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Author: John ONeill

The Winners of the 2015 British Fantasy Awards

The Winners of the 2015 British Fantasy Awards

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Cuckoo Song Frances Hardinge-smallCherrio! The winners of the 2015 British Fantasy Awards have been announced by the British Fantasy Society.

The nominees in 13 categories were announced in July, and the complete list of winners follows. Congratulations to all the winners!

Best Fantasy Novel – The Robert Holdstock Award

Cuckoo Song, Frances Hardinge (Macmillan Children’s Books)

Best Horror Novel – The August Derleth Award)

No One Gets Out Alive, Adam Nevill (Macmillan)

Best Novella

“Newspaper Heart,” Stephen Volk (The Spectral Book of Horror Stories)

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New Treasures: Shadows of Carcosa, edited by D. Thin

New Treasures: Shadows of Carcosa, edited by D. Thin

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Shadows of Carcosa-smallI think there’s something about October that drives publishers to repackage classic horror tales for a new generation.

Earlier this week we looked at Leslie S. Klinger’s new anthology In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe, which collects tales published between 1816-1914; today it’s D. Thin’s handsome new book from New York Review Book Classics, Shadows of Carcosa: Tales of Cosmic Horror by Lovecraft, Chambers, Machen, Poe, and Other Masters of the Weird, published on October 6th. It collects tales from roughly the same era, 1833-1927, all with the theme of the cosmically weird.

“The true weird tale has something more than a secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains. An atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; a hint of that most terrible conception of the human brain — a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.” —H. P. Lovecraft

This collection features some of the greatest masters of extreme terror, among them Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Bram Stoker, and Henry James, and includes such classic works as Arthur Machen’s “The White People,” Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows,” and of course Lovecraft’s own weird and hideous “The Colour Out of Space.”

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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Cover Reveal: Mechanical Failure by Joe Zieja

Cover Reveal: Mechanical Failure by Joe Zieja

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Mechanical Failure-small

Saga has released over two dozen books in 2015 — pretty darn good for a brand spanking new imprint — and their 2016 line up promises to be even more stellar, with titles from Kat Howard, A. Lee Martinez, Genevieve Valentine, and Black Gate author Frederic S. Durbin. Last week we gave you a peek at Mike Brooks’ debut novel Dark Run, a space opera SFFWorld calls “a Firefly-like tale.”

This week we take a look at Zor Zieja’s Mechanical Failure, the tale of a smooth-talking ex-sergeant and smuggler forced back into military service just as rumors of war begin to escalate, on sale from Saga Press June 7, 2016.

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Ten Terrifying Canadian Books For Halloween

Ten Terrifying Canadian Books For Halloween

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Ten Terrifying Canadian Books

Helen Marshall tipped us off this morning to this marvelous little article at the CBC website, promoting “10 of the scariest Canadian reads… From horrific dystopias to creepy, creaky old mansions.”

There’s plenty of familiar titles on the list, from Margaret Atwood’s famous bestseller The Handmaid’s Tale to Nick Cutter’s breakout novel The Troop, to Nalo Hopkinson’s dark fantasy Brown Girl in the Ring. But there’s also a nice assortment of surprises, including James Grainger’s tale of a weekend reunion of old friends that goes horribly wrong, Harmless; Samuel Archibald’s upcoming collection Arvida, packed with tales of wild beasts, haunted houses and spooky road trips; Jacqueline Baker’s novel of H.P. Lovecraft’s secret assistant, The Broken Hours; and Helen Marshall’s own 2012 collection Hair Side, Flesh Side.

It’s a great guide to some of the best seasonal scares north of the border. Check it out — and click on any if the pics in the article to read the full review.

Future Treasures: The Shards of Heaven by Michael Livingston

Future Treasures: The Shards of Heaven by Michael Livingston

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The Shards of Heaven-smallMichael Livingston’s short stories in Black Gate revealed a keen talent for mixing history and fantasy — especially his acclaimed tale “The Hand That Binds (BG 9),” a fabulous retelling of the legend of Beowulf. His story “At the End of Babel” (Tor.com) is another fine example. His first novel, on sale next month from Tor Books, reveals the secret history of Ancient Rome, and the hidden magic behind the history we know.

Julius Caesar is dead, assassinated on the senate floor, and the glory that is Rome has been torn in two. Octavian, Caesar’s ambitious great-nephew and adopted son, vies with Marc Antony and Cleopatra for control of Caesar’s legacy. As civil war rages from Rome to Alexandria, and vast armies and navies battle for supremacy, a secret conflict may shape the course of history.

