Browsed by
Year: 2015

Future Treasures: Warrior Women, edited by Paula Guran

Future Treasures: Warrior Women, edited by Paula Guran

Comments 0 Comment

Warrior Women-small

Editor Paula Guran has had a good year, with an impressive list of top-notch anthologies in 2015, including: New Cthulhu 2, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2015, Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep, Blood Sisters, and my favorite book of the year (so far), The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2015. But she’s not done yet, and her next release looks like one of her most intriguing: Warrior Women, a collection of tales of courageous fighting women from Mary Gentle, George R. R. Martin, Aliette de Bodard, Nalo Hopkinson, Robert Reed, Nancy Kress, Tanith Lee, and many others. It will be released in trade paperback from Prime Books on December 17, 2015.

Here’s the Table of Contents.

…

Read More Read More

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 183 and 184 Now Available

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 183 and 184 Now Available

Comments 0 Comment

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 184-smallAs I’ve noted before, if you neglect Scott H. Andrews and his magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies for more than 15 days or so, he’ll publish two issues, making you look out of touch and behind the times. So here I am playing catch-up, because Scott publishes magazines faster than I can write about them. In this post I’m going to cover the latest issue, #184, as well as their big Seventh Anniversary Double-Issue, #183. The cover art for both issues is “Sundown” by Feliks Grzesiczek.

Let’s start with issue #184. The issue is cover-dated October 15, and contains two short stories, and a podcast.

“A Careful Fire” by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam
They turned their backs to Mabella. Her stomach twisted as it did when she pilfered too many sweets from the kitchens. She wanted to say something and nothing. She wanted to run, but her feet throbbed. Instead she turned and walked from the winged women’s cackling silence.

“Unearthly Landscape by a Lady” by Rebecca Campbell
I found myself examining the impeccable rooms and gardens in these photographs, fearing that they, too, betrayed another world. I am ashamed to say that I was happy to have shut the door on such rooms, on Flora herself. But I could not erase the memory of the man with the Gatling gun, and the five-armed green creatures lying on the ground below him.

Audio Fiction Podcast:
A Careful Fire by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam (Duration: 30:21 — 20.85MB)
She bursts each night when he leaves her. She does not wash the juice from her skin but hides the blue stains beneath her clothes.

…

Read More Read More

Human Enclaves and Experimental Planets: Rich Horton on The Sun Saboteurs/The Light of Lilith

Human Enclaves and Experimental Planets: Rich Horton on The Sun Saboteurs/The Light of Lilith

Comments 0 Comment
The Sun Saboteurs-small The Light of Lilith-small

Over at Strange at Ecbatan, Rich Horton reviews another great old Ace Double, this one featuring Damon Knight’s The Sun Saboteurs, paired with G. McDonald Wallis’ The Light of Lilith.

Damon Knight of course was one of the great writers in SF history, a Grand Master. The Sun Saboteurs was his second of four Ace Double halves (three separate books). It is an expansion of his 1955 novella “The Earth Quarter,” and it is about 37,000 words long. G. (for Geraldine) McDonald Wallis is almost unknown in the SF field — this novel and her 1963 Ace Double half Legend of Lost Earth are her only in-genre publications. However, she had an extensive career under the name “Hope Campbell”…

I don’t really think that Don Wollheim (or whoever else selected Ace Double pairings) necessarily chose stories that were thematically or otherwise related, but every so often it happened. This is a particularly striking case. Both The Sun Saboteurs and The Light of Lilith present a strikingly anti-Campbellian theme. In both, humans are presented as evil warmongers amid a generally peaceful Galaxy. In both, humans are forced to accept their inferiority to many alien species, and in both, many or most humans simply fail to do so. In both, humans are faced with isolation in the Solar System, and eventually with extinction. That said, one novel is far better than the other.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories by Charles Beaumont

New Treasures: Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories by Charles Beaumont

Comments 8 comments

Perchance to Dream Charles Beaumont-smallCharles Beaumont authored several highly regarded short story collections, including Yonder: Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction (1958), Night Ride and Other Journeys (1960), and The Magic Man and Other Science-Fantasy Stories (1965), and was also the screenwriter for a number of classic horror films, including 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, The Intruder and The Masque of the Red Death. But he’s best remembered today as the writer of some of the most famous Twilight Zone episodes, including “The Howling Man,” “Miniature,” and and “Number Twelve Looks Just Like You.” Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories is a new collection of his classic tales, with a foreword by Ray Bradbury and an afterword by William Shatner. Shatner’s piece recalls meeting Beaumont when he was cast as the lead in The Intruder, and their misadventures on the set together.

