This is a new series where I attempt to find as many new Tuesday releases as I can in the science fiction categories, which include speculative fiction, dystopian, time travel, robots/AI, steampunk, postapocalptic, LitRPG, ya sci-fi, LGBTQ sci-fi, afrofuturism, sci-fi horror, alien romance, and anything else I feel could be your gateway drug into the genre.

In Time With You by Kristin Dwyer (St. Martin's Press) - Time travel romance. A girl's first love drowns, and she wakes up a year before and tries to stop it from happening while falling for his best friend. Is it really sci-fi? IDK that time travel speculative fiction is technically sci-fi, but if you're a romance girlie and this is how I get you to jump into sci-fi? Call me a gateway drug pusher. Get in the spaceship bitch.

Celestian Lights by Cecile Pin (MacMillan) - An astronaut born the day Challenger fell out of the sky gets tapped by an "enterprising" billionaire (we are already suspicious, but go on...) to lead a mission to Europa, and spends the whole journey retreating into his past - relationships lost, becoming a husband and father, the usual spiral. Literary sci-fi, less hard science more human condition, which is either your thing or it isn't. Cecile Pin's previous book Wandering Souls was Women's Prize longlisted and reportedly destroyed people emotionally, so if you enjoy a book that makes you question every choice you've ever made while also being in space, this one's for you.

Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Orbit) - Book 4 in Children of Time. Spiders in space, a mantis shrimp captain, humans trying to figure out what happened to a lost colony. If you haven't started this series and you love diverse found-family crews doing impossible things...well me either but if you have will you please tell me if it's worth starting a hugely thicc series?

Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories by Amal El-Mohtar (Macmillan) - Short story collection from the co-author of This Is How You Lose the Time War. Described as "fairy tales with teeth." I was obsessed with TIHYLTTW and El-Mohtar's other work hasn't been for me but has won many awards, so I still continuously give it a chance.

Deep Black by Miles Cameron (Simon & Schuster) - Book 2 in the Arcana Imperii space opera series - being re-released with a new cover in paperback. Black MC, autistic-coded love interest, nonbinary secondary character, queernorm setting. But the author is a white Canadian dude. His name is Christian Cameron but his Sci-fi pen name is Miles Cameron. He is on Bluesky as @phokion.bsky.social so do your own research. Described as perfect for fans of Tchaikovsky and The Expanse. I've read neither...should I? Let me know.

Trace Elements by Jo Walton & Ada Palmer (Macmillan) Two award winning sci-fi authors have a conversation about modern SFF, how it's written and how it's read. So this is sort of a nonfic sci-fi subgenre. "Subjects covered include...the implicit contract between author and reader, the ways SF and fantasy disguise themselves as one another, what SF&F can learn from outside influences ranging from Shakespeare to Diderot to anime, the role of complicity in reading, the need to expand our “sphere of empathy”, and finally the need for optimism, the importance of rejecting “purity” culture, and the fact that the human story for centuries to come will be composed of hard work." This sounds like everything I stand for so I will probably read this even though a book about books is way outside my wheelhouse.

I want you to notice that instead of putting the Imprint publisher, I'm listing them under their Big 5. Why? I want to continuously drive the point home that it's a damn monopoly and the only way to fight it is to support indie presses and authors. So here is my shameless plug:

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