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New Treasures: Grave Importance, Book 3 of Dr. Greta Helsing, by Vivian Shaw

New Treasures: Grave Importance, Book 3 of Dr. Greta Helsing, by Vivian Shaw

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Vivian Shaw’s debut fantasy novel was Strange Practice (2017). It introduced the world to Dr. Greta Helsing, doctor to the undead, and SFFWorld labeled it “a triumph.” The sequel, Dreadful Company, in which Dr. Helsing uncovers a coven of vampires underneath Paris, was released last year. Liz Bourke at Tor.com raved, saying “Dreadful Company is fast, fun, and immensely readable… [and] laugh-out-loud funny… it’s delightful.”

I’ve been looking forward to the third volume of this witty fantasy adventure series, and it finally arrived last month. Here’s the description.

Oasis Natrun: a private, exclusive, highly secret luxury health spa for mummies, high in the hills above Marseille, equipped with the very latest in therapeutic innovations both magical and medical. To Dr. Greta Helsing, London’s de facto mummy specialist, it sounds like paradise. But when Greta is invited to spend four months there as the interim clinical director, it isn’t long before she finds herself faced with a medical mystery that will take all her diagnostic skill to solve.

A peculiar complaint is spreading among her mummy patients, one she’s never seen before. With help from her friends and colleagues — including Dr. Faust (yes, that Dr. Faust), a sleepy scribe-god, witches, demons, a British Museum curator, and the inimitable vampyre Sir Francis Varney — Greta must put a stop to this mysterious illness before anybody else crumbles to irreparable dust…

…and before the fabric of reality itself can undergo any more structural damage.

You can read the first four chapters of Strange Practice at the Orbit website, and get more details on the series here. Grave Importance was published by Orbit on September 24, 2019. It is 448 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Will Staehle. See all our recent coverage of the best Series Fantasy here.

Intergalactic Wars, Ancient Gods, and Living Ships: New Novellas from Tor.com

Intergalactic Wars, Ancient Gods, and Living Ships: New Novellas from Tor.com

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The Undefeated Una McCormack-small The Border Keeper-small Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday-small Sisters of the Vast Black-small

The last Tor.com novella I read was Desdemona and the Deep by C.S.E. Cooney, and it made me want to read a lot more. The prose (as one expects from Cooney) was delightful, but it was also the perfect length for a light-but-also-surprisingly-dark fae fantasy. It had exactly the right number of calories, and now I find myself looking around for something equally tasty and not too filling.

Fortunately the Tor.com back catalog is deep and gorgeous. They started their handsome novella line almost exactly four years ago, in September 2015, and have kept up a semi-weekly (sorta-kinda weekly, sometimes bi-weekly) release schedule ever since. I haven’t counted but there must around 150 by by now.

Tor.com’s editors have produced something for every taste over the past four years. Space opera, weird fantasy, horror, urban fantasy, comedy, military science fiction, dark fantasy, alternate history love stories, and a whole lot more. Like all great editors, they’ve published award-winning fiction from top names (Martha Wells, Nnedi Okorafor, Seanan McGuire) and also mixed it up with some terrific debuts from stellar new talents. Looking over their recent releases, it’s clear the quality and drive at Tor.com has not flagged at all. Here’s a look at some of their most interesting new titles.

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Vintage Treasures: Matter’s End by Gregory Benford

Vintage Treasures: Matter’s End by Gregory Benford

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Matter’s End (Bantam Spectra, 1995). Cover by Pamela Lee

Gregory Benford began his writing career with the story “Stand-In” in the June 1965 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He was nominated for a Nebula Award for his first novel In the Ocean of Night (1976), and won it in 1980 for Timescape. Since then he’s focused chiefly on novels, most famously the six-volume Galactic Center Saga.

But he first built his reputation on short fiction, and he’s returned to it again and again over the course of a 50-year career. His short fiction has been nominated for four Hugo Awards (for two short stories and two novellas), and many Nebula Awards. He’s produced more than half a dozen collections, including In Alien Flesh (1986), Worlds Vast and Various (2000), Immersion and Other Short Novels (2002), and The Best of Gregory Benford (2015).

His second collection was Matter’s End, published by Bantam Spectra in 1995. It contains 21 stories, including “Stand-In,” the Nebula-nominated title story, an original novelette, “Sleepstory,” and one original short story, “Side Effect.” It came in third for the Locus Award for Best Collection in 1995, and was quickly reprinted in hardcover (by The Easton Press in 1995, and by Gollancz in 1996), and in paperback in the UK by Vista in 1997.

