I love, absolutely love, genre cross-overs. Historical mysteries? I am there. Science fiction or fantasy with a helping of high-stakes politics? Take my money, please. It’s not that I don’t love mysteries or political thrillers or science fiction all on their own—I do—but I love how crossovers mix and blend two or three genres to serve up a dish flavored with the best from each. Take for example Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, which combines beautifully detailed historical fiction with a murder mystery. Or Lois McMaster Bujold’s haunting novella The Mountains of Mourning, which blends science fiction with a police procedural.
One combo that hits all my MUST-BUY buttons is the SF Mystery/Thriller genre. With science fiction, you get new technologies and distant worlds shaped and altered by those new technologies. Languages change. Cultures change. Laws change. You don’t even need the distant worlds part because your near future Earth won’t be anything like the one today.
Now add in a political thriller or mystery. (Or both!) Those new technologies will color what kinds of mysteries get told, and how the characters investigate them. New laws, new politics, mean different stakes in your thriller.
Really, does it get any better than this?
Here are eight SF Mystery/Thriller works I’ve been reading. I hope you enjoy them too.
Aliette de Bodard, The Tea Master and the Detective (Subterranean Press)
Ever since the original Watson and Holmes stories first appeared, other authors have experimented with their own takes on the genius detective and his faithful friend. De Bodard has set her own pastiche in her Xuya universe (a far future space age initially dominated by Asian powers). Here we have a Watson who is a mindship named The Shadow’s Child, and who brews psychotropic teas for her customers. Long Chau is our Holmes, and just as abrasive and given to self-medication as the original.
Of course, there is a mystery. Long Chau initially comes to The Shadow’s Child because she wants to locate a corpse in space—for scientific reasons, she says—but she needs a specific concoction to ensure her mind still functions in the Deep Spaces. Chau and The Shadow’s Child do locate a corpse, but when Chau deduces that this was no accident, but a murder, the two embark on an investigation together.
S.L. Huang, Zero Sum Game (Tor Books)
Zero Sum Game, the first entry in Huang’s Cas Russell series, takes place in today’s world, but it’s a world peopled with characters who possess superpowers. Cas Russell is our protagonist, and her superpower is the superpower of math. She’s definitely not a superhero, though. She’s a mercenary who specializes in dangerous and not necessarily legal operations. Extractor of hostages. Weapons specialist. Sometimes assassin. She uses math to track and dodge bullets, to calculate the angle and velocity needed to punch through an enemy. She is one badass person.
Then she takes on what should have been a straightforward mission to extract a woman from a drug cartel. Except her path crosses that of a mysterious organization with the ability to reach into minds and change thoughts. Cas needs to figure out who hired her for that supposedly straightforward hostage rescue, but now she can’t even trust her own thoughts.
Nicole Givens Kurtz, Silenced (Mocha Memoirs Press)
Silenced is the first entry in Kurtz’s Cybil Lewis series. Cybil Lewis is a private investigator in the finest tradition of the hard-boiled detective genre—tough, smart, but with a vulnerable side. The setting, however, is a near future dystopia, where the United States has fractured into political regions, DC is in ruins, and regulators, not police, are the law enforcers. Oh, and genetically engineered humans might not be usual, but it doesn’t mean everyone accepts them.
The book opens in the classic mode. Lewis arrives at her office, only to find several security goons outside and the Mayor of the Memphis Quadrant inside. The Mayor’s daughter is missing, the regulators have failed, and now she wants Lewis to take the case. Lewis reluctantly agrees for two reasons: The missing daughter is the cousin of Lewis’s new junior detective. Also, Lewis badly needs the money.
The case, however, soon turns complicated and leads Lewis into the dangerous world of politics, where those in power are willing to do anything to protect their secrets.
Marie Lu, Legend (Speak)
Legend is the first book in Lu’s eponymous award-winning series. The setting is a dystopian future, where the western United States is now its own nation called The Republic. June and Day come from very different worlds within the Republic. June Iparis was born a member of the elite classes. Day Wing is a most-wanted criminal from the slums. Their paths cross when June’s brother, Metias, is murdered and Day becomes the prime suspect. Then the two uncover the truth behind Metias’s death, and the lengths their country will go to keep its secrets.
Nnedi Okorafor, Lagoon (Saga Press)
Let me start off that Nnedi Okorafor is on my auto-buy list. She writes YA fantasy, adult SF/F, graphic novels… You will never regret trying anything she’s written.
Of them all, Lagoon is her most ambitious novel: a first contact story crossed with Nigeria folklore crossed with a race to save the world.
The book starts when an alien ship crashes into the ocean off the coast of Lagos, Nigeria. Immediately, the plot explodes. The aliens are agents of change. They transform the local marine life, making them faster, stronger, and smarter. The gigantic wave from their entrance sucks three people underwater, and when those people emerge, they possess new powers.
Along with the newly changed humans comes a god-like person composed of nanoparticles. Take me to your leader, she tells them.
What follows is a race to save the country they love and the world itself.
Malka Older, Infomocracy (Tor.com Publishing)
Infomocracy is the first installment in Older’s cyberpunk political thriller series The Centenal Cycle. Older’s book takes place in the mid-21th century. Information, a powerful search engine monopoly, has pioneered the switch from warring nation-states to global micro-democracy, where political parties range from corporate conglomerates to tiny fringe groups. The book starts a few months before the next election, and while the Heritage Party—one of the conglomerates—has won the last two, a number of other factions are challenging them.
Ken belongs to one of those factions and is committed to seeing his party gain the Supermajority. Mishima is an analyst for Information and must ensure everyone plays by the rules. Domaine is a radical who opposes micro-democracy. Three different agendas. Only one outcome.
This one hits all my Must Buy buttons. (Politics! High stakes thriller! Be still my beating heart.)
Cindy Pon, Want (Simon Pulse)
Pon is best known for her Kingdom of Xia fantasy series, but in Want and its sequel, she takes a leap into far-future science fiction, with a healthy element of thriller. Want is set in a near-future Taipei, where the rich wear special suits to protect themselves from pollution and viruses, while the poor are left to die early. Jason Zhou is one of the poor, but he has a plot to take down the very wealthy Jin Corporation, which manufactures the special suits. (And which also creates the pollution making those suits necessary.) High stakes action. Romance. And a sharp critique of our own problems with global warming and corrupt businesses.
Rebecca Roanhorse, Trail of Lightning (Saga Press)
Trail of Lightning is the first entry in Roanhorse’s Sixth World series, set in a near future North America—or rather, a small region of North America, since a major ecological catastrophe called The Big Water has taken out most world. Dinétah has survived by creating a magical barrier around its borders, but resources like water and fuel are scarce, and you might get killed fighting over them.
Then there are the gods and monsters.
Enter the protagonist, Maggie Hoskie, who uses her clan powers to make a living as a monster hunter. The book starts when she takes the job of finding a missing girl, snatched by one of those monsters. Maggie is too late to save the girl. She does kill the monster, however, and takes its head to her one friend in the world, who identifies the creature as a magical construct. Only a very powerful witch could create such a thing, he says.
And there just happens to be a witch in Maggie’s past.
Urban fantasy meets near future SF, with a strong mystery at its core.
