2026

Lucifer Rising by Jim Mortimore and Andy Lane

The novel “Lucifer Rising” by Jim Mortimore and Andy Lane was published for the first time in 1993. It’s No. 14 in the “New Adventures” range by Virgin Publishing and follows “Deceit”.

Bernice Summerfield asked the Seventh Doctor to take her to the planet Lucifer to discover why an expedition aimed at exploring mysterious artifacts had suddenly ended. The Doctor decides to oblige, so he takes her and Ace to that system’s planet, where they find a more complex situation than expected.

Paula Engado has fallen into Lucifer’s atmosphere, and a complete malfunction in her spacesuit led to her death. A member of the Guild of Adjudicators has arrived to investigate the death, and the Doctor, upon arriving, suggests that it was murder.

Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders

The novel “Victories Greater Than Death” by Charlie Jane Anders was published for the first time in 2021. It’s the first book in the Unstoppable trilogy.

Tina Mains may appear to be a normal teenager, but she knows she’s an alien, given up for adoption on Earth to remain hidden on a remote planet. When the beacon implanted in her body lights up, signaling the arrival of a Royal Fleet starship to take her back to her true people, she’s tense and excited at the same time. Rachael, her best human friend, stays with her, partly to support her and partly to live an adventure better than her life on Earth. However, the new situation proves bittersweet, and even recruiting young Earthlings proves complicated.

Tina discovers she’s a clone of the legendary Thaoh Argentian, a legacy she immediately finds truly burdensome because everyone says she’s a great heroine. She must undergo treatments to reverse the effects of the genetic modifications that make her appear human, and most importantly, restore Thaoh Argentian’s memory. Something goes wrong, and Tina finds herself with the woman’s knowledge but not her personal memories. As if that weren’t enough, the starship is attacked by the enemies from the Compassion, led by Marrant, the one who killed her. Her survival depends on the secret of the Shapers, and the Talgan Stone is a clue.

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

The novel “The Ministry of Time” by Kaliane Bradley was published for the first time in 2024.

Some expatriates have been taken at various times of the past at the point of death and transported to a future London affected by climate change. To manage their adaptation to the new situation, the Ministry of Time is formed, a secret project that assigns each expatriate a so-called bridge.

Graham Gore was taken at the point of death in the Arctic during what in his future is known as Franklin’s lost expedition. To aid his adjustment, the Ministry of Time assigns him an Anglo-Cambodian woman with whom he lives in a specially prepared house. The relationship between the two of them isn’t easy, but their mutual understanding grows day by day, even as the project begins to reveal dark sides.

A diagram indicating the hominins that have left genetic traces in the DNA of modern humans.

An article published in the journal “Science” reports the discovery of genes belonging to two previously unknown hominin species in the DNA of modern humans. A team of researchers led by the University of California, Berkeley used a new algorithm called TRACE (TRacking Archaic Contributions via ARG Estimation), which they developed to reconstruct genetic relationships among hundreds of living human genomes. This allowed them to recognize two archaic genetic components from hominins that interbred with Homo sapiens in Africa over 50,000 years ago, and another from an interbreeding that occurred approximately 1.8 million years ago. The super-archaic genes of the second group don’t derive from a different interbreeding with modern humans, but from an interbreeding with the Denisovans.

Camp Concentration by Thomas M. Disch

The novel “Camp Concentration” by Thomas M. Disch was published for the first time in 1967, serialized in the magazine “New Worlds” and later as a book.

Louis Sacchetti was imprisoned as a conscientious objector who refused to participate in the war that had pitted the United States against virtually the entire world. Even in that situation, he tried to continue writing poetry, but after some time, he was transferred to a secret facility run by the military.

In his new prison, Louis Sacchetti discovers he was transferred to Camp Archimedes, where he becomes part of an intelligence-enhancement experiment. After being interviewed by resident psychiatrist Aimee Busk, he becomes a guinea pig for a treatment based on a derivative of the syphilis bacterium. Its negative side effect is that it’s even more lethal than syphilis itself.