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Year: 2015

Goth Chick News: Arnold Schwarzenegger (is not) the Zombie Terminator

Goth Chick News: Arnold Schwarzenegger (is not) the Zombie Terminator

Arnold Schwarzenegger may be back in his cold steel Terminator role later this year, but first it looks like he’s going to get all warm and gooey.

In a new film called Maggie, Schwarzenegger plays a loving father to a teen daughter he’s doing his best to protect at the peak of a zombie apocalypse. When Maggie becomes infected, the all-consuming virus begins to transform her into an undead creature with a budding appetite for human brains. Wade stands by her and attempts to ward off the authorities who are trying to collect her for quarantine and termination. Though her condition worsens, Wade is firm in his love; although Maggie would like him to save himself from the disease that is undoing her humanity.

Schwarzenegger manages all this while dropping only a few manly tears and sporting a grief beard that would put Tyrion Lannister to shame; though I’ll bet you an adult beverage that sometime before the credits roll we’ll see Arnie doing what he does best, involving fire and heavy weaponry.

Freshman Henry Hobson is in the director’s chair, and Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine and Zombieland) stars as Schwarzenegger’s ill-fated daughter. Maggie is scheduled to hit theaters May 8th.

George R.R. Martin Offers a New Excerpt from The Winds of Winter

George R.R. Martin Offers a New Excerpt from The Winds of Winter

Martin The Winds of Winter-smallBack in January we reported that The Winds of Winter, the sixth book in George R.R. Martin’s epic Song of Ice and Fire series, will not arrive this year, as some readers had hoped.

But to soothe the pain a little, Martin has been releasing small bits from the novel at his website. This morning he offered up a brand new chapter, featuring the return of a character who’s been absent for a long time. Here’s a small sample.

Alayne loved it here. She felt alive again, for the first since her father… since Lord Eddard Stark had died.

She closed the window, gathered up the fallen papers, and stacked them on the table. One was a list of the competitors. Four-and-sixty knights had been invited to vie for places amongst Lord Robert Arryn’s new Brotherhood of Winged Knights, and four­ and-sixty knights had come to tilt for the right to wear falcon’s wings upon their warhelms and guard their lord.

The competitors came from all over the Vale, from the mountain valleys and the coast, from Gulltown and the Bloody Gate, even the Three Sisters. Though a few were promised, only three were wed; the eight victors would be expected to spend the next three years at Lord Robert’s side, as his own personal guard (Alayne had suggested seven, like the Kingsguard, but Sweetrobin had insisted that he must have more knights than King Tommen), so older men with wives and children had not been invited.

And they came, Alayne thought proudly. They all came.

Read the complete chapter here, and the lengthy summary of everything we know about the novel so far over at Tor.com.

Shimmer 24 Now on Sale

Shimmer 24 Now on Sale

Shimmer 24-smallShimmer is a slender little magazine with a big reputation.

Issue #24, covered-dated March 2015, offers four stories about endings. Here’s editor E. Catherine Tobler’s on the issue:

The world is always ending. The world is always being reborn. Small steps, planetary scale. Turning itself inside out, do-over, rewind, fast-forward this part, and pause. Pause here and take a breath and read these four stories that will change your perception of how things end, how they start, how they go ever on.

Shimmer is not generally known for its humorous content, nor happy-go-lucky stories. Shimmer stories tend to have a mood and that mood is often bleak. Beth once told me Shimmer stories were like the line from Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” (or was that line only in the Jeff Buckley version?), it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah. It’s cold and broken, but there is still a sliver of light by which to see. That’s the shimmer.

Shimmer is published bi-monthly, and available in both print and your choice of DRM-free electronic formats (indeed, a wide range of formats, not just PDF and Kindle.) It has shown a talent for rooting out great fiction across a wide range of fantasy and SF, and describes itself as publishing “Speculative fiction for a miscreant world.”

Fiction this issue is by Maria Dahvana Headley, K.L. Pereira, Michael Ian Bell and Sunny Moraine. A new story is released on the magazine’s website every other Tuesday; or you can buy the complete issue in a variety of formats. The digital version also includes some nonfiction content (interviews and an editorial). Here’s the fiction TOC for March.

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See the Table of Contents for The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015, edited by Rich Horton

See the Table of Contents for The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015, edited by Rich Horton

The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015-smallLast month Prime Books announced the Table of Contents of my favorite Year’s Best book, Rich Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015.

This is the seventh volume, and it looks like another stellar line-up, with 34 stories from the leading print magazines (Asimov’s SF, Interzone, Analog, F&SF, and others), online publications (Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and more) and anthologies (Fearsome Magics, Reach for Infinity, Rogues, and Solaris Rising 3, among others).

