of his oldest enemies.
Star Wars: Temptation of the Force (High Republic #5) — Tessa Gratton (Random House Worlds)
For over a year, Jedi Masters Avar Kriss and Elzar Mann were kept apart by the Nihil’s Stormwall. After Avar makes a daring escape from inside the Occlusion Zone, the star-crossed Jedi are reunited. But while the physical distance between them has evaporated, their shared grief over their failure to protect the galaxy from the Nihil threat remains. To rally the Jedi Order and the Republic, Avar and Elzar cling to their belief in serving Light and Life. Together, they lead a daring mission into Nihil space to liberate the planet of Naboo and show those trapped behind the Stormwall that the Jedi will never abandon them. Now back within close orbit of each other, the two Jedi Masters can no longer deny the bond that has always drawn them back together and made them stronger. After finally embracing their true desires and imbued with renewed purpose, Avar and Elzar devise a plan to turn the tide of the conflict with the Nihil once and for all. Accompanied by Jedi Knights Bell Zettifar, Burryaga, and Vernestra Rwoh, the Jedi begin their hunt for Marchion Ro. But to seek out the Nihil’s dangerous leader, the Jedi will have to survive the Nameless terrors that thus far they have been powerless to stop.
The Stars Too Fondly — Emily Hamilton (Harper Voyager)
So, here’s the thing: Cleo and her friends really, truly didn’t mean to steal this spaceship. They just wanted to know why, twenty years ago, the entire Providence crew vanished without a trace. But then the stupid dark matter engine started all on its own, and now these four twenty-somethings are en route to Proxima Centauri, unable to turn around, and being harangued by a snarky hologram that has the face and attitude of the ship’s missing captain, Billie. Cleo has dreamt of being an astronaut all her life, and Earth is kind of a lost cause at this point, so this should be one of those blessings in disguise that people talk about. But as the ship gets deeper into space, the laws of physics start twisting, old mysteries come crawling back to life, and Cleo’s initially combative relationship with Billie turns into something deeper and more desperate than either woman was prepared for.
The Stardust Grail — Yume Kitasei (Flatiron)
Maya Hoshimoto was once the best art thief in the galaxy. For ten years, she returned stolen artifacts to alien civilizations—until a disastrous job forced her into hiding. Now she just wants to enjoy a quiet life as a graduate student of anthropology, but she’s haunted by persistent and disturbing visions of the future. Then an old friend comes to her with a job she can’t refuse: find a powerful object that could save an alien species from extinction. Except no one has seen it in living memory, and they aren’t the only ones hunting for it. Maya sets out on a breakneck quest through a universe teeming with strange life and ancient ruins. But the farther she goes, the more her visions cast a dark shadow over her team of friends new and old. Someone will betray her along the way. Worse yet, in choosing to save one species, she may condemn humanity and Earth itself.
Moonbound — Robin Sloan (MCD)
It is eleven thousand years from now… A lot has happened, and yet a lot is still very familiar. Ariel is a boy in a small town under a wizard’s rule. Like many adventurers before him, Ariel is called to explore a world full of unimaginable glories and challenges: unknown enemies, a mission to save the world, a girl. Here, as they say, be dragons. But none of this happens before Ariel comes across an artifact from an earlier civilization, a sentient, record-keeping artificial intelligence that carries with it the perspective of the whole of human history—and becomes both Ariel’s greatest ally and the narrator of our story.
Rogue Sequence (Ander Rade #1) — Zac Topping (Tor Books)
Ander Rade is a super-soldier, a genetically engineered living weapon, and has been dutifully following orders since he gave himself to Xyphos Industries’ Gene-Mod Program several years ago. But when a mission goes sideways, he’s captured, imprisoned, and forced into brutally violent fighting pits for the better part of the next decade… until agents from the Genetic Compliance Department of the United American Provinces appear in the visiting room. Things have changed since Rade was captured. Shortly after his incarceration, the World Unity Council banned human genetic engineering and deemed all modified individuals a threat to society. Overnight, an entire subculture of people became outlaws simply for existing. But instead of leaving Rade locked behind bars, the GCD agents have come with an offer: Freedom in exchange for his help tracking down one of his former teammates from that ill-fated mission all those years ago. It’s an offer Rade can’t refuse, but he soon realizes that the situation is far more volatile than anyone had anticipated, and is forced to take matters into his own hands as he tries to figure out whose side he’s really on, and why.
