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Future Treasures: Harrow the Ninth, Book 2 of The Locked Tomb Trilogy by Tamsyn Muir

Future Treasures: Harrow the Ninth, Book 2 of The Locked Tomb Trilogy by Tamsyn Muir

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Covers by Tommy Arnold

Gideon the Ninth was… well, just about the most acclaimed SF novel released last year. Acclaimed by whom? Everyone who read it in the Black Gate offices, for one thing. People who vote for awards, for another — it’s been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards for Best Novel, and it won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. It was voted one of the Best Books of 2019 by NPR, the New York Public Library, Amazon, BookPage, Shelf Awareness, BookRiot, and Bustle.

Book 2 arrives next week, and as you can imagine, anticipation is high. Here’s a taste of the feature review over at Nerd Daily.

When I read Gideon the Ninth last year, I didn’t know that I would be a wreck by the end of the book. I didn’t know it would create such an impact in my emotional well-being. I didn’t know that it would be one of the best books I read in 2019. Reading its sequel, Harrow the Ninth, now is like enjoying a nice, eventful walk… and then getting hit by a bus. This brilliant, confounding, and heartstopping sequel will quench the thirst of the fans, but not without leaving a new set of mysteries to keep us hooked.

Harrow the Ninth focuses on Harrow training in the Emperor’s haunted space station to fight an impossible war. Fresh off of lyctorhood, everything should be going easy for Harrow. But the truth is that both her body and her mind are failing her. And on top of that, someone just keeps trying to kill her…. Harrow the Ninth is mind-boggling from start to finish, and it’s an electrifying sequel you do not want to miss.

The third book in the series, Alecto the Ninth, is scheduled to be released next year.

Harrow the Ninth will be published by Tor.com on August 4, 2020. It is 512 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $13.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Tommy Arnold. Download the complete first act (all 139 pages!) in multiple digital formats at Tor.com.

See all our coverage of the best new SF and Fantasy here.

Vintage Treasures: Digits and Dastards by Frederik Pohl

Vintage Treasures: Digits and Dastards by Frederik Pohl

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Digits and Dastards by Frederik Pohl (Ballantine Books, 1966). Artist uncredited.

Frederik Pohl was something of a science fiction renaissance man. He was a fan, agent, publisher, editor (of both Galaxy and If magazines, from 1969-79), and multiple Hugo Award-winning writer. His career spanned over 75 years, from his first publication (a poem in 1937) to his last novel, All the Lives He Led (2011). He received the SFWA Grand Master Award in 1993. He died in 2013, at the age of 93.

Along with Asimov, Heinlein, Campbell and Wollheim, he was such an integral part of 20th Century SF that you can honestly say that without him, the field would have been dramatically different. Like Campbell and Wollheim, he was a taste-maker, a keen-eyed editor who loved discovering talent, and he won three Hugo Awards in a row as best editor. Like Asimov, he wrote extensively about science fiction, pointing many young readers (including me) towards the folks they should be reading, and enriching the history of the field with numerous non-fiction articles.

And like Heinlein and Asimov, he was hugely respected as a writer, winning numerous awards for his fiction, including a Hugo and Nebula Award for Gateway (1977), the John W. Campbell Award for the novella collection Years of the City (1984), and the coveted National Book Award for Jem (1979). In 2010 he won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer for his long-running blog, one of the earliest (and still one of the best) SF blogs, The Way the Future Blogs. He was a pioneer in the field to the very end.

I’m very fond of Fred Pohl. Like Asimov, he wrote about science fiction not as some higher and more enlightened branch of literature, but as a quirky business practiced by a small community of highly likeable individuals who shared common roots, and a common love of and fascination with science. It was that characterization, as much of my love of the stories itself, that filled me at a young age with an enduring desire to become an SF writer.

And, very much unlike Asimov, Pohl was a high-school dropout in a genre that celebrated hard science, and that gave him– critically, I think — a refreshingly different viewpoint on what science fiction could (and should) mean to the average reader. He was also a local SF writer, a fixture at the major Chicago SF conventions, and was just as delightful in person as he was on the page. He was an entertaining and self-deprecating writer, as you can see from the following excerpt from the introduction to his 9th collection, Digits and Dastards (1966).

