We did a cover reveal for Brian Lee Durfee’s upcoming epic fantasy back in December. But now that the book is on the verge of being published, I wanted to take another peek.
The Forgetting Moon is a debut novel, part of the stellar line from Saga Press, and the opening book in The Five Warrior Angels series. Brian shared his thoughts on the cover with us back in December; click the image above left to check it out. And read the book description by clicking on the image at right.
The Forgetting Moon will be published by Saga Press on August 30, 2016. It is 576 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition.
See Saga Press’ complete catalog here, and our coverage of all the best in upcoming fantasy here.
The complete July issue of Lightspeed is now yours to enjoy free online. This month brings new fantasy by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz and Kenneth Schneyer, and fantasy reprints by A. Merc Rustad and Spencer Ellsworth, plus original science fiction by Ted Kosmatka and Jilly Dreadful, along with SF reprints by Genevieve Valentine and Seth Fried.
In his editorial, editor John Joseph Adams shares some award good news, plus intriguing news about his new book line with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:
We’re thrilled to report that Alyssa Wong’s story, “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers,” from the Queers Destroy Horror! special issue of Nightmare (Oct. 2015), won the Nebula Award for best short story! Congrats to Alyssa and to all of the other winners. You can find a full list of the winners at SFWA.org/nebula-awards…
John Joseph Adams Books News
In my role as editor of John Joseph Adams Books for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, I just acquired two books in a new series by Molly Tanzer (author of Vermilion).
The first book is Creatures of Will and Temper, a Victorian-era urban fantasy inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which epee-fencing enthusiast Evadne Gray and her younger sister are drawn into a secret and dangerous London underworld of pleasure-seeking demons and bloodthirsty diabolists, with only Evadne’s skill with a blade standing between them and certain death.
Publication of book one will likely happen in late 2017. Can’t wait for you all to read it!
I’m especially intrigued by the Book News. We covered Molly Tanzer’s Vermilionhere, and I’m very interested in seeing her latest. John has proved to be an editor with a very keen eye… What other wonders will he offer us through John Joseph Adams Books? I’m looking forward to finding out.
Few writers have the kind of year that Wesley Chu had in 2015. He received a contract to continue his popular Taoseries with Angry Robot, announcing that the first book in a related series, The Rise of Io, would be released in 2017. And in August he won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. But the big news came in June, when Publishers Weekly revealed that Paramount Pictures had acquired the rights for a feature film franchise based on Chu’s new novel Time Salvager, with Michael Bay attached to direct and Chu set to executive produce.
Details on the film have been sparse ever since — but the praise for Time Salvager, a fast-paced time-travel adventure and the opening volume in a new series, has been plentiful. Publishers Weekly called it “Fascinating… this page-turner is a riveting, gratifying read.” And RT Book Reviews called it “Utterly captivating… to put it simply, Chu’s world-building is extraordinary.” The second volume in the series, Time Siege, was released in hardcover earlier this month by Tor.
Having been haunted by the past and enslaved by the present, James Griffin-Mars is taking control of the future.
Earth is a toxic, sparsely inhabited wasteland — the perfect hiding place for a fugitive ex-chronman to hide from the authorities.
James has allies, scientists he rescued from previous centuries: Elise Kim, who believes she can renew Earth, given time; Grace Priestly, the venerated inventor of time travel herself; Levin, James’s mentor and former pursuer, now disgraced; and the Elfreth, a population of downtrodden humans who want desperately to believe that James and his friends will heal their ailing home world.
James also has enemies. They include the full military might of benighted solar system ruled by corporate greed and a desperate fear of what James will do next. At the forefront of their efforts to stop him is Kuo, the ruthless security head, who wants James’s head on a pike and will stop at nothing to obtain it.
Time Siege was published by Tor Books on July 12, 2016. It is 431 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Richard Anderson.
Tor.com on Five Anthologies Worth Setting Aside a Novel For
Over at Tor.com, Adrian Collins has written an article after my own heart, celebrating five of the best anthologies of the past few years. Here he is on Blackguards: Tales of Assassins, Mercenaries, and Rogues, edited by J.M. Martin and published by Ragnarok Publications in May 2015.
