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Author: John ONeill

Help Hank Davis fill a Space Pirate Anthology

Help Hank Davis fill a Space Pirate Anthology

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The-Pirates-of-Zan-Ace-Double Leinster-smallIt always pays to check in early and often with Hank Davis, the mad genius editor at Baen Books behind The Baen Big Book of Monsters and The Best of Gordon R. Dickson, Volume 1. Here’s what he told me last month.

I was dorking around online, looking for stories and story ideas, and came across one of your Black Gate pages from way back in 2013, singing the praises of Leinster’s The Pirates of Ersatz/The Pirates of Zan, and bemoaning the dearth of space pirate novels. While I can’t do anything about the lack of space pirates in novel length, maybe the book will offset the lack.

Well, that certainly made me curious. When I asked him to elaborate, here’s what he said.

I’m going to be putting together an anthology of stories about space pirates, tentatively titled Cosmic Buccaneers, though that may change, and would appreciate suggestions from Black Gate readers of space pirate stories that have warmed the cockles of their heart. (Remind me to look up “cockle,” whatever that means.) Short stories preferred, though I could take a look at novelets — but probably can’t fit more than one or two in. And no novels, of course, even a great one like Murray Leinster’s great The Pirates of Ersatz/The Pirates of Zan.

And please no submissions of new stories. This is not a new story market and I’ll have to return any such submissions unread; sorry! And thanks for your help, and while the Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base is very helpful, please indicate where the story was pubbed or reprinted.

This is definitely good news for those of us who enjoy space pirate fiction (and really that’s everybody, right?).

He’s definitely come to the right place for ideas, anyway. If you’ve got a suggestion for a previously published space pirate story that belongs in the upcoming Cosmic Buccaneers, shout out in the comments and we’ll pass it along to Hank.

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New Treasures: Octavia Gone by Jack McDevitt

New Treasures: Octavia Gone by Jack McDevitt

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Octavia Gone-smallI’ve been a fan of Jack McDevitt since his second novel, the SF mystery A Talent for War (1989), the first of his long-running Alex Benedict series.

His latest is #8 in the series. Ricky L. Brown at Amazing Stories calls it “a blueprint for mystery writers”:

Alex’s uncle Gabe returns after being lost in space for over a decade, but time aboard the ship elapsed only a few weeks. In addition to dealing with his life awkwardly warping ahead eleven years, Gabe believes he is in position of an artifact that may lead to answers to the missing Octavia station. With the help of Alex and Chase, the search for answers launches into a fast-paced mystery with galactic proportions… Though this story ties into some of the elements following Coming Home, it is a stand-alone story with just enough backstory to keep the new reader involved. If this is your first introduction to McDevitt’s world of galactic archaeology, it is a great jumping in point…

Octavia Gone is a blueprint for mystery writers. Smart characters not only looking for answers, but growing from what they discover is satisfying, even if we might not like what they find.

Here’s the complete description.

After being lost in space for eleven years, Gabe finally makes his triumphant return to reunite with Alex and Chase and retrieve a possibly alien artifact — which may lead them to solve the greatest archaeological mystery of their careers, in the eighth installment of the Alex Benedict series.

After his return from space, Gabe is trying to find a new life for himself after being presumed dead—just as Alex and Chase are trying to relearn how to live and work without him. But when a seemingly alien artifact goes missing from Gabe’s old collection, it grants the group a chance to dive into solving the mystery of its origins as a team, once again.

When a lead on the artifact is tied to a dead pilot’s sole unrecorded trip, another clue seems to lead to one of the greatest lingering mysteries of the age: the infamous disappearance of a team of scientists aboard a space station orbiting a black hole—the Amelia Earhart of their time. With any luck, Alex, Chase, and Gabe may be on the trail of the greatest archaeological discovery of their careers…

In Octavia Gone, Nebula Award winner McDevitt, who Stephen King has called “the logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke,” has created another terrific science fiction mystery in his beloved Alex Benedict series.

