Bold Venture Press and Black Cat Media recently unveiled a new pulp anthology title, Awesome Tales. Largely the brainchild of editor/lead writer R. Allen Leider, three issues have been published thus far. Leider’s featured stories in each have successfully revived vintage pulp characters and placed them in World War II settings.
The first issue featured The Domino Lady, a racy adventuress from the “spicies” who has found popularity with “new pulp” specialty publishers such as Moonstone Books and Airship 27. Leider, who operates Black Cat Media, collaborated with Rich Harvey, who operates Bold Venture Press with Audrey Parente, in penning this new adventure that advances the character from her 1930s origins to the Second World War. Interestingly, the entire Domino Lady revival began when Bold Venture Press collected the character’s original 1930s adventures in 2004 and set the stage for new adventures to follow.
Steven Erikson’s 10-volume Malazan Book of the Fallen is one of the great works of fantasy of the 21st Century. It began with Gardens of the Moon in 1999; by 2012 the series had sold over a million copies worldwide.
In August 2012, Erikson kicked off The Kharkanas Trilogy, a prequel trilogy dealing with the Tiste before their split into darkness, light and shadow, with the opening novel Forge of Shadow. That book delved into events hinted at in the earlier series, and featured important characters from the Malazan Book of the Fallen such as Spinnoch Durav, Anomander Rake, and Andaris.
Erikson picks up the tale with Fall of Light, hot off the Tor presses this week, continuing the tragic story of the downfall of an ancient realm thousand years before the events of the Malazan Book of the Fallen. Civil war is ravaging Kurald Galain, as Urusander’s Legion prepares to march on the city of Kharkanas, and Silchas Ruin seeks to gather the Houseblades of the Highborn families to him and resurrect the Hust Legion in the southlands… but he is fast running out of time.
Fall of Light was published today by Tor Books. It is 864 pages, priced at $29.99 in hardcover and $14.99 for the digital edition. See all our recent New Treasures here.
The March/April issue of Interzone magazine is now on sale, with a cover by 2016 cover artist Vincent Sammy, “November-Class 627A” (click the image at right for a bigger version.)
Interzone #263 contains six stories:
“Ten Confessions of Blue Mercury Addicts, by Anna Spencer” by Alexander Marsh Freed
“Spine” by Christopher Fowler
“Not Recommended For Guests Of A Philosophically Uncertain Disposition” by Michelle Ann King
“Motherboard” by Jeffrey Thomas
“Lotto” by Rich Larson
“Andromeda of the Skies” by E. Catherine Tobler
Non-fiction this issue includes Shattering Illusions in SFF by Juliet E. McKenna, Future Interrupted by Jonathan McCalmont, Time Pieces by Nina Allan, News and obituaries, plus David Langford’s Ansible Link, and the regular columns: book reviews, Nick Lowe’s Mutant Popcorn film reviews, and Tony Lee’s DVD column, Laser Fodder. Issue 263 is nearly 100 pages and packed with fiction, columns, and top-notch art.
Interzone is the sister magazine of Black Static, both are published by TTA Press in the UK. The distinguished Andy Cox is the editor of both.
Two incredibly impressive magazines crossed my desk this past month: the very first issue of the brand new Cirsova, edited by P. Alexander, and Pulp Literature #10, edited by the triumvirate of Mel Anastasiou, Jennifer Landels, and Susan Pieters. Both are hefty collections (Cirsovais 95 pages and Pulp Literature is 229) and are available as e-books as well as real live paper versions.
Unfortunately, authors and editors of sci-fi and fantasy fiction seem to want to deny the genres’ pulp roots, or to hold up their literature as worthy of being taken seriously only as it has moved away from that which led to its existence in the first place. Cirsova is a celebration of those roots. In his afterword, Alexander writes:
There are a number of reasons why I wanted to launch a Cirsovamagazine, not the least of which being Jeffro Johnson’s Hugo-nominated Appendix N Retrospective series which both coincided with and helped spur my own look into a lot of older SFF stuff. Planet Stories in particular has become a favored inspiration of mine, and while I would not say that I plan or planned to model Cirsovaon that particular publication, I cannot and would not deny the influence.
If that piques your interest the slightest, then Cirsovais for you.
