Tattooed Bibliophiles | Earth 7
Earth 7
Deb Olin Unferth
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An end-of-the-world love story, an epic full of pathos and humor, asking what can be saved of our planet. Well, that’s about it for the story of planet Earth, poor Earth, reduced to not much more than a piece of burnt coal. But, as Deb Olin Unferth shows in her latest electrifying novel, life and love persist, even in the most unexpected, inhospitable places.
Two women meet on a beach of artificial sand. One was raised in a pod in the ocean and the other may or may not be a robot. Their love—or any love—seems so unlikely. Earth is severely depopulated. Some people have given up, gone off to Mars. Others pursue eternal life as digital code. And yet others, like Dylan and Melanie, are holdouts—and some of those holdouts are constructing a vast molecular collection in hopes that a future person may be alive to make a new Earth. Foolhardy? Misguided? Quixotic? Probably. But what can a human (or a robot) do? By the end of Unferth’s wild, poetic, revelatory, and slyly philosophical novel, the reader has traveled to the very edges of the cosmos as a “soul globule” and between grains of sand as a microscopic tardigrade. A slim book tackling big questions (is all matter conscious? will we tech ourselves into salvation, or out of existence?), Earth 7 is a poignant inquiry into death, mourning, and indefatigable life, the most exhilarating work to date by one of our most original and beloved writers.
Posts about this title from Tattooed Bibliophiles
Releases by Genre
SPACE OPERA
- Recursion: Germinal Book 2 by Aric McBay (AK Press, indie) - June 9 – A pacifist society on a tiny green planet is invaded by Colonizers.
- The Forgetting Navigations by Marlee Jane Ward (Interstellar Flight Press, indie) - June 9 – Our main character has emotional damage from being abandoned in a lifepod in space. A freight hauler rescues her and they bond over tea. Then the past comes a knocking, as it does in stories.
- The Sixth Nik by Daniel Kraus (Simon & Schuster/Saga Press) - June 2 – In a bioship capable of reacting to a crew’s every need, a nine-year-old cultist with a brain enhancement investigates a planet infected with a plague.
POST-APOCALYPTIC
- Earth 7 by Deb Olin Unferth (Graywolf, and Indie Press) - June 9 – Kind of a romance between a woman raised in a pod in the ocean and a woman who may or may not be a robot.
- The Withers by Lee Upton (Regal House Publishing) - June 23 – A post epidemic book where scars from the disease are called withers.
SPECULATIVE / LITERARY SCI-FI
- Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim (Macmillan/Tor) - June 2 – Imagine you immigrate to a new country, but the rule is, you get cloned, and only the clone gets to go and you have to stay.
- Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Macmillan/Tor) - June 2 – Genetically engineered animals do the work while humans relax in the sun.
TIME TRAVEL
- The Traveler by Joseph Eckert (Macmillan/Tor) - June 2 – at 7:51 am, Scott Treder slips forward through time 24 hours.
- Retro by Jessica M. Goldstein (Penguin Random House/Ballantine) - June 23 – An out of work actress takes a job as a time travel tour guide.
ROMANCE
- Moss'd in Space by Rebecca Thorne (Macmillan/Bramble) - June 30 – Cozy sci-fi romance about a starship captain.
- Plastic, Prism, Void by Violet Allen (LittlePuss Press, indie) – May 19 – Trans enemies to lovers in which a magical girl-gone-bad must find a way to stay on a date forever.
THRILLER
- The Other by Annie Neugebauer (Shortwave Publishing, indie) - June 9 – Ten people head out on a backpacking trip, but the first night eleven set up camp.
- Obstetrix by Naomi Kritzer (Macmillan/Tordotcom) - June 2 – An out of work OBGYN who has gotten publicly crucified for offering abortion care is kidnapped by a cult to help birth their babies.
ANTHOLOGY
- Ring Shout on Saturn by Sheree Renée Thomas (Third Man Books, indie) - June 9 – Afrofuturist short stories.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
- Lovecraft: Selected Stories, one of the Chiltern Classics being released on June 9.
See you next week!