The Moon and the Other

March 20, 2017
Kessel’s latest is thoughtful, slow-churning social science fiction mashing together what might be seen at first as near-utopias to reveal the underbellies and clashes of dissatisfaction and disenfranchisement, where the haves enjoy almost unimaginable freedoms while the have-nots are ground down. Mira is a young scientist trying to find her place in the 22nd-century matriarchal Society of Cousins on the moon, a struggle that includes taking on another identity: the subversive video artist Looker. Her lover, Carey, begins a fight for his parental rights against laws and traditions that give him none when the child’s mother is still alive. Erno, a biotechnologist exiled from the Cousins and now living in the Western-leaning Persian lunar society Persepolis, has a fateful encounter with Amestris, rebellious daughter of Persepolis’s most powerful family. All of them, and their societies’ political good intentions woven hand-in-hand with oppression, are about to be entangled in a Cousins upheaval heading towards possible disaster, alongside the search for a quantum machine whose bizarre effects could upturn everything. Kessel’s complex ideas and worldbuilding will appeal to any fan of character- and culture-driven speculative fiction. Agent: John Silbersack, Trident Media Group.

February 15, 2017
It is the middle of the twenty-second century, and humanity has spread to colonize the solar system. The moon houses more than three-million people in almost two-dozen separate city-state-style colonies. Political turmoil is brewing in the most secretive of these enclosed nations, the Society of Cousins, where men do not have the right to vote. Factions argue over the future course of their society, and the leadership advocates an even more withdrawn and secretive nature from the rest of the moon. Those who have escaped or have been exiled from the Cousins try to bring the plight of men in their homeland to light and share the vast technological advances that the Cousins now hold secret. As the society boils over, the overseeing council of all lunar states sends a fact-finding mission whose findings spark outrage and concern, igniting the first Lunar War. Kessel has crafted a compelling and complex tale, full of social commentary and thought-provoking dire warnings of a perilous future.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)