The terraformers

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Destry is a top network analyst with the Environmental Rescue Team, an ancient organization devoted to preventing ecosystem collapse. On the planet Sask-E, her mission is to terraform an Earthlike world, with the help of her taciturn moose, Whistle. But then she discovers a city that isn't supposed to exist, hidden inside a massive volcano. Torn between loyalty to the ERT and the truth of the planet's history, Destry makes a decision that echoes down the generations.

Centuries later, Destry's protege, Misha, is building a planetwide transit system when his worldview is turned upside-down by Sulfur, a brilliant engineer from the volcano city. Together, they uncover a dark secret about the real estate company that's buying up huge swaths of the planet—a secret that could destroy the lives of everyone who isn't Homo sapiens. Working with a team of robots, naked mole rats, and a very angry cyborg cow, they quietly sow seeds of subversion. But when they're threatened with violent diaspora, Misha and Sulfur's very unusual child faces a stark choice: deploy a planet-altering weapon, or watch their people lose everything they've built on Sask-E.

"Newitz performs a staggering feat of revolutionary imagination in this hopeful space-opera. . . . With the ethos of Becky Chambers and the gonzo imagination of Samuel R. Delany, plus a strong scientific basis in ecology and urban planning, this feels like a new frontier in science fiction."—Publishers Weekly, STARRED review

"The Terraformers, refreshingly, is the opposite of the dystopian, we’re-all-doomed chiller that’s become so common in climate fiction. Newitz’s mordant sense of humor steers the story clear of starry-eyed optimism, but it’s easy to imagine future generations studying this novel as a primer for how to embrace solutions to the challenges we all face."—Scientific American

"Brilliantly thoughtful, prescient, and gripping.” - Martha Wells, The Murderbot Diaries

“Newitz always sees to the heart of complex systems and breaks them down with poetic ferocity.”—N. K. Jemisin, author of the Broken Earth trilogy and The City We Became

"The Terraformers is so engaging, you could almost miss the pyrotechnic world-building and bone-deep intelligence. Newitz continues doing some of the best work in the field."—James S. A. Corey, author of the Expanse series

"Fascinating and readable in equal measure, The Terraformers will remake your mind like its cast remakes an entire planet."—John Scalzi, author of The Collapsing Empire

“A complete refurbishment of the great galactic story of terraformers. The old pleasures of the planetary romance are reanimated in kaleidoscopic fashion. Startling fun!”—Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Ministry for the Future

“Annalee Newitz’s ability to combine the wild west and the final frontier with plate tectonics and post humanism while spinning an epic tale that never loses sight of its characters is nothing short of magical. After reading The Terraformers you will want to live in Annalee Newitz’s future.”—Javier Grillo-Marxuach, creator of The Middleman and producer on Lost, The Witcher, and The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.

The future of another timeline

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A story of time travel, murder, and unlikely allies separated by centuries, battling for a world in which anyone can change the future.

1992: Beth, a teenage riot grrl, witnesses a murder and realizes something is deeply wrong with her life--maybe it's her best friend, maybe it's her dad, or maybe it's the strange woman who keeps trying to warn her about what's coming.

2022: Tess, a time-traveling geologist, journeys to different eras for her research, while secretly hoping to correct a mistake from her past that haunts her still.

Their lives become mysteriously intertwined as war breaks out across the timeline--a war that threatens to destroy time travel, leaving only a small group of elites with the power to shape the past, present, and future.

Nominated for the Locus Award for best science fiction novel.

Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Library Journal, and Booklist all gave it starred reviews. Publishers Weekly said, "An intelligent, gut-wrenching glimpse of how tiny actions, both courageous and venal, can have large consequences. Smart and profound on every level.”

Here’s what other people are saying about it:

A revolution is happening in speculative fiction, and Annalee Newitz is leading the vanguard. -- Wil Wheaton, actor Star Trek and Big Bang Theory

"Few stories are as smart, as nuanced, as exciting, and as unsettling as this one....engrossing and impactful. — Karen Joy Fowler, bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

A glorious tale of hope in the face of outrage, an anthem of timeless resistance against the powers that would lead us to our worst futures. —Ken Liu, Author of The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories and The Grace of Kings

"The Future of Another Timeline does brilliantly what SF does best: makes metaphor concrete to illuminate the human condition. In this case, the idea that women are consistently written out of history by men is turned into a visceral reality, and secret history becomes a thrilling secret war." —Nicola Griffith, author of Hild

“The best punk rock / time travel / Chicago history / riot girl / mindfuck of a book I have ever read. Grape Ape Forever!" --Dan Sinker, creator of Punk Planet magazine

"The Future of Another Timeline is the mind-blowing punk feminist sci-fi time traveling thriller you've been waiting for, and which our culture desperately needs. Packed with action, sass, righteousness, and danger, it just might be a perfect book." —Michelle Tea

A feminist, sci-fi, thrill-ride integrated into a covert history lesson. You close the book reeling with questions about your own life and your part in changing the future. —Amy Acker, actress Angel and Person of Interest

"Clever, compelling and utterly original." —Laurie Penny, author of Everything Belongs to the Future

"Exciting and urgent." —Saladin Ahmed, Eisner winning author of Black Bolt, Exiles, and Throne of the Crescent Moon

"A page-turner and an ambitious feminist lens on the time-traveler story.” — Kelly Sue DeConnick, author of Captain Marvel, Bitch Planet

Autonomous

Published in 2017, Autonomous was my first novel and won the Lambda Literary Award. It was nominated for the Nebula, Locus, and Campbell Awards, and optioned for TV by AMC Networks.

Earth, 2144. Jack is an anti-patent scientist turned drug pirate, traversing the world in a submarine as a pharmaceutical Robin Hood, fabricating cheap scrips for poor people who can’t otherwise afford them. But her latest drug hack has left a trail of lethal overdoses as people become addicted to their work, doing repetitive tasks until they become unsafe or insane.

Hot on her trail, an unlikely pair: Eliasz, a brooding military agent, and his robotic partner, Paladin. As they race to stop information about the sinister origins of Jack’s drug from getting out, they begin to form an uncommonly close bond that neither of them fully understand.

And underlying it all is one fundamental question: Is freedom possible in a culture where everything, even people, can be owned?  

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Publisher's Weekly gave Autonomous a starred review, and called it "a phenomenal debut."

The New York Times called it "timely."

The Chicago Tribune said, "Newitz's provocative ideas make this one of the strongest first novels of the year."

NPR raved, "It's a brilliant, fascinating debut, beautifully written and developed."

Rebellious Magazine described it as "sometimes sexy, sometimes brutal, consistently fascinating."

A "gutsy mix of existential ideas and adventures," said the Seattle Times.

The L.A. Times says, "This novel asks serious and thought-provoking questions."

Other Praise for Autonomous:

"Autonomous is to biotech and AI what Neuromancer was to the Internet."—Neal Stephenson

"Something genuinely and thrillingly new in the naturalistic, subjective, paradoxically humanistic but non-anthropomorphic depiction of bot-POV—and all in the service of vivid, solid storytelling."—William Gibson

"Moves fast, with frightening intelligence." —Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

"Annalee Newitz has conjured the rarest, most exciting thing: a future that's truly new ... a terrific novel and a tremendous vision." —Robin Sloan, author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

"Holy hell. Autnomous is remarkable." —Lauren Beukes, bestselling author of Broken Monsters

short stories

I have published science fiction short stories. Here are some favorites.

“The Best-Ever Cosplay of Whistle and Midnight,” Uncanny Magazine, 2024 (Read)

“Unhearable Music,” Rolling Stone, 2023 (Read)

“A Hole in the Light,” Sunday Morning Transport, 2022 (Read)

“The Almond Pirates,” Anthropocene Magazine, 2022 (Read)

“#Selfcare,” Tor.com, 2021 (read)

“I’m with MUNI — How Can I Help?” San Francisco Chronicle, 2020 (Read)

“The Translator,” published in Made to Order, edited by Jonathan Strahan, 2020

“Old Media,” Tor.com, 2019 (read)

“When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis,” Slate, 2018. (Read)

• Won the Sturgeon Award for best short story.

• Collected in Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019

"The Blue Fairy's Manifesto," Robots vs. Fairies, ed. by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe, 2018. 

"Birth of the Ant Rights Movement," Ars Technica UK, 2016. (Read)

"All Natural Organic Microbes," MIT's Twelve Tomorrows, 2016. (Order the issue.)

"Drones Don't Kill People," Lightspeed Magazine, 2014. (Read)

• Collected in The Year's Best Fantasy and Science Fiction

"Unclaimed," Shimmer Magazine, 2014. (Order the issue.)

"Two Scenarios for the Future of Solar Energy," Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, ed. by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer, 2014. (Order the book.)

"Twilight of the Eco-Terrorist," Apex Magazine, 2011. (Read)

"The Gravity Fetishist," Flurb, 2010. (Read)