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Year: 2017

June 2017 Locus Now on Sale

June 2017 Locus Now on Sale

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Locus magazine June 2017-smallLocus is one of the few magazines I read cover to cover. It’s packed full of news, interviews, conventions reports, color pics, enticing ads, and especially reviews of interest to me. For over 40 years it’s provided the most reliable and comprehensive coverage of the SF field on the market.

The June issue is crammed full of good stuff, including:

  • A lengthy interview with John Kessel (The Moon and the Other)
  • Winners of the Nebula and Bram Stoker Awards
  • Complete US and British Forthcoming Books
  • Review columns by Gardner Dozois, Rich Horton, Gary K. Wolfe, Faren Miller, Russell Letson, John Langan, Adrienne Martini, Liz Bourke, and others

One of the most interesting features for me was a spotlight on Scott H. Andrews, founding editor of  the excellent Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Here’s a snippet:

I started BCS in 2008 because the F/SF short fiction field had no dedicated home for literary or character-driven secondary-world fantasy. There were lots of great literary fantasy, slipstream, and magical realism, and decades of great literary SF, but rarely were magazines publishing character-centered or stylistically bold fantasy set in invented worlds.

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Patrick Swenson on Talebones, Fairwoods Press, and the Bad Old Days of Print on Demand

Patrick Swenson on Talebones, Fairwoods Press, and the Bad Old Days of Print on Demand

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Patrick Swenson-smallThe Ultra Thin Man-smallPatrick Swenson has been a major figure in speculative fiction for decades, first as the editor of Talebones, and now as the editor in chief of Fairwood Press. Many still remember his semi-pro magazine as the market to send to if you had a story that fit nowhere, but was nevertheless amazing. He has an eye for such things.

Nowadays, getting published by Fairwoods requires more than a good agent or query letter. It is by invitation only, and to be invited, one has to be on Patrick’s radar, and to be on Patrick’s radar, one has to be excellent.

He isn’t just an editor and publisher, though. He’s a writer as well, and his career is both exciting to watch, and an excellent snapshot of modern day publishing. His first book, The Ultra-Thin Man, was published by Tor, but when they passed on the second book, The Ultra Big Sleep, he elected to publish it himself.

Patrick explained this to me while I was standing at his table during the mass signing at Mile-Hi Con. There on the table were both books, and no one who saw them would have been able to say which was self published and which was published by Tor. The quality of their covers and bindings were identical.

On top of all this, Patrick also runs the Rainforest Writer’s Retreat twice a year. This retreat is where:

Writers gather at a location of minimized outside interference or influence, ready to spend an intensive four or five days on their own work, with others involved in the same who were present for support and interactive development of written creative work as art, craft, and science. Balanced against this is a schedule of events aimed at supporting this process, with the number of retreat guests and attendees kept to a limit.

Held in a resort village on the Olympia Penninsula, it’s an opportunity unlike any other to give an added boost to one’s writing career.

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New Treasures: A God in the Shed by J-F. Dubeau

New Treasures: A God in the Shed by J-F. Dubeau

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A God in the Shed-small A God in the Shed-back-small

J-F. Dubeau is a Montreal writer who burst on the scene last year with The Life Engineered, which was nominated for the Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. His follow-up is very different indeed — a contemporary horror novel set in small town Quebec, where a dark spirit has held sway for centuries. Fangoria says “Move over True Detective. A rich, gothic story of murder and mystery, A God in The Shed is quite possibly one of the most enthralling novels I’ve read in the last ten years.”

The village of Saint-Ferdinand has all the trappings of a quiet life: farmhouses stretching from one main street, a small police precinct, a few diners and cafés, and a grocery store. Though if an out-of-towner stopped in, they would notice one unusual thing ― a cemetery far too large and much too full for such a small town, lined with the victims of the Saint-Ferdinand Killer, who has eluded police for nearly two decades. It’s not until after Inspector Stephen Crowley finally catches the killer that the town discovers even darker forces are at play.

When a dark spirit reveals itself to Venus McKenzie, one of Saint-Ferdinand’s teenage residents, she learns that this creature’s power has a long history with her town ― and that the serial murders merely scratch the surface of a past burdened by evil secrets.

I love the movie-like credits on the back, which include the editor and cover designer. I wish more publishers followed suit. A God in the Shed was published by Inkshares on June 13, 2017. It is 428 pages, priced at $15.99 for the trade paperback and $7.99 for the digital edition. The cover was designed by M.S. Corley.

