John ONeill – Page 90

New Treasures: The Ragged Blade by Christopher Ruz

Monday, June 24, 2019 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Back in January I wrote about a conversation Colin Coyle, co-founder of Parvus Press, and I had in a bar at the World Fantasy Convention. One of the upcoming titles he told me about was The Ragged Blade, the debut fantasy novel from Christopher Ruz. The book’s editor, Kaelyn E. Considine, was kind enough to send me a copy of the finished book, and it looks fantastic. In an article titled “Why I Love The Ragged Blade” on the Parvus website, Colin pulls back on the curtain on how a small press acquires a book like this one.

One of the first books that was ever submitted to us was Century of Sand by Christopher Ruz. It was a previously self-published book that Ruz had released years prior. The book had some very positive reviews, but Ruz wasn’t sure how to go about selling it to a broad audience. He wanted to know if we wanted to pick it up and re-release it… Century of Sand was a tautly-paced book. It was a violin string on the verge of snapping. It was the work of a guy who was going to be a master at managing the rise and fall of mood, tension, and action in a book. But it wasn’t yet the best book it could be… when the Parvus team met to go through acquisitions, we all agreed we weren’t ready to take on the complexities of a re-release.

Two years later, Ruz sent me a brand new novel that he was querying… I called him right away and told him I thought it was time for us to tackle that Century of Sand challenge together and he readily agreed. It was a weird path to a publishing deal; I reject the book and then, two years later I end up buying it because of an entire different manuscript he sent. But publishing is a weird business, I’m a weird guy, and some of the best things in life are weird. Like pudding or bergamot.

So we picked up Century of Sand, Ruz threw away the opening third of the book, combined major characters, eliminated sub-plots, and all-but-completely rewrote anything that remained. And what we ended up with was The Ragged Blade, Book One of the Century of Sand by Christopher Ruz… I love this book. I love the broken father/daughter journey, the way this book is both expansive and intimate at the same time, and how every page of The Ragged Blade is a carefully composed work of true craft.

The Ragged Blade was published by Parvus Press on June 4, 2019. It is 459 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $7.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Ronan Le Fur. See our previous Parvus Press coverage here.

Vintage Treasures: Perilous Planets, edited by Brian Aldiss

Saturday, June 22, 2019 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Cover by Alex Ebel

In the days when I was first discovering science fiction, there were a number of seminal books that helped lead me along the path to becoming a collector. These were the tantalizing artifacts that taught me that SF and fantasy tended to come in a series, just like the comics I collected in my youth. And this — in the days when completing a series meant questing through bookstores, instead of simply ordering online — added a delicious element of uncertainty and desire to my new hobby.

I knew that my favorite books as a kid, like Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators and Perry Rhodan, were packaged as a series, and I was comfortable with the concept. When it gradually dawned on me that adult SF books, like Asimov’s Foundation series, Herbert’s Dune, The Lord of the Rings, and others, were series as well, I took to science fiction like a fish to water.

SF publishers understood this simple reading mentality of course, and frequently took advantage of it, packaging books that often had only nebulous connections into virtual series. Some were more successful than others. One of my favorite examples is the late 70s SF anthology series from Avon Books, all published with gorgeous wraparound covers by Alex Ebel. Avon found four Brian Aldiss anthologies published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in the UK, and repackaged them with similar covers across the pond: Galactic Empires Volume One (1979), Galactic Empires: Volume Two (1979), Evil Earths (1979), and Perilous Planets (1980).

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Tor.com on Robert E. Howard’s First (and Best?) Barbarian

Friday, June 21, 2019 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Kull the Fabulous Warrior King (Bantam, 1978). Art by Lou Feck

Rogue Blades Entertainment mastermind Jason M Waltz tipped me off to this article at Tor.com this morning, saying,

A decent article, even well-argued, but I disagree Kull is the better barbarian. Kull is the precursor to the culmination that is Conan; without Kull, Conan would be a lesser creation. Yet I enjoyed the article.