It is only natural that Charles Beaumont would make a name for himself crafting scripts for The Twilight Zone — for his was an imagination so limitless it must have emerged from some other dimension. Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumont’s finest stories, including five that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes.

Beaumont dreamed up fantasies so vast and varied they burst through the walls of whatever box might contain them. Supernatural, horror, noir, science fiction, fantasy, pulp, and more: all were equally at home in his wondrous mind. These are stories where lions stalk the plains, classic cars rove the streets, and spacecraft hover just overhead. Here roam musicians, magicians, vampires, monsters, toreros, extraterrestrials, androids, and perhaps even the Devil himself. With dizzying feats of master storytelling and joyously eccentric humor, Beaumont transformed his nightmares and reveries into impeccably crafted stories that leave themselves indelibly stamped upon the walls of the mind. In Beaumont’s hands, nothing is impossible: it all seems plausible, even likely.

Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories was published by Penguin Classics on October 13, 2015. It is 336 pages, priced at $16 in trade paperback, and $9.99 for the digital edition.

Canadian Inventor Creates the Goblin Glider

Canadian Inventor Creates the Goblin Glider

Comments 4 comments

This week Canadian inventor Catalin Alexandru Duru conducted the first successful test flight of a working hoverboard over a pond in Quebec.

Duru broke the world record for the longest hoverboard flight — more than 250 meters, five times the previous record — at Quebec’s Lake Ouareau in May of this year, but he’s been working on a “secret, next-generation version” of his device for the past five months. On Wednesday of this week, the 31-year-old Canadian inventor and his company, Omni Hoverboards, invited Reg Sherren of the CBC to witness the first test of the new prototype in Quebec. Watch the one-minute clip above for the results, and read all the details at the CBC website.

All I can say is: It’s about time, 21st Century. And now I know what I want for Christmas.

Clones, Deep Space Ships, and Surviving the Apocalypse on a Submarine: The Pocket Richard Cowper

Clones, Deep Space Ships, and Surviving the Apocalypse on a Submarine: The Pocket Richard Cowper

Comments 4 comments
Time Out of Mind-small Profundis-small Out There Where the Big Ships Go-small

Richard Cowper was a British SF and fantasy writer who published over a dozen novels and four short story collections between 1967 and 1986. Sadly, much of his output never made it across the Atlantic. Ballantine reprinted his first two novels in paperback, Breakthrough (1969) and Phoenix (1970), and DAW published perhaps his most famous novel, The Twilight of Briareus, in paperback in 1975. But those two ignored the rest of his work.

Fortunately, in the late 70s and early 80s Pocket Books brought six of his novels to the US, including the complete The White Bird of Kinship trilogy, and they were the sole publishers of his collection, Out There Where the Big Ships Go. It was the Pocket editions that first caught my eye on bookstore shelves in Ottawa — particularly the three gorgeous Don Maitz covers above. (You’ll note the maple leaf emblem on the top left of the Canadian editions.)

…

Read More Read More

Amazon.com Files Suit Against 1,114 Review Sellers on Fiverr

Amazon.com Files Suit Against 1,114 Review Sellers on Fiverr

Comments 0 Comment

Amazon HQ-smallYesterday Amazon.com filed suit against 1,114 individuals offering Review-For-Hire services through online marketplace Fiverr.

The suits follow a lengthy undercover sting operation in which Amazon purchased review-writing services from multiple sellers. Fivver is a popular online marketplace that lets sellers offer simple services, like video editing or photo conversion, typically for a flat fee of $5. Amazon claims it contacted Fiverr sellers who were advertising professional review-writing services for Amazon products.

