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Author: John ONeill

Andrew Liptak on 39 SF, Fantasy, and Horror Books to Read in June

Andrew Liptak on 39 SF, Fantasy, and Horror Books to Read in June

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The Rebellion's Last Traitor-small Slaves of the Switchboard FINA FINAL.indd The Witch Who Came In From The Cold-small

Last January, over at The Verge, Andrew Liptak combed through publisher catalogs and countless press releases to produce 16 SF and fantasy books worth noting. He did the same thing in March and came up with 23 titles. His June report includes a whopping 39 books. I can see this month is going to take some serious reading time if I even want to pretend to keep up.

Andrew’s list includes new titles by Tanya Huff, Catherynne M. Valente, Terry Brooks, Brenda Cooper, Victor LaValle, Yoon Ha Lee, Seanan McGuire, Cindy Pon, Lilith Saintcrow, Victoria Schwab, Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland, Theodora Goss, James Gunn, Stephen Graham Jones, Linda Nagata, Will McIntosh, Rachel Dunne, Daryl Gregory, Jason M. Hough, Karin Tidbeck, Tad Williams, and others. Here’s some of his selections that I found most interesting.

The Rebellion’s Last Traitor by Nik Korpon — Angry Robot (352 pages, $7.99 in paperback, June 6, 2017)

Decades of war has shattered Eitan City, and to help restore order, the Tathadann Party rewrites history by outlawing the past. One man, Henraek, is a memory thief, stealing memories from civilians, until he harvests a memory of his own wife’s death. Now, he’s going to do whatever it takes to discover the truth about her killing, even if it means turning on the people he was most loyal to.

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New Treasures: Skitter by Ezekiel Boone

New Treasures: Skitter by Ezekiel Boone

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The Hatching-small Skitter Ezekiel Boone-small

Ezekiel Boone (who also writes mainstream fiction under the name Alexi Zentner) published his debut horror novel last July. The Hatching, the tale of an Earth overrun by spiders, was called Arachnophobia meets 2012, and Publishers Weekly praised it as “An apocalyptic extravaganza of doom and heroism… addictive.”

The sequel Skitter arrived in hardcover from Atria/Emily Bestler Books last month. What can you expect in the second volume of a spider apocalypse saga? Let’s say that things don’t look good for mankind, and leave it at that. Spider apocalypse. Yeee…. I get the jitters just thinking about it.

First, there was the black swarm that swallowed a man whole, the suspicious seismic irregularities in India that confounded scientists, the nuclear bomb China dropped on its own territory without any explanation. Then, scientist Melanie Guyer’s lab received a package containing a mysterious egg sac; little did Dr. Guyer know that, almost overnight, Earth would be consumed by previously dormant spiders that suddenly wanted out.

Now, tens of millions of people around the world are dead. Half of China is a nuclear wasteland. Mysterious flesh-eating spiders are marching through Los Angeles, Oslo, Delhi, Rio de Janeiro, and countless other cities. According to Dr. Guyer, the crisis may soon be over.

But in Japan, a giant, glowing egg sac gives a shocking preview of what is to come, even as survivors in Los Angeles panic and break the quarantine zone. Out in the desert, survivalists Gordo and Shotgun are trying to invent a weapon to fight back, but it may be too late, because President Stephanie Pilgrim has been forced to enact the plan of last resort.

America, you are on your own.

We covered The Hatching here last year. Skitter was published by Emily Bestler Books on May 2, 2017. It is $26 in hardcover, and $7.99 for the digital edition.

A Treasure Trove of Classic Science Fiction & Fantasy: The Collected Short Works of Poul Anderson

A Treasure Trove of Classic Science Fiction & Fantasy: The Collected Short Works of Poul Anderson

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The Collected Poul Anderson 1 Call Me Joe-small The Collected Poul Anderson 2 The Queen of Air and Darkness-small The Collected Poul Anderson 7 Question and Answer-small

By the time of his death in 2001, Poul Anderson was at the top of the field, with over 70 novels and numerous short stories to his credit. He’d won virtually every award science fiction has to offer, including seven Hugos and three Nebulas. In the 16 years since, however, virtually all of his work has fallen out of print. And like most of the greats of 20th Century science fiction, he’s now in very real danger of being forgotten.

