Black Gate

Ken Liu’s been having a heck of a year. His English language translation of Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem helped the book win the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2015, and his first collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, appeared in hardcover from Saga Press in March. And the second volume in his new fantasy epic, The Dandelion Dynasty, arrived in October (read the first chapter right here at Black Gate).

That should be enough for anyone… but not for him, apparently. Last month Liu released his first anthology, a groundbreaking collection of SF stories from China that is getting a lot of attention. Invisible Planets is available now in hardcover. Don’t look for a review here any time soon… I didn’t mail our advance copy out to our reviewers, because I refused to part with it.

Award-winning translator and author Ken Liu presents a collection of short speculative fiction from China. Some stories have won awards (including Hao Jingfang’s Hugo-winning novella, Folding Beijing); some have been included in various ‘Year’s Best’ anthologies; some have been well reviewed by critics and readers; and some are simply Ken’s personal favorites. Many of the authors collected here (with the obvious exception of New York Times bestseller Liu Cixin’s two stories) belong to the younger generation of ‘rising stars’. In addition, three essays at the end of the book explore Chinese science fiction. Liu Cixin’s essay, The Worst of All Possible Universes and The Best of All Possible Earths, gives a historical overview of SF in China and situates his own rise to prominence as the premier Chinese author within that context. Chen Qiufan’s The Torn Generation gives the view of a younger generation of authors trying to come to terms with the tumultuous transformations around them. Finally, Xia Jia, who holds the first Ph.D. issued for the study of Chinese SF, asks What Makes Chinese Science Fiction Chinese?

Invisible Planets was published by Tor Books on November 1, 2016. It is 384 pages, priced at $24.99 in hardcover and $11.99 for the digital edition.

I admit the recent mini-boom in “pioneer fantasy,” which drops readers into a world of dark superstition, has a lot of appeal to me. Much of it is set on the American pioneer, but not exclusively.

The latest entrant is Alison’s Littlewood’s (A Cold Season, The Unquiet House) newest fantasy The Hidden People, which is set in rural Britain in the 1850s, and which Booklist calls “The perfect book to curl up with on a chilly fall day… will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.”

In 1851, within the grand glass arches of London’s Crystal Palace, Albie Mirralls meets his cousin Lizzie for the first — and, as it turns out, last — time. His cousin is from a backward rural village, and Albie expects she will be a simple country girl, but instead he is struck by her inner beauty and by her lovely singing voice, which is beautiful beyond all reckoning. When next he hears of her, many years later, it is to hear news of her death at the hands of her husband, the village shoemaker.

Unable to countenance the rumors that surround his younger cousin’s murder–apparently, her husband thought she had been replaced by one of the “fair folk” and so burned her alive — Albie becomes obsessed with bringing his young cousin’s murderer to justice. With his father’s blessing, as well as that of his young wife, Albie heads to the village of Halfoak to investigate his cousin’s murder. When he arrives, he finds a community in the grip of superstition, nearly every member of which believes Lizzie’s husband acted with the best of intentions and in the service of the village.

There, Albie begins to look into Lizzie’s death and to search for her murderous husband, who has disappeared. But in a village where the rationalism and rule of science of the Industrial Revolution seem to have found little purchase, the answers to the question of what happened to Lizzie and why prove elusive. And the more he learns, the less sure he is that there aren’t mysterious powers at work.

The Hidden People was published by Jo Fletcher Books on November 1, 2016. It is 368 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition.