There have been a few posts on anticipated genre 2013 releases around and about the internet, but most have either been uncritically exclusive, or squeeing fannishly over volume umpteen in various piss-poor epic fantasy series. Which is not to say the outlook for 2013 is entirely glum. Yes, there will be the usual badly-written tomes of badly-mangled mediaevalish adventure, all of which are interchangeable: swords! rape! magic! feisty princesses! rape! war! rape! But there are one or two books upon which I have my beady eye…

January
Adam Robots, Adam Roberts
A collection of Mr Robot’s stories. Who could not want this? I’ve appeared in a couple of anthologies alongside Adam, which has sort of forced me to read his stories. But what I’ve read I have liked and thought very good, so I’d like to read more of them. I seem to react better to his short fiction than his novels. And, it has to be said, that is a pretty damn cool cover.

The Explorer, James Smythe
Astronauts are definitely in – what with Lydia Netzer’s Shine Shine Shine (see here) and Christian Kiefer’s The Infinite Tides last year. The Explorer looks pretty much like genre heartland, although it seems to be marketed on the edges of science fiction. Given my own fascination with astronauts – Adrift on the Sea of Rains, The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself, ‘Faith’ (PDF), etc –  it’s certainly a book I plan to read.

February
The Best of All Possible Worlds, Karen Lord
This has been getting lots of good press and looks like one of the year’s more interesting sf releases. I’m not sure the précis on Amazon makes it sound wholly appealing – remnants of the galaxy’s once ruling elite is short on women, and a civil servant must accompany one such male on his search for a mate – but it all depends who’s writing it…

The Disestablishment of Paradise, Phillip Mann
I’ve been a big fan of Mann’s fiction for decades (oof, that makes me feel old) – see here – so I’ll buying this one in hardback the moment it is released. It will be Mann’s first book since 1996’s The Burning Forest, the final book in his A Land Fit for Heroes alternate history quartet. That’s quite a long silence – seventeen years. Alexander Jablokov spent a decade not writing before Brain Thief was published. I thought it very good, but it didn’t seem to do very well. Let’s hope Mann’s The Disestablishment of Paradise does better…

March
Life After Life, Kate Atkinson
I’ve not read any Atkinson, though I understand she’s quite good. I did watch the television series with Jason Isaacs, however (though, to be honest, it clashed with Scott & Bailey, which I thought much the better series). This book, about a person who serially reincarnates, sounds like it might be worth a go. I’ll wait for the paperback, though.

Necessary Ill, Deb Taber
According to Suzy McKee Charnas, this novel “offers hopeful glimpses of alternatives to the current cultural barrage of post-Apocalyptic savagery and regression to warlordism”. Am sick to bloody death of post-apocalypse novels in which people turn into animals and only some warped version of right-wing US society offers hope or a way forward. So, want.

April
The Serene Invasion, Eric Brown
Eric has been churning out quality sf for more than two decades, and his novels and short fiction are always worth reading. It’s a shame his books seem to cause few, if any, ripples. Except, of course, he’s been shortlisted this year for the Philip K Dick – albeit bafflingly for Helix Wars, rather than the year before for The Kings of Eternity, which is by far the better book.

Prophet of Bones, Ted Kosmatka
To be honest, I’d sooner see a collection from Kosmatka. I’ve only read a handful of his short fiction, but what I’ve read I’ve thought very good – I even picked his ‘Divining Light’ for the Locus All-Centuries Short Fiction Poll. I’ve been meaning to pick up Kosmatka’s first novel, last year’s The Games, in paperback, and whether or not I get Prophet of Bones will depend on my reaction to that book.

June
The Shining Girls, Lauren Beukes
I really liked Zoo City (see here), so I’m keen to read this one, even if the plot has been described as “The Time Traveler’s Wife meets The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo“. Ugh. But I trust Lauren to produce something good despite that. (Incidentally, it really annoys me they never bothered correcting the spelling mistake in the title of The Time Traveler’s Wife (yes, I know, it’s the american spelling; but I don’t live in the US, and we use British English here).)

The Adjacent, Christopher Priest
I’m always late reading Priest’s novels, though I usually get there in the end. It’s useless speculating what it might be about, because Priest’s novels generally defy summary. This one is allegedly his “most complex yet”, although if anyone knows of a simple Priest novel I’ve yet to hear it. Santa brought me The Islanders for Christmas, so I’ll be reading that soon… two years after everyone else and a year after it won the BSFA Award…

July
Evening’s Empires, Paul McAuley
The fourth book in McAuley’s hard sf nearish-future series. I really must read Gardens of the Sun…

August
On the Steel Breeze, Alastair Reynolds
The second book of Poseidon’s Children and the sequel to Blue Remembered Earth. I liked the first book, I liked its optimism and its avoidance of sf’s usual panoply of magic bullshit technology. This one I will certainly be buying in hardback on its release.

September
Proxima, Stephen Baxter
There’d be something wrong if there wasn’t at least one Stephen Baxter novel out each year. It’s deep future sf, with humans living on a dead world orbiting Proxima Centauri, and all sounds very Baxterian.

Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea, Adam Roberts
A sequel to The Asylum’s “mockbuster” of Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under Sea by Adam Roberts has to be worth a go. Though, to be fair, I did think the ending to the film was pretty unequivocal – the Nautilus was destroyed by the nuclear warheads Nemo had planned to launch against the US, and everyone aboard, including Nemo, was killed. But I’m sure Adam will come up with some cunning trick to show how Nemo escaped death in a nuclear explosion at the very last second.

December
Equilateral, Ken Kalfus
I saw mention of this on io9, and its description sounded interesting: British scientists at the turn of the century have come to believe there’s life on Mars, so they propose to build a massive triangle in the Egyptian desert. Yup, I’d read that. (io9 gives the publication date as April, but according to Amazon it’s December in the UK. I guess I’ll have to wait a bit longer than them, then.)

No doubt there will be more titles I want to read appearing throughout the year, but these are the only ones that have been announced so far that appeal to me. I’ll also probably end up reading other new books recommended to me but which, at first glance, I hadn’t thought worth trying, or hadn’t known about. So it goes.