Thank goodness for NESFA Press. Their ongoing project, The Collected Short Works of Poul Anderson, currently at seven volumes and counting, gathers the very best of his short fiction, including all of his Hugo and Nebula nominated and winning short stories. NESFA has produced some stellar collections over the past few decades, celebrating the work of Roger Zelazny, John W. Campbell, Fredric Brown, Zenna Henderson, Cordwainer Smith, C.M. Kornbluth, and countless others, with gorgeous permanent edition hardcovers.

Like each of those, these new volumes have made hard-to-find fiction available and fresh all over again, introducing Anderson to a whole new generation. The latest installment, The Collected Short Works of Poul Anderson, Volume 7: Question and Answer, collects five novellas, two novels, and a smattering of short works, including six tales of Dominic Flandry, agent of the Terran Empire, and two stories of the far-ranging Psychotechnic League. It was released in hardcover in February.

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Vintage Treasures: The Ace Novels of Patricia C. Wrede

Vintage Treasures: The Ace Novels of Patricia C. Wrede

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Lyra series Patricia C Wrede-small

On Thursday I was carefully stacking books in the vast subterranean treasure vault known locally as the Cave of Wonders (and which my wife calls, much more prosaically, our basement), when I found something unusual: a stack of unopened boxes. That’s a mystery worth investigating. I carted them back through winding tunnels and secret passageways until I reached our library, and pried them open with a crow bar.

Wonder of wonders! They were packed with vintage paperback and strange magazines. It’s like Christmas!

They were doubtless eBay booty that got hastily stashed in the basement because company was coming over five years ago, or something similar. Who knows. I have no recollection of them, so it’s like getting a surprise package from my former self. And, man. What great taste that guy has! There was an odd assortment of magic magazines from the early 1970s (chiefly The Linking Ring, which is packed with the most fabulous ads for trick cards, books, and neato magic books), a set of DAW volumes by Neal Barrett, Jr., and the collection of 80s Ace paperbacks by Patricia C. Wrede pictured above.

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Future Treasures: The Queen of Swords, Book 3 of the Golgotha Series, by R.S. Belcher

Future Treasures: The Queen of Swords, Book 3 of the Golgotha Series, by R.S. Belcher

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The-Six-Gun-Tarot-smaller The Shotgun Arcana-small The Queen of Swords RS Belcher-small

R.S. Belcher’s last novel, The Brotherhood of the Wheel, was selected as one of the best horror novels of the year by the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog. For his next novel, he returns to Golgotha, the Weird Western setting of The Six-Gun Tarot (which RT Book Reviews called “Fascinating… like a mashup of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Deadwood,”) and The Shotgun Arcana (“Golgotha is the wildest of the Wild West, attracting mystics, minor deities, alchemists, seers, and fanatics in a fantastical romp” — Publishers Weekly). It arrives in hardcover from Tor later this month.

1870. Maude Stapleton, late of Golgotha, Nevada, is a respectable widow raising a daughter on her own. Few know that Maude belongs to an ancient order of assassins, the Daughters of Lilith, and is as well the great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Anne Bonney, the legendary female pirate.

Leaving Golgotha in search of her daughter Constance, who has been taken from her, Maude travels to Charleston, South Carolina, only to find herself caught in the middle of a secret war between the Daughters of Lilith and their ancestral enemies, the monstrous Sons of Typhon. To save Constance, whose prophetic gifts are sought by both cults, Maude must follow in the footsteps of Anne Bonney as she embarks on a perilous voyage that will ultimately lead her to a lost city of bones in the heart of Africa ― and the Father of All Monsters.

