Malka Older, “Null States,” (Tor, 2017)

New Books in Literature · Sep 18, 2017 · 39m

Malka Older‘s Centenal Cycle is set in the latter half of the 21st century and yet, like all good science fiction, it speaks to the current moment. Null States (Tor, 2017), the second book in her series, builds on the first, Infomacracy, which introduced readers to a near future in which the Earth is crisscrossed by a network of small but stable democracies. But in Null States, efforts to strengthen and expand this world order are threatened by unknown plotters. What makes Older’s books so timely is that they address some of the most vexing challenges of the Trump era, including the…