To be truthful, I haven’t followed Benford’s novel career much. But his short fiction is a different story. I found a copy of Matter’s End in a collection I purchased recently, and I’ve very curious about it. Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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Analog Announces 90th Anniversary Reprint Series

Analog Announces 90th Anniversary Reprint Series

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Analog Science Fiction and Fact, November-December 2019, and an excerpt from Trevor Quachri’s editorial

Gabe Dybing, who clearly gets his issues of Analog faster than I do, tipped me off that editor Trevor Quachri has something very interesting planned for the magazine’s upcoming 90th Anniversary year (90! Holy cats). Gabe sent me the above pic of Trevor’s editorial in the November-December issue, on sale this week. For those of you who don’t like to squint, here’s the relevant text.

As many of you may know, 2020 is going to be Astounding/Analog’s 90th anniversary year, and the January/February issue is the 90th anniversary of our very first issue. Something we’ll be doing that requires a little explanation is a series of limited retrospectives over the year: each issue we’re running a reprint from one of our past decades, with an introduction (in the editorial/guest-editorial space) talking about it either as a historical artifact, an overlooked gem, or just a personal favorite — a story that an editor or knowledagable (sic) author found interesting for whatever reason but didn’t have an appropriate venue in which to chat about it.

The goal is to cover the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, the thinking being that most of the material from the ’30s isn’t really reflective of the magazine’s later identity, and anything from 2000 on is too recent. We’re going to try to keep it to one story per decade, though the nature of the project (tracking down the rights to older material particularly) means that’s not entirely set in stone. Some of those decades had a lot of good stories! But we have to save some ideas for the centennial, after all.

This is great news for classic SF fans, and I look forward to seeing what Trevor chooses (and I hope some bright-eyed new readers will discover a few giants of the genre as a result).

But since I’m old, I also have to grouse a little… Trevor can’t find one pulp story from the 1930s worth a look?? In the 1930s, John W. Campbell and Astounding published stellar fiction by the best pulp writers of the era — including “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell, Jr, “Helen O’Loy” by Lester del Rey, “Black Destroyer” by A. E. van Vogt, “Life-Line” by Robert A. Heinlein, “Ether Breather” by Theodore Sturgeon, and many, many more. Maybe Trevor is just looking for suggestions. Shout yours out in the Comments.

Future Treasures: Novice Dragoneer by E.E. Knight

Future Treasures: Novice Dragoneer by E.E. Knight

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Novice Dragoneer-smallI’m a huge fan of E.E. Knight. For one thing, he hosts the best board game nights I’ve ever seen. His Heroscape sessions, held annually in Chicago after the Windy City Pulp and Paper show for many years, were the stuff of legend. As he noted in one of his epic post-game Action Reports, they featured “Mohicans and British infantry and lizard men battling dinosaurs, giant spiders, dragons, and Atlantean robots in a jungle-choked ruin.” Don’t ask me to describe them, but they were life-changing.

He’s also a damn fine writer. You’re probably familiar with his 11-volume Vampire Earth series, which opened with Way of the Wolf, or his six-volume Age of Fire series. He’s also an occasional blogger here at Black Gate. And I was very proud to publish his Blue Pilgrim tale “The Terror in the Vale,” one of the very best stories in our Black Gate Online Fiction library (and reprint the first, “That of the Pit,” which first appeared in the underrated anthology Lords of Swords).

So naturally I was very excited to hear that he has a new novel arriving next month, the tale of an impoverished girl who enters into a military order of dragonriders. And if the buzz already building around Novice Dragoneer is any indication, it’s the beginning of a major new fantasy series. I asked Eric if he could tell us a little about it, and he graciously shared the following.

I’m very much looking forward to readers, both long-time and new, meeting our novice Ileth. She’s a little bit of each of my three kids spun around my own experiences at that age. I’ve even worked my first job, which I took on at twelve, into the story (although I was dealing with dog poop rather than dragon waste). I’ve been on a bit of a break from writing raising those three, so I’m excited to find out if I have any game left.

Here’s the publisher’s description.

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New Treasures: Salvaged by Madeleine Roux

New Treasures: Salvaged by Madeleine Roux

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Salvaged Madeleine Roux-smallWhen you’ve been reading and reviewing long enough, you grow a little numb to book blurbs. At least, I thought you did. But that was before I came across Madeleine Roux’s new science fiction-horror novel Salvaged, which has blurbs that didn’t just get my attention. They grabbed me by my collar and made me spill latte all over my shirt.