Half Past Human by T.J. Bass

Half Past Human by T.J. Bass

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‘Civilization is too high a price to pay for survival’

Moon from Half Past Human

I don’t know what made me buy Half Past Human (1971) by T.J. Bass fifteen years ago. It was one of those books I had always seen on the used book store shelves, but nothing about the cover (the basis on which I tended to buy unknown books back then) made me go “Gotta buy it.” Something on the back cover, though, must have caught my attention that day, because I plunked my money down on the counter of Red Bank, NJ’s (sadly, long gone) Book Pit. I started reading it on the ride home, and before I knew it I was a third of the way done. A week later I made a circuit of used book stores to get my hands on the sequel, The Godwhale (1974).

Initially published by Ballantine, Gollancz released the duology in 2014 as part of its Masterworks collection. If you’re a sci-fi reader of a certain age, or a student of the genre, you’ll recognize most of the books in the collection, definitely most of the authors. But with only two books published nearly fifty years ago, I wonder how many know Bass’s name today. Which is a shame.

The fear of overpopulation was immense in the late sixties. Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 The Population Bomb promised that if population growth was not brought under control, humanity faced oblivion. Regular famines, overcrowded cities, a polluted environment, and dwindling natural resources seemed to be our future. Science fiction was examining the problem with books like Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! (1966) (the basis for the Charlton Heston sci-fi noir Soylent Green) and John Brunner’s Stand On Zanzibar (1968). This fear set the stage for Bass’s vision of Earth crushed by the weight of three trillion people.

In this, the third millennium, Earth was avocado and peaceful. Avocado, because all land photosynthesized; and peaceful, because mankind was evolving into the four-toed Nebish — the complacent hive citizen.

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When Fantasy and Theology Collide: Some Thoughts on Satan

When Fantasy and Theology Collide: Some Thoughts on Satan

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Lord_of_DarknessI recently met a woman whose father-in-law had been a federal prison guard at a medical prison that held the “Blind Sheikh” back around the time of the 9/11 terrorist attack. The Blind Sheikh (Omar Abdel-Rahman) was an associate of Osama bin Laden and the planner behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing — one of the early “masterminds” of Al Qaeda. In other words, a real life counterpart to the nastiest, most nefarious villains in our fictional thriller novels and cinema fare.

She told me that her dad-in-law spoke to the Sheikh a couple times, as could be expected: casual banter will occasionally happen between guards and the imprisoned criminals they are guarding. She said the Sheikh seemed friendly enough to her father-in-law, but she added, “The Sheikh told him that we worship three gods. That was a big issue he had with us, that we worship three gods. So much of it was cultural misunderstanding.”

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The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog on the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of June 2017

The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog on the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of June 2017

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Cormorant Run Lilith Saintcrow-small Godblindy Anna Stephens-small The Asylum of Dr. Caligari by James Morrow-small

The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog has gradually become one of my most trusted resources. Yeah, they’re trying to sell you books, so maybe they’re a little less discerning than, say, John DeNardo over at Kirkus, or Andrew Liptak at The Verge. But I’ve been consistently impressed with the quantity and quality of their articles. They’ve got a fine staff of enthusiastic writers who really know the industry. If you’re looking for a dedicated group of book nerds to help you cherry-pick the most interesting new releases coming down the genre chute week after week, month after month, then this is the place to be.

Jeff Somers sizes up the June releases with a look at new titles from Yoon Ha Lee, Tad Williams, Timothy Zahn, Tom Holt, Neal Stephenson and Nicole Gallard, Terry Brooks, K.W. Jeter, Karin Tidbeck, Catherynne M. Valente, Seanan McGuire, Jason M. Hough, Richard Kadrey, William C. Dietz, Theodora Goss, and many others. Here’s a look at three of his selections that grabbed my eye.

Cormorant Run by Lilith Saintcrow (June 13, Orbit, 400 pages, $15.99 in paperback)

After the mysterious Event, rifts opened all over, leading to strange places filled with deadly creatures and inexplicable events. “Rifters” have ispecial skills that allow them to explore the rifts and survive — sometimes. Svinga is released from prison on one condition — she must lead a less-than-harmonious team into the “holy grail” of rifts: the Cormorant, the deadliest and possibly most valuable example of the strange phenomena. Her lover died trying to map it, but that extra knowledge gives her the slightest edge — if she can keep the team she’s guiding in one piece while they traverse the most dangerous place in the universe.

