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Random House Canada, $39, 416 pages

In “Final Orbit,” the third of his alternate-history, Cold War-era science-fiction books, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield takes us back to the heady days of 1975, détente and the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission. Only this time, things really go off the rails.

Rugged leading man Kazimieras “Kaz” Zemeckis is working at Mission Control in Houston when a depressurization “accident” takes out half the crew of the American-Soviet mission. This incident kicks off a wham-bang plot involving next-level geopolitics when it turns out that a new player, China, has secretly joined the space race.

Though the three books can be read as a series, “Final Orbit” also works just fine as a stand-alone. Hadfield has developed a signature style that fluidly blends real historical personages and events with explosive action, while also squeezing in quick timeouts for backgrounders on things like the development of Chinese rocketry in the 13th century. This all works surprisingly well, and shows that Hadfield has established himself as a reliable brand in grounded, retro-flavoured SF.

As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories

Edited by Terese Mason Pierre

Spiderline, $19.99, 288 pages

Editor Terese Mason Pierre introduces this anthology of stories by Black Canadian writers in a way that avoids putting them in any kind of box. “Speculative fiction” covers a lot of ground and cultural identity isn’t always in play, but the stories here all “further conversations of growth, futurity, and joy that are necessary in Canadian literature spaces.”

Acknowledging the variety on display, there are some recurring themes and elements: the importance of family and social connections, and the danger of isolation; entering a time that is post- so many things, including life itself — which doesn’t mean death anymore.

As with all the best speculative fiction, though, the real treat is in realizing how much of what’s described sounds like the way we live now. These stories aren’t all about what’s strange and new but may be set in places and deal with situations we can easily recognize, whether it’s sheltering from a pandemic or working for an online “everything” store.

Lucky Day

By Chuck Tingle

Tor Nightfire, $27.99, 240 pages

At the most fundamental level, the seemingly solid reality of our world dissolves into mere probability. There are few things that are truly impossible; they’re just very unlikely to happen.

Vera Norrie, a professor of statistics, knows all about this, but is nevertheless unprepared when the Low-Probability Event strikes, killing some eight million people around the world in a single day in the most bizarre and gruesome ways imaginable. Think of mass carnage in the streets while fish rain from the sky and pigs dressed up as angels drive around in cars.

The LPE has a devastating effect on Vera, leading her to withdraw from life. Then one day Agent Layne arrives on her doorstep and sweeps her off to Las Vegas to look into a casino that seems to be operating in defiance of the laws of probability. Which is when things get really crazy.

Chuck Tingle goes overboard with surreal violence and “X-Files”-like plotting as Vera is forced to confront escalating eruptions of the weird, slipping into our reality through randomly appearing “plot holes” that connect to an extra-dimensional spirit of nihilism.

There’s a moral and political message to all this too, but it’s a book that’s mainly for those who just want to enjoy the fireworks and confetti.

Before Superman: Superhumans of the Radium Age

Edited by Joshua Glenn

MIT Press/Radium Age, $19.95, 252 pages

Published in 1938, Action Comics #1, the first appearance of Superman, is considered to be the first superhero comic and is now the most valuable comic book in the world. The idea of heroes with superhuman powers, however, is as old as the Epic of Gilgamesh and still as popular as ever, as the dominance of today’s Marvel and DC movies shows.

In this new anthology, editor Joshua Glenn mines the protoscience fiction of the period from 1900 to 1935 for the supermen of what he’s branded the Radium Age. An introduction traces the origin of these figures, from Nietzsche’s Übermensch to the results of scientific experiment or accelerated evolution. They’re not quite men in tights wearing capes, but we can see steps in that direction.

The fact that most of the stories here are excerpts from what are now mostly obscure longer works is a bit disappointing, but for anyone interested in the genre or the era, this selection provides essential background on the rise to dominance of superhumans in our own pop culture.