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Author: John ONeill

Andrew Liptak on 18 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books to Read this January

Andrew Liptak on 18 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books to Read this January

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Black Star Renegades by Michael Moreci-small Apart in the Dark Ania Ahlborn-small Frankenstein in Baghdad Ahmed Saadawi-small

Holy cats, it’s the last few hours of January. I’m already a month behind on my 2018 reading plan. How the heck did that happen??

In cases like this I’ve learned (through long experience) that it’s best to distract myself with books until the problem goes away. To do that I turn to the always reliable Andrew Liptak at The Verge, and his monthly recommended reading column. Let’s dig in and see what Andrew has for us this month.

First up is the debut novel from Michael Moreci, author of the comic series Roche Limit and Burning Fields. Kirkus Reviews calls Black Star Renegades “A propulsive space opera that is also an unapologetic love letter to Star Wars… Impossible not to love.”

Black Star Renegades by Michael Moreci (St. Martin’s Press, 384 pages, $27.99 in hardcover, January 2, 2018)

A young man named Cade Sura reluctantly controls the most powerful weapon in the galaxy, and it puts him into the path of the evil Praxis Kingdom. Michael Moreci is known for his comic books, but his debut novel is a mashup of familiar tropes from space operas like Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy. Kirkus Reviews says that he’s assembled all of these tropes “with such devotion and style that it’s impossible not to love this strange mashup for its own sake.”

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The Late January Fantasy Magazine Rack

The Late January Fantasy Magazine Rack

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Alter Ego 150 Stan Lee January 2018-small Apex Magazine 104 January 2018-small Galaxy's Edge 30 January 2018-small Meeple Monthly 61 January 2018-small
Back Issue 102 December 2018-small Lightspeed Magazine 92 January 2018-small Lackington's 16 Fall 2017-small Space and Time Winter 2017 130-small

I think my favorite read so far this month has been Alter Ego #150, the special 100-page Stan Lee issue, with a rare interview with Stan the Man conducted in the 1980s, a look at Stan’s non-Marvel work, and tons more. The January fiction mags feature stories by Nisi Shawl, Nick Mamatas, Adam-Troy Castro, Sarah Pinsker, Laurie Tom, David Afsharirad, Patricia Russo, and many others.

Here’s the complete list of magazines that won my attention in late January (links will bring you to magazine websites).

Alter Ego — Issue 150 of Roy Thomas’ Comics Fanzine celebrates 95 years of Stan Lee! 100 pages in full color for $9.95.
Apex — Issue #104 has new stories by Lila Bowen, Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley, Nick Mamatas, Chi Hui, Armando Saldaña, and Nisi Shawl, plus reprints by Cassandra Khaw and T. Kingfisher
Galaxy’s Edge — The fifth anniversary issue has stories by Laurie Tom, Nick DiChario, Eric Leif Davin, Sean Patrick Hazlett, David Afsharirad, M. E. Garber, George Nikolopoulos, and David VonAllmen, plus reprints by Joe Haldeman, Orson Scott Card, Kij Johnson, and Mercedes Lackey — and the fourth segment of Joan Slonczewski’s serialized novel Daughter of Elysium.
Meeple Monthly — Upcoming games from IELLO, Looney Labs, Expedition: The Roleplaying Card Game, Pelgrane Press Ltd, and Steve Jackson Games!

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New Treasures: Nemo Rising by C. Courtney Joyner

New Treasures: Nemo Rising by C. Courtney Joyner

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Nemo Rising-smallC. Courtney Joyner has more than 25 movies to his credit, including the Viggo Mortensen film Prison. His new novel Nemo Rising began as a screenplay, as Joyner reveals in the appendix, “Nemo Rising: From Script to Novel and Back Again.” Here’s a snippet.

A kiddie matinee, with popcorn boxes and cups of soda flying overhead, was my introduction to Jules Verne. The movie was Mysterious Island, that grand and very loose adaptation of Verne’s semi-sequel to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, which featured that wonderful giant crab, created by Ray Harryhausen, and a mesmerizing Captain Nemo in the form of actor Herbert Lom. I was about eight years old, and hadn’t read any Verne yet, but I knew who he was, thanks to monster magazines, comic books, [and] paperbacks… I wish I could pretend my interest in Verne, and all that he created, had more sophisticated roots, but the movies and comic books touched the nerve that made me want to discover the real thing and sit down and read.

