To be published in April 2026
I’ve posted several times in the past about John Twelve Hawks, who, as soon as I read him, became my favorite living science fiction author. His most recent novel until now was published in 2014, so his fans have been waiting for a long time.
The new novel is Certainty, to be published by Penguin Random House/Doubleday in April 2026. The Penguin Random House page is here, and the Amazon page (you can pre-order it) is here.
For a good twenty years, it has been hard to find the kind of science fiction (new science fiction, anyway) that I like. Please pardon my political incorrectness, but trends in the publishing industry have not been favorable for writers who are straight white males whose writing is lucid and vigorous (as opposed to literary) and whose themes are something other than social themes. Maybe John Twelve Hawks had a 12-year fallow period. But I can’t help but wonder, actually, whether those trends in the publishing industry shut him out for a while as too male, insufficiently literary, and too political.
When I say, “insufficiently literary,” that, to me, is a compliment to John Twelve Hawks’ writing. To me, the story is the point, not the writing. So it’s clean, transparent, cinematic writing that I like, writing that lights up our visual circuits rather than putting heavy demands on our language circuits. That such writing is facile is just plain wrong. It’s actually very hard to do.
John Twelve Hawks has occasionally posted on his Facebook page during the past 14 years. His official web site has rarely been updated. He remains anonymous (John Twelve Hawks is, of course, a pseudonym) and reclusive. I’m sure I’m not the only fan hoping that, when this next book is published, he’ll do more interviews, publish more articles, and become more heard in the marketplace of ideas during these nightmare times in which we’re all living.