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Charlene Brusso Reviews The Cloud Roads

Charlene Brusso Reviews The Cloud Roads

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the-cloud-roadsThe Cloud Roads
Martha Wells
Night Shade Books (300 pp, $14.99, February 2011)
Reviewed by Charlene Brusso

I always look forward to reading anything by Martha Wells, because she always gives me something marvelous and new–and The Cloud Roads doesn’t disappoint.

Moon is an outsider. He’s drifted all over, living with one tribe or clan or family after another, and never met another soul like himself. Because Moon has a secret: he’s a shapeshifter. With a little concentration he can alter his body from something that appears human and “normal” to a scaly humanoid with big dragon-like wings and sharp, retractable claws. Orphaned as a child, he’s been on his own ever since, never quite fitting in, and never staying long. It’s not safe to stay, because if anyone found out what he was, what he could become, they’d be certain to think he was one of the vile, noisome Fell, creatures from nightmares who live to hunt and consume humankind.

Moon isn’t Fell. Hes’ not sure what he is. And Moon doesn’t want to be alone. That’s just how things are.

Then he meets another shapeshifter: Stone, someone like himself. From Stone, Moon learns about the Raksura, who shift between groundling and dragonish shapes and live in courts run by Queens. There’s a long list of hierarchical rules to learn, but Moon is welcome to come back with Stone to Indigo Cloud Court and become one of its warriors. More than welcome, in fact.

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Clarkesworld #68 plus PKD and Gnosticism

Clarkesworld #68 plus PKD and Gnosticism

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cw_68_300The May  issue of Clarkesworld is currently online. Featured fiction: “Prayer” by Robert Reed, “Synch Me, Kiss Me, Drop” by Suzanne Church and “All the Things the Moon is Not” by Alexander Lumans.  There are also audio versions of all three stories, read by Kate Baker. Non fiction by Aletha Kontis, Jeremy L.C. Jones and Elizabeth Bear.  The cover art is by Jessada Suthi.

All of this is available online for free. However, nothing is really free. The magazine is supported by “Clarkesworld Citizens” who donate $10 or more. There’s also a Kindle edition.

One personal reaction to Bear’s very funny essay, “Another Word: Dear Speculative Fiction, I’m Glad We Had This Talk”: I agree that Lenny Bruce didn’t get funnier when he got angrier (his drug problems certainly didn’t help), but I found George Carlin to be more interesting the angrier he got. Maybe he wasn’t quite as funny, but his anger certainly resonated with me.  Sometimes having your “face pressed down into a trough of human misery until the bubbles stop” is necessary to remind people that life is not a television sitcom. At least the ones who haven’t already drowned.

Someone else who got less interesting when he started taking himself too seriously (and, once again, the drugs didn’t help) was Philip K. Dick. Simon Critchley examines Dick’s metaphysical worldview as expressed in Exegeiss, a posthumously published series of philosophical 133948681ramblings. While I tend to think all this stuff really is the result of a bad acid trip, Critchley as a professor of philosophy for the most part keeps a straight face. Some of you may laugh out loud not only at the source material, but the attempt at exegesis.

We last covered Clarkesworld with issue #67.

Aqueduct Press releases The Moment of Change, an Anthology of Feminist Speculative Poetry

Aqueduct Press releases The Moment of Change, an Anthology of Feminist Speculative Poetry

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the-moment-of-change2I’ve received word this morning that contributor copies of Aqueduct Press’s The Moment of Change have started to arrive, and the book is now available for order on their website.

The Moment of Change is an anthology of feminist speculative poetry with an absolutely stellar line-up of contributors, including Ursula K. Le Guin, Jo Walton, Delia Sherman, Catherynne M. Valente, Theodora Goss, Phyllis Gotlieb, Yoon Ha Lee, Nisi Shawl, Greer Gilman, Sonya Taaffe, JoSelle Vanderhooft, and Nicole Kornher-Stace.

