Browsed by
Author: John ONeill

Future Treasures: The Smoke by Simon Ings

Future Treasures: The Smoke by Simon Ings

Comments 1 comment
The Smoke-small The Smoke-back-small

I’m familiar with the name Simon Ings, but for the life of me I can’t remember from where. His bio says he’s the author of eight previous novels, including his “widely acclaimed” debut Hot Head and the British Science Fiction Association/Campbell Award nominee Wolves (2014), but I dunno, those don’t ring any bells either. However, his short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s SF, Meeting Infinity (2015), and Year’s Best volumes from David Hartwell, Rich Horton and Jonathan Strahan, and it seems likely I’ve encountered him in more than a few TOCs over the years. But his upcoming novel The Smoke already looks like one of major SF novels of 2019, and has been getting plenty of advance notice, including a very enthusiastic review from Gary K. Wolfe at Locus for the original UK hardcover.

Early on, we are given to understand that the “Great War” ended in 1916 with the nuking of Berlin and the irradiation of Europe, that a Yellowstone Eruption in 1874 devastated North America and led to a decade-long global winter, and that – more to the immediate point of how this world diverged from ours – the real-life Russian embryologist Alexander Gurwitsch perfected a “biophotonic ray,” which led to a form of biotech that eventually led to “the speciation of man­kind.”… At the top of the sociobiological heap is an enhanced class of urbanites call the Bund, who have taken over large swaths of London (usually referred to as “the Smoke”), and whose advanced technology has already sent robot miners to the moon… [a] haunting tale.

The Smoke will be published by Titan Books on January 22, 2019. It is 309 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback and $7.99 in digital formats. The striking cover is, sadly, uncredited.

See all of coverage of the best upcoming SF and Fantasy releases here.

A Space Opera of Surpassing Weirdness: The Amaranthine Spectrum by Tom Toner

A Space Opera of Surpassing Weirdness: The Amaranthine Spectrum by Tom Toner

Comments 1 comment
the-promise-of-the-child-small the-weight-of-the-world-small The Tropic of Eternity-small

I’m off work for the holidays. Sixteen long days of Christmas food and home improvement tasks. It’s my longest break of the year, and also the time when I can get a little more ambitious with my reading. 

You know what that means. It means I procrastinate big reading projects until the end of the year. And here at the end of 2018 I find myself with several large stacks of unfinished fat fantasies, trilogies, and longer series.

Well, they’re all going to have to wait. Because I want to start with Tom Toner’s Amaranthine Spectrum, an ambitious trilogy set in the far-distant 147th Century (How ambitious? The third volume has a 19-page glossary). The series just concluded with The Tropic of Eternity, published by Night Shade in August, and it has been one of the most acclaimed space operas on the market. Tor.com called “Among the most significant works of science fiction released in recent years,” and Locus proclaimed it “Marvelous…. a space opera of surpassing gracefulness, depth, complexity, and well, all-round weirdness.”

Here’s the description for the third volume, and all the publishing details. Now don’t bother me, I’m headed to my big green chair with some hot chocolate and a warm lap cat.

…

Read More Read More

How do You Find Someone You Can’t Remember? Guardians of Aandor by Edward Lazellari

How do You Find Someone You Can’t Remember? Guardians of Aandor by Edward Lazellari

Comments 0 Comment
Awakenings Edward Lazellari-small The Lost Prince Edward Lazellari-small Blood of Ten Kings Edward Lazellari-small

When I first saw Edward Lazellari’s Awakenings back in 2011, I was struck by Chris McGrath’s cover. I’d never seen anything quite like it. Featuring a creepy-eyed dude in a hoodie and a square-jawed street cop, it looked like a cross between dark fantasy and a modern police procedural. Maybe? It sure made me pick up a copy, anyway, and the name Edward Lazellari stuck in my mind.

That doesn’t mean I’m top of things, of course. When I received a review copy of Blood of Ten Chiefs from Tor last week, it took a few days for me to realize it was part of the same series. In fact, I didn’t even knew it was a series. Probably because I missed the second book, The Lost Prince, released in 2013.

All three are part of what’s now being called the Guardians of Aandor. Without getting into specifics (because I’m too lazy to read all three book blurbs), a cop and a photographer who don’t know each other get stalked by interdimensional beings, find out they’re from an alternate reality with castles and knights and stuff, who came across to our world to hide an infant royal, but ended up with lost memories and no knowledge of the current whereabouts of the young prince. The first novel earned praise from fantasy master Glen Cook (“Read Awakenings and get in on the ground floor with a great new writer,”) and Library Journal (“Urban fantasy reminiscent of Jim Butcher in a hard knocks action tale,”) but I dunno, I think they had me with McGrath’s cover. I dug Awakenings out of limbo in the basement, and hope to settle down with it this weekend.