Authors include Kelly Link, Robert Reed, James Patrick Kelly, Alexander Jablokov, K. J. Parker, Ken Liu, Genevieve Valentine, Eleanor Arnason, Cory Doctorow, Peter Watts, and many, many others.

I was also very pleased to see two Black Gate contributors made the list: Saturday blogger Derek Künsken, with his Asimov’s tale “Schools of Clay,” and website editor emeritus C. S. E. Cooney, for her story “Witch, Beast, Saint: An Erotic Fairy Tale,” from Strange Horizons.

The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015 is a fat 576 pages, and goes on sale in trade paperback from Prime Books in June.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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New Treasures: The Skull Throne by Peter V. Brett

New Treasures: The Skull Throne by Peter V. Brett

The Skull Throne Peter V Brett-smallThe Warded Man, the first novel in Peter V. Brett’s Demon Cycle series, was released in March 2009. His second, The Desert Spear (March 2010), became an international bestseller, and the third, The Daylight War, followed in February 2013. Now the fourth book in the series, The Skull Throne, has been released this week.

The Skull Throne of Krasia stands empty.

Built from the skulls of fallen generals and demon princes, it is a seat of honor and ancient, powerful magic, keeping the demon corelings at bay. From atop the throne, Ahmann Jardir was meant to conquer the known world, forging its isolated peoples into a unified army to rise up and end the demon war once and for all.

But Arlen Bales, the Warded Man, stood against this course, challenging Jardir to a duel he could not in honor refuse. Rather than risk defeat, Arlen cast them both from a precipice, leaving the world without a savior, and opening a struggle for succession that threatens to tear the Free Cities of Thesa apart.

In the south, Inevera, Jardir’s first wife, must find a way to keep their sons from killing one another and plunging their people into civil war as they strive for glory enough to make a claim on the throne. In the north, Leesha Paper and Rojer Inn struggle to forge an alliance between the duchies of Angiers and Miln against the Krasians before it is too late. Caught in the crossfire is the duchy of Lakton — rich and unprotected, ripe for conquest.

All the while, the corelings have been growing stronger, and without Arlen and Jardir there may be none strong enough to stop them. Only Renna Bales may know more about the fate of the missing men, but she, too, has disappeared…

The fifth (and final?) book in the series, The Core, does not yet have a release date. The Skull Throne was published by Del Rey on March 31, 2015. It is 704 pages, priced at $28 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital version. Read the first chapter here.

Amazon.com Returns to 1999 for April Fool’s Day

Amazon.com Returns to 1999 for April Fool’s Day

Amazon.com April Fools 2015-smallAmazon.com has turned back the clock to 1999 for April Fool’s Day.

The world’s largest online retailer has re-formatted its main page to precisely mirror the look and feel it had on April 1, 1999. It’s not just a snapshot of the page from sixteen years ago — it has replaced everything on the page, including the links on its top Books, Music and Videos, with April Fools-themed products.

The Amazon 100 Hot Books, for example, is topped by these three titles:

April Fool’s Day, Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew, by Carolyn Keene
The Practical Joker’s Handbook, by Tim Nyberg
April Foolishness, by Teresa Bateman

All the titles are real. None of the links function, however (clicking anywhere on the page will dump you back to the 2015 version of the Amazon home page).

As someone who used to shop regularly at Amazon in 1999, this page really takes me back. I love the prominent link to “VHS Top Sellers” in the bottom right. All of Amazon’s regular services — such as your cart, wish list, and the search functions — operate normally. It’s just the main page that’s been pranked.

Visit the Amazon home page here.

Presumably, Amazon’s home page will return to normal by the end of the day. Click on the image at right for a screen capture of the full page.

Epic Musket Fights and Vampire-Like Magic: Guns of the Dawn by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Epic Musket Fights and Vampire-Like Magic: Guns of the Dawn by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Guns of Dawn
This book is a supremely good read. That it’s also also thoughtful, wise and clever, is a bonus, like a good honest curry that however leaves an exquisite aftertaste.

(This weekend, I’ll be doing my thing at Conpulsion, Edinburgh’s truly excellent gaming convention. If you’re there, drop by and say hello.)

Guns of the Dawn
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Tor UK (700 pages, February 12, 2015, £16.99 in hardcover, £7.99 digital)

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Guns of the Dawn is…

Imagine Pride and Prejudice meets Sharpe, or if some of the female characters of the Cherry Orchard got conscripted into All Quiet on the Western Front, or was it Red Badge of Courage or Catch 22?

With Magic.

In a nutshell, two vaguely 1800s nations go to war. As attrition grinds down her side’s army to the point where they are conscripting women, upper class Emily decides not to draft dodge and goes to war, in a red coat, with a musket, ultimately in a swamp. And somewhere in there, there is an emotionally complex romance, coming of age, a mediation on truth and propaganda,  and a hint of… but that would be a spoiler.