It also includes two members of Team Black Gate: two poems by Amal El-Mohtar, “Pieces” and “On the Division of Labour,” and a long poem by our website editor, C.S.E. Cooney,  “The Last Crone on the Moon.” The anthology is edited by Rose Lemberg, and she’s posted the complete Table of Contents here. In her introduction she writes:

In these pages you will find works in a variety of genres — works that can be labeled mythic, fantastic, science fictional, historical, surreal, magic realist, and unclassifiable; poems by people of color and white folks; by poets based in the US, Canada, Britain, India, Spain, and the Philippines; by first- and second-generation immigrants; by the able-bodied and the disabled; by straight and queer poets who may identify as women, men, trans, and genderqueer.

I had the pleasure of listening to C.S.E. read “The Last Crone on the Moon” last year at the monthly Top Shelf Books Open Mic here in Chicago, and it is worth the price of the book alone.

Rose Lemberg and many of the contributors will be reading from The Moment of Change at Wiscon in Madison, Wisconsin this weekend. I’ll be there, and I’m looking forward to it.

The Moment of Change is 174 pages in paperback. The cover art is by  Terri Windling. It sells for $20.

William Patrick Maynard’s The Terror of Fu Manchu

William Patrick Maynard’s The Terror of Fu Manchu

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the-terror-of-fu-manchu2We’re a talented group here at Black Gate. Every time I drop a pencil someone on staff publishes a book. Last week I spilled a pencil case, and Scott Taylor announced a nine-volume fantasy series.

I was especially pleased to get my hands on the first novel by Friday blogger William Patrick Maynard, The Terror of Fu Manchu, published in 2009 by Black Coat Press. Bill was authorized to continue Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu thrillers and the second volume, The Destiny of Fu Manchu has just appeared, also from Black Coat Press.

I met Bill for the first time at the Windy City Pulp and Paper show two weeks ago here in Chicago, and found him to be an intelligent and entertaining conversationalist. I was fortunate to have the chance to ask him about his novels, and I was treated to an enthusiastic and fascinating lecture on the Boxer Rebellion, the psychology of Yellow Peril novels, and the uniquely global evil of Fu Manchu.

It was one of those moments when you wish you had a recorder. After listening to Bill I was more intrigued than ever to read his novels, and I wished I had a way to share his infectious enthusiasm with our readers.

Eventually I asked Bill to recreate what he told me as best he could in an e-mail message, to post here.

He graciously complied, and here’s what he sent me.

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Apex Magazine #36

Apex Magazine #36

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apexmag05-12May’s Apex Magazine features  ”Decomposition” by Rachel Swirsky  (who is interviewed by Maggie Slater),  ”Tomorrow’s Dictator” by Rahul Kanakia and “The Chaos Magician’s Mega Chemistry Set”  by Nnedi Okorafor.

Naoto Hattori provides the cover art. Nonfiction by Tim Akers  and editor Lynne M. Thomas round out the issue.

Apex is published on the first Tuesday of every month.  While each issue is available free on-line from the magazine’s website, it can also be downloaded to your e-reader from there for $2.99.  Individual issues are also available at  Amazon and Weightless. A version for the Nook will also be available in the near future.  Twelve issue (one year) subscription can be ordered at Apex and Weightless for $19.95; Kindle subscriptions are available for $1.99 a month.

New Treasures: War & Space, edited by Rich Horton & Sean Wallace

New Treasures: War & Space, edited by Rich Horton & Sean Wallace

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war-spaceMy copy of War & Space: Recent Combat finally arrived today, and it’s everything I hoped it would be: a thick anthology reprinting some of the best tales of space warfare from the last few decades, including one of my recent favorites, Ken MacLeod’s tale of a man who investigates a civilization implosion in a far-distant human habitat and the startling horrors he discovers, “Who’s Afraid of Wolf 359?” Here’s the opening lines:

When you’re as old as I am, you’ll find your memory’s not what it was. It’s not that you lose memories. That hasn’t happened to me or anyone else since the Paleocosmic Era, the Old Space Age, when people lived in caves on the Moon. My trouble is that I’ve gained memories, and I don’t know which of them are real.