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Future Treasures: Dark Sky and Dark Deeds by Mike Brooks

Future Treasures: Dark Sky and Dark Deeds by Mike Brooks

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Dark-Run-Mike-Brooks-small Dark Sky Mike Brooks-small Dark Deeds Mike Brooks-small

Mike Brooks’s space opera Dark Run, published last year by Saga Press, was one of the most acclaimed SF debuts of 2016. The Keiko and its crew of smugglers, soldiers of fortune, and adventurers travelling Earth’s colony planets successfully took on a job that could pay off a lot of their debts, in a corrupt galaxy where life is cheap and criminals are the best people in it. In the sequel Dark Sky, arriving in hardcover and trade paperback next month, Captain Ichabod Drift and his crew sign on for a new smuggling job that soon goes south when they’re separated and caught up in a dangerous civil war.

When Ichabod Drift and the Keiko crew sign on for a new smuggling job to a mining planet, they don’t realize what they are up against. The miners, badly treated for years by the corporation, are staging a rebellion. Split into two groups, one with the authorities and one with the rebels, Drift and his crew support their respective sides in the conflict. But when they are cut off from each other due to a communication blackout, both halves of the crew don’t realize that they have begun fighting themselves…

Dark Sky (322 pages, $26.99 hardcover/$16.99 trade/$7.99 digital) will be published by Saga Press on July 11, 2017. It will be followed this fall with the third volume, Dark Deeds, in which a ship-wide vacation leads to the second-in-command being taken hostage by a criminal mastermind.

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Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: The Many Faces of Bob Weinberg

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: The Many Faces of Bob Weinberg

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Bob Weinberg and Tina Jens-small

Robert Weinberg and Tina Jens

In many ways, Bob was like the Tony Randall character in the movie 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. In the movie, Tony Randall is the “owner“ of a mysterious circus that visits a western town. He appears in different guises to teach the townspeople what they each need to know to become better people. Based on a novel by fantasy writer Charles G. Finney, the screenplay was written by one of Bob’s favorite authors, Charles Beaumont. To one townsperson, Dr. Lao is the oracle Apollonius; to another, the music-loving, goat-god Pan; to yet another, Merlin the magician and wizard.

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Monsters, Murder and Magic in Victorian London: Storm and Ash by Elizabeth Cady

Monsters, Murder and Magic in Victorian London: Storm and Ash by Elizabeth Cady

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Storm and Ash - Elizabeth Cady-small

Black Gate blogger Elizabeth Cady (whose last article for us was a review of Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway), has launched a captivating web serial titled Storm and Ash. The Greysons, a powerful and respected British family, is thrown into turmoil at the death of eldest son Edmund’s fiancee. When it’s revealed the cause of her death was necromancy, the family must adapt quickly to a world they never even dreamed existed. (As Elizabeth tells me privately, it’s Buffy meets Sherlock — monsters, murder and magic in Victorian London.) Here’s the full blurb.

Just a few months ago, the Greysons appeared to be an utterly unremarkable family. Wealthy, well-regarded, but by the standards of London society, not extraordinary. Oldest son Edmund had taken over the family’s affairs after the death of their father. Rafe, the troublesome middle child, alternated his wanderings between the far side of the ocean and the underside of London’s streets. Youngest son Stephen was finishing his studies at university and preparing to join Edmund in business, while his twin sister Wilhelmina was planning her official debut into society.

The first blow came when Edmund’s fiancee, Charlotte, died unexpectedly. Grief turned to horror when the true cause of her death was revealed. And while the culprit may have been found, they were left with far more questions than they could have imagined.

Still, necessity is the mother of discovery. They have new allies, new skills, and a newfound faith in each other. Just in time, because the longest night of the year is coming, and the bodies have begun to appear again.

Chapter 6 went live on June 17; new chapters are posted twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday. The promo image above is by Jayd Ait-Kaci. Check it out at www.stormandash.com, or dive right into the first chapter here.

Try the Science Fiction Value Packs from Asimov’s and Analog for Just $6.95

Try the Science Fiction Value Packs from Asimov’s and Analog for Just $6.95

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Asimov Science Fiction and Analog double sized issues-small

Get a dozen double issues of Asimov’s and Analog — a $96 value — for just $15.95!

I was checking the subscription rates for Analog Science Fiction last week, as I was prepping an article on the May/June issue, when I stumbled on two curious new entries on the subscription page:

Science Fiction Value Pack-8 — $6.95
Science Fiction Double Issue Value Pack-12 — $15.95

For a limited time Dell Magazines, publishers of Asimov’s and Analog (as well as Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine) is selling packs of back issues at steep discounts. You can get an 8 pack (total value nearly $40) for just $6.95 — less than a dollar an issue! — or an even dozen double issues (value $96) for just $15.95. All the stock is brand new.

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