The piece itself, by Alan Brown, is a thoughtful look at one of Robert E. Howard’s early creations, and a great intro to a fascinating character, especially for those chiefly familiar with Howard through his later Conan tales.

The Kull stories marked the first time that Howard created an entire quasi-medieval world from whole cloth. While the various races and tribes bear some resemblance to peoples who inhabit the world today, he portrayed a time before the great cataclysm that caused Atlantis to sink, when even the shape of the land was different, a time when pre-human races still walked the Earth. Kull is an Atlantean barbarian who from his earliest days harbored an ambition that set him apart from his fellow tribesmen. A large, quick man, often compared to a tiger, he is powerful yet lithe, with dark hair and grey eyes, and a complexion bronzed from a life in the sun. He had been a warrior, galley slave, pirate, mercenary, and general before seizing the throne of Valusia from the corrupt King Borna. While a mighty warrior, Kull also has a whimsical and inquisitive side. He could be kind and sensitive, and is fascinated by the metaphysical.

Read the entire piece here.

The Adventure Stories We’ve Needed: Crossbones & Crosses: An Anthology of Heroic Swashbuckling Adventure, edited by Jason M Waltz

Thursday, June 20, 2019 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Art by Dieder Normand

There’s been no shortage of publishing events in 2019, but one of the most exciting for me personally has been the return of Rogue Blades Entertainment.

In its heyday about a decade ago, RBE was well on the way to becoming the most important adventure fantasy publisher in the US. With a back catalog that included Writing Fantasy Heroes (which included contributions from luminaries such as Steven Erikson, Brandon Sanderson, Orson Scott Card, Glen Cook, and Howard Andrew Jones), and hit anthologies like Rage of the Behemoth (2009) and Demons (2010), it had built a loyal customer base and a stellar reputation. Then the creative mastermind behind Rogue Blades, Jason M Waltz, scaled back operations to make certain they could reliably deliver on their long-term commitments.

It was a strategy that paid off. The contest anthology Challenge! Discovery, RBE’s first new book in four years, appeared in 2017, and Crazy Town, a brand new anthology of hard boiled tales, arrived to wide acclaim in November. And the book I’ve really been waiting for, Crossbones & Crosses, an anthology of Heroic Swashbuckling Adventure, was published just last month with a stellar cover by artist Dieder Normand.

Crossbones & Crosses is a collection of new and reprint tales of swashbuckling historical adventure featuring pirates and crusaders. Contributors include Howard Andrew Jones, Keith Taylor, C.L. Werner, and many others. Here’s a snippet from Keith West’s review at Adventures Fantastic.

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New Treasures: The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall

Tuesday, June 18, 2019 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

The Affair of the Mysterious Letter-small

The Affair of the Mysterious Letter-back-small

Have you ever picked up a book in a bookstore and known instantly it was coming home with you? That’s exactly what happened with The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall when I plucked it off the shelf on Saturday. Glancing over the top-rated Amazon reviews (kimbacaffeinate sums it up as a “Sherlockian based tale set off planet and filled with magic, vampires, gods and limitless worlds,” and Sherry M. calls it “Clever and very funny queer mashup of Holmes/weird fantasy”) when I got home reassured me I’d definitely made a wise purchase.

But it was this blurb from Ruthanna Emrys, author of Winter Tide and Deep Roots, that convinced me I’d found my reading project for the week.

This book is so far up my alley that I discovered new, non-euclidean corners of the alley that I didn’t previously know existed. The world has heretofore suffered from a sad lack of queer consulting sorceresses, prudish-yet-romantic Azathoth cultists, existentially surreal urban planning, and post-colonial Carcosan politics.