Exactly the kind of book I like to snuggle into my big green chair with. (Side note to website editor C.S.E. Cooney: yes, I ended a sentence with a proposition. Give me a break, it’s Friday). Here’s the book description:

Conflict: a basic human instinct, helping humankind evolve even while threatening the very existence of the species… an instinct that will be as much a part of the future as it is now and always has been. For all the glories of war-the defeat of evil, the promise of freedom, justice, protection of the innocent, the righting of wrongs, technological innovation, heroism-there are also the horrors: individual grief, mass destruction, the elimination of entire cultures and great achievments, injustice, villainy, the annihilation of the innocent, and pain beyond bearing. War and Space offers the ultimate speculation on the future of warfare-stories of insectoid anguish, genetically-engineered diplomats who cannot fail, aliens plundering humanity, a weaponized black hole-scenarios of triumph and defeat, great heroism and vile depravity… and more.

War & Space includes short stories from Nancy Kress, Paul McAuley, Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Catherynne M. Valente, Tom Purdom, and many others. You can get additional details here.

C.S.E. Cooney’s How to Flirt in Faerieland & Other Wild Rhymes On Sale

C.S.E. Cooney’s How to Flirt in Faerieland & Other Wild Rhymes On Sale

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how-to-flirt-in-faerieland2The multi-talented C.S.E. Cooney — poet, editor, web mistress, bookseller, performer, author, spiritual leader and world renowned zombie wrangler — has just released a new poetry collection, How to Flirt in Faerieland & Other Wild Rhymes. You need a copy.

I’m not kidding. This book is your path back to a meaningful life. It will teach you how to love poetry again. You need it because your soul is dead, you don’t even know it, and this book will resuscitate it. It’s a compact, 2,000-volt defib unit for your very soul. Here’s the description:

Do you know how to flirt in Faerieland? C.S.E. Cooney does. In this collection of seventeen poems — four never before published — you’ll find goblins, crones, robber brides, coyotes, and even a sea king. Cooney draws from folklore and myth to create something entirely her own, something glimpsed only in Faerie. From the raucous and bawdy to the sorrowful dirge, these poems will work upon you like a spell. Inside you’ll find seven original illustrations by artist/tattooist Rebecca Huston, who also provided the artwork used on the cover.

Here’s some advice, for after you get the book: Read it out loud to someone you love. Or someone you hate, I don’t care. Just climb up on a chair and start belting it out. You’ll feel your life start to change right then and there. You can thank me later.

Our last C.S.E. Cooney news was the release of the Jack o’ the Hills audiobook, her interview with Aesthetically Speaking, and that time she won the Rhysling Award for her poetry. She’s busy, C.S.E. Cooney.

How to Flirt in Faerieland & Other Wild Rhymes is 86 pages in paperback, published by Papaveria Press. It includes an introduction by Amal El-Mohtar. Read more details — including blurbs from Delia Sherman, Jane Yolen, S.J. Tucker, Pamela Dean, Nicole Kornher-Stace and Sharon Shinn — at the Papaveria Press website. It sells for $10 and is available from Amazon.com and other fine booksellers.

Playing Favorites: A Talk with Myke Cole

Playing Favorites: A Talk with Myke Cole

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Myke ColeMyke Cole is a badass. OK, I’ve never met him, but seriously smalls, take a look at that square-jawed, large-armed headshot. Badass. He looks like the kinda guy who could jump-punch a shark from a speedboat. He probably has. In fact, did you know that Myke Cole once pulled Chuck Norris from the gaping maw of a Great White? True story.* The next day, he saved seventeen pugs and a heretofore unknown, complete vellum copy of the Gutenberg Bible from a warehouse fire on the docks.** Yeah, he’s that guy. You’d hate him if he weren’t so dang nice. Instead, you want to bump into him at a coffeeshop.

His first novel, SHADOW OPS: Control Point, makes for hella good weekend reading. Oscar Britton is an Army officer turned fugitive sorcerer. Britton isn’t a bad guy, but he is dangerous. He’s manifested magical powers that he can’t control (like thousands of others across the world) and the government he formerly worked for is now determined to collect and control him…or take him out.

Cole has the chops to write military fantasy. He’s been a security contractor, government civilian and military officer. Dude’s worked everything from Counterterrorism to Cyber Warfare, in addition to serving three tours in Iraq and being recalled to serve during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

We here at Black Gate pride ourselves on asking the questions that dare not be asked. Yes, constant reader, we got a hold of Myke Cole and asked him about his favorites. These sort of questions are usually scoffed at…how can someone pick a favorite book? THERE ARE SO MANY GOOD ONES! But Cole graciously answered us.