Schuyler Hernstrom’s “The Gift of the Ob-Men” kicks off the issue. Exiled from his tribe, the young warrior Sounnu, is changed into the tool that the Ob-Men, “tall heavy creatures, bearing the form of a mushroom bent into the shape of men,” will use to reclaim their ancient homeland. They transform Sounnu, growing a third eye in his forehead that lets him see the past and more importantly, all possible futures, and turning him into a nearly unstoppable killing machine. Before he reaches his destination he will face slavering ur-wolves and a mad artist haunting a ruined city. The best individual moments are the nearly psychedelic visions the young exile has when he sees all potential futures simultaneously.
My Grandad claimed he saw the Mogollon Monster once, when he drove up the Rim to visit the land they’d bought to build the cabin. He had pulled to the side of the road, let his dog out to run, and the dog got wind of something that upset him.
I don’t know more of the story than that — Grandad’s no longer around to fill the gaps and, anyway, maybe he’d embellish just to get a rise out of us.
When we were young, he and Nan drove us up to visit the land, and my Grandad was a very quiet man while Nan chattered away keeping us entertained.
But at one point, when we’d gotten way up as near the sky as you can get in Arizona, where the snowdrifts were two feet deep, Grandad pulled to the side of the road, without a word, got out, came around back of the truck, opened the tailgate, grabbed each of us, methodically, and tossed us into the snow.
We laughed fit to burst, then Nan dusted the snow off our pants, loaded us back up, and we were on our way.
I ran into my friend Phyllis Eisenstein at the Windy City Pulp & Paper Show here in Chicago over the weekend, and the first thing she said to me was, “I’m retired!”
This is exciting news. Phyllis has been nurturing several writing projects for the past few years, and I’ve been impatiently waiting for them — and it’s great to hear that she’ll finally have more time to devote to them. Though I forgot to ask if it means we’ll finally get the long-promised third volume in her Book of Elementals fantasy series, which began with Sorcerer’s Son in 1979, and continued with The Crystal Palace (1988). The third volume, The City in Stone, was actually completed a decade ago, but was left without a publisher after the sudden collapse of Meisha Merlin in 2007. The first two volumes are now long out of print.
Phyllis’ other novels include Shadow of Earth (1979), In the Hands of Glory (1981), and the Tales of Alaric the Minstrel (two novels, Born to Exile (1978) and In the Red Lord’s Reach (1989), plus various short stories). Her work has been nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, but these days of course she’s most famous for being the person who convinced George R.R. Martin to put dragons in A Song of Ice and Fire.
Last week, we had something of an introduction to Tony Hillerman and his Navajo Tribal Police novels. A quick read before continuing on here might serve you well. Or, you can throw caution to the wind and keep going!
In July of 1945, Hillerman was was on a sixty day convalescent furlough from World War II, with a patch over a damaged eye and a cane to assist his gimpy leg. He had been wounded near the German village of Niefern. Carrying a stretcher under fire, he had stepped on a mine. Now being carried himself on a stretcher, the man holding the front stepped on a mine and Hillerman was on the ground again. Someone picked him up in a fireman’s carry, dropped him in a creek, got him to a jeep and laid him across the hood. Hillerman made it out, alive (He would receive the Bronze Star, the Silver Star and the Purple Heart for his service).
Now temporarily back in the States, he had gotten a job driving pipe from Oklahoma City to an oil well drilling site on the Navajo checkerboard reservation. He stopped as a stick carrier’s camp crossed the road in front of him. They were making the ritual delivery of a scalp to the camp of a Navajo serviceman receiving an Enemy Way ceremonial. That’s a bit different than a deer crossing the road!
Hillerman’s first novel, some twenty years later, heavily involved an Enemy Way (that was his choice for the title. His publisher selected a completely unrelated ceremonial, The Blessing Way).
Tony Hillerman had been a reporter for many years and had also written nonfiction when he decided to write his first novel. As influences, he has cited Ross MacDonald, Raymond Chandler, George V. Higgins, Ernest Hemingway (“when he was still young enough to care about it”), Graham Greene and Eric Ambler (a master of suspense who has become unfairly forgotten over the years).
A less familiar name is that of Arthur Upfield, who wrote about the Australian Aborigine, Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. Hillerman frequently cited Upfield’s ability to make the setting seem real. That same descriptive ability is at the core of the Leaphorn and Chee books.
