My favourite books published in 2010 have been:

• Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks. Starting with a seemingly insignificant murder and then pulling back the focus to see how its repurcussions affect politics on a galactic scale, Surface Detail sees the utopian Culture going up against more religiously traditional civilisations in an effort to wipe out their sadistic electronic afterlives.

• Zero History by William Gibson. Almost the antithesis of Banks’s book, Zero History eschews a futuristic setting, instead focusing its action in London in 2009, as various characters struggle to unearth the clues that will lead them to the designer of a “secret” clothing brand.

• Zoo City by Lauren Beukes. Beukes repeats the success of her debut Moxyland, this time bringing us a gritty urban fantasy set in South Africa, and a tough, likeable heroine searching for some kind of absolution amidst the crime and struggle of everyday life.

My article The tightrope act of near-future fiction appears in today’s edition of The Irish Times.

Near-future fiction is a tightrope act, a game played with the audience. It’s a way of looking at the world, reflecting it through a prism to make the everyday extraordinary and the future relevant to the reader. But it’s a risky undertaking. If you assume it takes 18 months to write and publish a novel, world events may have rendered the entire premise of the book obsolete before it hits the shelves. No other literature has such a potentially short shelf life.

Read the full article here.

Moxyland is set in South Africa, only a stone’s throw into the future, in a society where the difference between employment and unemployment can also be the difference between life and death; where the greatest punishment is to have your mobile phone disconnected.

Starting slowly, the novel introduces us to its four narrators: Kendra the retro photographer; Toby the vlogcaster; Tendeka the would-be revolutionary; and Lerato the corporate programmer. Telling their intertwined stories over the course of alternating chapters, they show us their world, and we get to watch with horrified fascination as they become slowly embroiled in a deadly conspiracy that none of them fully understands.

With her stripped prose and lack of superfluous description, Lauren Beukes gives us what we need to see the world through the characters’ eyes. They never feel the need to over-explain themselves, and each has a distinctive and recognizable voice. The pages whip by quickly, as the tension grows, and as readers, we’re only half a step ahead of the characters in piecing together the seriousness of what’s going on.

Lean, sharp, and tightly written, Moxyland keeps raising the stakes, from the opening chapter to the uncompromising finale. And with its electronic panopticon, it gives us a dystopia to rival 1984 or Stand On Zanzibar – a future horrifying for its very plausibility.

Moxyland is published by Angry Robot.

As a result of last week’s Mind Meld on SF Signal, I had a nice suprise in the post this morning. Because I mentioned that I really wanted to read Moxyland by Lauren Beukes,  those lovely people at Angry Robot Books have sent me a copy, plus an advance proof copy of King Maker by Maurice Broaddus.

Both books look good. The first is a “politically charged urban speculative thriller”, and the second a retelling of the Arthurian myth, set amongst the drug dealers and gangs on the streets of downtown Indianapolis.

When I’ve read them, I’ll post a review.