Octavia Gone was published by Saga Press on May 7, 2019. It is 384 pages, priced at $27.99 in hardcover and $7.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Stephen Youll.

See all our latest New Treasures here.

A Series that Embodies Delicious Steampunk Mystery: Newbury & Hobbes Investigation by George Mann

A Series that Embodies Delicious Steampunk Mystery: Newbury & Hobbes Investigation by George Mann

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The Affinity Bridge-small The Osiris Ritual-small The Immorality Engine A Newbury & Hobbes Investigation-small The Executioner's Heart A Newbury & Hobbes Investigation-small The Revenant Express A Newbury & Hobbes Investigation-small

The Newbury & Hobbes novels. Cover art by Viktor Koen

George Mann’s Newbury & Hobbes Investigations are a highly acclaimed steampunk mystery series. amNewYork called the opening volume “A riveting page-turned that mixes the society of manners in turn-of-the-century London with a gritty and brutal murder mystery,” and Entertainment Weekly says the books bring “industrial London to life like a Jerry Bruckheimer movie in book form.” Damn — I’m still not sure what these books are about, but I definitely want to read them.

There have been five so far.

#1: The Affinity Bridge (April 2010)
#2: The Osirus Ritual (June 2011)
#3: The Immortality Engine (July 2012)
#4: The Executioner’s Heart (July 2014)
#5: The Revenant Express (February 2019)

The most recent, The Revenant Express, arrived in February this year from Tor. Like the others, it’s a quick read, 237 pages, and available in both hardcover and digital formats. Here’s the description.

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When Surviving the Apocalypse is Only the Beginning: The Road to Nowhere Trilogy by Meg Elison

When Surviving the Apocalypse is Only the Beginning: The Road to Nowhere Trilogy by Meg Elison

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The Book of the Unnamed Midwife-small The Book of Etta-small The Book of Flora-small
The Book of the Unnamed Midwife-back-small The Book of Etta-back-small The Book of Flora-back-small

It’s good to see Meg Elison, who made such an impressive splash with her debut novel The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, finally start to connect with wider audiences.

The Book of the Unnamed Midwife (2014) won the 2014 Philip K. Dick award and was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2016. The second novel in The Road to Nowhere Trilogy, The Book of Etta (2017) was also a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. And in April of this year the highly anticipated third volume, The Book of Flora, was published in paperback by 47 North. As each book has arrived the acclaim and recognition for the series has grown, and when I checked tonight I was surprised and delighted to discover that the first book in the series had reached the #3 position in Amazon Kindle Best Sellers in Science Fiction.

Back in 2016, Slate called The Book of the Unnamed Midwife the 2014 Sci-Fi Novel that Eerily Anticipated the Zika Crisis. More germane to those of us looking for a good story, Sci-Fi Scary labeled it “moving and intelligent work. Brutal and chilling at times, but also hopeful and very human. It immersed me right from the start and kept me gripped to the last page.” Now that the series is a proper trilogy, we’ll get to work baking it a cake.

All three volumes are available in trade paperback from 47 North. Click the images above for apocalypse-sized versions.

Vintage Treasures: The Weird Tales Anthologies

Vintage Treasures: The Weird Tales Anthologies

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Weird Tales Peter Haining-small More Weird Tales Peter Haining-small

Weird Tales and More Weird Tales (Sphere, 1978). Covers by Les Edwards

Weird Tales is unquestionably the most storied and respected American fantasy magazine. It first appeared in March 1923, and published its last issue in Spring 2014 — a nearly 91-year run. That’s impressive by any standard.

Of course, Weird Tales isn’t measured purely by its longevity. The three greatest pulp fantasy writers — Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith — did their most important work in its pages, and it also published classic fiction by Edmond Hamilton, C.L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, Algernon Blackwood, E. Hoffmann Price, Robert Bloch, Manly Wade Wellman, Seabury Quinn, Ray Bradbury, Fritz Leiber, Eric Frank Russell, Fredric Brown, Mary Elizabeth Counselman, Theodore Sturgeon, and hundreds of others. It remains the most collectible and desirable fantasy pulp, and individual issues sell for hundreds (sometimes thousands) of dollars.

