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New Treasures: The Stone in the Skull by Elizabeth Bear

New Treasures: The Stone in the Skull by Elizabeth Bear

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The Stone in the Skull-smallElizabeth Bear won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2005, and followed that in quick succession with two Hugo wins: in 2008 a Best Short Story nod for “Tideline,” and in 2009 a Best Novelette award for “Shoggoths in Bloom.”

Her biggest commercial hit so far has been her Eternal Sky trilogy (Range of Ghosts, Shattered Pillars, Steles of the Sky). Last month she returned to the world of Eternal Sky with a brand new trilogy, The Lotus Kingdoms, which kicked off with The Stone in the Skull, now available in hardcover from Tor.

The Stone in the Skull, the first volume in her new trilogy, takes readers over the dangerous mountain passes of the Steles of the Sky and south into the Lotus Kingdoms.

The Gage is a brass automaton created by a wizard of Messaline around the core of a human being. His wizard is long dead, and he works as a mercenary. He is carrying a message from a the most powerful sorcerer of Messaline to the Rajni of the Lotus Kingdom. With him is The Dead Man, a bitter survivor of the body guard of the deposed Uthman Caliphate, protecting the message and the Gage. They are friends, of a peculiar sort.

They are walking into a dynastic war between the rulers of the shattered bits of a once great Empire.

Tor.com usually offers up sample chapters of new Tor releases, and they didn’t disappoint us this time. Check out Chapter One here, and Chapter Two hidden in a completely different place here.

The Stone in the Skull was published by Tor Books on October 10, 2017. It is 368 pages, priced at $27.99 in hardcover and $14.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Richard Anderson.

Stories of Wild Childhood Adventure: The Wildwood Chronicles by Colin Meloy

Stories of Wild Childhood Adventure: The Wildwood Chronicles by Colin Meloy

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Wildwood Colin Meloy-small Under Wildwood Colin Meloy-small Wildwood Imperium Colin Meloy-small

Colin Meloy is a talented guy. As the frontman for the rock band The Decemberists he’s sold over a million records around the world. His debut novel, Wildwood, became a New York Times bestseller, and grew into a bestselling trilogy that has been called “full of suspense and danger and frightening things the world has never seen,” (Lemony Snicket), and which Michael Chabon calls “Dark and whimsical, with a true and uncanny sense of otherworldliness… the heir to a great tradition of stories of wild childhood adventure.” Here’s the description for the first volume.

Prue McKeel’s life is ordinary. That is, until her brother is abducted by a murder of crows and taken to the Impassable Wilderness, a dense, tangled forest on the edge of Portland.

So begins an adventure that will take Prue and her friend Curtis deep into the Impassable Wilderness. And what begins as a rescue mission becomes something much greater as the two friends find themselves entwined in a struggle for the very freedom of this wilderness. A wilderness the locals call Wildwood.

All three novels in the series are illustrated by Carson Ellis, the acclaimed illustrator of The Mysterious Benedict Society. Here’s a look at all three back covers.

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A Homecoming: Son of Mfumu by Milton J. Davis

A Homecoming: Son of Mfumu by Milton J. Davis

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DIhhmcBUQAAjNxv“…keep it old school. Don’t make it boring, pack it with action, don’t invert it, converge it, or subvert it. Have a hero even if he is a rascal. Have some gothic atmosphere and a touch of cosmicism. Give it technicolor and dream dust instead of shades of gray. Have the ending mean something.”  -Morgan Holmes, on writing a classic S&S story.

Milton Davis’ five volume series about the mighty and wily Changa Diop is swords & sorcery cast from a classic mold, the dimensions of which were first set down ninety years ago by Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and C.L. Moore. Changa is a hero through and through. Even when he’s got one eye focused on making a profit, the other is on his own honor and courage. There are wonderful descriptions of a vibrant, exciting world designed perfectly as a stage for mighty adventures, but done so well it never impedes the action. Of action, there’s more than enough for any S&S fan, ranging from duels with pirates to epic battles with demonic conjurations. Heroes are bold and villains deadly. This is the root stuff of which good S&S is made.

Whenever you get bummed out about the current state of S&S, rest assured that there are authors hewing to something like Holmes’ cri-de-coeur. And they aren’t making copies of the tried and true, but crafting their own myths and legends, adding their rousing additions to this genre we love.

Starting with Changa’s Safari (2011), and continuing for four more books, Milton Davis has sent our titular hero to the ends of the earth in search of the means to avenge his father’s murder, and claim the throne of Kongo from the usurper and sorcerer, Usenge. Each comrade with whom he surrounds himself is skilled and memorable in his own way. Foremost, there is the blue-robed and silent swordsman known only as the Tuareg. Zakee is a young Yemeni prince rescued from a disastrous marriage, the irascible navigator Mikaili is an Ethiopian with plans to become an priest someday…just never today, and finally there is Panya, Yoruban sorceress and beloved of Changa.