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After Hastings: On Names

After Hastings: On Names

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After Hastings cover by Laura Givens

Coming up with a title or character names can be much more difficult that you might expect. The title, especially, is a reader’s first introduction to the book and the way word about the book will spread. Because of this, it needs to be as perfect as the first line.

When I was working on After Hastings, I questioned the title, trying to come up with something catchier that still captured the essence of the novel, which is set in the two years after the Battle of Hastings (specifically, January 5, 1067-January 5, 1069). I asked around and received some suggestions, such as 1067. Eventually, I decided After Hastings was the way to go. Amazingly enough, it wasn’t until after the novel was published that I looked at it and realized that its initials, AH, were how Alternate History, the subgenre to which it belongs, is often abbreviated. Sometimes we’re just too close to things.

For characters, my choices should have been easier. A lot of the characters in After Hastings are historical. Their names were selected by their parents over a millennium ago. Unfortunately, even there things weren’t always easy.

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New Treasures: The Shadows by Alex North

New Treasures: The Shadows by Alex North

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The Shadows-smallAlex North’s previous novel was the bestselling thriller The Whisper Man. With his new novel The Shadows he creeps into horror territory — and does it with style. Publishers Weekly calls it a “terrifying spine-tingler… impossible to put down,” and The New York Times says “This is absorbing, headlong reading, a play on classic horror with an inventiveness of its own… As with all the best illusions, you are left feeling not tricked, but full of wonder.”

It was published in hardcover two weeks ago. Here’s the description.

You knew a teenager like Charlie Crabtree. A dark imagination, a sinister smile–always on the outside of the group. Some part of you suspected he might be capable of doing something awful. Twenty-five years ago, Crabtree did just that, committing a murder so shocking that it’s attracted that strange kind of infamy that only exists on the darkest corners of the internet — and inspired more than one copycat.

Paul Adams remembers the case all too well: Crabtree–and his victim — were Paul’s friends. Paul has slowly put his life back together. But now his mother, old and suffering from dementia, has taken a turn for the worse. Though every inch of him resists, it is time to come home.

It’s not long before things start to go wrong. Paul learns that Detective Amanda Beck is investigating another copycat that has struck in the nearby town of Featherbank. His mother is distressed, insistent that there’s something in the house. And someone is following him. Which reminds him of the most unsettling thing about that awful day twenty-five years ago.

It wasn’t just the murder.

It was the fact that afterward, Charlie Crabtree was never seen again…

The Shadows was published by Celadon Books on July 7, 2020. It is 336 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $13.99 in digital formats. Read an excerpt at EW.com.

See all our recent coverage of the best new releases here.

Future Treasures: Chaos Vector by Megan E. O’Keefe

Future Treasures: Chaos Vector by Megan E. O’Keefe

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Covers by Sparth

Megan E. O’Keefe’s 2019 space opera Velocity Weapon was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, and earned a bucket full of great press. The Guardian called it “A brilliantly plotted yarn of survival and far-future political intrigue,” and Booklist described it as “Full of twists, feints, and deception… [in] a visionary world rife with political intrigue and space adventure.” But my favorite review was from Kirkus:

The last thing Sanda Greeve remembers is her ship being attacked by rebel forces. She’s resuscitated from her evacuation pod missing half a leg — and two centuries — as explained to her by the AI of the rebel ship that rescued her. As The Light of Berossus — aka Bero — tells her, she may be the only living human for light-years around, as the war wiped both sides out long ago. Sanda struggles to process her injuries and her grief but finds friendship with the lonely spaceship itself. Sanda’s story is interspersed with flashbacks to the war’s effects on her brother, Biran, as well as scenes from a heist gone terribly wrong for small-time criminal Jules. The three narratives, separated by a vast gulf of time, are more intertwined than is immediately apparent. When Sanda rescues Tomas, another unlikely survivor, from his own evacuation pod, she learns that even time doesn’t end all wars….

Meticulously plotted, edge-of-your-seat space opera with a soul; a highly promising science-fiction debut.

We previously covered Velocity Weapon, and O’Keefe’s Scorched Continent fantasy trilogy.

The sequel to Velocity Weapon is one of the more hotly anticipated books of the year. Chaos Vector arrives from Orbit on July 28. It is 592 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback, and $9.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Sparth. See all our recent coverage of the best upcoming SF and fantasy here.