Many sellers don’t even bother to write reviews, instructing buyers to write the reviews they want posted. In effect, they are selling the use of their online identities to post a review.

Amazon is not suing Fiverr, and in fact these services are effectively banned by Fiverr’s terms and conditions. But that obviously hasn’t prevented sellers from offering them.

See more details, and read the complete legal complaint, at Geekwire.

Why Novellas? Tor.com‘s Stellar New Fantasy & SF Releases

Why Novellas? Tor.com‘s Stellar New Fantasy & SF Releases

Comments 3 comments
The-Sorcerer-of-the-Wildeeps-Tor Witches-of-Lychford-Tor Sunset-Mantle-Tor

Here’s the thing about Tor.com Publishing: I’m a total fan. Complete fanboy.  I know, I know, they pay me to tell people how wonderful the books are, but between you & me? I’d do it for free, because I’m a total sucker for the books we’re putting out. (Probably not full-time, though, so if you’re reading this, boss, keep the paychecks coming!)

In all seriousness, it really is a “dream job,” precisely what I’d hoped to be doing when I got into publishing: having opinions about books with wizards & spaceships, & making those opinions matter. I’ve picked up a bit of jack-of-all-trades over the years, & being part of a new experiment flexes those skills in ways I am still gleefully scrambling to figure out. Tor.com Publishing is proof that publishers are doing new things & evolving.

…

Read More Read More

Springald! The Medieval Eighty-Eight

Springald! The Medieval Eighty-Eight

Comments 0 Comment
Springald1
“Destroyed everything within range”

The springald looks quaint in the 14th century illustration – a flimsy looking box frame served by two oddly bendy crewmen.

Youtube video of reconstruction in action
Youtube video of reconstruction in action

However, at the battle of Mons-en-Pevele in 1304, a pair of French springalds “destroyed  everything within range” — and that range could be 300 m — until the enemy overran them and hacked it up.

According to the Royal Armouries Springalds and Great Crossbows (the main source for this article), a springald bolt could weigh 1.4kg, and impacted with an estimated energy of 1782 Joules, that’s about twenty times that of a regular crossbow, nearly three times that of a Magnum pistol, and a bit more than an impact from an AK47 round (source)!

No wonder, then that the chronicler Froissart describes one such terrible missile passing right through a man and out the other side!

…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: Word Puppets by Mary Robinette Kowal

Future Treasures: Word Puppets by Mary Robinette Kowal

Comments 3 comments

Word Puppets Mary Robinette Kowal-smallIn the last few years Mary Robinette Kowal has built a name for herself as a master of historical fantasy with her Glamourist series, which began with the Nebula nominee Shades of Milk and Honey in 2010. But she’s also known for her acclaimed short fiction, and in fact in 2008 she won the Campbell Award for Best New Writer based solely on the strength of her superb short stories — no easy feat in a field where most of the acclaim (and the awards) go to emerging novelists. She’s been nominated for the Hugo Award three times (for “Evil Robot Monkey,” “For Want of a Nail,” and “The Lady Astronaut of Mars”), and won twice.

In addition to writing, Mary is also an accomplished pupeteer who has performed for Jim Henson Pictures, the Center for Puppetry Arts, and other fine institutions. She brings her two careers together with her second short story collection, Word Puppets, which goes on sale from Prime Books on November 5.

Celebrated as the author of five acclaimed historical fantasy novels in the Glamourist series, Mary Robinette Kowal is also well known as an award-winning author of short science fiction and fantasy. Her stories encompass a wide range of themes, a covey of indelible characters, and settings that span from Earth’s past to its near and far futures as well as even farther futures beyond. Alternative history, fairy tales, adventure, fables, science fiction (both hard and soft), fantasy (both epic and cozy) — nothing is beyond the reach of her unique talent. Word Puppets — the first comprehensive collection of Kowal’s extraordinary fiction — includes her two Hugo-winning stories, a Hugo nominee, an original story set in the world of “The Lady Astronaut of Mars,” and fourteen other show-stopping tales.

Word Puppets features an introduction by Patrick Rothfuss

…

Read More Read More