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Vintage Treasures: The Best Science Fiction Novellas of the Year 1, edited by Terry Carr

Vintage Treasures: The Best Science Fiction Novellas of the Year 1, edited by Terry Carr

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The Best Science Fiction Novellas of the Year 1 Terry Carr-small The Best Science Fiction Novellas of the Year 1 Terry Carr-back-small

Some of the most rewarding books I’ve read in the past few years have been anthologies edited by Terry Carr. Even though he died 30 years ago, in April 1987, his books remain splendid reading for modern audiences, and I think it’s very possible Carr may have been the most gifted editor our field has ever seen. The sixteen volumes of The Best Science Fiction of the Year (1972-1987) he edited may well be the high water mark for Year’s Best anthologies.

In 1979 and 1980, Carr convinced Lester del Del at Del Rey Books to allow him to try an experiment. In effect, to see if the market would bear an additional Terry Carr Best SF, this one showcasing the best SF novellas of the year. It was a noble ambition, and a great idea, but that didn’t mean the market was ready for it. The Best Science Fiction Novellas of the Year died after two volumes, and Carr went back to the frustrating task of trying to fit as many novellas as he could into his slender Best SF paperbacks every year.

I’ve never read either of his Best Novellas books before. But, like his regular Best SF series, both volumes are packed with classic fiction that has stood the test of time, as well as genuine finds. I recently came across the first one in a collection I bought on eBay. I was expecting greatness, and I was not disappointed.

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Future Treasures: The Big Book of the Continental Op by Dashiell Hammett

Future Treasures: The Big Book of the Continental Op by Dashiell Hammett

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The Big Book of the Continental Op-smallYesterday, as I was preparing a New Treasures piece on Otto Penzler’s newest Vintage anthology, The Big Book of Rogues and Villains, I stumbled on a listing for one I’d never seen before: The Big Book of the Continental Op, a massive omnibus of classic fiction by Dashiell Hammett, perhaps the greatest crime writer of the 20th Century.

Edited by Richard Layman and Julie M. Rivett, The Big Book of the Continental Op gathers all 28 of Hammett’s Continental Op stories into one place for the first time, including the novels Red Harvest and The Dain Curse. It arrives in trade paperback on Tuesday.

Now for the first time ever in one volume, all twenty-eight stories and two serialized novels starring the Continental Op — one of the greatest characters in storied history of detective fiction.

Dashiell Hammett is the father of modern hard-boiled detective stories. His legendary works have been lauded for almost one hundred years by fans, and his novel The Maltese Falcon was adapted into a classic film starring Humphrey Bogart. One of Dashiell Hammett’s most memorable characters, the Continental Op made his debut in Black Mask magazine on October 1, 1923, narrating the first of twenty-eight stories and two novels that would change forever the face of detective fiction. The Op is a tough, wry, unglamorous gumshoe who has inspired a following that is both global and enduring. He has been published in periodicals, paperback digests, and short story collections, but until now, he has never, in all his ninety-two years, had the whole of his exploits contained in one book. The book features all twenty-eight of the original standalone Continental Op stories, the original serialized versions of Red Harvest and The Dain Curse, and previously unpublished material. This anthology of Continental Op stories is the only complete, one-volume work of its kind.

Vintage’s Big Book series is a gift to genre fiction lovers of all stripes. Many of my favorites — including The Big Book of Ghost Stories, The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries and The Vampire Archives — were edited by Penzler, but they also include the monumental Big Book of Science Fiction, edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Ann Vandermeer, which may be the largest single SF anthology ever published. There are nearly a dozen Big Books at this point, and they’re well worth tracking down. And they make great Christmas gifts!

The Big Book of the Continental Op will be published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard on November 28, 2017. It is 752 pages, priced at $25 in trade paperback.

Elric and Me

Elric and Me

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Elric of Melnibone-small The Sailor on the Seas of Fate-small

My introduction to Michael Moorcock’s Elric came from a single line in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master Guide. Gary Gygax included a note in Appendix N that Michael Moorcock’s Stormbringer and Stealer of Souls, as well as the first three books of the Hawkmoon series, influenced the game. I sought out the Elric cycle (as well as the Hawkmoon, Corum, Erekosë, etc.) in the DAW editions with cover art by Michael Whelan.