There have been numerous anthologies and collections gathering much of the best work from Weird Tales over the years. Most were produced by Arkham House, the publishing house founded in 1939 by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei to preserve the work of H.P. Lovecraft. Arkham mined Weird Tales for decades, issuing many hardcover volumes, and in the process preserved the work of many fine writers. Many of their reprints are now highly collectible on their own, which doesn’t help those of us looking for an inexpensive introduction to the glories of Weird Tales.

Fortunately for folks like you and me, there are a number of affordable and highly readable books out there that can do the job. Here’s a dozen to get you started.

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Raiders and Rogues in a Cursed World: Forbidden Lands by Modiphius

Raiders and Rogues in a Cursed World: Forbidden Lands by Modiphius

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Forbidden Lands Modiphius-small Forbidden Lands Modiphius -back-small

While I was at the Spring 2019 Games Plus Auction, I took the time to shop around in the New Arrivals section, since Games Plus is probably the best-stocked games store I’ve ever visited. As usual, I picked up a few magazines and the latest issues of Jolly Blackburn’s excellent Knights of the Dinner Table comic. But there was another game that caught my eye: Forbidden Lands, a boxed RPG developed by accomplished Swedish development house Fria Ligan (Free League in English), makers of the excellent Coriolis science fiction game, as well as the acclaimed Tales from the Loop and the upcoming Alien Roleplaying Game, and distributed in the US by Modiphius.

What drew me to Forbidden Lands? Truthfully it was the cover art by Simon Stålenhag, and the impressively sized (and heavy!) box. Once I picked it up however, it was the back-cover text that fired my imagination.

In this open-world survival roleplaying game, you’re not heroes sent on missions dictated by others — instead, you are raiders and rogues bent on making your own mark on a cursed world. You will discover lost tombs, fight terrible monsters, wander the wild lands and, if you live long enough, build your own stronghold to defend.

Last thing I need is another fantasy RPG crowding my shelves, especially one in a generic fantasy setting. But the evocative text sold me on the promise of a dark world far-removed from routine high fantasy tropes, and characters that sounded a lot closer to sword & sorcery archetypes than I’m used to. The price on the box was $49.99, and I decided to take a chance.

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The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog on the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of May 2019

The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog on the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of May 2019

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Children of Ruin Adrian Tchaikovsky-small Westside W M Akers-small Empire of Grass Tad Williams-small

It’s the last day of May, and you know what that means. You’re another month behind in your reading.

Fortunately for you, there are some excellent resources out there to help you discover just how badly you blew it (yet again) by not spending every spare moment in May reading. My new favorite is The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog, which does a terrific job month-after-month of letting us know just how bad we suck. Here’s some of the highlights from Jeff Somers summary of The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of May 2019.

Children of Ruin, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Orbit, 576 pages, $15.99 trade paperback/$9.99 digital, May 14)

The sequel to the British Science Fiction Award-winning Children of Time returns to the unlikely new cradle of humanity, a colony planet whereupon a disastrous terraforming attempt resulted in the creation of a new society of uplifted ants and spiders whose civilization evolved at breakneck speed before the desperate remnants of the a ravaged Earth could arrive. Now unlikely allies, the humans and the insects catch fragmentary signals broadcast from light years away, suggesting there might be other survivors from their shared homeworld. A mixed expedition sets out to solve the mystery, but what’s waiting for them out in space is another calamity set in motion by long-dead Earth scientists’ arrogant and desperate efforts to ensure the survival of their species. Children of Ruin managed to completely deliver on a truly absurd premise, and the sequel offers similar pleasures.

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New Treasures: The Outlaw and the Upstart King, Book 2 of The Map of Unknown Things by Rod Duncan

New Treasures: The Outlaw and the Upstart King, Book 2 of The Map of Unknown Things by Rod Duncan

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The-Queen-of-All-Crows-medium The Outlaw and the Upstart King-small

Rod Duncan is the author of The Fall of the Gas-Lit Empire trilogy, a supernatural mystery series featuring Elizabeth Barnabus, who lives a double life as herself and as her brother, a private detective. The first volume, The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter (2014) was a finalist for the 2014 Phillip K. Dick Award.

