Machinehood (Saga Press, March 2, 2021). Cover by Richard Yoo and Zi Won Wang

S.B. Divya was nominated for a Hugo award for her groundbreaking work with Mur Lafferty on the hugely popular Escape Pod podcast. She’s published over a dozen short stories since 2014 in top-tier markets like Lightspeed, Tor.com, and Uncanny magazine, but her breakout book was Runtime (Tor.com, 2016), which was nominated for a Nebula Award for Best Novella.

Her latest is a near-future thriller with plenty of cyberpunk elements, set in a gritty futurescape run mostly by AIs. Publishers Weekly called Machinehood “stunning” in a rave review; here’s an excerpt.

Bodyguard Welga Ramírez is a disillusioned former Special Forces soldier who makes her living protecting CEOs and celebrities, using mechanical implants and a course of high-tech drugs to enhance her combat skills… Welga especially enjoys the opportunity to perform for the ubiquitous microdrone swarms that film and broadcast her every move. She even adds stylish action moves to her fights to improve her tips from her viewers. But when a job goes wrong, Welga faces a mysterious pro-AI terrorist group called The Machinehood. Determined to learn who they are and what they want, Welga heads into the very heart of The Machinehood’s operation… Divya keeps the pace rapid, and her crack worldbuilding and vivid characters make for a memorable, page-turning adventure, while the thematic inquiries into human and AI labor rights offer plenty to chew on for fans of big idea sci-fi. Readers will be blown away.

Machinehood will be published by Saga Press on March 2, 2021. It is 404 pages, priced at $27 in hardcover, $9.99 in digital formats, and $44.99 on audio CD. The cover was designed by Richard Yoo and feature 3D art by Zi Won Wang.

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