Juba, Numidian prince and adopted brother of Octavian, has embarked on a ruthless quest for the Shards of Heaven, lost treasures said to possess the very power of the gods — or the one God. Driven by vengeance, Juba has already attained the fabled Trident of Poseidon, which may also be the staff once wielded by Moses. Now he will stop at nothing to obtain the other Shards, even if it means burning the entire world to the ground.

Caught up in these cataclysmic events, and the hunt for the Shards, are a pair of exiled Roman legionnaires, a Greek librarian of uncertain loyalties, assassins, spies, slaves… and the ten-year-old daughter of Cleopatra herself.

Michael Livingston’s The Shards of Heaven reveals the hidden magic behind the history we know, and commences a war greater than any mere mortal battle.

The Shards of Heaven will be published by Tor Books on November 24, 2015. It is 414 pages. priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital version. It is the opening volume in an epic new historical fantasy series set against the rise of the Roman Empire.

Apex Magazine #77 Now on Sale

Apex Magazine #77 Now on Sale

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Apex Magazine Issue 77-smallIn his editorial this month, Jason Sizemore tells us a little about the latest issue, and dishes out some excellent Halloween advice.

This month, we offer four original short stories by D.K. Thompson, Aaron Saylor, Maurice Broaddus and Arkady Martine. These stories are nothing alike in tone, setting, style, or mood. But they all share a central theme of “protection.” If you enjoy unique explorations of a singular conceit, then we have a great issue for you. And if you want your eyebrows raised and your tropes turned upside down, then read “Super Duper Fly” by Maurice Broaddus. If this story doesn’t start a discussion, then I will be very disappointed in you!

Or if you simply like a good werewolf story, well, we have that, too. It is the Witching month, after all!…

While this issue comes out several weeks prior to Halloween, I would like to close with a word of advice. If you’re giving out candy to trick-or-treaters, remember that nobody likes candy corn. Nobody.

Here’s the complete TOC.

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Forbes on the Tragic Failure of Jem And The Holograms

Forbes on the Tragic Failure of Jem And The Holograms

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Jem And The Holograms-smallLast week Box Office Mojo reported that Guillermo del Toro’s gothic horror film Crimson Peak “crashed and burned into 2,984 theaters to the tune of an estimated $12.8 million.” So what did it make of Jem And The Holograms‘ historically bad take of one-tenth of that total this weekend, $1.3 million from 2,413 theaters? It calls it one of “the year’s biggest flops… the fourth worst opening for a film in more than 2,000 theaters.”

Jem And The Holograms was a much-loved 80s cartoon produced by Hasbro, Marvel, and Sunbow (the same team behind G.I. Joe and Transformers). Featuring the plucky Jerrica Benton, whose father left her virtually flawless hologram technology that allowed her to disguise herself as a beautiful pop singer, Jem was the brainchild of comics writer Christy Marx (Sisterhood of Steel, Conan, Red Sonja). Forbes writer Scott Mendelson sees the massive failure of the live-action version as a genuine tragedy.

The film took a source material that is over-the-top colorful and over-the-top exciting, filled with larger-than-life characters and musically-charged action sequences where Jem and her friends had to both be kick-ass rock stars and kick-ass crime fighters at the same time, and made a toned-down, muted, and overly patronizing “young girl gets in over her head due to fame and artistic success and forgets what matters” fable that basically penalized its young heroes for wanting and achieving success and power…

It was the kind of film that Josie and the Pussycats spoofed a decade ago, and basically operated as a dark-n-gritty origin story that spent the entire film building up to the possibility of maybe seeing a Jem movie that Jem fans wanted to see the first time out in a would-be sequel. Okay, so a cheap film that spit on the source material bombed, who cares right? Well, here’s the rub: The overriding message of Jem and the Holograms is that a girl-centric action cartoon from the 1980′s doesn’t deserve or justify even 5% of the resources given without a second thought to boy-centric properties cashing in on 80′s nostalgia.

Read the complete article here.

Vintage Treasures: None But Man by Gordon R. Dickson

Vintage Treasures: None But Man by Gordon R. Dickson

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None But Man Pyramid-small None But Man DAW 1977-small None But Man DAW-small

When I was young, there was a peculiar sub-genre of science fiction that many folks attributed to the influence of John W. Campbell, the legendary editor of Astounding. If you were an SF reader in the 1950s-1980s, you read a fair share of novels in which mankind began a reign of conquest in outer space, carving a glorious empire among the stars. And when we inevitably crossed paths with aliens who frustrated our boundless ambitions, we’d show those godless E.T’s in relatively short order why you don’t mess with homo sapiens.

This always seemed to me to be a uniquely American branch of SF. Growing up in Ottawa, right across the river from the province of Quebec, my natural response when I met folks from an alien culture, with their own strange language and incomprehensible customs, was not to immediately attempt to assert my superiority. Instead you tried to score some French comics, and asked if they minded if you dated their sister. And if they drove a truck, you bought poutine from them, because that stuff was frickin’ manna from heaven.