One of the most popular characters from The Six-Gun Tarot and The Shotgun Arcana ventures beyond Golgotha on a boldly imaginative, globe-spanning adventure of her own.

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Princesses, Space Battles, Monsters and Aliens: The Sirantha Jax Novels by Ann Aguirre

Princesses, Space Battles, Monsters and Aliens: The Sirantha Jax Novels by Ann Aguirre

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Grimspace Wanderlust Doubleblind Sirantha Jax

I love adventure science fiction, but I’m a little shy of all these open ended series. I want to fall in love with a series, sure… but do I want to fall for a publishing endeavor with an uncertain future, one that could easily be derailed by an author illness, a fickle market, publishing setbacks or other unexpected tragedy? Who needs that anxiety and potential heartache? Not me; I have three teenagers.

Which leaves me in a bit of a quandary, since most of the adventure SF I like tends to be part of series. But there are a few completed story arcs, out there — not many, but a few. Successful series that have wrapped up with a beginning, middle, and an end. And one of those is Ann Aquirre’s 6-volume Sirantha Jax cycle, a far-ranging space opera in a well-realized universe that left fans happy with a satisfying concluding volume.

My friend Sharon Shinn was one of the first to alert me to these books, with her review of the opening volume Grimspace: “Sirantha Jax doesn’t just leap off the page — she storms out, kicking, cursing, and mouthing off. No wonder her pilot falls in love with her; readers will too.”

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May/June Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Now on Sale

May/June Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Now on Sale

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Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction May June 2017-smallThe May/June F&SF features the second appearance of Matthew Hughes’s new series character Baldemar, in the issue’s cover story “The Prognosticant.” Matt had an interview with Stephen Mazur on the Fantasy & Science Fiction blog in which he discusses the series.

It’s a continuation of the career of young Baldemar, who was introduced in the last issue in “Ten Half-Pennies” as a budding wizard’s henchman working for a thaumaturge who calls himself Thelerion the Incomparable (though his fellow wizards would likely change that to “Incompetent”).

In “The Prognosticant,” Baldemar and his supervisor, Oldo, are sent out to a ruined ancient city in the desert to bring back a magical object known as the Helm of Sagacity. But the Helm, it turns out, is not just an object: it’s an entity, and a powerful one. And it has its own agenda…

I’m writing the life of a character in a Jack Vance-inspired, Dying Earth fantasy world. Like most of my characters, Baldemar is an outlier, as becomes evident as he deals with what the world hands him. He’s not your average henchman.

The cover is by Maurizio Manzieri. The issue also includes fiction by Richard Bowes, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Leah Cypess, Shannon Connor Winward, and others.

Victoria Silverwolf has a fine review of the issue at Tangent Online, with particular praise for the stories by Brian Trent, Kelly Jennings, Zach Shepard, and R. S. Benedict. Here’s a snippet.

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New Treasures: The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories, Volume One, edited by James D. Jenkins and Ryan Cagle

New Treasures: The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories, Volume One, edited by James D. Jenkins and Ryan Cagle

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The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories-smallNow here’s an interesting idea — a collection of horror stories showcasing the work of a single publisher.

How appealing is that? Depends on the publisher. In the case of Valancourt Books, an independent small press specializing in the rediscovery of rare, neglected, and out-of-print Gothic, Romantic and Horror fiction, it’s very appealing indeed. Here’s a snippet from the Editor’s Forward to give you a taste.

Since 2005, Valancourt Books has made available almost 40 neglected classics by dozens of authors, most of them out of print for decades, sometimes even for a century or two. Our catalogue includes Gothic novels from the late 1700s and early 1800s, Victorian ‘penny dreadfuls’ and ‘sensation’ novels, vintage mystery and horror fiction from the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, rediscovered gay interest fiction from the mid-20th century, and more recent horror and science fiction from the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s. The idea behind this anthology was, “What if we distilled the best of each part of our catalogue into a single volume? What would a horror anthology spanning two centuries, and featuring only Valancourt authors, look like?”

