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Year: 2015

Internet Explodes Around Irene Gallo

Internet Explodes Around Irene Gallo

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Irene Gallo Tor Creative Director-smallIf you’ve been following science fiction publishing for the past 48 hours, you may have found yourself asking, “Who the heck is Irene Gallo?”

The talented Ms Gallo is the Creative Director of Tor Books, and the associate publisher of the marvelous Tor.com, where she’s done some exemplary work. On May 11, in response to a question on her personal Facebook page, she wrote a quick and rather clueless assessment of the Sad Puppies/Rabid Puppies movement:

There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end of social justice in science fiction and fantasy. They are unrepentantly racist, sexist and homophobic. A noisy few but they’ve been able to gather some Gamergate folks around them and elect a slate of bad-to-reprehensible works on this year’s Hugo ballot.

Virtually no one took notice of Irene’s comments until Vox Day tweeted a screenshot on June 6th, and Larry Correia took note of it on Facebook, saying:

Irene Gallo is the Creative Director at Tor… I think we should share the love. Everybody deserves to see this wisdom in action.

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Clarkesworld Magazine Now Accepting Novelettes

Clarkesworld Magazine Now Accepting Novelettes

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Clarkesworld 84-smallNeil Clarke has had quite a year. His magazine Clarkesworld published its 100th issue in January — an extraordinary milestone for any fiction magazine, let alone one of the earliest online venues — and in November he and fellow Clarkesworld folks Sean Wallace and Kate Baker received a Special Award from the World Fantasy Convention. And at the Nebulas this past weekend, Neil had no less than three stories he’d edited up for awards — more than any other editor. But I think the biggest news from Neil was this low-key announcement on his blog on June 2:

For several years now, I’ve capped the upper limit on Clarkesworld’s original fiction at 8,000 words. There were several good reasons for doing that, but they were mostly financial. This past week, we passed our latest Patreon goal and secured funding for a fourth original story in every issue… Assuming the Patreon pledge levels hold, this puts us in a situation that provides me with some flexibility.

I’m considering raising our upper limit to 16,000 words. That would take us firmly into novelette territory. (Right now, we barely scrape it.) Each issue would feature no more than one novelette… We would also accompany this change with an increase in pay rate on the 4000+ side of our scale.

And in a very brief post the next day, Neil confirmed that Clarkesworld would now publish fiction up to 16,000 words. Its rates have changed as well: it now pays 10¢ per word for the first 5,000 words, and 8¢ for each word over 5,000.

This is very good news for fantasy writers of all kinds. Clarkesworld is one of the most acclaimed publications in the industry, and the fact that it published exclusively short fiction was a source of continued frustration for many writers. So if your great fantasy novelette has been languishing in your desk drawer for years without a home, now’s the time to take it out and polish it up. Clarkesworld‘s submission page is here, and we covered the May issue here.

Future Treasures: The Captive Condition by Kevin P. Keating

Future Treasures: The Captive Condition by Kevin P. Keating

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The Captive Condition-smallPantheon isn’t known for publishing horror or fantasy… so when they do, it’s worth sitting up and taking notice. Their latest release, by the author of The Natural Order of Things, is a deliciously dark novel about an idyllic Midwestern college town that turns out to be a nexus of horror.

For years Normandy Falls has been haunted by its strange history and the aggrieved spirits said to roam its graveyards. Despite warnings, Edmund Campion is determined to go there and pursue an advanced degree in literature. At first things proceed wonderfully, but Edmund soon learns he isn’t immune to the impersonal trappings of fate: his girlfriend Morgan Fey smashes his heart, his advisor Professor Martin Kingsley crushes him with frivolous assignments, and his dead end job begins to take a toll on his physical and mental health.

One night he stumbles upon the body of Emily Ryan, a proud and unapologetic “townie,” drowned in her family pool. Was it suicide, Edmund wonders, or murder? In the days following the tragedy, Emily’s husband Charlie, crippled by self-loathing and ultimately frozen with fear, attempts to flee his disastrous life and sends their twin daughters to stay with the Kingsleys. Possessed with an unnamed, preternatural power, the twins know the professor seduced their mother and may have had a hand in her death. With their piercing stares, the girls fill Martin with the remorse and dread he so desperately tries to hide from his wife.

Elsewhere, a low-level criminal named The Gonk takes over a remote cottage, complete with a burial ground and moonshine still, and devises plans for both; Xavier D’Avignon, the eccentric chef of a failing French restaurant, supplies customers with a hallucinogenic cocktail he makes in his kitchen; and Colette Collins, an elderly local artist of the surreal and psychedelic, attends a New Year’s Eve retrospective that is destined to set the whole town on fire.