Alexis Hall pays homage to Sherlock Holmes with a new — very new — twist on some of the most famous characters in literature, in a book that’s equal parts homage to Arthur Conan Doyle and H.P. Lovecraft. The Affair of the Mysterious Letter is not the kind of book I expect to see from Ace Books these days, but that’s their logo right there on the spine. It was published by Ace on June 18, 2019. It is 340 pages, priced at $16 in trade paperback and $9.99 in digital formats. The cover was designed by Adam Auerbach. Read the first six chapters (29 pages) here.

Vengeful Gods, Deadly Monsters, and Secrets: God of Broken Things by Cameron Johnston

Monday, June 17, 2019 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Cameron Johnston’s The Traitor God was one of the big fantasy debuts of last year, so I was delighted to find the sequel on the shelves during my regular trek to Barnes & Noble this weekend. In his weekly roundup of the best new SF & fantasy at The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog last Tuesday, Joel Cunningham waxed enthusiastic:

Outcast mage Edrin Walker has saved the world, but at great cost: he’s defeated the monster unleashed by his enemies, but it has already infected the leaders of his city with mind-controlling parasites…. and an [army] of invaders in marching on the city. Edrin gathers a band of anti-heroes to head them off in the mountains, but there also lie difficult trials: vengeful gods, deadly monsters, and secrets Edrin would rather stay buried. A wicked sense of humor and a cast of flawed but striving-for-good characters keeps this mid-series entry from getting too grimdark.

I never got around to reading The Traitor God last year, but the addition of God of Broken Things to the series makes it a lot more irresistible. They look damn good in my TBR pile, anyway. Here’s the publisher’s description for the sequel.

Tyrant magus Edrin Walker destroyed the monster sent by the Skallgrim, but not before it laid waste to Setharis, and infested their magical elite with mind-controlling parasites. Edrin’s own Gift to seize the minds of others was cracked by the strain of battle, and he barely survives the interrogation of a captured magus. There’s no time for recovery though: a Skallgrim army is marching on the mountain passes of the Clanhold. Edrin and a coterie of villains race to stop them, but the mountains are filled with gods, daemons, magic, and his hideous past. Walker must stop at nothing to win, even if that means losing his mind. Or worse…

God of Broken Things was published by Angry Robot on June 11, 2019. It is 432 pages, priced at $12.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Jan Weßbecher. Read an excerpt at the Angry Robot website.

Vintage Treasures: Out of the Deeps by John Wyndham

Sunday, June 16, 2019 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Out of the Deeps John Wyndham-back-small

Del Rey / Ballantine edition, 1977. Art by Vincent Di Fate

John Wyndham is best remembered these days for his classic SF horror novels The Day of the Triffids (1951), The Chrysalids (1955), and The Midwich Cuckoos (1957) (filmed twice as Village of the Damned, the second time by John Carpenter). But he had a lengthy career in the pulps, publishing dozens of stories in Amazing Stories, Wonder Stories, and other places under the name John Beynon Harris and John Beynon. Much of his early pulp fiction was collected in Sleepers of Mars (Coronet Books, 1973) and two volumes of The Best of John Wyndham (Sphere Books, 1973).

He published seven novels under the name John Wyndham between 1951 – 1968, starting with The Day of the Triffids, and these are the books that made his reputation. The second was The Kraken Wakes (1953), published in the US as Out of the Deeps. Like most of his Wyndham material, it has been continuously in print for most of the past six decades. In a 2009 review at Tor.com, Jo Walton wrote:

I’d remembered it as being a cosy catastrophe where the world is destroyed by sea monsters, and rather second-tier Wyndham, but I’d done it an injustice. The Kraken Wakes is quite an unusual cosy catastrophe, and really much more interesting than I’d remembered it.

To start with, it’s an alien invasion. The first things are “red dots,” fiery meteors landing in the deep sea, which are actually alien craft. It’s speculated that they might come from Jupiter or Neptune and like living at high pressure under water, and it’s speculated that humanity could share the planet with them, since they need different things. The rest of the book is a series of attacks by the aliens, never called krakens in the book, culminating in the scene that starts the novel where rising sea water and icebergs in the Channel have entirely changed the climate and landscape of Britain and the protagonists are trying to escape. This is essentially the story of how some very unusual aliens conquer the world in 1953, and it’s much closer to The War of the Worlds than it is to Wyndham’s other novels.