Actually, the whole X meets Y thing breaks down very quickly. “Oh this is the French Revolutionary War..? or is it the American Revolution? Or…”

Tchaikovsky is obviously well-read, has life experience, understands war and organisations, and people, and if there are parallels with classic literary works and moments of Military History, it’s because they in turn reflect truths about life and people. Though, as I read on, I got the sense that he was quietly enjoying playing with reader expectations. Just sometimes, you think, “Oh I know how this goes. This is a Rorke’s Drift sequence…” and then it’s not.

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Vintage Treasures: The Ghatti Tales of Gayle Greeno

Vintage Treasures: The Ghatti Tales of Gayle Greeno

Sunderlies Seeking-small The Farthest Seeking

When I was running SF Site in the late 90s, I got hundreds of review books every year. Many appealed to me, though I had time to read almost none, and instead assigned them to our freelance reviewers. (Isn’t that always the way? You can have plenty of books, or you can have plenty of time, but you can never have both.)

Anyway, in the intervening 15+ years, I’ve long since forgotten most of the delightful volumes that passed through my hands. Yesterday I was in my basement — excuse me, the Cave of Wonders — making room for recent arrivals, packing up nearly a thousand old review copies to store in the attic, when I came across my dust-covered copy of Sunderlies Seeking, the first novel in Ghatten’s Gambit, a two-volume fantasy series published by DAW in 1998 and 2000.

I did remember Sunderlies Seeking. Even after 17 years, I recalled Mark Hess’s great cover and the evocative description on the back, promising a tale of adventure in a land of “convicts, rebels, and the unwanted refuse of society.” Not to mention a pair of friendly cats on the cover, helping sail a ship into the harbor. I’d never heard of author Gayle Greeno before Sunderlies Seeking crossed my desk in 1998, but after it did I sought out her other novels with great interest.

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The Dark Net, Encryption Keys, and Lethal Secrets: The Silence of Six by E. C. Myers

The Dark Net, Encryption Keys, and Lethal Secrets: The Silence of Six by E. C. Myers

The Silence of Six-smallThe Silence of Six
E. C. Myers
Adaptive Books (368 pages, November 5, 2014, $17.99 in hardcover)

When we meet Max Stein, he and his friends are attending a presidential debate hosted at their high school. This isn’t just any debate — the candidates are there to discuss education and internet regulations, both of which are topics of great concern to the youth of America. To highlight this, the moderator fields questions posted through Panjea, a popular social network. As the debate is about to begin, Max gets a text from an anonymous number: a passcode several digits long from a person who identifies himself as STOP.

Max instantly knows STOP’s identity: Evan Baxter, his best friend and fellow hacker. Moments later, Evan — wearing a hood and masking his voice — hacks into the debate’s live feed and posts a live video question: “What is the silence of six, and what are you going to do about it?” Then, horribly, Evan kills himself with a gun on camera.

Max is devastated. While he and Evan had grown apart over the past several months — Max had left the hacking world behind to pursue soccer and girls and popularity — he still considers Evan his best friend. He knows Evan wouldn’t have committed such a heinous, irreversible act without a good reason; he also knows the passcode that Evan gave him is the key that will unlock everything.

With no one to trust and the Feds on his tail, Max goes on the run in search of what Evan knew. His discovery will change how the world views social media forever. That is, if he can make it public before he becomes the seventh person silenced…

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New Realm March 2015 Now on Sale

New Realm March 2015 Now on Sale

New Realm magazine March 2015-smallI discovered New Realm last week, as I was preparing my update on magazine coverage here at Black Gate. It’s one of seven new monthly digital magazines launched at FictionMagazines.com over the past few years; the others are eFiction (literary fiction), FIVE Poetry, Heater (mystery/thriller), Nebula Rift (science fiction), Romance Magazine (romance/adult), and Under the Bed (horror).

eFiction was the first; it was started by Doug Lance in his college apartment, and published its first issue April 1st, 2010. The others were added in 2012. The magazines rely on a community to produce each issue; volunteers read and vote on story submissions, and those with the most votes end up in each issue. It’s a daring and unusual approach to short fiction publishing.

Each issue of New Realm contains five stories; there’s no non-fiction mentioned, although the guidelines talk about book reviews and interviews. Looking over the 23 monthly issues published so far, I notice two things. First, the covers, by Doug Lance and a team of artists, are excellent, easily a notch or two above most other small press fantasy magazines. Second, I don’t recognize any of the contributors, which tells me the mag is looking far afield of the usual sources to bring new voices into the genre.

The March 2015 issue contains the usual five stories. Here’s the complete table of contents.

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