THE UNREAL AND THE REAL: OUTER SPACE, INNER LANDS. By Ursula K. Le Guin. Gollancz. 336pp. $39.95.

MEMORY OF WATER. By Emmi Itaranta. Harper. 263pp. $35.

THE GIRL IN THE ROAD. By Monica Byrne. Blackfriars. 325pp. $29.99.

THE FOREVER WATCH. By David Ramirez. Hodder. 327pp. $29.99.

SAND. By Hugh Howey. Century. 368pp. $32.99.

Reviewer: COLIN STEELE

This roundup of SF titles contains some outstanding contributions by both established and new writers. Ursula Le Guin, one of the all-time SF and fantasy greats, has selected 38 stories out of a possible published 130 for a major two-volume retrospective. Le Guin has said that the number of stories to be included was “far too large”, so she  excluded novellas and some of her most reprinted stories to bring others “back into the light”.

Le Guin dislikes genre categorisations, but she says “if you want genre, I’ll give you genre”, offering her readers a number of labels for her stories, including “magic realism”, “geriatric realism”, “surrealism”, and “temporal fantasy”. Her stories probe issues of race, gender and the nature of authority explored through, at times, almost anthropological analyses of future and alternate societies. These issues are particularly reflected in her Orsinian and Oregonian stories.

Radically altered gender roles are reflected in The Matter of Seggri, while ethical and sociological concerns are found in Nine Lives, a tale of clones and individual consciousness. Her dry wit is seen in The First Contact with the Gorgonids, when a crass American male mistakes aliens for Aborigines in the outback with dramatic results.

Sur follows a small female South American expedition to the South Pole at the beginning of the twentieth century, preceding that of Amundsen. The women do not feel the need to announce their successful trek, rather being fulfilled by their collective effort. The Unreal And The Real is an excellent collection, for both Le Guin devotees and those who have not discovered her excellent short stories.

The award-winning Finnish debut novel Memory of Water by Emmi Itaranta has been compared to Le Guin and Margaret Atwood's work. Global warming has transformed the world, both geographically and politically. China rules Europe, including the Scandinavian Union, under the name New Qian.

In this future world, fresh water is a scarce commodity and the cause of conflict. 17-year-old Noria Kaitio, training to become a tea master, soon learns that her knowledge of a hidden freshwater spring will incur the wrath of the military authorities. Much knowledge has been lost, so, when Noria and her friend Sanja find and play cassettes and CDs  containing historical detail, they stumble into more forbidden territory. Memory of Water is a lyrically written coming-of-age novel set against an increasingly dark dystopian background.

American writer Monica Byrne’s The Girl in the Road is another outstanding first novel. Once more global power has shifted east, in this case, to India, China and an emerging Africa. The storyline juxtaposes the journeys of two young women forced to leave their homes, both seeking for differing reasons, and at different times, to reach Addis Ababa.

Meena, a young woman, flees Mumbai but her journey, across the Trans-Arabian Linear Generator, an energy-harvesting bridge across the Arabian Sea, will be a dangerous one. No-one has apparently succeeded in making such an unauthorised journey. Much of Meena’s story is played out against her attempt to reach Djibouti and then Addis Ababa, where Meena’s parents were murdered. Earlier, Mariama, a young African girl, escapes from slavery and joins a caravan heading across Saharan Africa towards Ethiopia. The Girl in the Road is challenging multicultural SF, exploring issues of sexuality, religion and mythology within its futuristic framework.

David Ramirez in The Forever Watch builds on his research as a molecular biologist with the Human Genome Project. Noah is a multi-generational spaceship on route to the planet Canaan after Earth's population was devastated by alien disease City planner Hana Dempsey and security officer Leon Barrens combine to find out who is carrying out a series of gruesome murders and why the authorities seem reluctant to find the murderer.

Their investigation leads them into the history of the ship and its hidden alien technologies. Hana's ability to tap into the AI systems will ultimately decide her fate and that of the ship. Ramirez peels back layer after layer of the ship’s secrets as he draws the reader towards a gripping conclusion.

Hugh Howey achieved international best-selling success with his initially self published Wool trilogy, in which populated silos functioned beneath the surface of a devastated Earth, In Sand the reverse occurs as post-apocalyptic communities survive by retrieving and selling artefacts from cities buried below desert sands. Sand begins as Palmer, nominal head of a troubled family, undertakes a dangerous dive beneath the surface to Danvar  (Denver), but is double crossed and left for dead in the buried city.

Howey has said Sand is “an exploration of the opposite side of dystopia. Where Wool is about totalitarian regimes, Sand is about lawlessness. It is Rousseau to Wool's Hobbes”. A comment perhaps too highly pitched, but Sand is another well-paced SF blockbuster from Howey.