Tag: nearfuture

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This 2025 novel by German author Tim Staffel centers on the geopolitical and commercial exploitation of water, in times where fresh water is getting scarce as climate changes, glaciers melt, and aquifers get depleted. The protagonist, who has a fear of water, is a world wide activist on the human right to potable water, exposing the machinations of those who see profit in gatekeeping water. The German village he was born in and left to never return becomes the center of the mechanisms of oppression and water poverty. So he does return. Wasserspiel means water game. I came across this book when browsing the Dussmann bookstore in Berlin last October.

While interesting and entertaining, the story never really sucked me in. I kept reading while hovering above it.

Read through the Kobo plus subscription.

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Came across this 2025 book in a Bregenz book store, Brunner, last summer while visiting the Austrian alps, and later looked for it online.

Set in an ancient convent in a small deserted Italian village, and narrated by what appears to be a renaissance literary style all knowing voice. After a few chapters it becomes more apparent who the narrator is. Took me a bit to get into, because of that narrator, but then enjoyed it. Some nice ideas, funny at times, and entertaining.
Horváth is an Austrian writer, and this seems to be his third novel.

Read in German through the Kobo plus subscription.

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Loved this. Nicely interwoven stories, and the book title triggered all the right associations. We follow a budding and then successful SF author, as well as a near future robot Bildungs-novel, the two stories increasingly interwoven into a nice twist.
Previously read the Binti (in 2017/2018) and Akata series (in 2021/2022), as well as a few other works by Nnedi Okorafor.

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Madeline Ashby is the author of Company Town, a fun near future SF novel I read in 2016.
In Glass Houses, published 2024, an AI company’s team crashes on a deserted island while on a trip celebrating having been acquired. Its CEO has Mars colonisation dreams, but not everyone of the team is on board with that fantasy. His PA has an agenda of her own, and a deeper understanding than she lets on. As things on the island turn bloody, flashbacks fill in the back story. Enjoyed it, and it was a quick read, but I remember having enjoyed Company Town more.

Finished this on new year’s day (having started it the day before).
(e-book, bought from Kobo platform)

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Early January in Nijmegen I browsed the second hand book shelves of the Dekker v.d. Vegt book store, when we visited the city for a day. I came across and bought The Nano Flower by Peter F. Hamilton, a 1995 novel.

At the time I did not realise it is the final part of a trilogy, and later realised I did not read the other two. Bought the other two back home as e-books online, Mindstar Rising from 1993, and A Quantum Murder from 1994. Read the first two e-books earlier in April, and the paper book during a brief spring holiday last week. All three are entertaining, set in a near future UK after the climate urgency has hit full-on. The final book builds on the previous two books, veering into first contact and more space oriented SF, than the other two.

Good fun.