The Captive Condition will be published by Pantheon on July 7, 2015. It is 265 pages, priced at $24 in hardcover and $9.99 for the digital edition.

Interzone #258 Now on Sale

Interzone #258 Now on Sale

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Interzone 258-smallThe May–June issue of Britain’s longest running science fiction and fantasy magazine is now on sale.

The cover, by Martin Hanford, is titled “Dorian Gray,” and is a fine (and terrifically creepy) re-interpretation of the 1891 novel by Oscar Wildle… with space suits. I like it. Click the image at right for a bigger version.

Interzone #258 contains five stories:

“a shout is a prayer / for the waiting centuries” by T.R. Napper
“The Re’em Song” by Julie C. Day
“Doors” by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam
“Angel Fire” by Christien Gholson
“Her First Harvest” by Malcolm Devlin

Non-fiction this issue includes “Freak Zone” by Christopher Fowler. Here’s the first paragraph:

My former agent once told me, “I accept any kind of fiction except science fiction.” When I asked her why, she explained, “I just don’t think I could do it justice,” which was a polite way of saying that she didn’t understand it. But to me, not understanding everything was the point and purpose of reading.

There’s also “Future Interrupted,” by Jonathan McCalmont, and Nina Allan’s “Time Pieces” column, this month titled: “Election Special: the Hugos, the Puppies, and the Big Pile of Poo.”

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May Short Story Roundup

May Short Story Roundup

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oie_6212435zQMwrmTD (1)I’m sorry that I let April pass without a short story roundup. The outpouring of new heroic fiction continues unabated on the pages of numerous magazines the genre is lucky to have. I’m back on track and here to tell you about last month’s must-reads.

I have never left any doubt in my reviews about which is my favorite fantasy magazine, so let me start by singing the praises of Adrian Simmons and his cohorts at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. Each issue has terrific cover art, two or three stories and a number of poems, and in the three years I’ve been reading and reviewing the magazine it has always been at least satisfactory and usually splendid. What makes HFQ so strong is the editors’ love for and knowledge of the genre, which is obvious by their singular ability to select and edit stories. Always true to the traditions of heroic fiction, they yet manage to publish tales that push the genre in new directions.

Issue 24 is maybe their best yet. This quarter’s artwork is a dark, brooding piece titled “Wizard With Army” by Vuk Kostic. Click this link to see the painting in its full glory.

The issue opens with Cullen Groves’ first published story, “The Madness of the Mansa,” a tale of a capricious monarch with a peculiar penchant for poetry.

Following a night in which “a great storm arose over the western ocean, and many citizens and sailors in the port of Asongai told how they had seen the demons of madness walking the black winds in the darkness.”, the ruler, the Mansa, is struck by a curious madness. From that point on he allows people to address him only poetically, using “the old meters” of songs and legends.

In the wake of the Mansa’s madness, the merchants of Asongai find themselves unable to successfully compete for his attention against the skilled singers of his tribal subjects. When a merchant named Bukra overhears the ex-gladiator, Draba, singing in a tavern, he hires him to petition the Mansa on his behalf.

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Vintage Treasures: Dragonflight and Dragonquest by Anne McCaffrey

Vintage Treasures: Dragonflight and Dragonquest by Anne McCaffrey

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Dragonflight McCaffrey-small Dragonquest McCaffrey-small

Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern is one of the most famous and bestselling science fantasy series of all time. All told there are sixteen novels, written between 1968 and 2006, the last two in collaboration with her son Todd.

The artist most closely associated with it is probably Michael Whelan, who was hired to paint the cover for the third novel, The White Dragon, published in June 1978. The White Dragon became the first bestseller in the series, and Whelan was hired by Ballantine to create new covers for the first two novels, Dragonflight and Dragonquest, late in 1978. He did a fine job, and was subsequently hired for the next four volumes in the series.

But I still admit a great fondness for the early 70s covers of the first two books (above), both painted by Gino D’Achille. Both books were Ballantine paperback originals. The covers are more whimsical and fairy-tale like, and speak to me of 1970s fantasy.

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The Camera Can Lie: FairyTale: A True Story

The Camera Can Lie: FairyTale: A True Story

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Cottingley FairiesNews flash: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, having created literature’s greatest rationalist in the form of Sherlock Holmes, spent his later years heavily invested in the occult, the supernatural, and the possible existence of (yes) fairies.

