Here’s the full list of science fiction titles heading your way in January!
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.
January 6
To Tread Obsidian Shores (Bronze Legion #1) — Jason Cordova, Melissa Olthoff (Baen)
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A WARRIOR? The Protectorate of Mars Foreign Legion: A path to citizenship. A fresh start. Defending the Protectorate of Mars against all enemies, foreign and domestic. HOPE. With itchy feet and a vagabond soul, all Blue ever wanted was to join the Survey Corps and explore the universe. But when she failed the entry exam, becoming a dropship pilot for the Legion was her last chance at achieving that dream. It was only supposed to be a stepping stone… DUTY. All he ever wanted was a home. But when Tavi is driven from his world by murderous revolutionaries, he only has one chance to escape: the Legion. Searching for a new life, he soon discovers something even better—a family.
For the Eternal Glory of Rome — Tom Kratman (Baen)
In September of the year 9 A.D. three Roman legions are trapped in the Teutoburg Forest by tens of thousands of rebelling Germanic tribesmen under the Romano-German renegade, Arminius. In an attempt to save what can be saved, an alien starship transports one of those legions, Legio XIIX, to safety. But the aliens are rushed by events and transport the XIIXth not just in space, but through time as well. Dropped four centuries into their future, under the leadership of their first spear centurion, Marcus Caelius and the young but promising junior tribune, Gaius Pompeius, Legio XIIX must fight to survive almost from the first moments of arrival. Moreover, they must march and fight across a continent to find their way home. Because home, the Roman Empire, needs them—their discipline, their tactics, their indomitable fortitude—more desperately than it has ever needed anything… because New Years Eve, 406 A.D. is coming, and with it, a horde of barbarians are going to cross the frozen Rhine and, unless stopped cold, destroy the Empire.
January 13
Ice — Jacek Dukaj, translated by Ursula Phillips (Head of Zeus)
14th July 1924: In a Warsaw buried under feet of snow and Russian rule, Benedykt Gieroslawski, a dissolute young Polish mathematician, is roused from his bed by two officials from the Ministry of Winter and dispatched to Siberia, on the Trans-Siberian Express, to track down his long-exiled father. The catalyst for this frosty metamorphosis of 20th century history is the impact of the Tunguska asteroid, deep in Siberia, in 1908. From this Ground Zero, emerge the Gleissen, silent harbingers of an eternal winter that follows in their ponderous wake. As they spread across the continent, agriculture collapses and people flock to cities as they seek protection from the deadly cold. As the land freezes, so does history: the Tsar still rules Russia; the Belle Époque endures; and the First World War never happened. But out there, on the ice, a new world is being forged. The extreme, alien cold has transmuted elements into strange new forms, a “black physics” that is the catalyst for a new industrial and scientific revolution. At the heart of it lies Siberia—a “Wild East,” a magnet for all the political, religious and scientific fevers shaking the world at the dawn of the 20th century, the crucible where black physics, shamanic lore and the cold logic of winter combine. And Benedykt’s final destination.
Godfall — Van Jensen (Grand Central Publishing)
When a massive asteroid hurtles toward Earth, humanity braces for annihilation—but the end doesn’t come. In fact, it isn’t an asteroid but a three-mile-tall alien that drops down, seemingly dead, outside Little Springs, Nebraska. Dubbed “the giant,” its arrival transforms the red-state farm town into a top-secret government research site and major metropolitan area, flooded with soldiers, scientists, bureaucrats, spies, criminals, conspiracy theorists—and a murderer. As the sheriff of Little Springs, David Blunt thought he’d be keeping the peace among the same people he’d known all his life, not breaking up chanting crowds of cultists or battling an influx of drug dealers. As a series of brutal, bizarre murders strikes close to home, Blunt throws himself into the hunt for a killer who seems connected to the Giant. With bodies piling up and tensions in Little Springs mounting, he realizes that to find the answers he needs, he must reconcile his old worldview with the town he now lives in—before it’s too late.
January 20
For We Are Many (Bobiverse #2) — Dennis E. Taylor (Saga)
Waking up after death wasn’t on Bob Johansson’s bucket list. But here he is, four decades later, inhabiting the mind of a sentient computer and piloting a self-replicating space probe. It was supposed to be a dream gig—explore the cosmos, find new worlds, repeat. Instead, everything has gone spectacularly off-script. Humanity is hanging by a thread after a devastating war wiped out 99.9 percent of the human race. The planet is spiraling into nuclear darkness, extremist groups are fighting over what scraps of civilization remain, and rogue Brazilian probes are doing their best to annihilate everything in their path. And the Bobs have encountered a terrifying alien species with one very straightforward view of other life forms: food. Bob never signed up to be a hero, and he certainly didn’t expect to play God to a fledgling alien civilization. Now, he faces the ultimate question: Can a scattered army of digital copies, outnumbered and outgunned, outsmart extinction itself? Packed with snarky humor, jaw-dropping discoveries, and a heaping dose of heart, For We Are Many continues the wildly inventive saga that redefines what it means to be human… or at least post-human. The stakes are immense, but with Bob on the job, survival might just depend on thinking way outside the box.
January 27
Hearthspace — Stephen Baxter (Gollancz)
Thousands of years ago, a massive colony ship arrived at the Hearth—the celestial birthplace of millions of planets, ranging from habitable earth-like worlds to unimaginable hellscapes of pressure and heat. Using lightsails to navigate, humanity has spread itself across dozens of these worlds. But they have also forgotten their beginnings, where they came from… and a terrible secret is about to be unveiled. For Commander Ulla Breen, on her first tour of duty aboard a patrol sail-ship, the universe is about to change around her. Attacked by an unknown and unthought-of enemy, she and her fellow crewmembers will face slavery, punishment and death—and so will their home planets. Because someone else has seen the richness of the inner Hearth, and plans to take it for themselves. A new enemy, but one who seems disturbingly familiar. And perhaps knows more about the history of the Hearth than even Ulla and her crew. Faced with a complete upheaval of all she thought she knew, Ulla must survive long enough to come up with a plan—one which will unite all the disparate elements of the Hearth, and perhaps discover the reason why humanity came to Hearthspace in the first place…
Artifact Space (Arcana Imperii #1) — Miles Cameron (Saga)
Out in the darkness of space, something is targeting the Greatships. With their vast cargo holds and a crew that could fill a city, the Greatships are the lifeblood of human occupied space. They transport an unimaginable volume—and value—of goods from City, the greatest human orbital, all the way to Tradepoint to trade for xenoglas with an unknowable alien species. It has always been Marca Nbaro’s dream to achieve the near-impossible: escape her upbringing and venture into space. All it took to make her way onto the crew of the Greatship Athens was thousands of hours in simulators, dedication, and the pawning or selling of every scrap of her old life in order to forge a new one. But although she’s made her way onboard with fake papers, leaving her old life—and scandals—behind isn’t so easy. She may have just combined all the dangers of her former life with the perils of the new…
Halcyon Years — Alastair Reynolds (Orbit)
Yuri Gagarin is a private investigator, who picks up small cases from his local community, runs into trouble with the local police, and generally ekes out a living as best he can. He’s aboard the Halcyon—a starship, hurtling through space, carrying thousands of passengers with thousands more sleeping the journey away. Only his usual investigative work—catching cheating spouses, and small time con artists—is about to take a turn. He’s hired by a mysterious woman called Ruby Red to look into a death in one of Halcyon’s most elite families… and then warned off the case again by a second mysterious woman called Ruby Blue. Caught between the two, he’s about to be embroiled in a murder mystery in which—at any moment—he could be the latest victim.