It was a great time to discover the books, since they were all in print and relatively easy to obtain. I worked my way through as many of Moorcock’s books as I could find, including his Dancers at the End of Time series, Michael Kane/Warrior of Mars series, and even books like The Black Corridor, The Wrecks of Time, and The Shores of Limbo. I remember my elation upon finding a used copy of The Ice Schooner in a used bookstore in New Haven, CT after searching for it through several states in those pre-internet days.

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New Treasures: The Big Book of Rogues and Villains edited by Otto Penzler

New Treasures: The Big Book of Rogues and Villains edited by Otto Penzler

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The Big Book of Rogues and Villains-smallOtto Penzler’s Big Books series include some of the most substantial anthologies I’ve ever held in two hands. Big oversized volumes that clock in at nearly a thousand pages each, they’re virtually a graduate level course in American 20th Century genre fiction. His latest, The Big Book of Rogues and Villains, weighs in “at a svelte 928 pages… [and] is equally impossible to pick up and put down” (Kirkus Reviews).

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler’s new anthology brings together the most cunning, ruthless, and brilliant criminals in mystery fiction, for the biggest compendium of bad guys (and girls) ever assembled.

The best mysteries — whether detective, historical, police procedural, cozy, or comedy — have one thing in common: a memorable perpetrator. For every Sherlock Holmes or Sam Spade in noble pursuit, there’s a Count Dracula, a Lester Leith, or a Jimmy Valentine. These are the rogues and villains who haunt our imaginations — and who often have more in common with their heroic counterparts than we might expect. Now, for the first time ever, Otto Penzler gathers the iconic traitors, thieves, con men, sociopaths, and killers who have crept through the mystery canon over the past 150 years, captivating and horrifying readers in equal measure. The 72 handpicked stories in this collection introduce us to the most depraved of psyches, from iconic antiheroes like Maurice Leblanc’s Arsène Lupin and Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu to contemporary delinquents like Lawrence Block’s Ehrengraf and Donald Westlake’s Dortmunder, and include unforgettable tales by Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Washington Irving, Jack London, H.G. Wells, Sinclair Lewis, O. Henry, Edgar Wallace, Leslie Charteris, Erle Stanley Gardner, Edward D. Hoch, Max Allan Collins, Loren D. Estleman, and many more.

I’m looking for a complete TOC, and will post it here when I find one. In the meantime, check out our previous coverage of Penzler’s massive anthologies.

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Party Of The First Part

Party Of The First Part

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3 musketeers ballEveryone likes a party. Many of us even like to plan parties, especially writers (who, if they didn’t like process, wouldn’t be writers.) But do we like to write about them? Maybe not so much

Of course there are some memorable parties to be found in Fantasy and SF literature. The two that immediately come to mind are the birthday party that opens LOTR, and the high tea that opens The Hobbit. Is it significant that both of these involve not only the same author, but the same character?  I think so. I also think it’s significant that Bilbo doesn’t plan the party in The Hobbit (it’s Gandalf’s do), but he does plan the one in LOTR. Seems like it might take a little age and experience to organize a big affair.

MatrixFor the most part parties in literature seem to be limited to pre-WWII novels where omniscient narrators can give us interesting overviews, occasionally zooming in to present important detail. Look at Jane Austen: with or without zombies these people spend a lot of time at balls, dances, tea parties, supper parties and the like. Otherwise, how would the characters, particularly the women, meet one another? Even Cinderella meets the prince at a ball.

A party is also a great way to allow your characters to interact in public, and reveal all kinds of details about themselves that you might otherwise have to take chapters to show. Still, unless you are using an omniscient narrator, a party scene can be deadly both to read and to write. Think of the last big party you attended. If the narrative of the story was told from your point of view only, the reader would get a very limited understanding of what happened.

Do parties have any other narrative use? Do they forward the plot? I’d say they do, but only by what we’ve seen already: introducing characters to the reader and allowing characters to meet each other. By the way, however planned they might be, I don’t think we can include ceremonies in our definition of parties. Maybe the reception, for example, but not the wedding itself.

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Vintage Treasures: The Folk of the Air by Peter S. Beagle

Vintage Treasures: The Folk of the Air by Peter S. Beagle

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The Folk of the Air-small The Folk of the Air-back-small

Peter S. Beagle burst on the scene in 1960 with A Fine and Private Place, the tale of a man quietly living in a cemetery for decades. Written while he was still a teenager, the novel established Beagle immediately as a major American fantasist. He followed it with The Last Unicorn (1968), which placed fifth in the 1987 Locus Poll for All-Time Best Fantasy Novel, sold more than five million copies, and was made into a popular animated film by Rankin/Bass in 1982.