Of course, people have always evinced a desire to believe — sometimes in this, sometimes in that — and so it is perhaps not so surprising that Conan Doyle played a large role in one of history’s great photographic deceptions, that of the so-called Cottingley Fairies.

In fact, he was one of those most willing to champion the trumped-up, cheap-looking fakes (black and white stills of young girls posing in shrubbery with paper cut-outs of highly Romanticized winged fairies) His role in this debacle (the girls only recanted decades later) is the subject of a FairyTale: A True Story (1997), a film well worth revisiting given our drone-happy, GPS-driven, target-rich world.

You see where I’m going with this, yes? Given our present era of photo manipulation and computer generated graphics, our collective ability to dupe the unwary has never been greater, and just like statistics, images lie.

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Neil Gaiman and Kazuo Ishiguro on Sword & Sorcery

Neil Gaiman and Kazuo Ishiguro on Sword & Sorcery

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Neil Gaiman in The New Republic-small

The New Republic has posted a lengthy conversation on fantasy, titled Breaking the Boundaries Between Fantasy and Literary Fiction, between Neil Gaiman (The Graveyard Book, American Gods) and Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day, The Buried Giant). Among other fascinating topics, the two discuss sword & sorcery, and the different cultural approaches to swordfights.

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New Treasures: Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction

New Treasures: Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction

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Hannu Rajaniemi Collected Fiction-smallOne of the more enjoyable parts of the Nebula Awards weekend was the autograph session late Saturday night — when folks like Greg Bear, Larry Niven, Connie Willis, Nancy Kress, Joe Haldeman, Jack McDevitt, Aliette de Bodard, Tobias Buckell, and dozens more sat down to sign autographs for fans. The author with the biggest line was unquestionably Cixin Liu, author of Nebula-nominated The Three-Body Problem, who’d flown all the way from China, but there was plenty of love to go around. Greg Ketter from Dreamhaven was doing a brisk business in the middle of the room, selling books to eager autograph hounds. I decided to limit myself to one book and, oddly enough, despite the rare opportunities to get autographs from some of my favorite authors, the title I couldn’t resist was Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction, from an author who wasn’t even in attendance. It’s a beautiful limited edition hardcover from Tacyhon Publications. I’d heard rumors it was almost sold out, and when I saw Greg had a single copy, I snatched it up.

Inside the firewall, the city is alive. Buildings breathe, cars attack, angels patrol, hyperintelligent pets rebel.

Hannu Rajaniemi (The Quantum Thief) is always on the cutting edge. His postapocalyptic, postcyberpunk, and posthuman tales are full of extraordinary beings and unpredictable optimism. With his remarkable agility at merging science with storytelling, Rajaniemi makes the impossible possible — or even probable.

Rajaniemi’s much-anticipated first collection contains seventeen stories, with two original tales, a neurofiction experiment, and his Twitter micro-fiction. Journeying deep into inner and outer space, he asks us, how will human nature evolve when the only limit to desire is creativity? What happens when the distinction between humans and gods is as small as nanomachines — or as large as the universe? So whether you think the next big leap in technology might be genetic engineering, unlimited energy, or space travel, know this: Hannu Rajaniemi the arbiter of what happens after.

Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction was published by Tachyon Publications on May 19, 2015. It is $25.95 for the limited edition hardcover; there is no digital edition. The cover art is by Lius Lasahido.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Looking at The Bruce Partington Plans

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Looking at The Bruce Partington Plans

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BruceP_FDSSolar Pons is, of course, the next best thing to Sherlock Holmes (which you know because you read THIS post, right?). I’m a Pons fan and I run www.SolarPons.com, the only website dedicated to The Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street.

Along with my two free, electronic newsletters (The Solar Pons Gazette and Baker Street Essays), the heart of the site is a collection of (non-spoiler) case commentaries for August Derleth’s stories. Some day, it will also host commentaries for the Basil Copper pastiches.

One of the many projects on my ‘To Do’ list (which might as well be Wish list) is to write case commentaries for the sixty Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I’ve done one (woohoo!!!). First, if you haven’t done so, you really, really, really (I mean, really) need to read “The Bruce Partington Plans.” It’s a short story; won’t take long. And the rest of this post will actually mean something to you.

Each case commentary includes a non-spoiler preview of the story, some notable quotes, and a plethora of miscellaneous observations and comments. I’m probably in the minority, but I think there is some good stuff below and you’ll know a bit more about the story after you read it. So, come, the game is afoot!

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