This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome Lena Nguyen, author of We Have Always Been Here.

About We Have Always Been Here: Misanthropic psychologist Dr. Grace Park is placed on the Deucalion, a survey ship headed to an icy planet in an unexplored galaxy. Her purpose is to observe the thirteen human crew members aboard the ship—all specialists in their own fields—as they assess the colonization potential of the planet, Eos. But frictions develop as Park befriends the androids of the ship, preferring their company over the baffling complexity of humans, while the rest of the crew treats them with suspicion and even outright hostility.

Shortly after landing, the crew finds themselves trapped on the ship by a radiation storm, with no means of communication or escape until it passes—and that’s when things begin to fall apart. Park’s patients are falling prey to waking nightmares of helpless, tongueless insanity. The androids are behaving strangely. There are no windows aboard the ship. Paranoia is closing in, and soon Park is forced to confront the fact that nothing—neither her crew, nor their mission, nor the mysterious Eos itself—is as it seems.

About Lena Nguyen: Lena is a writer of speculative fiction and fantasy. She was raised in Phoenix, Arizona and has studied writing all over the world—including at Stanford, Brown, Harvard, and UCLA. She holds an M.F.A. in fiction from Cornell University, where she also taught as a lecturer of English, leading classes on creative writing, composition, comparative literature, and cultural studies.

Lena’s career has been dedicated to writing. Along with lecturing and teaching, she has worked as a researcher of science fiction; a literary novel judge; a creative consultant; a copy editor; a developmental editor; a game developer and writer; and an assistant editor of the literary publication EPOCH. Her science fiction has won several awards.

Lena is excited to announce the publication of her forthcoming science fiction thriller, WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE: a post-apocalyptic space mystery featuring a misanthropic psychologist and her android companions as they voyage on a haunted spaceship. WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE was published by DAW Books and Penguin Random House on July 6, 2021, and can be ordered online or in stores now.

Lena’s next project is to design, write, and code a full-length, choice-based interactive high fantasy game, as well as to finish her new speculative wasteland adventure: an assassin’s desert romp that lies somewhere between the realms of Mad Max and X-Men.

This week’s picks:

• Lena: Mass Effect Legendary Edition
• Tracy: The Crew – Quest for Planet Nine (Card Game)
• Patrick: Marvel Studios’ Black Widow

Links:

• Lena Nguyen on Twitter
• Tracy Townsend on Twitter
• Patrick Hester on Twitter
• The Functional Nerds Patreon Page

© 2021 Patrick Hester

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