In 1969 Beagle wrote one of his most popular short stories, “Lila the Werewolf” (first published in Guabi #1, and in Terry Carr’s New Worlds of Fantasy #3), featuring the character Sam Farrell. Two decades later Farrell returned in Beagle’s third novel The Folk of the Air, which won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award and was called “Peter Beagle’s Silmarillion” in the Mythopoeic Society review.

The publication of The Folk of the Air is an Event, no doubt about it… it is easily the best new fantasy novel I read last year… The main character is Joe Farrell, who first appeared as the hero of a short story called “Lila the Werewolf” (which may be found in the omnibus volume The Fantasy Worlds of Peter S. Beagle). It’s several years after “Lila”, and Farrell is making his first visit in a long time to his old stomping grounds in Avicenna, California…

If The Folk of the Air had been published five years ago, it would by now be seen as a foundation stone in the currently flourishing subgenre of contemporary urban fantasy — books like Moonheart by Charles de Lint, Tea with the Black Dragon by R.A. MacAvoy, and Brisingamen by Diana Paxson… Beagle has captured the style of the subgenre perfectly. From the beginning, where the sense of something magical and uncanny is in the air nearly from the start, long before the supernatural actually rears its head, to the end, which features a bang-up magical battle between two of the principal characters while the others look on in dazed wonder, this book has everything to capture the interest of fantasy readers who like a magical tale in the here and now.

The book has held up very well over the decades (SF Reviews recently called it “top-drawer, comparable to the best of Tim Powers”), although Beagle has reportedly been working on a revised edition, to be called Avicenna, for some time. Whatever the case, the book has been out of print in the US since the 1988 Del Rey paperback, pictured above. I found this copy at the Windy City Pulp and Paper show here in Chicago earlier this year, where I paid $2 for it. It is 375 pages, with a cover price of $4.50. The cover is by Romas. There is no digital edition. See our previous coverage of Peter Beagle here.

Nothing Gets Belly Laughs Like Cthulhu: The Cackle of Cthulhu, edited by Alex Shvartsman

Nothing Gets Belly Laughs Like Cthulhu: The Cackle of Cthulhu, edited by Alex Shvartsman

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The Cackle of Cthulhu-smallAlex Shvartsman is best known for his Unidentified Funny Objects annual anthology series from UFO Publishing, and his recent humorous anthologies Funny Horror, Funny Fantasy and Funny Science Fiction. He’s also a noted short story writer, and his first collection, Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma and Other Stories, was released in 2015.

It seems inevitable that he would combine his love of Lovecraftian horror with his passion for humorous short fiction. His first book for Baen, The Cackle of Cthulhu, is an anthology of Lovecraftian humor coming in January 2018.

Knock, knock!
Who’s there?
Cthul.
Cthul who?
Exactly! I’ve come to tickle your funnybone.
Oh, and also to eat your soul.

In 1928, Weird Tales debuted “The Call of Cthulhu” by H.P. Lovecraft, and the Cthulhu Mythos was born. In the 90 years since, dozens of writers have dared play within HPL’s mind-blowing creation — but never with such terrifyingly funny results. Now top authors lampoon, parody, and subvert Lovecraft’s Mythos. See Cthulhu cut short his nap at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to invade North Korea! Watch the Unspeakable Eater of Souls solve crimes on the pulpy streets of Innsmouth! And speaking of largish Elder Gods, listen to a plastic Elvis doll dispense folksy advice straight from the heart of the Emperor of Dread! Again Ol’ Tentacle-Face is confronted by frail humans who dare defy the Incarnation of Ultimate Evil — but this time not by brave monster hunters and terrified villagers, but by fan fiction writers, clueless college students, and corporate lawyers (okay, we realize it’s hard to know who to root for in that confrontation).

Twenty-three mirthful manifestations within the Cthulhu Mythos from best-selling and award-winning authors Neil Gaiman, Mike Resnick, Esther Friesner, Ken Liu, Jody Lynn Nye, Laura Resnick, Nick Mamatas, and many more!

Guaranteed to leave you howling. Because if you look at it just right, there’s nothing funnier than a soul writhing in cosmic horror before a tentacled maw of malevolence. As HPL himself saith: “From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.”

The Cackle of Cthulhu is a mix of original fiction and reprints, it includes some of the best known examples of Lovecraftian mirth, including “The Shunned Trailer” by Esther Friesner (from Asimov’s SF, February 2000, and adapted as a podcast at Escape Pod here), and Neil Gaiman’s “Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar,” originally published in Mike Ashley’s The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy in 1998 (and discussed at Tor.com here, and read by Neil Gaiman here.)

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