Christopher Golden calls the book “A breathless, claustrophobic twist on the SF thriller, full of deep space dread, conspiracies, and malevolent alien spores… This is the Alien we need right now.” And Seanan McGuire says it’s “The prose equivalent of playing a survival horror game… Beautifully written.” And Jonathan Maberry raves “Salvaged scared the hell out of me, and I write horror for a living! … a brilliant novel that any fan of Alien will simply devour. Brava!”

See what I mean? Anything with ” deep space dread, conspiracies, and malevolent alien spores” and which draws multiple comparisons to Alien definitely deserves my attention. Here’s an excerpt from the starred review at Publisher’s Weekly.

In a spacefaring future, Rosalyn Devar is a xenobiologist who takes a job as a salvager — janitor of dead space crews — to get away from her father, his business, and the man who hurt her. When caught drinking on the job, she’s given one more chance: clean up the Brigantine, a research ship whose crew is dead. But they aren’t. Aboard the Brigantine, she meets Edison Aries, the captain, and his undead crew. They are infected with a mysterious fungus, Foxfire, that has taken root in their minds, convincing them that it is their mother and that Rosalyn needs to join them. Stranded aboard the Brigantine, Rosalyn and Edison try to outwit the other crew members and Mother, while looking for a way to stop Foxfire from spreading.. This entertaining, deeply disturbing, and clever story hits all the right notes for those who like a little horror with their SF.

Salvaged was published by Ace Books on October 15, 2019. It is 368 pages, priced at $16 in trade paperback and $9.99 in digital formats. The cover was designed by Faceout Studio/Jeff Miller.

See all our recent New Treasures here.

The Boxed Set of the Year: American Science Fiction: Eight Classic Novels of the 1960s edited by Gary K. Wolfe

The Boxed Set of the Year: American Science Fiction: Eight Classic Novels of the 1960s edited by Gary K. Wolfe

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Cover by Paul Lehr

Gary K. Wolfe is one of my favorite Locus columnists. He also reviews science fiction for the Chicago Tribune and, with Jonathan Strahan, co-hosts the excellent Coode Street Podcast. But more and more these days I think of him as an editor. He edited the Philip Jose Farmer retrospective collection Up the Bright River (2011) and, even more significantly, American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s: A Library of America Boxed Set (2012), a massive 1,700-page, 2-volume omnibus collection of classic novels by Pohl & Kornbluth, Sturgeon, Brackett, Matheson, Heinlein, Bester, Blish, Budrys, and Leiber, all in gorgeous hardcover with acid-free paper, sewn binding, and full cloth covers.

So I was thrilled to hear that, seven long years later, Wolfe has fulfilled that promise of that first beautiful boxed set with a sequel: American Science Fiction: Eight Classic Novels of the 1960s. Like the first, it will be sold as two separate hardcovers, and also available in a handsome boxed set edition. It contains eight of the finest SF novels of the 60s:

The High Crusade, Poul Anderson (1960)
Way Station, Clifford D. Simak (1963)
Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes (1966)
…And Call Me Conrad (This Immortal), Roger Zelazny (1966)
Past Master, R. A. Lafferty (1968)
Picnic on Paradise, Joanna Russ (1968)
Nova, Samuel R. Delany (1968)
Emphyrio, Jack Vance (1969)

The whole package comes wrapped up in a boxed set featuring artwork from the brilliant Paul Lehr. It will be in bookstores on November 5th — and is available now at $15 below retail if you order direct from Library of America.

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A Glorious Tapestry of Alternate History: The Empire of Fear by Brian Stableford

A Glorious Tapestry of Alternate History: The Empire of Fear by Brian Stableford

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British science fiction writer Brian Stableford has published more than 70 novels across a career spanning nearly five decades. His first novel was The Days of Glory (Ace, 1971), his most recent was The Tyranny of the Word (Black Coat Press, 2019), which appeared just last month. He’s produced a number of popular series, including six Hooded Swan science fiction novels, beginning with The Halcyon Drift (DAW 1972), six Daedalus Mission books, his famous werewolf trilogy (The Werewolves of London, The Angel of Pain, and The Carnival of Destruction), the Genesys trilogy, and the more recent six-volume Emortality series from Tor, beginning with Inherit the Earth (1998) and Architects of Emortality (September).

