Remember the first time you picked up Neuromancer, Snow Crash, or Mirrorshades and found yourself bewitched by the succubus of cyberpunk, enthralled by new worlds and dimensions, your imagination pummeled into impossible configurations? Nowadays, the term conjures up recycled nightmarish visions of Blade Runner-esque cityscapes, and humanoids either hyped up on technodrugs or jacked into the mainframe. In fact, these have defined the genre for so long that you may not realize that other possibilities exist until you read Dreaming in Smoke. How many SF books have you read that combine cyberpunk, hard science, and worldbuilding in one smooth, gripping volume? Tricia Sullivan, praised as one of the finest new talents in the field by David Brin, has crafted an utterly fresh view of our interaction with artificial intelligences. Her characters, the protagonist Kalypso, the scientist Marcsson, the AI Ganesh, and the unyielding alien planet T'nane are drawn in vivid, seductive detail, while the plot evolves in an exquisitely riveting course toward uncharted horizons, breathing new life into old ideas. At last, cyberfiction has escaped the confines of dark, fetid futures, matured beyond the adrenaline and attitude, and is free to reach into all areas of SF and the universe at large. --Jhana Bach


Cover artist: A. Pedro