Joyner sounds like a man after our own heart. I get the feeling he and our Saturday morning blogger Ryan Harvey would hit it off especially well. His script version of Nemo Rising (a sample of which he includes in the appendix) was a sequel to Verne’s adventures of Captain Nemo; he turned it into a novel and attracted the attention of Tor Books, no mean feat. Here’s the description.

Sea monsters are sinking ships up and down the Atlantic Coast. Enraged that his navy is helpless against this onslaught and facing a possible World War as a result, President Ulysses S. Grant is forced to ask for assistance from the notorious Captain Nemo, in Federal prison for war crimes and scheduled for execution.

Grant returns Nemo’s submarine, the infamous Victorian Steampunk marvel Nautilus, and promises a full Presidential pardon if Nemo hunts down and destroys the source of the attacks. Accompanied by the beautiful niece of Grant’s chief advisor, Nemo sets off under the sea in search of answers. Unfortunately, the enemy may be closer than they realize…

Nemo Rising was published by Tor Books on December 26, 2017. It is 368 pages, priced at $27.99 in hardcover and $14.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Raymond Swanland. Read the first chapter here.

Vintage Treasures: Barrow by John Deakins

Vintage Treasures: Barrow by John Deakins

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Barrow John Deakins-small Barrow John Deakins-back-small

One of the reasons I like Roc is they have a long reputation of taking chances on new authors. Some of those gambles pay off handsomely, including folks like Jim Butcher, Anne Bishop, Carol Berg, Rob Thurman, and many others. Sometimes the authors involved produce a trilogy or two, and then retire into obscurity. And sometimes, like John Deakins, they produce a single novel and then vanish.

John Deakins’ Barrow was published by Roc in April 1990. It was the first and last book he published with Roc (or any mainstream publisher). There isn’t a lot of information about Deakins online, although I did find this brief bio by blogger Janika Banks, who appears to have been a neighbor.

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Future Treasures: Pride & Prometheus by John Kessel

Future Treasures: Pride & Prometheus by John Kessel

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Pride and Prometheus John Kessel-back-small Pride and Prometheus John Kessel-small

John Kessel seems to be back.

He produced a string of well-regarded novels a few decades ago: Freedom Beach (1985, with James Patrick Kelly), Good News from Outer Space (1989) and Corrupting Dr. Nice (1997). Then he pretty much gave up on novels, switching to short fiction and producing five fiction collections between 1992 and 2012.

He returned in style last year with The Moon and the Other, his first novel in 20 years. Library Journal called it “Speculative fiction at its finest… impossible to put down,” and the Chicago Tribune labeled it “One of the year’s most intelligent and provocative novels.”

His fifth novel Pride & Prometheus, arriving in hardcover next month, blends Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein as Mary Bennet falls for the enigmatic Victor Frankenstein and befriends his monstrous Creature.

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When Science Fiction Sucks: Rich Horton on Alien Sea, by John Rackham and C.O.D. Mars, by E. C. Tubb

When Science Fiction Sucks: Rich Horton on Alien Sea, by John Rackham and C.O.D. Mars, by E. C. Tubb

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Alien Sea John Rackham-small C.O.D. Mars E C Tubb-small

Black Gate has some very prolific reviewers. Ryan Harvey has produced 290 articles for us, Matthew David Surridge 330, and Sue Granqust has written exactly 400. But the most prolific reviewer in our small community is doubtless Rich Horton who, in addition to his duties here, writes a regular monthly column for Locus, contributes short fiction reviews to places like Tangent Online, and maintains his own blog, Strange at Ecbatan. Not long ago Rich posted his 100th Ace Double Review at his blog, covering the forgotten novels Alien Sea by John Rackham and C.O.D. Mars by E. C. Tubb, published in 1968.

I started these on the wonderful old Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written back in the early 2000s. I retain an interest in Ace Doubles for an intersection of reasons… the feeling that they give room for an awkward story length (25,000 to 45,000 words, say); the fact that they provided space for new writers to get published; the sometimes goofy subject matter; the fact that they could be a home for unpretentious adventure SF; and their uncommon format. But it must also be said that a lot of the stories published as Ace Doubles were downright crappy. And indeed this review, the 100th, perhaps appropriately features a couple of awfully weak short novels.

Even though the novels sucked, Rich gives it his all, as always. Here’s his thoughts on two bad science fiction novels by John Rackham and E.C. Tubb.