Back in 2013 I wrote a brief Vintage Treasures piece on his 1998 horror novel The Empire of Fear, and in the Comments section BG blogger Joe Bonadonna offered a splendid mini-review.

I read this one right after reading George R.R. Martin’s Fevre Dream, and these are 2 of my favorite vampire novels, because they are so much more than that. Empire of Fear is a glorious tapestry of alternate history a, “what mine have been,” had Van Helsing not slain Dracula. Beautifully written, with flesh-and blood characters, and quite well told. My only complaint — it’s too bloody short.

Joe’s comments stayed with me, and as I celebrate the spooky season by selecting classic horror novels to read in October, I picked up a copy to read this weekend.

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New Treasures: A Lush and Seething Hell: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror by John Hornor Jacobs

New Treasures: A Lush and Seething Hell: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror by John Hornor Jacobs

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I’m hearing a lot about John Hornor Jacobs’ new book, A Lush and Seething Hell. Like, a lot.

Like this starred review from Kirkus:

Two lush, sprawling novellas that are nothing like each other except that they’re both scary as hell… Two spectacular novellas. After a glowing foreword by Jacobs’ fellow fabulist Chuck Wendig, the book launches into “The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky,” a Lovecraft-ian horror story set in a fictionalized South American nation. In it, a young academic named Isabel Certa becomes involved with a famous one-eyed poet named Rafael Avendaño, a cavalier scoundrel who’s heading into a war zone… Then there’s the chill-inducing, artfully paced “My Heart Struck Sorrow,” in which we’re introduced to Cromwell, a librarian from the Library of Congress who specializes in oral tradition [who] accidentally stumbles upon a long-hidden treasure trove of blues recordings from the 1930s… Falling somewhere between House of Leaves (2000) and The Blair Witch Project, it is a terrifying, gothic descent into madness… This book has a fitting title if there ever was one, and these nightmares are worth every penny.

And Sam Reader’s rave review at The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog.

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Future Treasures: Quillifer the Knight by Walter Jon Williams

Future Treasures: Quillifer the Knight by Walter Jon Williams

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Covers by Gregory Manchess and Alejandro Colucci

Walter Jon Williams is one of the most versatile writers we have. Space opera, military science fiction, cyberpunk, alternative history, SF police procedural — you name it, he’s done it. He’s written historical adventures, disaster novels (The Rift) and even a Star Wars novel (The New Jedi Order: Destiny’s Way). In his Locus review of the opening novel in William’s ambitious new fantasy series, Quillifer, Gary K. Wolfe says “Williams has been cheerfully genre-hopping for most of his career, sometimes even in the same novel.”

Quillifer is worth a second look — and not just because it’s one of Williams rare attempts at historical fantasy. Booklist calls it a “swashbuckling tale reminiscent of George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman.” The second novel in the series, Quillifer the Knight, arrives in three weeks. Here’s Gary on the first volume.

Quillifer belongs to the ranks of what we might call displaced historical fantasies, stories which make meticulous use of actual historical detail (Williams’s character quote Elizabethan poets, and his weapons and ships are all historically real), but which are set in imaginary nations or kingdoms, often with restrained use of fantasy elements – such as we see from writers like Ellen Kushner, K.J. Parker, or Guy Gavriel Kay (although Kay is far more specific in his historical analogues).

In classic adventure-novel tradition, Quillifer comes from modest beginnings: the son of a butcher, he studies law in the port city of Eth­lebight, but is also something of a classic 18th-century rake, and the novel opens with his comical escape out the window of the young woman with whom he’s currently in love… things quickly begin to change when Ethlebight is invaded, plundered, and destroyed by pirates from the rival empire of the Aekoi. Quillifer survives, but is later captured by a notorious bandit calling himself Sir Basil…

With the aid of a nymph-goddess who finds him appealing, he manages to escape again, but rejects her advances as he realizes that joining her in her kingdom might result in his returning to his world as much as a century later (one of the few classic fantasy motifs that Williams employs). Spurning her sets up a threat that will hang over Quillifer for the rest of the novel, which consists largely of fully realized independent episodes: Quillifer finds his way into the court of Duisland, where he assumes the title “Groom of the Pudding” and almost accidentally proves himself to be a champion stag-killer (drawing on his background as a butcher), later a brilliant naval strategist, and eventually an effective field-marshal in a crucial land battle to save the kingdom from usurpers…  a thoroughly enjoyable series of historical adventures in a faux-Europe that is as meticulous in its details as it is vague in time and place.

Here’s a look at the back cover.

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