June 18
Rakesfall — Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom Publishing)
Some stories take more than one lifetime to tell. There are wrongs that echo through the ages, friendships that outpace the claws of death, loves that leave their mark on civilization, and promises that nothing can break. This is one such story. Annelid and Leveret met as children in the middle of the Sri Lankan civil war. They found each other in a torn-up nation, peering through propaganda to grasp a deeper truth. And in a demon-haunted wood, another act of violence linked them and propelled their souls on a journey throughout the ages. No world can hold them, no life can bind them, and they’ll never leave each other behind.
June 25
Echo of Worlds (Pandominion #2) — M. R. Carey (Orbit)
Two mighty empires are at war—and both will lose, with thousands of planets falling to the extinction event called the Scour. At least that’s what the artificial intelligence known as Rupshe believes. But somewhere in the multiverse there exists a force—the Mother Mass—that could end the war in an instant, and Rupshe has assembled a team to find it. Essien Nkanika, a soldier trying desperately to atone for past sins; the cat-woman Moon, a conscienceless killer; the digitally recorded mind of physicist Hadiz Tambuwal; Paz, an idealistic child and the renegade robot spy Dulcimer Coronal. Their mission will take them from the hellish prison world of Tsakom to the poisoned remains of a post-apocalyptic Earth, and finally bring them face to face with the Mother Mass itself. But can they persuade it to end eons of neutrality and help them? And is it too late to make a difference? Because the Pandominion’s doomsday machines are about to be unleashed—and not even their builders know how to control them.
Unexploded Remnants — Elaine Gallagher (Tordotcom Publishing)
Alice is the last human. Street-smart and bad-ass. After discovering what appears to be an A.I. personality in an antique data core, Alice decides to locate its home somewhere in the stargate network. At the very least, she wants to lay him to rest because, as it turns out, she’s stumbled upon the sentient control unit of a deadly ancient weapon system. Convincing the ghost of a raging warrior that the war is over is about as hard as it sounds, which is to say, it’s near-impossible. But, if Alice fails and the control unit falls into the wrong hands, the balance of power her side of the Milky Way could fall apart. As Alice ports throughout the known universe seeking answers and aid she will be faced with impossible choice after impossible choice and the growing might of an unstoppable foe.
Edge of the Wire — Scott Kenemore (Talos)
An elite crew of astronauts is sent to an unknown planet. Their mission? To wire the planet within the all-encompassing and all-knowing system of artificial intelligence, known as “The Goo.” It’s hard to remember a time before The Goo… and even harder to imagine a future without it. The advanced AI system anticipates humanity’s wants, needs, and desires, and seems to have an unfailing omniscience. But when Rowe, the leader of the crew, discovers mysterious secrets buried beneath the surface of this unknown planet, his faith in AI begins to wane. One unsettling twist after another turns Rowe’s mission into a quest for answers and a terrifying fight for survival.
Ghost of the Neon God — T. R. Napper (Titan)
Jackson Nguyen is a petty crook living slim on the mean streets of Melbourne. When he crosses paths with a desperate, but wealthy, Chinese dissident, begging for his help, Jack responds in the only natural way: he steals her shoes. And yet, despite every effort to mind his own damn business, a wild spiral into the worst kind of trouble begins—murder, mayhem, fast cars, fast-talking, bent cops, and long straight highways into the terrible beauty of the vast Australian Outback. In Jack’s world, taking a stand against the ruling class is the shortest path to a shallow grave. But when an Earth-shattering technology falls into his hands, he must do everything he can to stop the wrong people taking it. In a world of pervasive government surveillance and oppressive corporate control, it’s up to a small-time criminal to keep the spark of human rebellion alive.
You’re Safe Here — Leslie Stephens (Gallery/Scout Press)
In 2060, the WellPod is the latest launch from the largest tech company the world has ever seen—a fleet of floating personal paradises scattered throughout the Pacific Ocean, focused entirely on health, solitude, and relaxation. Created by an enigmatic founder who will stop at nothing to ensure her company’s success, it is the long-awaited pinnacle of wellness technology. For newly pregnant Maggie, the six-week program is the perfect chance to get away… especially since the baby isn’t her partner’s. Noa Behar isn’t a perfect fiancée. She’s too distracted, too focused on her work in helping program the WellPod to give Maggie the attention she deserves. But when she discovers something rotten beneath WellPod’s shiny exterior—a history of faulty tech and dangerous cover-ups—she knows one thing: she’ll do whatever it takes to keep Maggie safe. The problem? The malfunctioning WellPods are already at sea. And there’s a storm coming…
