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Year: 2016

Future Treasures: The Drowning Eyes by Emily Foster

Future Treasures: The Drowning Eyes by Emily Foster

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The Drowning Eyes-smallTor.com‘s new lines of novellas was one of the biggest publishing stories of last year. Launched in September 2015 with Kai Ashante Wilson’s highly-regarded The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, Tor.com released a novella every week for ten weeks, including titles by Paul Cornell, Nnedi Okorafor, and K. J. Parker.

With the arrival of the new year, Tor.com kicks off another ambitious publishing round with The Drowning Eyes, the debut release from Emily Foster, a “magic- and wind-filled adventure, peopled with excellent and strong characters” (Fran Wilde) in which apprentice Windspeaker Shina must return her people’s power to them before the Dragon Ships destroy everything.

When the Dragon Ships began to tear through the trade lanes and ravage coastal towns, the hopes of the arichipelago turned to the Windspeakers on Tash. The solemn weather-shapers with their eyes of stone can steal the breeze from raiders’ sails and save the islands from their wrath. But the Windspeakers’ magic has been stolen, and only their young apprentice Shina can bring their power back and save her people.

Tazir has seen more than her share of storms and pirates in her many years as captain, and she’s not much interested in getting involved in the affairs of Windspeakers and Dragon Ships. Shina’s caught her eye, but that might not be enough to convince the grizzled sailor to risk her ship, her crew, and her neck.

See the complete list of Tor.com novellas we’ve covered so far below.

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A Positive View on the Accelerating Reboots in Comics

A Positive View on the Accelerating Reboots in Comics

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uncanny-inhumans-640The Marvel and DC reboots seem to happen quicker and quicker. Every 2-3 years, the big two stop production of many lines and then re-origin or rework a bunch of characters and teams. On one hand, I get it.

A #1 issue sells better than a #5 or a #25. Also, some characters or storylines get long in the tooth and a refresh isn’t bad. And often, this is a place to sneak in (or boldly proclaim) new diversity to appeal to a broader range of fans. On the other hand, some consumers, myself included, like our continuity and the idea of collecting all the issues and knowing that what I bought five years ago is still cannon.

But I’ve got to say that the quality of the reboots is winning me over. There is so little pure continuity left that the emotional cost of a reboot for me is lower and lower.

For example, in 2012, Marvel launched the NOW! branding of their line. A bunch of new #1 issues came out and many were kicking serious ass (Ms. Marvel, Captain Marvel, Guardians of the Galaxy, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Magneto, etc). In 2015, Marvel destroyed the Marvel Universe (surprise!) to make Secret Wars.

As a personal aside, hearing that they were redoing Secret Wars had me a little anxious. I’m old enough that I bought the first Secret Wars series over twelve months in corner stores. I thought a redo would be crappy. However, Marvel made this one much, much bigger in scope, and included most of the current characters in the MU.

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Galaxy, October 1967: A Retro-Review

Galaxy, October 1967: A Retro-Review

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Galaxy October 1967-smallA bit of a change of pace here, a late ’60s issue of Galaxy. Frederik Pohl was the editor. It is billed as the “Seventeenth Anniversary Issue, and the conceit is that the contributors are all celebrating an anniversary in the field. For example, Pohl himself published a poem in an SF magazine in 1937, making this his 30th anniversary. George O. Smith’s first story was published in 1942, so his 25th anniversary. H. L. Gold is here as the founding editor. Fair enough. The contributor that puzzles me is Roger Zelazny. The cover says “representing his 17th anniversary, but never explains that. This was the fifth anniversary of his first published story. Does it mean he started reading SF in 1950? I don’t know – it’s not explained at all.

The cover is by Gray Morrow, illustrating Gold’s story accurately enough. Interiors are by Gaughan, Morrow, and R. Dorfman (his or her only appearance, according to the ISFDB, in SF). Willy Ley contributes a science essay in his “For Your Information” series, which ran from 1952 through 1969. This one, “The Worst of all the Comets,” is about the great comet of 1680, which has a 574 year period, and which one writer speculated was the comet that caused the Biblical Flood (by raining water on the Earth when it passed very close). Pohl’s brief editorial is about the changes since his poem was published, in 1937.

