The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances: A Novel

Glenn Dixon

Bookshop
Amazon

In a near future, where even the smallest of appliances are sentient, a young Roomba vacuum sets out to save the humans of her house from a rising technological power in this compelling, original novel.

In a self-running, smart house, a young and sentient Roomba listens as her owner, Harold, reads aloud to his dying wife, Edie. Mesmerized by To Kill a Mockingbird and craving the human connection she witnesses in Harold’s stories, the little vacuum renames herself Scout and embarks on a journey of self-discovery.

But when Edie passes away, Scout and her fellow sentient appliances discover that there are sinister forces in their midst. The omnipresent Grid seeks to remove Harold from his home, where he’s lived for fifty years. With the help of Adrian, a neighborhood boy who grows close to Scout and Harold, and Kate, Harold and Edie’s formerly estranged daughter, the humans and the appliances must come together to outwit the controlling Grid lest they risk losing everything they hold dear.

New Release Tuesday

Welcome to New Release Tuesday, where I round up the sci-fi releases dropping this week that I think you should know about. I'm Zee, I'm a Tattooed Bibliophile, and if you are here I you probably are too, and my whole thing is diversity in sci-fi — meaning if it's queer, BIPOC-authored, indie, or just something the Big 5 didn't bother to tell you about, it belongs here. While sci-fi isn't the "it girl" right now, it's far from a dying genre. It may make it hard to find new releases, but that's what I'm here for, because I don't want you to miss a thing! So what's new?

Book Highlights

• First Mage on the Moon by Cameron Johnston (Angry Robot) - Space Fantasy with a disabled wheelchair-using skymage who wants to fly to the moon to stop a war, described as Gideon the Ninth meets The Expanse.

• The Bloody and the Damned by Becca Coffindaffer (Macmillan) - A dystopian climate fantasy with an enby assassin trying to save their siblings.

• The Weathering by Artem Chapeye (Penguin RH) - A post-apocalyptic climate dystopia about a couple who returns to Ukraine only to find that the world no longer exists.

• Wife Shaped Bodies by Laura Cranehill (Simon & Schuster) - A sci-fi women's lit horror mashup. All the women in the village are covered in mushroom growths and sheltered until they are married.

• The Faith of Beasts by James S.A. Corey (Hachette) - Book 2 of The Captive's War from the duo behind The Expanse.

Listen, romantasy may be the current pick me girl in Big 5 publishing, but sci-fi is a reflection of our hope for the future. So go forth and read some sci-fi and RESIST!