Browsed by
Category: Books

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

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

Comments 0 Comment

Gaslight Ghosts & Ghouls-smallIn 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

New Treasures: The Outside by Ada Hoffmann

Comments 0 Comment

The Outside Ada Hoffmann-smallJune 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.

In 500 Words or Less: The Gossamer Mage by Julie E. Czerneda

In 500 Words or Less: The Gossamer Mage by Julie E. Czerneda

Comments 0 Comment

The Gossamer Mage-smallThe Gossamer Mage
By Julie E. Czerneda
DAW Books (416 pages, $27.00 hardcover/$12.99 eBook, August 6, 2019)

In the words of the great Mr. Spock, Julie Czerneda’s forthcoming novel The Gossamer Mage is fascinating.

To be fair, everything I’ve ever read from Julie is fascinating in some way. But Gossamer is a different brand of cool than either The Clan Chronicles or Web Shifters. Not only is it a jump from science fiction to fantasy, but it brings along the intricate detail and clever wordplay that you can find in any of Julie’s other works.

What mainly fascinated me here was the magic. I’m not the sort of reader or writer who needs a magic system to have strictly defined rules that can’t be broken and need to see explained in detail (although I enjoy that when it’s done well, like in The Dresden Files). What I definitely need, though, is magic that has consequences, so you don’t need to come up with complicated reasons to prevent mages from laying waste to every opponent. Julie’s presented a really cool brand of consequence: magic that siphons years off a mage’s life, aging them as they perform their works, in this case through ink and parchment.

She goes one better to make that aging somewhat up to the whim of the Deathless Goddess, to which (almost) every scribemaster gives their allegiance. And then on top of that, she’s layered a complex world built around the idea of mages who literally spend their life to achieve success. Scribemaster Saeleonarial, for example, worries that every new magical script will make him a decrepit old man, and looks down on young people who burn through that youth too quickly going after glory. There’s a vested interest in producing new mages through promoting powerful bloodlines, but the power to control that rests with the hold daughters, who represent the Deathless Goddess who allows magic to exist. And so on.

…

Read More Read More

Big, Ambitious and Experimental: BBC Culture on John Brunner

Big, Ambitious and Experimental: BBC Culture on John Brunner

Comments 8 comments
Stand on Zanzibar-small Stand on Zanzibar 1976-small

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.

…

Read More Read More

Sentient Mining Robots, Interstellar Warfare, and an A.I. Revolution: The Corporation Wars by Ken MacLeod

Sentient Mining Robots, Interstellar Warfare, and an A.I. Revolution: The Corporation Wars by Ken MacLeod

Comments 0 Comment

The Corporation Wars Trilogy-smallScottish writer Ken MacLeod is the author of Cosmonaut Keep, The Cassini Division, Newton’s Wake, and roughly a dozen other science fiction novels. His books have been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Clarke, and British Science Fiction Awards. His Corporation Wars trilogy (Dissidence, Insurgence, and Emergence) is a fast-paced space opera told against a backdrop of interstellar drone warfare, virtual reality, and an A.I. revolution. In his review of the second volume at Locus Online, Russell Letson said:

MacLeod manages big Ideas (po­litical and futurological) and propulsive action without short-changing either side of that classic science-fictional tension-of-opposites, a trait he shares with Iain M. Banks and Charles Stross. I’m going add one more name and then duck be­hind the sofa: Heinlein.

I was sloppy about picking up the originals when they first appeared; that usually means I have to painstakingly track down out-of-print copies. But not this time! Orbit came to my rescue with a gorgeous (and gorgeously economical) 879-page omnibus brick: The Corporation Wars Trilogy. If you’re interested in an acclaimed space opera from a modern master, this is an excellent gift for yourself. Here’s the description.

In deep space, ruthless corporations vie for control of scattered mining colonies, and war is an ever-present threat.

Led by Seba, a newly sentient mining robot, an AI revolution grows. Fighting them is Carlos, a grunt who is reincarnated over and over again to keep the “freeboots” in check. But he’s not sure whether he’s on the right side.

Against a backdrop of interstellar drone combat Carlos and Seba must either find a way to rise above the games their masters are playing or die. And even dying might not be the end of it.

