Black Gate

Reading reviews frequently helps heighten my anticipation for a book. That’s certainly the case with Jonathan Strahan’s acclaimed new anthology Drowned Worlds, a collection of SF tales which looks at the future of Earth after the full effects of climate change.

The book includes all-new fiction from Ken Liu, Kim Stanley Robinson, Christopher Rowe, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Charlie Jane Anders, Jeffrey Ford, Rachel Swirsky, Lavie Tidhar, Catherynne M. Valente, and many others. It’s been getting some terrific reviews, from places like Tor.com, Locus Online, and other fine institutions. Here’s a few samples, starting with author James Lovegrove in the Financial Times.

Taking its cue — as well as its title — from JG Ballard’s 1962 debut novel The Drowned World, the book offers 15 memorable, distinctive visions of Earth after climate change has exerted its grip. Sea levels have risen, and deserts have spread. People live aboard rafts, amid ruins, on other planets. The Anthropocene era has done its apocalyptic worst. There is nevertheless, a thin silvery thread of hope — humankind, through its adaptability and ingenuity, endures.

And here a snippet from Gary K. Wolfe’s lengthy review at Locus Online.

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Michael Swanwick’s previous collection with Tachyon Publications was The Dog Said Bow-Wow (2007). In Not So Much Said the Cat he takes a feline turn, collecting 17 stories published between 2008 and 2014, including Hugo nominee “From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled…”. Here’s a snippet from the starred review from Kirkus.

There’s a man who, having suffered a crushing loss, finds solace after accidental contact with a time traveler; a group of time travelers hunkered down at the end of the Cretaceous period — where, oddly, nobody’s interested in the dinosaurs; and a scientist who finds a partner worthy of her genius. We also get a fascinating glimpse (which feels like a novel fragment) of a far future populated by humans and centipedelike aliens, narrated by the intelligent space suit of a woman who’s dead as the story begins; and another future where human lives resemble those in fairy tales while advanced, hidden AIs battle for supremacy. Elsewhere, in a literary-games vein, the characters in a fairy tale discuss whether they prefer to remain in books, and immortal, or enter history; there’s a famous Gene Wolfe story stripped down, turned inside out, and rebuilt to perfection; and, in a marvelous conceit, the writer Alexander Pushkin appears as he may have been — in an alternative universe. To round out the collection, we meet a dutiful young woman who, entering hell to challenge the devil to return her father, discovers that things are not as she assumed; Darger and Surplus, those good-hearted rogues with a propensity to shoot themselves in the foot, make an appearance, as does “The House of Dreams,” an entry from Swanwick’s splendid Mongolian Wizard e-book series. Tales that, through their extraordinary clarity of thought and expression, showcase precisely why this multiaward-winning author is held in such high regard.

Swanwick’s other collections from Tacyhon include Tales of Old Earth (2000) and Gravity’s Angels (2001). Our previous coverage of Michael Swanwick includes articles on The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, Chasing the Phoenix, and his short story “The Night of the Salamander.”

Not So Much Said the Cat was published by Tachyon Publications on July 18, 2016. It is 290 pages, priced at $15.95 in trade paperback and $7.99 for the digital version.