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When The Hero Comes Home: A Review

When The Hero Comes Home: A Review

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When the Hero Comes HomeWhen the Hero Comes Home is an anthology from Dragon Moon Press co-edited by Garbielle Harbowy and Ed Greenwood. It’s a surprisingly thin book, given that it holds nineten stories by twenty writers (including two Black Gate contributors, Peadar Ó Guilín and Jay Lake, in collaboration with Shannon Page). Its theme is exactly what it says: the homecoming. The point where the story usually ends. I have some reservations about how the book turned out, but the idea’s intriguing: what do you find when you make it back to where you began? Has the place changed, or have you?

One thinks of Odysseus’ return to Ithaca, or of Frodo’s discovery of what’s happened to the Shire. The conclusion of the story that sums up the themes of all that’s gone before. The last unexpected twist, the discovery that heightens emotion and gives the protagonist one final conflict. Arthur Miller said that every great play has to do with the question “how may a man make of the outside world a home?” But what, ultimately, is home? How do we recognise it?

Not all of the stories in When the Hero Comes Home have these kinds of questions on their minds. Overall, though, the tales do tend to examine the idea of ‘home,’ rather more than they do the idea of ‘hero.’ Then again, the existence of a hero, however defined, is inherent in the theme; it’s the nature of the home that implicitly has to be established. So: these are stories about fairly unambiguous heroes, finding that things at home are more complicated, and often more disappointing, than they’d thought.

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New Treasures: Henry Kuttner’s Thunder in the Void

New Treasures: Henry Kuttner’s Thunder in the Void

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thunder-in-the-voidThis weekend here in Chicago was the 12th annual Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention, one of my favorite local shows. I met fellow BG bloggers Jason Waltz, Joe Bonadonna, and David C. Smith on Saturday, as well as Bill “Indy” Cavalier, Morgan Holmes, and the always engaging Bob Garcia. Late on Sunday I heard someone call my name and turned to discover none other than William Patrick Maynard, our distinguished Friday blogger, who was selling his new novels The Terror of Fu Manchu and The Destiny of Fu Manchu at an impressively-stocked table. Despite having worked together for years it was the first time we’d ever meet, and I really enjoyed our conversation. He’s a fascinating fellow, and I kept him until well after the show had ended.

But the highlight of the show is always seeing the new titles at the Haffner Press booth, and this year didn’t disappoint. Stephen Haffner’s archival quality hardcovers are works of art, and his taste is excellent. He has published the definitive short fiction collections of many of the finest early pulp writers, including Leigh Brackett, Edmond Hamilton, Jack Williamson, C.L. Moore, and Henry Kuttner.

Still, Stephen may have outdone himself with his newest release, Henry Kuttner’s Thunder in the Void, a massive collection of 16 Space Opera tales from Planet Stories, Weird Tales, Super Science Stories, and other classic pulps. Before Kuttner married C.L. Moore in 1940, he wrote blood-n-thunder Space Opera in the style of one of his favorite authors, Edmond Hamilton — with winning titles like “Raider of the Spaceways,” “We Guard the Black Planet,” and my favorite, “Crypt-City of the Deathless Ones” — all of which are collected here.

The book looks terrific, even by the high standards of Haffner Press. Most of the these tales are appearing in book form for the first time. Also included is a previously unpublished story, “The Interplanetary Limited,” and an introduction by Mike Resnick.

Stephen mention to me that Thunder in the Void may be the fastest-selling book he has ever printed. It was released on April 4th in a printing of 1000 copies, of which only 200 are left. If you want a copy, I urge you to act fast. Thunder in the Void is 612 pages in a high-quality hardcover, with a cover price of $40. Cover art is by Norman Saunders. It is available directly from Haffner Press.

Previous Haffner releases covered here include Kuttner and Moore’s Detour to Otherness, Henry Kuttner’s Terror in the House: The Early Kuttner, Volume One, and the upcoming The Complete John Thunstone, by Manly Wade Wellman.