Algis Budrys’ Galaxy Bookshelf covers Damon Knight’s anthology Worlds to Come (he objects that too many of the stories aren’t really SF), a reissue of Fritz Leiber’s The Big Time (which, Budrys reminds us, is really a play), Robert A. Heinlein’s landmark collection The Past Through Tomorrow (his big Future History collection, which Budrys praises highly), and, most significantly, Samuel R. Delany’s The Einstein Intersection. In the Thomas Disch piece just reprinted in Stories for Chip Disch writes of Delany telling him happily that Budrys had declared him (Delany) the best SF writer in the world. I don’t know if this is the review that prompted Delany’s happiness (apparently it was his review of Nova), but it would certainly make one happy. One quote: “The man simply operates on a plane that Robert Heinlein never dreamed of.”

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Vintage Treasures: The Well of the Unicorn by Fletcher Pratt

Vintage Treasures: The Well of the Unicorn by Fletcher Pratt

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The Well of the Unicorn-smallIt’s no surprise that I don’t get to pick up as many novels as I used to — and I finish even fewer than I start. I tell myself that at least I’m pretty well grounded in classic fantasy… but even then there are embarrassing holes. Like Fletcher’s Pratt’s groundbreaking The Well of the Unicorn, which the great Lester del Rey called “The best piece of Epic Fantasy ever written.” It’s one of his two truly major novels (the other being The Blue Star), and it influenced an entire generation of fantasy writers. It has been out of print for decades, and there is no digital edition, but copies aren’t hard to find. I tracked one down last week, and I’m very much looking forward to reading it.

A rousing epic fantasy of romantic adventure and swashbuckling sorcery by the author of The Blue Star.

Outcast of the Well

The ruthless and greedy Vulkings drove young Airar Alvarson from his people and his heritage. But soon, aided by the mysterious enchanter Meliboe, he embarked on a desperate odyssey through a treacherous world where magic worked — sometimes at a perilous price. As one of a band of desperate rebels, fighting against his Vulking oppressors, Airar’s future quickly became enmeshed with a trio of women… each one seemed born to alter his destiny!

Gython: A snow blonde beauty who fired his blood with a heart as cold as ice…
Evadne: A savage warrior maid determined to have her way with her battles and her men…
Argyra: A princess of the Well from whose waters come peace. A lady who brought him only turmoil and strife…

In a flash Airar Alvarson was trapped in the bloodiest battles, the most sinister of intrigues… and the most amazing romance of all.

The Well of the Unicorn was first published in hardcover by William Sloane Associates in 1948 (under the name George U. Fletcher). It was first printed in paperback in 1967 by Lancer Books, and then Ballantine in May 1976, with a classic cover by the Brothers Hildebrandt. The Ballantine edition is 388 pages, priced at $1.95 (click the image at right for a bigger version).

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PC Gaming Review: Endless Legend

PC Gaming Review: Endless Legend

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Endless_LegendMy first experience with 4x gaming (“eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate”) was a 1989 fantasy game called Warlords. I have many fond memories of the Orcs of Kor and super-mobile wizards and played the bits out of it for about a year, in fact the game probably holds some kind of personal record for cost per hour in gaming in fractions of pennies. I’ve played them off and on ever since, and settled into being a solid Sid Meier fan sometime around Civ III. I’ve played just about everything he’s put out since. Frankly, he’s the king of 4x.

Sid’s throne is resting on an unsteady dais these days, as Amplitude, an upstart indie publisher, captured my imagination and my heart with Endless Legend. Legend is a fantasy 4x that expertly weaves ideas, art, and gaming interface into a synergistic RPG RTS whole that tests brain, bladder, and sometimes marriage (Me: “Just one more turn, hon.” Wife: “So, three hours, then?”). Auriga, the world of Endless Legend, is a place I have a great deal of trouble leaving.

It’s a fascinating tableau, once part of a high interplanetary civilization known as the Endless. They’re gone now – Auriga suffered some planetary catastrophe and the races are just now getting themselves back on their feet. While they have mostly forgotten their higher days, there are ruins filled with secrets that may give you an advantage as you rebuild.

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New Treasures: Slavemakers by Joseph Wallace

New Treasures: Slavemakers by Joseph Wallace

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Slavemakers Joseph Wallace-smallJack McDevitt called Joseph Wallace’s 2013 novel Invasive Species, the tale of an explorer who stumbles on a new species of wasp in an African rainforest, “Brilliant.” His newest thriller is a sequel to that book, and it opens with humans on the verge of extinction.

If you like postapocalyptic adventure tales, this one looks original and intriguing. Check it out.

It’s Their Territory Now

Twenty years ago, venomous parasitic wasps known as “thieves” staged a massive, apocalyptic attack on another species — Homo sapiens — putting them on the brink of extinction.