Vintage Treasures: The Stochastic Man by Robert Silverberg

Vintage Treasures: The Stochastic Man by Robert Silverberg

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The Stochastic Man (Warner Books, 1987, cover art by Don Dixon)

Back in May I started a Vintage Treasures post about Robert Silverberg’s 1975 novel The Stochastic Man, and it wasn’t long before I’d unearthed nearly a dozen different editions. Pretty soon I got distracted comparing the art and author branding for each, and that led me down a deep rabbit hole that ended up with a very long article titled The Art of Author Branding: The Paperback Robert Silverberg.

That was fun, and very satisfying. But it never mentioned The Stochastic Man.

So today I grit my teeth, committed myself to a lot more focus, and started in again. Wish me luck.

The Stochastic Man was one of Robert Silverberg’s most popular and successful novels. It was originally serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (April to June, 1975), and then published in hardcover by Harper & Row in September 1975. That year it was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Campbell Memorial Award. After that it was packaged up by many publishers in the 70s and 80s, and enjoyed a long life and fruitful life in reprint editions from Fawcett Gold Medal, The Science Fiction Book Club, Coronet Books, Gollancz, Warner Books, Gateway/Orion, and others. It was reprinted in trade paperback just last year by ReAnimus Press.

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New Treasures: Shimmer: The Best Of, edited by E. Catherine Tobler

New Treasures: Shimmer: The Best Of, edited by E. Catherine Tobler

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Cover by Sandro Castelli

How did I not know there was a Best of Shimmer anthology? Time to get some better inside contacts in the publishing biz, I think.

Shimmer was one of the best of the small press fantasy magazines. It received a Hugo nomination for Best Semiprozine last year, and editor E. Catherine Tobler was honored with a Best Professional Editor, Short Form nomination. The magazine published science fiction, fantasy, and “a dash of literary horror.” The final issue, #46, appeared in November 2018.

Shimmer was constantly interesting, and we covered over half a dozen issues as part of our magazine coverage over the years. Their greatest skill was spotting talent, and they did plenty of that. Shimmer: The Best Of contains stories by many of the brightest stars of modern fantasy, including Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Amal El-Mohtar, Karin Tidbeck, Mary Robinette Kowal, Carmen Maria Machado, Sunny Moraine, Arkady Martine, Fran Wilde, Sonya Taaffe, A. C. Wise, Sarah Gailey, Vajra Chandrasekera, K.M. Szpara, and many, many others, all packed into a massive 489-page volume.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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These Two Books Are Not the Same: John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes and Out of the Deeps

These Two Books Are Not the Same: John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes and Out of the Deeps

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The Kraken Wakes

The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham; First Edition: Michael Joseph, 1953
Cover art uncredited

The Kraken Wakes
by John Wyndham
Michael Joseph (288 pages, 10/6, hardcover, 1953)
Cover art uncredited

Out of the Deeps
by John Wyndham
Ballantine (182 pages, $2.00, hardcover, 1953)
Cover by Richard Powers

John Wyndham was an English author, popular for five or six major novels published in the 1950s and 1960s, among numerous other books. The first of his famous novels was The Day of the Triffids (1951), about murderous walking plants and a meteor shower than causes most of humanity to go blind. Several following novels were also catastrophes of various sorts, and were published both in the UK and the US, though sometimes with variant titles. The second of these was The Kraken Wakes (UK 1953), about aliens who settle into Earth’s oceans, attack cruise liners, and subsequently wreck the climate and the world economy. It was published in the US by Ballantine as Out of the Deeps (also 1953). What I discovered only recently was that the two books are of course very similar but not identical, and nothing in either edition (in particular the US edition, presumably the second published), indicates any such differences. In fact Ballantine’s copyright page claims “This novel was published in England under the title The Kraken Wakes” which is, in fact, not literally true.