This book has something for fans of each section of our catalogue. Those who have enjoyed our Gothic Classics series will surely find Matthew Gregory Lewis’s rare ghost story in verse, “The Grim White Woman,” to their liking. If, like us, you love a good, old-fashioned Victorian horror story, you’ll relish the creepy tales we’ve included by authors hugely popular in the day but now little known, like Florence Marryat, Richard Marsh and Mary Cholmondeley. Readers who have appreciated our efforts to rediscover lost gay fiction will be pleased to find contributions from authors such as Forrest Reid, Hugh Walpole and Francis King in this volume. Of course, no horror anthology would be complete without stories from some of the great contemporary masters of horror like Michael McDowell, Bernard Taylor and Stephen Gregory. But perhaps the biggest surprise for some readers will be the excellent tales by writers not normally thought of as “horror authors,” like Christopher Priest, Michael Blumlein and Francis King.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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Vintage Treasures: World’s Best Science Fiction 1965 – 1970, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr

Vintage Treasures: World’s Best Science Fiction 1965 – 1970, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr

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Ace Best Science Fiction of the Year 1965 1970-small

If you’ve been paying attention over the past two months, you’re probably aware that we’re deep into the Year’s Best Science Fiction season. So far this year Solaris, Night Shade, and Prime Books have all released Best of the Year anthologies (edited by Jonathan Strahan, Neil Clarke and Rich Horton, respectively), and in the next few months we can expect additional volumes by Gardner Dozois, John Joseph Adams, Ellen Datlow, Paula Guran, Stephan Jones, and others.

Now I know what you’re thinking. What the heck, world? My favorite fantasy series gets canceled after three volumes, but eight publishers happily produce Best of the Year anthologies every single year? How is that even possible? And you know, that’s not a bad question. How did we get to the point where the market is willing to bear so many books that all claim to contain the best science fiction of the year?

Everett F. Bleiler and T.E. Dikty are widely credited with creating the first such anthology, The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1949. But our current appetite for Best of the Year volumes can be traced back to Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr, two of the most important editors our field has ever seen. Starting in 1965 and running until Wollheim’s death in 1990, together and separately Wollheim and Carr produced over 50 Best of the Year volumes, and in the process they shaped the direction of short fiction in the genre for generations to come. Their books were of such high quality that they were must-reads for all serious fans of science fiction and fantasy. Year after year the Carr and Wollheim anthologies were absolutely indispensable, and if you enjoy the rich assortment of modern Best of the Year editions, you can trace our modern enthusiasm for the format directly back to these two men.

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Catching Up With the Fiction at Tor.com

Catching Up With the Fiction at Tor.com

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A Human Stain by Kelly Robson Extracurricular Activities by Yoon Ha Lee The Autobiography of a Traitor and a Half-Savage by Alix Harrow The Scholast in the Low Waters Kingdom by Max Gladstone

Tor.com is one of the most successful and acclaimed sources of genre short fiction we have. They routinely lead the field in award nominations, as they did with this year’s Hugo nominations. And as recently as 2014, they swept the short fiction categories of the Hugo Awards.

They publish one new work of short fiction every week, completely free, at the Tor.com website. But because they don’t have regular issues, I don’t do a very good job of including them in our regular magazine coverage. So that means I have to report on them as best I can every few months. Which brings us to today’s massive catch-up post featuring 30 stories and 11 flash fiction pieces — enough to fill two decent-sized anthologies.

And what a dazzling list of contributors! Over the last 6+ months Tor.com has published brand new fiction from Peter S. Beagle, Carrie Vaughn, Yoon Ha Lee, Lavie Tidhar, Max Gladstone, Jo Walton, Kelly Robson, M. Dellamonica, Theodora Goss, Allen Steele, S.B. Divya, Stephen Leigh, and many others, plus reprints from Ken Liu, Ellen Klages, and others. All of it gorgeously illustrated by a talented group of artists, and available online completely free. You owe it to yourself to check it out.

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