Zachary Jernigan had the misfortune of being one of the last authors published by Night Shade Books, a long-running independent press that collapsed earlier this year. In all that shuffle, Jernigan’s debut novel, No Return, has become a bit lost. And that’s a crime. A science-fantasy epic that’s as of a much perverse hybrid as it is an homage to an earlier era when those genres weren’t so strictly segregated, No Return is set on a world that bears wizards and astronauts equally. It also pulls no punches in its rich, visceral depictions of sexuality, martial arts, punk energy, and the philosophical quandaries of power and identity that speculative fiction uniquely exploits—and that few up-and-coming speculative writers outside Jernigan tackle with such guts. (c) AVClub