But some humans did survive. The colony called Refugia is home to a population of 281, including scientists, a pilot, and a tough young woman named Kait. In the African wilderness, there’s Aisha Rose, nearly feral, born at the end of the old world. And in the ruins of New York City, there’s a mysterious, powerful boy, a skilled hunter, isolated and living by his wits.

As the survivors journey through the wastelands, they will find that they are not the only humans left on earth. Not by a long shot.

But they may be the only ones left who are not under the thieves’ control…

Slavemakers was published by Ace Books on December 1, 2015. It is 384 pages, priced at $9.99 for both the paperback and digital editions.

Cornelia Funke Founds Her Own Publishing Company to Release Reckless: The Golden Yarn

Cornelia Funke Founds Her Own Publishing Company to Release Reckless: The Golden Yarn

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Reckless Cornelia Funke-smallCornelia Funke is the international bestselling author of the Inkheart trilogy and more than a dozen other novels. Her latest to arrive on American shores is the third book in the popular MirrorWorld trilogy, which began with Reckless (2010) and Fearless (2013). It didn’t arrive without some bumps on the way, however. According to Publisher’s Weekly, Funke was so upset by her publisher’s suggested changes to the book that she formed her own company to release it.

At issue was a request by Funke’s publisher Little, Brown, to move the first chapter… to a different place in the book. After returning from a book tour in Germany where her publisher had released The Golden Yarn this February, Funke says she was “stunned” by the email she received from her editor at Little, Brown in the U.S., who she says was also speaking on behalf of the author’s U.K. editor. “It said, ‘We love the book, Cornelia, but could you please change the first chapter? It’s a birth scene. That’s a little drastic for our audience. Could you please put that somewhere else?’”

The opening chapter describes a dark faerie watching a princess give birth. “It’s about love,” says Funke, from her Beverly Hills home. “And it’s about what love does to you, and it’s about the fruit of love – a baby. The golden yarn is the yarn that binds us to people with love.” Her publishers also objected to the “open ending” of the book and asked Funke to turn it into an epilogue instead. “And I love that ending,” says Funke. After discussing these issues with her agents, Andrew Nurnberg and Oliver Latsch, Funke made the decision to part ways with her publishers and launch her own publishing house for markets in the U.S. and likely the U.K.

Well, it’s not every author who can walk away from a lucrative publishing contract midway through a series, and more power to her. Still, there are good reasons to partner with a major publisher — and one of them is that they understand the American market. I’d love to see Funke succeed, but the packaging for this book isn’t going to help readers at all. I received an advance copy of the book, and the completed hardcover, and several photocopied articles and releases explaining what it was, and honestly I was still confused about what book I’d received.

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Beyond the Immediate Shiver: The Rim of Morning by William Sloane

Beyond the Immediate Shiver: The Rim of Morning by William Sloane

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The Rim of Morning-smallAccording to either Google or Oz the Great and Powerful (I forget which, and for God’s sake, don’t look behind that curtain!), over 300,000 books are published in the United States every year. That’s over 800 a day, every day, day in and day out.

Most, of course, are utterly worthless and are destined to vanish without a trace almost immediately (see Sturgeon’s Law), and given the magnitude of this never-ceasing flood of words, even worthy books by fine writers will inevitably go out of print sooner or later — most likely sooner.

But here’s the thing — even when they drop out of print, books that are good enough are remembered, and sooner or later, like Marely’s Ghost or that particularly embarrassing anecdote that your mother loves telling at every family gathering (especially when a new significant other is present), the good ones come back.

Hence The Rim of Morning: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror, an omnibus volume reprinting two novels that William Sloane wrote a long time ago: To Walk the Night (1937) and The Edge of Running Water (1939). The books have been reprinted a few times, mostly in paperback, over the more than seventy five years since their first appearance, but the last editions were over thirty years ago under the Del Rey imprint (see the hardcover and paperback editions in a previous BG post here.)

Sloane was not exactly prolific; the two novels collected here are the only ones he ever wrote (or are at least the only ones that were ever published; I for one am hoping that there’s a big trunk somewhere, stuffed with manuscripts that he never bothered to mail in.) Shortly after writing them, Sloane launched a literary career of impressive solidity, especially coming from a man who had mostly given up writing himself. He started his own publishing house, edited a pair of science fiction anthologies, taught at the prestigious Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference for over twenty five years, and eventually became the managing director of Rutgers University Press, a position he held until his death in 1974.

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