Here’s the back covers of the first two books, because they’ll do a better job explaining all this than I’m doing right now.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Creatures of Want and Ruin by Molly Tanzer

New Treasures: Creatures of Want and Ruin by Molly Tanzer

Comments 3 comments
Creatures of Will and Temper-small Creatures of Want and Ruin-small

When Molly Tanzer’s novel Creatures of Will and Temper was published last year, I confidently predicted that it would be huge.

Molly Tanzer’s Creatures of Will and Temper looks like a breakout book. It’s got all the classic elements — fabulous setting, swordplay, and the supernatural — while also being totally original. And there’s no doubt in my mind that Molly is poised for a break-out. Her first novel Vermilion received rave reviews (“A splendid page-turner of a Weird West adventure… hugely entertaining” — Publishers Weekly), and her most recent book was the anthology Swords vs Cthulhu, co-edited with Jesse Bullington. How cool is that?

I’m pleased to see that the book was very warmly received — it was nominated for the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel, and critics praised it widely. Jeff VanderMeer said it was “A delightful, dark, and entertaining romp,” and Outlander author Diana Gabaldon called it “An artful, witty, Oscar Wilde pastiche with the heart of a paranormal thriller.”

Molly’s follow up, Creatures of Want & Ruin, arrived from John Joseph Adams Books last month, and was selected as a Barnes & Noble Best Science Fiction Fantasy Book of November 2018. Tor.com‘s Liz Bourke calls it “A measured, atmospheric novel, with compelling characters and a deeply disturbing undercurrent of horror,” and the B&N Sci-Fi Blog says “Molly Tanzer does it all; from her debut novel, named best book of 2015 by i09, to the “thoughtful erotica” she edits at her magazine, Congress, she’s proven to be one of the most distinct voices in contemporary SFF.”

…

Read More Read More

A Year of Weirdbook

A Year of Weirdbook

Comments 2 comments
Weirdbook 38-small Weirdbook 39-small Weirdbook 40-small

Not all that long ago, Douglass Draa was the Online Editor for Weird Tales, maintaining a lively Facebook presence and posting numerous highly readable articles on the website (which, sadly, have now been removed.) Although the magazine has essentially been dead since 2014, Doug kept the Weird Tales name alive as best he could, and I frequently found myself wondering what someone with that much energy could do with more editorial control.

We found out in 2015 when the much-loved magazine Weirdbook returned to print with Doug at the helm. The first issue, #31, was a generous 160 pages of brand new weird fiction and sword & sorcery from many familiar names, packaged between gorgeous covers by Dusan Kostic and Stephen E. Fabian. Over the next three years Doug has produced no less than 10 issues — a staggering 2,000+ pages of new content — plus the very first Weirdbook Annual in 2017. Issues arrive like clockwork, and the magazine only seems to get better and better.

2018 was a great year for Weirdbook, with three huge issues. It seems to have settled into a comfortable 256-pages, and readers of this blog will be pleased, as I was, to see several Black Gate writers among the contributors — including John C. Hocking, John R. Fultz, and the prolific Darrell Schweitzer, with no less than three stories. I was especially pleased to see Doug’s use of quality interior art, which I think greatly enhances the look of the magazine. The latest issue, which just arrived last week, includes moody and effective spot art by the great Allen Koszowski, who also graced the pages of Black Gate back in the day.

…

Read More Read More

Steve Carper on the Solo SF Art of Leo Dillon

Steve Carper on the Solo SF Art of Leo Dillon

Comments 1 comment
Leo Dillon Galaxy art 2-small Leo Dillon Galaxy art-small

Art for Stephen Barr’s “The Back of Our Heads” by Leo Dillon (Galaxy, July 1958)

Leo Dillon, who passed away in 2012, was one half of the famous husband-and-wife art team of Leo and Diane Dillon, who won back-to-back Caldecott Awards in 1976 and 1977, and the 1971 Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist for their work on Terry Carr’s Ace Special covers. They created some of the most iconic SF and Fantasy cover art of the 20th Century, including Harlan Ellison’s Deathbird Stories and Strange Wine, John Brunner’s The Traveller in Black, and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. But before he began to work with Diane, Leo had a career doing interior art for Galaxy magazine from 1957-60. BG blogger Steve Carper unravels some of their fascination history at his blog Flying Cars and Food Pills.