I never managed to acquire a copy until two weeks ago, when I tracked down the handsome Del Rey reprint above, with the fine Di Fate cover (Del Rey reprinted several Wyndham paperbacks at the same time, including The Midwich Cuckoos, which I discussed here). The Del Rey edition is a nice slender book (182 pages), and looks like a perfect summer read. It’s been too long since I’ve read Wyndham, and I’m very much looking forward to it.

A Celebration of Classic British Horror: Gaslight, Ghosts & Ghouls by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, edited by Stephen Jones

Saturday, June 15, 2019 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

In a May 30 Facebook post, Stephen Jones announced a major new career retrospective of British horror writer R. Chetwynd-Hayes, who died in 2001. Chetwynd-Hayes published early fiction in The Pan Book of Horror Stories in the sixties, and wrote the classic The Monster Club, the basis for the 1980 film starring Vincent Price and John Carradine.

Jones was Ron’s co-editor for two posthumous anthologies, Great Ghost Stories (2004) and Tales to Freeze the Blood: More Great Ghost Stories (2006). He also helped him compile several collections, and published Ron’s fiction in multiple anthologies. He’s the perfect man for the job of assembling a “Best of” survey of the five-decade career of one of the great names in 20th Century British horror. Here’s Stephen:

R. Chetwynd-Hayes… was one of the most important horror writers and editors working in Britain. Not only was he happy to write about such genre standards as ghosts, demons, ghouls, vampires and werewolves, but he also delighted in making up his own bizarre monster variations that managed to stretch the imaginations of both author and reader alike…

Ron published an impressive twenty-four collections of short fiction, twenty-four anthologies (including twelve volumes of the influential Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories series), thirteen novels and more than 220 short stories. His work was adapted for the movies, television, radio and comics, and reprinted in various languages around the world. One of his publishers described him as “Britain’s Prince of Chill”, and his volumes of ghost stories and humorous tales of terror once filled the shelves of nearly every public library in the UK…

With the centenary of his birth fast approaching this year, I decided that it was time to finally compile the “Best of” collection… as it was such a monumental occasion to be celebrated, we decided to go well beyond that — to create a volume that truly did justice to Ron’s work and his enduring legacy… Gaslight, Ghosts & Ghouls: A Centenary Celebration contains sixteen of Ron’s highly original tales of terror and the supernatural, which invariably combined horror and humour in equal measure, giving them a style that was uniquely the author’s own. These not only include a rare reprint of one of his novellas featuring “the world’s only practising psychic detective” Francis St. Clare and his vivacious assistant Frederica (“Fred”) Masters, but also two tales that have never been reprinted since their original publication, plus a vampire novella that is appearing in print for the very first time!

Gaslight, Ghosts & Ghouls: A Centenary Celebration also contains the longest interview with Ron ever published, conducted by Jo Fletcher and Jones, a detailed Bibliography, a full-color portfolio of covers by Les Edwards, rare photos, endpapers by John Bolton and Graham Humphreys, and a back cover painting by Walter Velez. It will be published by PS Publishing in three formats, including a jacketed hardcover, signed slipcase, and deluxe limited edition. The unsigned hardcover is offered at £25.00. It will premiere at FantasyCon in Glasgow, Scotland, October 18th–20th. The cover, “The Monsters Escape,” is by Les Edwards. Pre-order copies of the book here.

New Treasures: The Outside by Ada Hoffmann

Friday, June 14, 2019 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

June has some great SF and fantasy headed our way, but the title that’s grabbed my attention this month has already arrived: Ada Hoffman’s debut novel The Outside. Karin Tidbeck calls it “a fresh and mind-bending mix of cosmic horror and space opera,” and Publishers Weekly says it’s “a breezily told adventure that bursts with sheer fun… [a] beautifully smart, uncynical space opera.”