His next project is The Map of Unknown Things, a new series set in the same world that follows the continuing adventures of Elizabeth. It began with Queen of all Crows (2018), which was warmly reviewed by several of my favorite review sites. Sydney Shields at The British Fantasy Society said “Duncan’s Gas-lit Empire reads and feels like the world of a Victorian detective adventure (think Sherlock Holmes, the Blake & Avery Mysteries, Charles Dickens) but the twist is that the year is actually 2012… Definitely recommend.” And The Speculative Shelf gave it an enthusiastic write-up:

Fresh off her battle with the International Patent Court, Elizabeth Barnabus finds herself working on behalf of that very organization that brought her so much trouble in the past. She sets sail to investigate the disappearance of an airship that went down in the Atlantic.

The concept of the worldwide alliance that maintains world peace at the cost of technological advancement continues to be a fascinating one…Duncan has crafted a solid adventure story that featured some superb scenes and passages. I remain impressed by Duncan’s skills as a writer. His prose is clean, readable, and rich. There’s a great theatricality infused into his stories that make the mundane seem grand… this is another enjoyable adventure featuring a great protagonist and set of side characters.

The second volume in the series, The Outlaw and the Upstart King, was published by Angry Robot earlier this year. Here’s a scan of both back covers.

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Vintage Treasures: Emergence by David R. Palmer

Vintage Treasures: Emergence by David R. Palmer

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Emergence David Palmer-small Emergence David Palmer-back-small

Cover by Jim Burns

The mid-80s were a good time to be a science fiction short story author. If you had a pair of popular tales in top-selling magazines like Analog or Asimov’s SF, that’s all it took to catapult you near the top of the field.

Take David R. Palmer, for example. His first published story, “Emergence,” was published in the January 1981 issue of Analog; it won the magazine’s Readers Choice awards, and was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Novella. He followed it with his second (and last) short piece, the novella “Seeking,” in the February 1983 Analog, which also won the Analog award, and was nominated for both a Hugo and Locus Award for Best Novella. Palmer used the stories as the first two parts of his first novel Emergence (Bantam Spectra, 1984) and voila. He had a best seller.

Emergence made a major splash, especially for a first novel. It won the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel, and was nominated for the Hugo, Locus, and Philip K. Dick Awards. The long-awaited sequel, Tracking, appeared 14 long years later. It was serialized in Analog magazine between the July and October issues, but has never been published in book form. In fact, other than a single follow up novel (Threshold, 1985), Palmer has never published another book — or short story, for that matter. Despite rumors over the years, he has yet to deliver on the astonishing promise of his first book.

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There’s a Lifetime of Reading in DAW Omnibus Volumes

There’s a Lifetime of Reading in DAW Omnibus Volumes

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The Initiate Brother Duology-small The Nightfall Duology-small Species Imperative-small

DAW Books was founded in 1971 by uber-editor Donald A. Wollheim after he left Ace Books. In the last five decades it’s published almost two thousand science fiction and fantasy novels (W. Michael Gear’s Pariah, released on May 14, is Daw Book #1823), and it has launched the careers of hundreds of writers, including C. J. Cherryh, Julie E. Czerneda, Patrick Rothfuss, Tad Williams, Kristen Britain, Melanie Rawn, Violette Malan, and Tanith Lee.

Right. So there’s lots of reasons to love DAW Books. But here’s another one you may not be aware of: it has a fascinating tradition of re-releasing much of its most popular SF and fantasy in compact and affordable paperback omnibus editions. In fact, of those 1800 DAW titles released since 1971, nearly a hundred are omnibus editions, many of which are still in print.

Hard to believe? I didn’t believe it myself until I found all three of the omnibus collections above in a recent trip to my local B&N and, after I brought them home, began to poke around to see just how many others were still available. I counted well over 50 without even trying. Here they are.

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