Even though they had been working full-time as illustrators in the publishing industry, they were neither wealthy nor famous nor much recognized in the science fiction community in 1968… They knew Harlan Ellison, though, having done covers for his books as early as 1961, and he naturally recruited them for the cover of his monumental 1967 anthology Dangerous Visions. There weren’t supposed to be any interior illustrations but Harlan, being Harlan, suddenly decided he wanted them. On the Friday before the book was to go to press on Monday. He hied over to the Dillon’s brownstone in Brooklyn and they stayed up the entire weekend taking inspiration from Harlan’s synopses of all 33 stories. For some reason Harlan brought Terry Carr with him…. Diane [recalled]: “After that, Terry began giving us assignments for book jackets, the Ace Specials.”

Read the article here, complete with generous samples of Leo Dillon’s interior art, and a lengthy listing of his art for stories by Poul Anderson, Theodore Sturgeon, Clifford D. Simak, Fritz Leiber, H. Beam Piper, Frederik Pohl, Zenna Henderson, William Tenn, Robert Sheckley, and many others.

New Treasures: An Agent of Utopia by Andy Duncan

New Treasures: An Agent of Utopia by Andy Duncan

Comments 0 Comment

An Agent of Utopia-smallAndy Duncan is one of my favorite modern short story writers, and has been ever since the release of his first collection, the World Fantasy Award-winning Beluthahatchie and Other Stories (Golden Gryphon Press, 2000). I heard him read from that book at the World Fantasy Convention in Corpus Christi in 2000, and in 2018 I got to repeat that experience by being in the audience at this year’s convention in Baltimore while Andy read from his brand new collection An Agent of Utopia.

An Agent of Utopia contains a dozen tales, two of them brand new. They include multiple award nominees and winners, including the Locus Award nominee “Senator Bilbo,” which blended the tales of Bilbo Baggins and white supremacist Mississippi senator Theodore G. Bilbo, World Fantasy Award winner “The Pottawatomie Giant,” Hugo nominee “Beluthahatchie,” and no less than three Nebula nominees. Here’s the back cover text.

In the tales gathered in An Agent of Utopia: New and Selected Stories you will meet a Utopian assassin, an aging UFO contactee, a haunted Mohawk steelworker, a time-traveling prizefighter, a yam-eating Zombie, and a child who loves a frizzled chicken ― not to mention Harry Houdini, Zora Neale Hurston, Sir Thomas More, and all their fellow travelers riding the steamer-trunk imagination of a unique twenty-first-century fabulist.

From the Florida folktales of the perennial prison escapee Daddy Mention and the dangerous gator-man Uncle Monday that inspired “Daddy Mention and the Monday Skull” (first published in Mojo: Conjure Stories, edited by Nalo Hopkinson) to the imagined story of boxer and historical bit player Jess Willard in World Fantasy Award winner “The Pottawatomie Giant” (first published on SciFiction), or the Ozark UFO contactees in Nebula Award winner “Close Encounters” to Flannery O’Connor’s childhood celebrity in Shirley Jackson Award finalist “Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse” (first published in Eclipse) Duncan’s historical juxtapositions come alive on the page as if this Southern storyteller was sitting on a rocking chair stretching the truth out beside you.

Duncan rounds out his explorations of the nooks and crannies of history in two irresistible new stories, “Joe Diabo’s Farewell” ― in which a gang of Native American ironworkers in 1920s New York City go to a show ― and the title story, “An Agent of Utopia” ― where he reveals what really (might have) happened to Thomas More’s head.

And here’s the complete table of contents.

…

Read More Read More

The Return of a Fantasy Landmark: The Unfortunate Fursey by Mervyn Wall

The Return of a Fantasy Landmark: The Unfortunate Fursey by Mervyn Wall

Comments 3 comments
The Unfortunate Fursey-small The Return of Fursey-small

While I was standing in front of the Valancourt Books booth at the World Fantasy Convention (so I could buy a copy of the classic horror novel The Fungus by Harry Adam Knight, as I reported last week), I took the time to look over all their latest releases. Valancourt is one of the great treasures of the genre — their editorial team has excellent taste, and they scour 20th Century paperback backlists to bring long-neglected classics back into print. I’m pretty familiar with 20th Century genre stuff, but they consistently surprise me with their diverse and excellent selections.

I ended up taking home a pile of books, including the one-volume edition of Michael McDowell’s complete Blackwater Saga and Steve Rasnic Tem’s new collection Figures Unseen. But I was hoping for new discoveries, and I wasn’t disappointed. There were plenty of eye-catching titles vying for my attention, but the most interesting — and the ones I ended up taking home with me –was the pair of novels above.

