October 2020

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers (Italian edition)

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The novel “A Closed and Common Orbit” by Becky Chambers was published for the first time in 2016. It’s the second book in the Wayfarers series and follows “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet”.

Sidra is an outlaw creature as she’s an artificial intelligence in an android body. Pepper, who managed to achieve that result together with her friend Blue, is committed to helping Sidra adapt to a very different situation than her job as a starship artificial intelligence. It’s a difficult process even if Sidra finds new friends on her path.

Jane 23 is a little girl used together with many others like her to do various jobs. One day an explosion in the factory where she lives and works disrupts her life by revealing that there’s something outside it. She’s frightened, but she escapes taking advantage of the fact that the robots that manage the work can’t leave the factory, and ends up finding an abandoned shuttle where there’s still a working artificial intelligence.

Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) in That Hope Is You, Part 1 (Image courtesy CBS / Netflix. All rights reserved)

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“That Hope Is You, Part 1” is the 1st episode of the 3rd season of the TV show “Star Trek: Discovery”, which starts again after “Such Sweet Sorrow Part 2”.

Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) exits the wormhole and ends up in the midst of space wrecks while there’s a clash between two starships. She crashes on a nearby planet together with one of the two starships, driven by Book (David Ajala). She discovers that she’s in the year 3188, that the Federation has collapsed, and there’s no trace of the USS Discovery, which was her only hope of not being completely lost in a place and time that is not her own.

'Salem's Lot by Stephen King (Italian edition)

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The novel “‘Salem’s Lot” by Stephen King was published for the first time in 1975.

Ben Mears returns after many years to Jerusalem’s Lot, the city where he spent part of his childhood with events that left him with deep traumas. His intention is to write a new novel after the success of his previous ones, and the inspiration comes from the events that marked his childhood. The mansion at the center of the story was purchased by two antique dealers who have recently arrived in the city as well, though one of the two is also away on business.

Jerusalem’s Lot looks like a sleepy town, but what appears to be a quiet situation is shaken when a young boy disappears and his brother dies. Ben Mears befriended Matt Burke, a teacher at the city’s high school, and began a romantic relationship with Susan Norton, who recently graduated from college. They and other inhabitants of the town get involved in an increasingly complicated situation when they have to accept that there are vampires in the city.

Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Italian edition)

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The novel “Children of Ruin” by Adrian Tchaikovsky was published for the first time in 2019. It’s the sequel to “Children of Time”.

An expedition reaches a star system with the aim of terraforming a planet that has an interesting potential to develop. However, the scientists discover that a biosphere already exists on the planet, so terraforming should begin with its elimination. As a result, it’s decided to terraform the neighboring planet, where it’s possible to create a favorable habitat for modified octopodes. The life forms on the planet they discarded are more complex than humans imagined.

Millennia later, from a distant system comes another expedition of humans who formed an alliance with sentient Portia spiders, attracted by radio signals. Instead of finding a human colony, the new expedition ends up in the midst of a war, and it’s difficult to understand its causes. Contact is difficult, with the consequence that understanding which factions are fighting and avoiding being destroyed by one of them requires the skill of both species.

Oksoko avarsan fossils

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An article published in the journal “Royal Society Open Science” reports the identification of a new species of parrot-like feathered dinosaur that lived in modern Mongolia about 68 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period. A team of researchers named it Oksoko avarsan after examining various specimens in various states of incompleteness. Some of the specimens had been confiscated by the Mongolian authorities after they were found in the possession of smugglers. These dinosaurs were classified within the oviraptorid (Oviraptoridae) family, but were toothless and had two fingers instead of the typical three of their closest relatives.