My debut novel,The Sleepless, is a sci-fi noir story born out of my passion for both speculative fiction and crime fiction. I grew up devouring Marvel comics and Ray Bradbury and Agatha Christie, and those were some of my strongest influences when I finally decided to write my own stories. As a queer immigrant and a person of color, I was also influenced by the lives of people who live these identities, as much as I was influenced by my career as a lawyer in the immigration, criminal, and civil rights fields.
As independent genres, science fiction and noir are both interested in exploration, not only of plot mysteries or the rules of a new and different setting, but also of deeper truths about the human condition. The Body Scout has a futuristic NYC where body modification is the norm, and an affecting detective story, which both examine how we relate to our bodies. From labor to narcotics to aesthetics to sex and desire, the book explores how we view and treat our own bodies and others, and how our social structures exploit them.
Hong Kong society is often regarded as politically apathetic. Yet throughout its history, Hong Kong experienced periodic waves of social movement activity. In part, the perception of an apathetic populace stems from the colonial government's laissez-faire policies, the society's concentration on economic development, the maintenance of traditional Chinese culture, and a consensus that Hong Kong would revert to Chinese sovereignty. Since Hong Kong was a colony, instead of evolving into a democratic government, Great Britain instituted a system of elite consultation and absorption of the masses' political problems through indirect participation. Butenhoff addresses the question of why social movements emerged…
In critiquing the failures of our institutions, noir necessarily spends a lot of time in society’s underbelly. Almost everyone in the cast is morally gray, if not on the darker shade of the spectrum. That’s what we get fromCertain Dark Things, which takes the narco gang wars in Mexico City, and instead of cartels, we get vampire clans, each with their own agendas and rules. For the protagonist Atl, a young female vampire on the run, the pull of the criminal underworld seems inescapable, and in her struggle we see the complications and the horrors of escaping one’s past.
Welcome to Mexico City, an oasis in a sea of vampires. Domingo, a lonely garbage-collecting street kid, is just trying to survive its heavily policed streets when a jaded vampire on the run swoops into his life. Atl, the descendant of Aztec blood-drinkers, is smart and beautiful - and very dangerous. Domingo is mesmerised.
Atl needs to escape the city quickly, to get far away from the rival narco-vampire clan relentlessly pursuing her. Her plan doesn't include Domingo, but little by little, she finds herself warming up to the scrappy young man and his undeniable charm. As the trail of…
At the center of many noir stories is a flawed detective—sometimes they’re depressed, often they have a drinking problem. They’re unreliable, but they are competent—and this tension from a point-of-view character is brought to the fore inThe Paradox Hotel, where the protagonist is saddled with the grief of a lost love, a hard edge to her personality, and a condition that has her perception “unstuck” in time. The book uses the science fiction element of time travel to show how that technology might alter one’s memories and experiences (and thus one’s emotions and choices), and in doing so seamlessly blends the strengths of both genres.
“Time travel, murder, corruption, restless baby dinosaurs, and a snarky robot named Ruby collide in this excellent, noir-inflected, humor-infused, science-fiction thriller.”—The Boston Globe
An impossible crime. A detective on the edge of madness. The future of time travel at stake. From the author of The Warehouse . . .
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, Kirkus Reviews
January Cole’s job just got a whole lot harder.
Not that running security at the Paradox was ever really easy. Nothing’s simple at a hotel where the ultra-wealthy tourists arrive costumed for a dozen different time periods, all eagerly waiting…
Noir can sometimes be hard to identify, but most readers are familiar with the tropes: the put-upon private investigator, the case that he can’t walk away from, the hunt for leads, the twists and double-crosses. With Hammers on Bone, we get all the aesthetics of a hardboiled detective story but also: Lovecraftian monsters. Noir stories lay bare individual and collective moral failings, and in adding eldritch horrors, the book further externalizes those ills, showing how monstrous humans can be.
Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw is a novella that melds the hardboiled detective novel with Lovecraftian monsters. Our private dick, John Persons, is hired by a ten-year-old kid to off his abusive stepfather. From this classic noir setup, to the character voice and dialect, to the shady characters, to the twists and reversals, this book really keys into the strengths of the genre, and amplifies them even further with the visceral horrors of imaginary beasts.
Cassandra Khaw bursts onto the scene with Hammers on Bone, a hard-boiled horror show that Charles Stross calls "possibly the most promising horror debut of 2016." A finalist for the British Fantasy award and the Locus Award for Best Novella!
John Persons is a private investigator with a distasteful job from an unlikely client. He’s been hired by a ten-year-old to kill the kid’s stepdad, McKinsey. The man in question is abusive, abrasive, and abominable.
He’s also a monster, which makes Persons the perfect thing to hunt him. Over the course of his ancient, arcane existence, he’s hunted gods and…
As a reader, I am drawn to both noir and science fiction because they are both puzzles. They present a mystery seeking an answer, whether it is a question about the rules of a strange new world, or the question of who killed who and how. In Far from the Light of Heaven, we start with a locked room murder mystery set on an interstellar vessel. The seemingly impossible crime is enough to keep one reading to the end, but then the book provides other, more enticing mysteries that grow in scale and scope the deeper the story goes.
'Gripping and skilfully told, with an economy and freshness of approach that is all Tade Thompson's own. The setting is interstellar, but it feels as real, immediate and lethal as today's headlines' Alastair Reynolds
Arthur C. Clarke Award winner Tade Thompson makes a triumphant return to science fiction with this unforgettable vision of humanity's future in the chilling emptiness of space.
The colony ship Ragtime docks in the Lagos system, having travelled light years from home to bring one thousand sleeping souls to safety among the stars.
Some of the sleepers, however, will never wake - and a profound and…
A mysterious pandemic causes a quarter of the world to permanently lose the ability to sleep—without any apparent health implications. The outbreak creates a new class of people who are both feared and ostracized, most of whom optimize their extra hours to earn more money. Jamie Vega, an investigative journalist, is one of the Sleepless. When his mentor dies in a suicidal overdose, Jamie doesn’t buy this too-convenient explanation—especially given its suspicious timing during a controversial merger—and investigates.
As Jamie delves deeper into his mentor's final days, he tangles with extremist organizations and powerful corporate interests, and must confront past traumas. But he soon faces the most dangerous decision of all, as he uncovers a terrifying truth about Sleeplessness that imperils him—and all of humanity.
He’s riddled with guilt. She’s annoyed with the status quo.
The death of a crime boss’s daughter forces Detective Neil Caldera to leave NYC. He seeks refuge in the tranquil embrace of a small town, where he finds himself entangled in the labyrinth of a teenage girl’s murder. Tess Fleishman’s pale skin and extreme weight loss portrays a disease she wants others to see. While inside, a compulsion for Neil fuels her passion to have him or destroy him.
He's riddled with guilt. She's annoyed with the status quo. The death of a crime boss's daughter forces Detective Neil Caldera to leave NYC. He seeks refuge in the tranquil embrace of a small town, where he finds himself entangled in the labyrinth of a teenage girl's murder. Tess Fleishman's pale skin and extreme weight loss portrays a disease she wants others to see. While inside, a compulsion for Neil fuels her passion to have him or destroy him. As Neil delves into the heart of the town's secrets, will truth deliver solace? Or will Tess prevail?