Set in 11th century Ireland, where demonic forces have launched an assault on the monastery of Clonmacnoise, The Unfortunate Fursey was originally published in 1946. The sequel The Return of Fursey followed in 1948. Written by Irish writer Mervyn Wall, they were praised as “landmark book in the history of fantasy,” by Year’s Best SF editor E. F. Bleiler. More recently, Black Gate author Darrell Schweitzer wrote:

The Unfortunate Fursey and The Return of Fursey are not quaint esoterica for the specialist, folks, they are living masterpieces. They haven’t dated slightly and are as fresh and as powerful as when they were first written.

Both novels were reprinted in handsome trade paperback editions by Valancourt last year, with new introductions by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Dirda.

…

Read More Read More

Take a Bite From The Poison Apple: Interviews from Black Gate Magazine by Elizabeth Crowens

Take a Bite From The Poison Apple: Interviews from Black Gate Magazine by Elizabeth Crowens

Comments 0 Comment

The Poison Apple Volume One-smallOver the past two years, since December 13, 2016, Elizabeth Crowens has become one of the most consistently popular contributors to Black Gate magazine. She’s accomplished this with a surprisingly small number of articles — scarcely a dozen so far, over 24 months.

Each, however, has been a fascinating and in-depth discussion with a prominent individual in the genre. Her interviews have included a cross section of talents, including stunt doubles, TV stage managers, fantasy illustrators, bestselling authors, editors, and even Black Gate contributors. All of her interviews have been popular, and more than a few — such as her dual interview with Delia Sherman and Ellen Kushner in June 2017 — have been among the most widely-read pieces we’ve published in the past few years.

Earlier this month Elizabeth released The Poison Apple, Volume One: Interviews from Black Gate Magazine, a collection of her earliest interviews. It includes lengthy discussions with:

Teel James Glenn
Steven Van Patten
Lissanne Lake
Martin Page
Gail Carriger
Delia Sherman and Ellen Kushner

The book includes the complete contents of each interview, including all the questions and responses, and even the color images.

ELizabeth tells us that she plans to follow up with Volume Two next year, which includes conversations with Charlaine Harris, Heather Graham Pozzessere, Jennifer Brozek, Nancy Kilpatrick , Nancy Holder and Leslie Klinger.

Get all the details at Elizabeth’s website here, and be sure to sign up for new Newsletter for details on her upcoming projects and special offers. While you’re waiting for the next issue of the newsletter, read all of her recent Poison Apple columns at Black Gate here.

Aliens in a Space Prison: The Sanctuary Novels by Caryn Lix

Aliens in a Space Prison: The Sanctuary Novels by Caryn Lix

Comments 0 Comment
Sanctuary Caryn Lix-small Containment Caryn Lix-small

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that we’re living in a YA golden age. The runaway success of Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and the Percy Jackson novels has generated a glut of books, most of which are fantasy or SF series. It reminds me of the urban fantasy/paranormal romance trend of a decade ago, when it seemed that half the books on the shelves featured superpowered vampire killers who were dating werewolves.

I know more than a few readers who avoid YA altogether. But, like any other subgenre, there’s plenty of interesting work to be found if you look hard enough. Recently I started reading Caryn Lix’s Sanctuary, which reads like Aliens set on a space prison, and have been enjoying it so far. The sequel Containment is set to be released next August. Here’s the jacket copy for Sanctuary.

Kenzie holds one truth above all: the company is everything.

As a citizen of Omnistellar Concepts, the most powerful corporation in the solar system, Kenzie has trained her entire life for one goal: to become an elite guard on Sanctuary, Omnistellar’s space prison for superpowered teens too dangerous for Earth. As a junior guard, she’s excited to prove herself to her company — and that means sacrificing anything that won’t propel her forward.

But then a routine drill goes sideways and Kenzie is taken hostage by rioting prisoners. At first, she’s confident her commanding officer — who also happens to be her mother — will stop at nothing to secure her freedom. Yet it soon becomes clear that her mother is more concerned with sticking to Omnistellar protocol than she is with getting Kenzie out safely.

As Kenzie forms her own plan to escape, she doesn’t realize there’s a more sinister threat looming, something ancient and evil that has clawed its way into Sanctuary from the vacuum of space. And Kenzie might have to team up with her captors to survive — all while beginning to suspect there’s a darker side to the Omnistellar she knows.

Sanctuary was published by Simon Pulse on July 24, 2018. It is 461 pages, priced at $19.99 in hardcover and $10.99 for the digital version. The cover was designed by Sarah Creech, with art by Jacey. Read the first chapter here. See all our recent coverage of the best new fantasy series here.