The Corporation Wars was published by Orbit on December 11, 2018. It is 896 pages, priced at $19.99 in trade paperback and $13.99 in digital formats. The cover was designed by Lisa Marie Pompilio.

If you’re in the market for fine value in reading, check out our recent coverage of fat omnibus editions here.

Future Treasures: Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone

Future Treasures: Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone

Comments 0 Comment

Empress of Forever-smallThe six novels in Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence have earned him a reputation as a modern master of urban fantasy (not to mention a Hugo nomination.) His latest novel, Empress of Forever, is something very different. Delilah S. Dawson calls it “A classic space opera that impossibly becomes a thrilling dungeon crawl fantasy,” and if that’s not a perfect book blurb, I don’t know what is. In her feature review at The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog yesterday, Nicole Hill wrote:

The comparisons this novel has drawn to Guardians of the Galaxy are understandable and well-earned — you won’t soon read a book more overloaded with outlandishly imaginative and downright fun set-pieces, including a battle involving space vessels made of stained glass… It’s a chess game played out across the stars, with a fearsome matched set of queens and a collection of pawns who are unforgettable.

Empress of Forever arrives in trade paperback from Tor next week. Here’s the description.

From Hugo Award finalist Max Gladstone comes a smart, swashbuckling, wildly imaginative adventure; the saga of a rag-tag team of brilliant misfits, dangerous renegades, and enhanced outlaws in a war-torn future.

A wildly successful innovator to rival Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, Vivian Liao is prone to radical thinking, quick decision-making, and reckless action. On the eve of her greatest achievement, she tries to outrun people who are trying to steal her success.

In the chilly darkness of a Boston server farm, Viv sets her ultimate plan into motion. A terrifying instant later, Vivian Liao is catapulted through space and time to a far future where she confronts a destiny stranger and more deadly than she could ever imagine.

The end of time is ruled by an ancient, powerful Empress who blesses or blasts entire planets with a single thought. Rebellion is literally impossible to consider — until Vivian Liao arrives. Trapped between the Pride ― a ravening horde of sentient machines ― and a fanatical sect of warrior monks who call themselves the Mirrorfaith, Viv must rally a strange group of allies to confront the Empress and find a way back to the world and life she left behind.

Empress of Forever will be published by Tor Books on June 18, 2019. It is 480 pages, priced at $18.99 in paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Tommy Arnold. Read an excerpt at Tor.com.

Help Hank Davis fill a Space Pirate Anthology

Help Hank Davis fill a Space Pirate Anthology

Comments 11 comments

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.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Octavia Gone by Jack McDevitt

New Treasures: Octavia Gone by Jack McDevitt

Comments 0 Comment

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

Comments 6 comments
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.

…

Read More Read More

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: On Wings of Song, by Thomas M. Disch

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: On Wings of Song, by Thomas M. Disch

Comments 0 Comment

Cover by Malcolm Ashman
Cover by Malcolm Ashman

Cover by Michael Mariano
Cover by Michael Mariano

Cover by Lou Feck
Cover by Lou Feck

The Campbell Memorial Award, not to be confused with the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Author, was founded in 1973.  The award is a juried award and presented to the best SF novel published in the US. The award was founded by Harry Harrison in memory of the long-time editor of Astounding and Analog magazine. The first Campbell Memorial Award was presented to Barry N. Malzberg’s novel Beyond Apollo. The award is presented at the University of Kansas in Lawrence and over the years a weekend conference has grown up around the presentation of this award and the Sturgeon Award, which was founded in 1987 to honor short stories. In 1980, the award was presented on July 31.

Originally published from February through April in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Disch’s 1979 novel On Wings of Song takes place in a Balkanized United States, where Daniel Weinreb lives in an Iowa ruled by a conservative Christian movement which bans a variety of activities, including singing. After an ill-advised jaunt to Minneapolis to see a movie with a friend who disappears, Daniel finds himself harassed by his friend’s powerful father and eventually sent to a penal camp for a minor infraction.  While there, Daniel learns the secret of flying and its connection to singing. Freed from the prison camp, Daniel flees to New York to pursue a career as a singer and learn the art of flying, although his success leaves his idealism and hope in tatters.

…

Read More Read More