This looks like fun: a standalone supernatural thriller from The New York Times bestselling team of Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens. In Arlington, Virginia, a cop about to lose his career comforts a dying woman in the wreckage of her car. The next night, her ghost asks him for his help… a Russian general has infiltrated the US on a madman’s quest. His weapons are wraiths who cannot be killed. Ghosts have been weaponized.
In 1995, the CIA made a breakthrough that they hid from the world because it would change everything in modern science ― but some secrets can’t stay hidden. A rogue force has learned how to make disembodied minds capable of lethal action. Ghosts have been weaponized, and now a Russian general has infiltrated the U.S. with a squad of “berzerkers”―an army that can’t be killed because they’re already dead. Only one person knew the general’s plans, but she died in a car crash. The only person who can communicate with her is the cop who was at her side when she died ― and now he must race to stop a force that could end life as we know it.
Wraith will be published by Thomas Dunne Books on April 26, 2016. It is 320 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital version. The cover is by Micharl Komarck.
The Dungeon Master’s Guide to the Middle Ages? (Review: All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World)
This book will probably save you time and money because you won’t need all those funny little books on private life and seasons and agriculture and inns…
The horrible thing about being a historical novelist is that the specific information you need often exists, but not in an accessible form. You stand a good chance of being Embarrassingly Wrong on topics such as marriage customs for your particular setting and that — worse — you’ll discover this in your Amazon reviews: “I think you’ll find…”
That’s what drew me to All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World, a big fat pricey double volume by medievalist blogger Ruth A Johnston, “an independent scholar with a research specialty in medieval literature and languages” and published by the uber-respectable academic press Greenhill.
In the age of Wikipedia, it’s rather brave to publish any sort of popular encyclopedia, which is perhaps why this one seems priced for the academic and library market. It was of course the price — hefty for a hard copy, and perhaps outrageous for the ebook ($154.44 or £108.48!) — that nudged me into asking for review access. I needed to know: Is it any good for my research?
It’s certainly inspiring and well written; a worthy successor to books like the old A History of Everyday Things in England. Just glancing at the entries for M we have well-illustrated and lively topics: “Machines, Magic, Maps, Masons (See Stone and Masons), Measurement (See Weights and Measures), Medicine, Menageries (See Zoos), Mills, Minstrels and Troubadours, Monasteries, Monsters, Music, Muslims.”
I’ve covered a handful of truly massive anthologies at Black Gate over the years — Otto Penzler’s The Vampire Archives and The Big Book of Adventure Stories spring to mind, as well as Ann and Jeff Vandermeer’s 1152-page The Weird — but I’m not sure I’ve ever come something as hugely ambitious as The Big Book of Science Fiction, edited by the Vandermeers, and scheduled to be released by Vintage this July.
Weighing in at 1,216 pages in oversized trade paperback, this could be one of the largest anthologies the genre has seen. Here’s the description.
Quite possibly the greatest science fiction collection of all time — past, present, and future!
What if life was neverending? What if you could change your body to adapt to an alien ecology? What if the pope were a robot? Spanning galaxies and millennia, this must-have anthology showcases classic contributions from H. G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, Octavia E. Butler, and Kurt Vonnegut, alongside a century of the eccentrics, rebels, and visionaries who have inspired generations of readers. Within its pages, you’ll find beloved worlds of space opera, hard SF, cyberpunk, the New Wave, and more. Learn about the secret history of science fiction, from titans of literature who also wrote SF to less well-known authors from more than twenty-five countries, some never before translated into English. In The Big Book of Science Fiction, literary power couple Ann and Jeff VanderMeer transport readers from Mars to Mechanopolis, planet Earth to parts unknown. Immerse yourself in the genre that predicted electric cars, space tourism, and smartphones. Sit back, buckle up, and dial in the coordinates, as this stellar anthology has got worlds within worlds.
And here’s the complete Table of Contents — including a rich assortment of world SF.
Bold Venture Press and Black Cat Media recently unveiled a new pulp anthology title, Awesome Tales. Largely the brainchild of editor/lead writer R. Allen Leider, three issues have been published thus far. Leider’s featured stories in each have successfully revived vintage pulp characters and placed them in World War II settings.
