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(Orbit, 416 pages, $25.99)

“Machine Vendetta” is the final part of a trilogy called The Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies, so named because the lead character is a space cop (or prefect) named Tom Dreyfus. His job is to keep the peace among the Glitter Band, a loose federation of artificial habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone.

You don’t have to have read the previous two books to understand this one — summaries of essential information are provided — but it’s recommended as there is a larger narrative arc in the ongoing battle between a pair of superpowerful, highly-evolved AIs. Dreyfus and his fellow prefects in the Panoply are really up against it in a high-stakes and high-tech police procedural where people, computers, and even hyperpigs, may not be what they seem.

Alastair Reynolds writes smart books and you feel like you have to read them at speed just to keep up. His world building is so advanced that it seems every page has some new gadget or big idea flashing by that needs to be taken on board. All of which means there’s lots here to enjoy in the thrilling conclusion to what has been a great series.

The Fabulist Play Cycle

By Hugh A. D. Spencer

(BrainLag, 387 pages, $23.99)

The fact that he’s both a fan and a scholar of science fiction plays into all of Toronto author Hugh A. D. Spencer’s work. For Spencer, SF isn’t just a genre or a tradition but also his subject matter: what his books are about.

“The Fabulist Play Cycle” is a brilliant example, being a collection of three radio plays that track a group of writers living through America’s golden age of SF, followed by a fourth play in four parts that offers a coda.

If you know something of this history you’ll recognize, under different names, the famous magazine editor John W. Campbell Jr., the author Isaac Asimov, and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. And it’s with regard to Hubbard that the story becomes most intriguing, as Spencer makes a link between the operations of popular or mass culture and a religious cult.

Pure Wit: The Revolutionary Life of Margaret Cavendish

By Francesca Peacock

(Pegasus Books, 360 pages, $39.95)

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, was an exception to the rule that writers, whatever their imaginative gifts, usually lead boring lives. Cavendish was a remarkable character, obsessed with fame, who always wanted to stand out. And this she did. She survived England’s civil war in the 17^th century as an exile aristo and then went on to fashion a career as a writer working in various forms and genres at a time when female authors weren’t thick on the ground.

A new biography of Cavendish merits mentioning here as her Utopian fantasy “The Blazing World,” published in 1666, has a good claim to be a work of proto-science fiction. Though not widely read today, it’s a landmark speculative novel and Utopian fiction about a journey to another planet, informed by Cavendish’s political interests and her fascination with the science of the day.

Every text has a context, and Francesca Peacock brings that context to life in this fast-moving and revealing literary bio.

The Bezzle

By Cory Doctorow

(Tor, 240 pages, $36.99)

“The Bezzle” — the name comes from the time between an embezzlement and its discovery — is the second Cory Doctorow novel about the freelance forensic accountant Martin Hench, and is a prequel to last year’s “Red Team Blues.”

While enjoying some downtime on Catalina Island in 2006, Martin and a friend disrupt a shady fast-food operation. Unfortunately, Martin’s friend is later thrown into a prison run by the rich guy who was behind the burger scheme, which leads us into a complex plot built around the control of America’s for-profit prison-industrial complex.

If you’ve read much of Doctorow’s stuff you’ll know that the bad guys here are a billionaire class of greedheads with a distinct lack of empathy or concern for the public good. Digging deeper, however, we get a critique of the secretive worlds of tech and capital, and the ways the system can be gamed. Martin Hench is the hero such a world needs.

While there’s a fair bit of Doctorow’s usual black-and-white tub-thumping and background exposition, “The Bezzle” has a good story and offers a fresh perspective on what might be happening now, or will be soon, in the big business of criminal justice.