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New Treasures: The Queen of All Crows by Rod Duncan

New Treasures: The Queen of All Crows by Rod Duncan

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The Queen of All Crows-small The Queen of All Crows-back-small

Rod Duncan is the author of The Fall of the Gas-Lit Empire trilogy, a supernatural mystery series featuring Elizabeth Barnabus, who lives a double life as herself and as her brother, a private detective. The first volume, The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter (2014) was a finalist for the 2014 Phillip K. Dick Award. We covered The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter here, and the entire series here.

His newest, The Queen of All Crows, is the start of a brand new series, The Map of Unknown Things. Only Elizabeth Barnabus can stop the world from descending into endless war in this new saga set in the world of the Gas-Lit Empire. It seems an odd mix of steampunk, supernatural mystery, and intellectual property thriller, but I like it.

The Queen of All Crows was published by Angry Robot on January 2, 2018. It is 348 pages, priced at $9.99 in trade paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Will Staehle. Get more details at the Angry Robot website.

Vintage Treasures: The Machine in Shaft Ten by M. John Harrison

Vintage Treasures: The Machine in Shaft Ten by M. John Harrison

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The-Machine-in-Shaft-Ten-small The-Machine-in-Shaft-Ten-back-small

Howard Andrew Jones was the first to pique my interest in M. John Harrison, in his very first blog post for Black Gate back in 2007. Matthew David Surridge significantly heightened that interest with his thoughtful 2013 post To Unbuild the Unreal City: M. John Harrison’s Viriconium:

Viriconium is a city of the distant future, surrounded by the polluted wastelands left by previous civilisations. It is fundamentally decadent, filled with killers, artists, street gangs, and peculiar customs. It is divided into different neighbourhoods along class lines. And it is frequently under threat, though what precise consequences these threats can bring is often nebulous. The first book, The Pastel City, is clearly the most conventional. At first blush, it strongly resembles the pulp work of Michael Moorcock; the better points of the Hawkmoon books, for example, though Pastel City is much better written.

But it was Fletcher Vredenburgh, with this 4-part examination of the Viriconium books, that really sent me chasing after Harrison’s novels.

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Horrors, Marvels, Gods and Demons: C.L. Moore’s Tales of Northwest Smith

Horrors, Marvels, Gods and Demons: C.L. Moore’s Tales of Northwest Smith

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Northwest of Earth-small Northwest Smith Ace-small Northwest of Earth Planet Stories-small

As Steven Silver has already noted, today is C.L. Moore’s birthday. To celebrate Steven reviewed “Lost Paradise,” from the July 1936 Weird Tales, “one of her stories featuring her space-faring rogue Northwest Smith… essentially a bar story with a twist.”

Northwest Smith is one of the enduring serial characters C.L. Moore created for Weird Tales (the other was Jirel of Jorey) — and I do mean enduring. The tales of this “space-faring rogue” have been collected multiple times, and over 80 years later they are still in print. It’s pretty clear that George Lucas, a noted fan of Planet Stories and other SF pulps, drew on Smith as his inspiration for Han Solo, as the two characters are cut from the same cloth.

Over at Tor.com, Alan Brown has a more detailed look at C.L. Moore’s Northwest Smith tales, which have been reprinted in a number of highly collectible volumes over the years. Here’s my favorite quote.

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Ursula K. Le Guin, October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018

Ursula K. Le Guin, October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018

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Ursula Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin, one of the greatest SF writers of the 20th Century, died yesterday.

Le Guin was equally at home in both science fiction and fantasy, and won virtually every accolade our field has to offer. Her novel The Dispossessed (1974) won the Locus, Nebula, and Hugo Awards, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) won both the Hugo and Nebula, and her Earthsea novel The Other Wind (2001) won the World Fantasy Award. The third Earthsea novel, The Farthest Shore, won the 1973 National Book Award. She won the Hugo Award in virtually every category available to writers, including Best Short Story (“The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” 1974), Best Novelette (“Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight,” 1988), Best Novella (The Word for World Is Forest, 1976), and Best Related Work (her essay collection Words Are My Matter, 2016). She won the Locus Award a record nineteen times. Unlocking the Air and Other Stories was one of three finalists for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize.

In 1995 Le Guin was presented with the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, and in 2003 she became a SFWA Grand Master Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Science Fiction Writers of America. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted her in 2001, and in April 2000 the U.S. Library of Congress made her a Living Legend in the “Writers and Artists” category. In 2016 The New York Times described her as “America’s greatest living science fiction writer.”

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