For me, the Reddit Stabby Award-winning Blackguards started my love of the Kickstarter anthology. The cheeky Kickstarter marketing campaign grabbed my attention, and who doesn’t love discovering new grimdark worlds, cunning anti-heroes, and gripping stories?
From the foreward by Glen Cook to the last page, Blackguards is spectacular, hitting every sonorous grimdark note from the blackest humor to the downright horrible. Peter Orullian’s “A Length of Cherrywood” was the pick of the bunch for me. It was dark, brutal, horrible, but had that little ray of light in it to keep you reading.
Soon after reviewing Blackguards on the GdM blog, I began planning how my team and I could put together something just as magnificently sinister.
Curiously, Adrian has selected fantasy anthologies exclusively for his list. Here are the other four to make the cut:
Dangerous Women, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois Rogues, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois Unfettered: Tales by Masters of Fantasy, edited by Shawn Speakman The Best Horror of the Year – Volume Eight, edited by Ellen Datlow
Our own coverage of Blackguards is here. See Adrian’s complete article here.
A Pulp Hero in Mythological China: Alyc Helms’s Missy Masters Novels
I sometimes wonder why, in this age where superheroes rule all media, pulp heroes haven’t made more of a comeback in popular fiction.
I think the answer is that I’m just not looking hard enough. Case in point: Alyc Helms’s Missy Masters novels, in which Missy takes her grandfather’s place as the pulp hero Mr. Mystic, make a fine example.
My friend Alex Bledsoe, author of The Sword-Edged Blonde and The Hum and the Shiver, sums up the first book: “A tough, witty young woman who inherited her superhero grandfather’s powers barrels through a rollicking Big Trouble in Little China-esque tale filled with magic, monsters and wisecracks. I loved it.” And Cassie Alexander, author of the Edie Spenceseries, says “The Dragons of Heaven combines superheroes, romance, ancient mythological China, and does it right. The world-building is stunning.”
There are two novels in the series so far, both published by Angry Robot, and both priced at $7.99 in mass market paperback, and $6.99 for the digital edition. They are:
The Dragons of Heaven (416 pages, June 30, 2015) — cover by Amazing15 The Conclave of Shadow (336 pages, July 5, 2016) — cover by Amazing15
Some of the most treasured possessions in my games library are the boxed adventure supplements published by Chaosium between 1981 – 1986. They include some of the finest adventure gaming products ever made, such as the classic Thieves’ World (1981), Michael Moorcock’s Stormbringer (1981), the brilliant Masks of Nyarlathotep (1984), the Arkham Horror board game (1984), Larry Niven’s Ringworld (1984), the revolutionary King Arthur Pendragon RPG (1985), and H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands (1986).
I bought each as it was released, and over the last 30 years I’ve made a concerted effort to pick up spare (i.e non shrink-wrapped) copies whenever I can find them. I had to give that up about a decade ago, as prices have skyrocketed… copies of many of Chasoium’s early boxed sets in good condition sell for $200 and up these days. A few years back I was lucky enough to find a decent condition copy of Borderlands, an epic campaign for RuneQuestpublished in 1982, for 40 bucks — a bargain! — and snatched it up. It’s been sitting next to the big green chair where I write all my BG posts ever since, waiting until I have the time to say a few words about it.
Coincidentally, yesterday I stumbled upon a fascinating tidbit at Geek & Sundry that reports that LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman — who recently sold his company to Microsoft, becoming a billionaire in the process — was one of the writers of Borderlands, and in fact was a contributor to Chaosium at a very early age. Here’s the relevant part of the article, written by Ben Riggs and titled “Playing RPGs Can Totally Make You a Billionaire, You Guys.”
Mary Robinette Kowal won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2008, and she has won the Hugo award for her short fiction several times. Her latest novel is Ghost Talkers, a tale of the mysterious spirit corps, trained to glean crucial intelligence from dead soldiers in World War I.
Ginger Stuyvesant, an American heiress living in London during World War I, is engaged to Captain Benjamin Hartshorne, an intelligence officer. Ginger is a medium for the Spirit Corps, a special Spiritualist force.
Each soldier heading for the front is conditioned to report to the mediums of the Spirit Corps when they die so the Corps can pass instant information about troop movements to military intelligence.
