Victor Manibo Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Victor Manibo is a speculative Filipino fiction writer that resides in New York. He identifies as a person of color in addition to being a queer immigrant.

He likes to write about characters that live identities in the real world while they navigate their own personal imaginary words. He was also awarded the honor of being a 2022 Lambda Literary Emerging Voices Fellow. Victor is also known for writing the science fiction noir novel that would be his debut, the compelling first story titled The Sleepless. He would eventually follow that up with an installment for Erewhon Books titled Escape Velocity, which will be his triumphant second novel.

Victor very much enjoys writing fiction but apart from that, he also has a highly interesting day job working as a lawyer. In this career he also is able to use his imagination to weave stories and worlds for his clients, all based on the truth, of course. The author is married and lives with his husband in Queens in New York, along with their dog and two cats. He can be located online at his home site or most social media platforms under the handle of his full name, Victor Manibo.

The Sleepless is the first novel out from this author, released in 2022. The story has received many reviews and quite a lot of praise from various publications and reviewers. Booklist called it a story of ‘insidious, corporate-capitalist implications’ that tells the tale of the consequences for a person of having a life without dreams.

Meanwhile, Nebula Award author Sam J. Miller (Blackfish City) called the title fitting, as the plot of the book will have those reading it turning the pages long into the night. The author recounts that the book does what the best science fiction writing can do, which is to come up with a world that is so different from ours but so true that readers can be taught something about the world that they themselves live in.

Green Bone Saga author Fonda Lee also enjoyed the debut, saying that The Sleepless is a winner to him because it has everything in it that he wants from a science fiction near-future book: a great premise of ‘what if’, a murder investigation, and the dark side of a future that is supposed to be– or promised to be– bright, but may end up turning out to be anything but.

The setting of The Sleepless is in the future, in a world that is competitively hyper-capitalist. A journalist is going through the tough process of grieving the death of his mentor, all while doing his best to investigate it. At the same time, he is dealing with the consequences of bio-hacking that he may be implicated in.

Meanwhile, a strange pandemic ends up with around a quarter of the entire world’s population suddenly losing their ability to sleep. It happened suddenly, does not appear to have any other side effects or implications for their health, but also appears to be permanent. The outbreak of this condition more or less immediately changes society, making a new class of people that are ostracized while being feared, who use their extra time to try and make money and survive.

The main character in this story is the journalist, a man that goes by the name of Jamie Vega. He is one of those afflicted. He cannot sleep, and now he doesn’t apparently need to. Then his boss ends up passing right before a corporate takeover, and Jamie is not falling for the explanation that it was just a suicide. He decides to look into the matter for himself.

Everything starts going wrong when the journalist finds out that he was apparently the last person to witness Simon while he was alive. This means that he’s a main suspect for the police, and Jamie also cannot recall that night. Could the loss of his memory be related to how he turned into Sleepless? Could he have become forced into this status like the others, through a process of risky bio-hacking?

The journalist begins looking into the final days of his mentor and starts coming into contact with various organizations and corporate interests, while getting through trauma from the past as well as the consequences of the medical experiments that may have been done on him. But the last thing that he sees coming is the truth about the inability to sleep that puts him and humanity in danger. Can he make the right choice about what to do with the truth? What will happen? Read this exciting science fiction novel debut from Manibo to find out!

Escape Velocity is the second novel to be published by Victor Manibo and was released to the reading world in 2024. If you enjoy science fiction or have read The Sleepless and want to read more of Victor Manibo’s work, check this book out!

Low Earth orbit is home to the best luxury resort, known as Space Habitat Altaire. This is the place where the wealthy and the privileged come to play, the best location for reunions to be held for the Rochford Institute.

Rochford is all about the best, and takes only the cream of the crop. It accepts the most promising and wealthiest students with pedigrees and family legacies all to themselves. These reunions come with perks like space walks, but they are also a great place for alumni to contend with former classmates, rivals and friends as they all try to get into better positions to advance the applications they have put in to reside on a settlement on Mars.

The applications are their only hope to get out from the planet, which is dying. Earth is not sustainable for much longer and the ones that are able to be saved will arguably be the best. Ava is a finance magnate that is on board the Altaire for the purposes of attending a 25th reunion.

Ava is determined to find out what happened to her brother, who was murdered in the process of their senior year. Meanwhile, political scion and ambassador Laz is hoping that they’ll finally have a chance to win the attention and heart of Ava.

Then there’s Sloane, whose family is declining and is busy collecting secrets. He’s also hoping to get a client out of all of this. Henry is due to inherit an empire in healthcare and is busy creating an unusual opportunity to try and get to Mars in the hopes of getting away from a secret from childhood. All of these characters are playing the game, but will they notice the other agendas in place in time? Read this thrilling science fiction novel to find out!