But my favorite review was a rave from Kate Sherrod at The Skiffy and Fanty blog. Here’s a snippet.

With a boffo combination of hard science fiction, cosmic Lovecraftian horror, both cyber- and god-punk, some ridiculously charismatic aliens, and a fascinating female protagonist somewhere on the autism spectrum, Ada Hoffman’s The Outside feels like it was made to order for us here at Skiffy and Fanty!…

In The Outside, Humanity has colonized the galaxy, but it hasn’t done it alone: our first step to the stars involved creating a dozen or so artificial intelligences so vastly powerful that they’ve come to be regarded as gods. These gods are served by a hierarchy of cybernetically-enhanced human “angels” who help them run the teeming variety of human-inhabited planets… Dr. Yasira Shien is a scientist-engineer, the finest student of a famous physicist who disappeared after the pair laid most of the groundwork for a new kind of reactor… Before we know it, disaster strikes on the station. In the chaotic and tragic aftermath, Yasira is torn from the small island of comfort she’s created for herself… haunted by a hundred deaths from her reactor’s mysterious failure, Yasira is whisked away by a stern batch of angels to go find her erstwhile mentor, Dr. Evianna Talirr, whose dimension-bending heresies may be a threat to Reality Itself™…

I enjoyed the roller coaster ride that is the plot, the feast of challenging ideas, and the fascinating characters. I also relished the mystery of the Outside, which could easily have become just another alternate space teeming with monsters but here balances on the more abstract and cerebral side even as it entertainingly warps reality… The Outside is quite possibly the best book I’ve read so far this year. Mad respect, Ms. Hoffman!

The Outside was published by Angry Robot on June 11, 2019. It is 400 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Lee Gibbons.

See all our recent New Treasures here.

Big, Ambitious and Experimental: BBC Culture on John Brunner

Thursday, June 13, 2019 John ONeill Comments 8 comments

John Brunner was one of the greatest science fiction writers of the 20th Century. Unlike many of his peers, however — like Philip K. Dick. Ursula K. Le Guin, Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein — his star has dimmed considerably since his death in 1996, and virtually all of his fiction is now out of print. So I was very pleased to see this May 10th feature story on Brunner at the BBC Culture site, focusing on his uncannily on-target predictions, especially those in his brilliant novel Stand on Zanzibar.

If some of his predictions now read like wacky sci-fi clichés, others have proven spot on. For instance, in his 1962 novella Listen! The Stars! he conjured up the ‘stardropper’, an addictive portable-media-player-like gizmo. In 1972, he published one of his most pessimistic novels, The Sheep Look Up, which prophesies a future blighted by extreme pollution and environmental catastrophe. And his 1975 novel, The Shockwave Rider, created a computer hacker hero before the world knew what one was. It also envisaged the emergence of computer viruses, something that early computer scientists dismissed as impossible. He even coined the use of the word ‘worm’ to describe them…

[Brunner] won, too, almost every sci-fi prize worth winning, including the Hugo Award for best science-fiction novel, which had never before gone to a Brit. Nevertheless, Brunner’s gripes about heavy-handed editing and in-fighting within the claustrophobic sci-fi scene gave him a prickly reputation. By middle-age, much of his work had fallen out of print in the UK, and he’d been forced to sell his London home and move to Somerset… Today, his name is little known beyond sci-fi aficionados, and he’s chiefly remembered for Stand on Zanzibar. Big, ambitious and formally experimental, it’s a science-fiction thriller that depicts a world confronting population control. By 2010, Brunner declared, the world’s population would top seven billion (he was a year out – this actually happened in 2011).

In his June 2 article on classic dystopias here at Black Gate, Joe Bonadonna made some similar observations.

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