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Dorgo Returns! Mad Shadows, Book Two: Dorgo the Dowser and the Order of the Serpent

Dorgo Returns! Mad Shadows, Book Two: Dorgo the Dowser and the Order of the Serpent

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Joe Bonadonna’s 2011 sword and sorcery collection Mad Shadows: The Weird Tales of Dorgo the Dowser won the 2017 Golden Book Readers’ Choice Award for Fantasy. In his BG review William Patrick Maynard wrote:

Joe Bonadonna describes his fiction as ‘Gothic Noir’ and it is entirely appropriate… The six stories in Mad Shadows offer a mixture of traditional sword & sorcery necromancers and demons as well as werewolves, vampires, witches, and bizarre half-human mutations that H. P. Lovecraft would happily embrace.

Pulp Hero Press reissued Mad Shadows last December, in a revised second edition with a new cover, new maps, revised text, and an expanded Afterword. Now they’ve given the same treatment to the sequel, Dorgo the Dowser and the Order of the Serpent. Here’s a brief snippet from Fletcher Vredenburgh’s terrific review of the original 2017 release.

I totally dig these stories and especially the world Bonadonna’s created. Tanyime is rife with magic and magical beings. Minotaurs serve as guards, a cyclops runs a gambling den, and an old satyr is one of Dorgo’s best friends. Bonadonna’s too skilled a storyteller to let his setting become overwhelmed by the possible cutesiness of it all, instead, creating a good, hardboiled world with room in it for justice…. Aside from his deep understanding of S&S and hardboiled fiction, Bonadonna knows how to write a hero… [Dorgo] is an honest-to-goodness hero looking to do the right thing,

Read a generous excerpt from Dorgo the Dowser and the Order of the Serpent right here at Black Gate.

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Between the Years When the Oceans Drank (Henry Kuttner’s) Atlantis, and the Rise of COVID-19 — Elak Lives Again!

Between the Years When the Oceans Drank (Henry Kuttner’s) Atlantis, and the Rise of COVID-19 — Elak Lives Again!

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Elak lives again! Just released by Pulp Hero Press, Adrian Cole continues a saga Kuttner abandoned 80 years ago.
Elak lives again! Just released by Pulp Hero Press, Adrian Cole continues a saga Kuttner abandoned 80 years ago.

Adrian Cole is hardly a stranger to fantasy fiction.

Born in Plymouth, Devonshire in 1949, Adrian first read The Lord of the Rings in the late 1960s while working in a public library in Birmingham, and was inspired by the book to write an epic entitled “The Barbarians,” which was eventually revised into The Dream Lords trilogy, published by Zebra Books in the early 1970s. He has been writing various ghost, horror, and fantasy tales, in both short-story and novel-length, ever since. His career is well-established and diverse, from psychological, alien-horror, to superheroes, fantasy trilogies to young-adult novels.

So it is particularly interesting that Adrian’s newest work is an anthology of stories about the adventurer Elak of Atlantis: Elak, King of Atlantis, which was just released earlier this month by Pulp Hero Press.

Atlantis? A vogue setting in early to mid-20th century fantasy fiction, we don’t really see novels or short stories in Atlantis anymore. Ah, but you see, Elak is himself a piece of history…

After Robert E. Howard’s unfortunate suicide in 1936, a number of authors stepped up to fill the void. Most wrote reasonable, working tales, that were largely forgettable, and they themselves were forgotten. One, however, was the masterful Henry Kuttner, who danced easily between fantasy, horror and science fiction, and had a stellar career, made the more so by his collaborations with his wife, C. L. Moore. Kuttner wrote four Elak of Atlantis stories, which appeared in Weird Tales between 1938 and 1940.  They are an abridged version of REH’s Conan stories, and follow the exploits of Elak as he passes from sword-for-hire to king. But Elak is not a “Clonan”: he’s a civilized man, a noble cast-off, who wields a rapier. Whereas Conan is destined to seize a crown, Elak is trying to avoid his destiny.  Unlike Conan, he is not a loner with “guest star” companions, and is accompanied by the perpetually drunk thief Lycon, and the druid Dalan, who is trying to get Elak to accept his destiny to rule the kingdom of Cyrena.

We first meet Elak returning from an encounter with the wife of Atlantean nobility and that strikes a note in the tales: there is a light-heartedness to them, although the world is a dark one.  If you can imagine an Errol Flynn swashbuckler with wizards and Deep Ones, you have the vibe.

Of course, that doesn’t tell us why, 80 years after Kuttner abandoned the doomed island, Cole is bringing it back up from its watery depths.

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