To my mind Gordon R. Dickson (who was born in Edmonton, Alberta, in 1923) was never part of the Manifest Destiny in Outer Space crowd but, like most career SF writers at the time, he tried a little bit of everything. His 1969 novel None But Man, the tale of ‘brave human frontiersmen’ who defy a peace treaty and engage in guerrilla warfare against “unhuman Aliens” rather than surrender their homes, seemed pretty firmly in the “Nobody does war the way humans do” Campbell tradition.

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New Treasures: In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Leslie S. Klinger

New Treasures: In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Leslie S. Klinger

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In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe-smallWhen I do my Vintage Treasures posts, I usually end up lamenting the fact that the book I’m profiling is out of print. You think I’d be used to it by now. Many of the titles that were New Treasures at the beginning of the year are out of print already. Even the most popular fantasy writers in our field — Bradbury, Simak, Kuttner, Asimov, Poul Anderson, and countless others — have fewer titles in print every year. So imagine what it means for a fantasy writer to be consistently in print for the past 165 years. It means a kind of genius that transcends generations. In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe: Classic Tales of Horror, 1816-1914 is a new anthology that collects a century of horror from authors whose contributions have been lost in the shadow of one of the finest fantasy writers who ever lived: Edgar Allan Poe.

Edgar Allan Poe did not invent the tale of terror. There were American, English, and Continental writers who preceded Poe and influenced his work. Similarly, there were many who were in turn influenced by Poe’s genius and produced their own popular tales of supernatural literature. This collection features masterful tales of terror by authors who, by and large, are little-remembered for their writing in this genre. Even Bram Stoker, whose Dracula may be said to be the most popular horror novel of all time, is not known as a writer of short fiction.

Distinguished editor Leslie S. Klinger is a world-renowned authority on those twin icons of the Victorian age, Sherlock Holmes, and Dracula. His studies into the forefathers of those giants led him to a broader fascination with writers of supernatural literature of the nineteenth century. The stories in this collection have been selected by him for their impact. Each is preceded by a brief biography of the author and an overview of his or her literary career and is annotated to explain obscure references.

Read on, now, perhaps with a flickering candle or flashlight at hand…

In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe: Classic Tales of Horror, 1816-1914 contains stories by Ambrose Bierce, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Theodor Gautier, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Arthur Conan Doyle, Lafcadio Hearn, M. R. James, Bram Stoker, and many others. It was edited by Leslie S. Klinger and published by Pegasus on October 15, 2015. It is 320 pages, priced at $24.95 in hardcover, and $20.98 for the digital edition. The cover is by Faceout Studio/Charles Brock.

Future Treasures: Weighing Shadows by Lisa Goldstein

Future Treasures: Weighing Shadows by Lisa Goldstein

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Weighing Shadows-smallLisa Goldstein has had a stellar career. Her work has been nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards, and her first novel, The Red Magician (1982), won the National Book Award. Under her own name she has produced over a dozen books, including The Dream Years (1985), Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon (1993), and Summer King, Winter Fool (1994), and under the name Isabel Glass she’s written two high fantasy novels, Daughter of Exile (2004) and The Divided Crown (2005). Her latest novel, Weighing Shadows, is a time-traveling fantasy that arrives in early November.

Ann Decker fixes computers for a living, and in the evenings she passes the time sharpening her hacking skills. It’s not a very interesting life, but she gets by — until one day she’s contacted with a job offer for a company called Transformations Incorporated. None of her coworkers have ever heard of it before, and when Ann is finally told what the company does, she can hardly believe it: TI has invented technology to travel in time.

Soon Ann is visiting a matriarchy in ancient Crete, and then a woman mathematician at the Library of Alexandria. But Transformations Incorporated remains shrouded in mystery, and when Ann finally catches her breath, there are too many troubling questions still unanswered. Who are Transformations Incorporated, and what will they use this technology to gain? What ill effects might going back in time have on the present day? Is it really as harmless as TI says?

When a coworker turns up dead, Ann’s superiors warn her about a covert group called Core out to sabotage the company. Something just isn’t right, but before she has time to investigate, Ann is sent to a castle in the south of France, nearly a thousand years in the past. As the armies of the Crusade arrive to lay siege, and intrigue grows among the viscount’s family, Ann will discover the startling truth — not just about the company that sent her there, but also about her own past.

Weighing Shadows will be published by Night Shade Books on November 3, 2015. It is 318 pages, priced at $15.99 in both trade paperback and digital formats. The cover is by Cortney Skinner.