Ginger and her fellow mediums contribute a great deal to the war efforts, so long as they pass the information through appropriate channels. While Ben is away at the front, Ginger discovers the presence of a traitor. Without the presence of her fiance to validate her findings, the top brass thinks she’s just imagining things. Even worse, it is clear that the Spirit Corps is now being directly targeted by the German war effort. Left to her own devices, Ginger has to find out how the Germans are targeting the Spirit Corps and stop them. This is a difficult and dangerous task for a woman of that era, but this time both the spirit and the flesh are willing…
Mary is best known for her popular Glamourist Histories fantasy series from Tor, the first two of which were nominated for a Nebula Award. We covered all five volumes in the series:
Ghost Talkers will be published by Tor Books on August 16, 2016. It is 299 pages, priced at $24.99 in hardcover and $11.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Chris McGrath. Read the first chapter at the Tor/Forge blog.
I was delighted to receive a copy of the latest issue of Weirdbook in the mail. The last one, Weirdbook 31, the first new issue in nearly 20 years, was an unqualified success. This one seems to be packed largely with unknowns, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Best of all, it appears barely 9 months after the previous issue, which is a hopeful sign — and no easy task for a trade-paperback sized magazine that clocks in at 173 pages.
The issue contains no less than 25 tales of dark fantasy and the weird, as well as 9 poems. Here’s the complete table of contents.
Among the many fascinating trailers shown for the first time at Comic-Con this weekend (including those for Justice League and Wonder Woman, which we showcased here, and the first official trailer for Dr. Strange) was a special Comic-Con trailer for Kong: Skull Island. Produced by the Legendary team behind the latest film version of Godzilla (see Ryan Harvey’s rave review here), the film is also a set-up for the upcoming Godzilla Vs. Kong megapicture.
All very cool. But this most interesting part of the trailer for me (next to the peek at actress Brie Larson, who’s just been cast as Captain Marvel) was John Goodman’s brief speech, which is straight out of H.P. Lovecraft.
This planet doesn’t belong to us… ancient species owned this Earth long before mankind. I’ve spent 30 years trying to prove the truth. Monsters exist.
You tell ’em, Goodman! The world needs to know this stuff. Also, you should let everyone in on the giant insects of Monster Island.
Kong: Skull Island is directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts and stars Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Jason Mitchell, Corey Hawkins, Toby Kebbell, Tom Wilkinson, Terry Notary, John Goodman, and John C. Reilly. It is scheduled for release on March 10, 2017.
See the Comic-Con Teaser Trailers for Justice League and Wonder Woman
I quite enjoyed Zack Snyder’s Batman vs. Superman. One of the things I liked best about it was the care it took in setting up follow-up features in the DC Universe. Yesterday at San Diego Comic-Con, Warner Bros. unveiled some of the fruits of that careful planning, with the first teaser trailer for Justice League, and a full-length trailer for Wonder Woman.
Justice League features Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg, and looks like a lot of fun. Clearly following in the successful footsteps of Marvel’s Avengers, the film gathers an ensemble cast (including Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa, Ray Fisher, Amy Adams, Jeremy Irons, J. K. Simmons, Amber Heard and Willem Dafoe) and sets up an epic battle between Earth’s mightiest heroes and an extra-planetary menace.
Principal photography began on April 11, 2016, so this is obviously very early footage. Not a lot is known about the plot, but we do know that Batman assembles the team to take on the interdimensional threat of Steppenwolf and his army of Parademons, as hinted in the closing scenes (and this deleted scene) from Batman vs. Superman. Justice League is directed by Zack Snyder and scheduled for release November 17, 2017.
Be sure to check out the first full-length trailer for Wonder Woman, also released this weekend at Comic-Con. Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins, and staring Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Connie Nielsen, and Robin Wright, is the fourth installment in what’s now being called the DC Extended Universe. The producers have whole-heartedly embraced Wonder Woman’s epic backstory, including her origin as Princess Diana of Themyscira, warrior princess of the Amazons of Greek mythology. Gadot surprised me in Batman vs. Superman, pretty much stealing all the scenes she was in, and she brings a marvelous gravity to the role. The film is scheduled to be released on June 2, 2017.
