Black Gate

I’ve been slowing down my acquisition of new books recently, mostly for reasons of space. But occasionally a title will prove just too irresistible, as happened last week with Seth Fried’s debut, about a human and his AI partner on an adventure to save the great American city of Metropolis. It was Library Journal‘s “Debut of the Month,” and named one of the best books of the month by The Verge, io9, Amazon Books, Book of the Month Club, Tor.com, and others. Here’s Leah Schnelbach’s take at Tor.com.

The Municipalists, Seth Fried’s debut novel, is a futuristic noir that isn’t quite a noir; a bumpy buddy cop story where the cops are a career bureaucrat and computer program… It’s also deeply, constantly funny, and able to transform from a breezy page-turner into a serious exploration of class and trauma in a few well-turned sentences.

At first it seems like a wacky buddy cop book. The buttoned-down bureaucrat Henry Thompson is a proud member of United States Municipal Survey, traveling around the country to make improvements to city infrastructures… the kidnapping of a beloved teen celebrity [has] left the city reeling, only for people to be knocked truly punch-drunk by a series of terrorist attacks. The attacks and the kidnapping might be related. We’re soon taken all the way into sci-fi territory however when Henry gains a partner — a snarky AI called OWEN who is positively giddy about being sentient…

Seth Fried has been writing fiction and humor for years now, with excellent short work popping up in McSweeney’s, Tin House, One Story, and The New Yorker — his Tin House story “Mendelssohn”, about a Raccoon of Unusual Size, was a particular favorite of mine. His 2011 short story collection, The Great Frustration, was wildly diverse. Now with The Municipalists he proves that he can orchestrate a tight, complicated plot… Fried has also given us an endearing protagonist in Henry Thompson, and an all-time classic drunken AI, and if there’s any justice in the cities in this reality this will be the first book in a Municipalists-verse.

The Municipalists was published by Penguin Books on March 19, 2019. It is 265 pages, priced at $16 in trade paperback and $11.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Matthew Taylor. Read the first ten pages here, and see all our recent New Treasures here.

This is definitely the era of the Chinese invasion. Chinese writers like Cixin Liu and Hao Jingfang are winning Hugo Awards, and Western readers are paying attention to Chinese SF like never before. Chen Qiufan is one of the stars of the Chinese invasion; his short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and the anthologies Invisible Planets and Broken Stars.

His debut novel was published in the spring, and at Locus Online Gary K. Wolfe says “Waste Tide moves along at a terrific pace… with enough buzzy ideas to power a couple of novels.” And in a starred review Kirkus Reviews calls it “Cutting-edge, near-future science fiction… Chinese science fiction, once an unknown quantity in the U.S., is making its way to the forefront through sheer excellence.” Here’s the description.

Mimi is drowning in the world’s trash.

She’s a waste worker on Silicon Isle, where electronics — from cell phones and laptops to bots and bionic limbs — are sent to be recycled. These amass in towering heaps, polluting every spare inch of land. On this island off the coast of China, the fruits of capitalism and consumer culture come to a toxic end.

Mimi and thousands of migrant waste workers like her are lured to Silicon Isle with the promise of steady work and a better life. They’re the lifeblood of the island’s economy, but are at the mercy of those in power.

A storm is brewing, between ruthless local gangs, warring for control. Ecoterrorists, set on toppling the status quo. American investors, hungry for profit. And a Chinese-American interpreter, searching for his roots.

As these forces collide, a war erupts — between the rich and the poor; between tradition and modern ambition; between humanity’s past and its future.

Mimi, and others like her, must decide if they will remain pawns in this war or change the rules of the game altogether.

Waste Tide was published by Tor on April 30, 2019. It is 340 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $13.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Victor Mosquera. Read the complete first chapter at Tor.com.

Craig Davidson is the author of Sarah Court and Cataract City and, under the name Nick Cutter, The Acolyte, from ChiZine Publications, which we covered here back in 2015. His newest is the definition of a breakout novel. It’s gotten rave reviews from the New York Times, Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, and numerous other places. As Jason Heller puts it at NPR, it’s a novel that celebrates the wonders and horrors of being a kid:

Jake Baker, the main character of Craig Davidson’s new novel The Saturday Night Ghost Club [is] a neurosurgeon, and… The Saturday Night Ghost Club is his story, although most of it takes place in the past — one summer during the ’80s, in which he turned 12. He grew up in Niagara Falls, and the town’s mist-shrouded natural monument serves as a dramatic backdrop to something bordering on the supernatural. Because as Jake tells it, he spent that summer with his eccentric Uncle Calvin and a handful of friends, practicing rituals and hunting ghosts and monsters….

The masterful segues between the narratives of child Jake and adult Jake shimmer. And even more profoundly, the book is a celebration of the secret lives of children, both their wonders and their horrors…. Hunting imaginary monsters is a grand adventure, but the most horrendous monsters can be real people. Immensely enjoyable, piercingly clever, and satisfyingly soulful, The Saturday Night Ghost Club is an exquisite little talisman of a book, one that doesn’t flinch as it probes the dark underside of nostalgia.

The Saturday Night Ghost Club was published by Penguin Books on July 9, 2019. It is 211 pages, priced at $16 in trade paperback and $11.99 in digital formats. The cover is by George Wylesol.