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The 2016 Philip K. Dick Nominees

The 2016 Philip K. Dick Nominees

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Archangel Marguerite Reed-smallThe nominees for the 2016 Philip K. Dick Award, given each year for distinguished science fiction originally published in paperback in the United States, have been announced, and it’s an interesting ballot. Over at Barnes&Noble.com, in an article titled This Year’s Philip K. Dick Award Nominees Take SF in Strange New Directions, Joel Cunningham writes:

Sorry Hugos, but for my money, there’s no more interesting award in sci-fi than the ones named for Philip K. Dick. In the tradition of everyone’s favorite gonzo pulpist, the “PKD Award” honors innovative genre works that debuted in paperback, offering a nice reminder that you don’t need the prestige of a hardcover release to write a mind-blowing book (just ask William Gibson, whose seminal cyberpunk classic Neuromancer claimed the title in 1984), and in fact, if past winners are any evidence, the format might be seem as a license to take greater risks. This year’s nominees are of a piece with PKD contenders of the past: they twist genre tropes in new ways, carving new toe-holds in well-worn tropes. Which brings us to another thing we love about this particular award: the winner is basically impossible to [predict].

This year the noninees are

Edge of Dark, Brenda Cooper (Pyr)
After the Saucers Landed, Douglas Lain (Night Shade)
(R)evolution, PJ Manney (47North)
Apex, Ramez Naam (Angry Robot)
Windswept, Adam Rakunas (Angry Robot)
Archangel, Marguerite Reed (Arche)

The winner will be announced on March 25, 2016 at Norwescon 39 in SeaTac, Washington. Congratulations to all the nominees!

New Treasures: The Library of America Publishes Elmore Leonard

New Treasures: The Library of America Publishes Elmore Leonard

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Elmore Leonard Four Novels of the 1970s-small Elmore Leonard Four Novels of the 1980s-small

The Library of America has made a fine business of publishing archival quality omnibus editions of the most important novels of the 20th Century. We’ve covered several here recently, including:

A Princess of Mars and Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s, edited by Gary K. Wolfe
American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny, edited by Peter Straub

They’ve also published omnibus editions of Kurt Vonnegut, Dashiell Hammett, Philip K. Dick, Ross Macdonald, David Goodis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many others. I received several review copies in the mail from Library of America recently, including one of their Elmore Leonard collections. It’s been years since I’ve read anything by Leonard, but then again, it’s been a long time since I’ve held something as enticing as these collections. If you’re looking to put together an impressive genre library, this is the place to start.

Elmore Leonard: Four Novels of the 1970s was published on August 28, 2014. It contains Fifty-Two Pickup, Swag, Unknown Man, and The Switch; it is 809 pages, priced at $35 in hardcover. Elmore Leonard: Four Novels of the 1980s was published on September 1, 2015. It contains City Primeval, LaBrava, Glitz, and Freaky Deaky; it is 1024 pages, priced at $37.50 in hardcover. There are no digital editions.

Future Treasures: Medusa’s Web by Tim Powers

Future Treasures: Medusa’s Web by Tim Powers

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Medusas Web-smallA new book by Tim Powers is a major event. Powers made a huge splash with his early novels, especially The Drawing of the Dark (1979), which Fletcher Vredenburgh reviewed for us here, The Anubis Gates (1983), Dinner at Deviant’s Palace (1985), and On Stranger Tides (1987). His last novel was Hide Me Among the Graves (2012), a sequel of sorts to The Stress of Her Regard (1989). Medusa’s Web is a phantasmagoric tale of a man who must uncover occult secrets in 1920s Hollywood to save his family.

In the wake of their Aunt Amity’s suicide, Scott and Madeline Madden are summoned to Caveat, the eerie, decaying mansion in the Hollywood hills in which they were raised. But their decadent and reclusive cousins, the malicious wheelchair-bound Claimayne and his sister, Ariel, do not welcome Scott and Madeline’s return to the childhood home they once shared. While Scott desperately wants to go back to their shabby South-of-Sunset lives, he cannot pry his sister away from this haunted “House of Usher in the Hollywood Hills” that is a conduit for the supernatural.

Decorated by bits salvaged from old hotels and movie sets, Caveat hides a dark family secret that stretches back to the golden days of Rudolph Valentino and the silent film stars. A collection of hypnotic eight-limbed abstract images inked on paper allows the Maddens to briefly fragment and flatten time — to transport themselves into the past and future in visions that are both puzzling and terrifying. Though their cousins know little about these ancient “spiders” which provoke unpredictable temporal dislocations, Ariel and Claimayne have been using for years — an addiction that has brought Claimayne to the brink of selfish destruction.

As Madeline falls more completely under Caveat’s spell, Scott discovers that to protect her, he must use the perilous spiders himself. But will he unravel the mystery of the Madden family’s past and finally free them… or be pulled deeper into their deadly web?

Medusa’s Web will be published by William Morrow on January 19, 2016. It is 368 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition.

When the Ghost is Unseen: Finding Fantasy in Mainstream Fiction

When the Ghost is Unseen: Finding Fantasy in Mainstream Fiction

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The Seance John Harwood-small The Vanishing Wendy Webb-small The Somnambulist Jonathan Barnes-small

When I browse the SF and Fantasy section at my local Barnes & Noble every Saturday, I usually return home with a handful of intriguing finds. There’s certainly no shortage of books to choose from, and more showing up every week.

One thing I miss in my book hunts, however, is the thrill of the unknown. When I settle into my big green chair with a new horror novel, I know there’s a monster hiding somewhere. That’s the one drawback of always shopping in the genre section: you know the ghost will pop out by chapter five.

That’s why I like to spice up my reading by browsing in the gothic mystery section (my wife Alice’s favorite section). Is there a spook, or isn’t there? Often you don’t know until the end of the book (and sometimes not even then), and that adds a delicious element of mystery. Here’s a quick rundown of three delightful gothic mysteries I recently added to my collection.

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Vintage Treasures: Assignment Nor’ Dyren by Sydney J. Van Scyoc

Vintage Treasures: Assignment Nor’ Dyren by Sydney J. Van Scyoc

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Sydney J. Van Scyoc is an American science fiction writer. She was born in 1939, and published her first story, “Shatter the Wall,” in Galaxy magazine in 1962. She was very active for the next three decades, publishing eleven novels and around 30 stories between 1962 and 1991, including Saltflower (1971), Starmother (1976), Cloudcry (1977), Sunwaifs (1981), and the Daughters of the Sunstone trilogy. Most of her novels were published as paperback originals from Berkley or Avon. In 1992, she reportedly retired to make and sell jewelry, but in 2004 & 2005 she sold two new short stories to Gordon Van Gelder at F&SF.

Assignment Nor’ Dyren, her second novel, is one of her most well known. Compared by some to The Left Hand of Darkness, it’s the tale of two human agents to the planet Nor’ Dyren who discover the inhabitants have a social order that divides them into three specialized castes. But the world seems to be crumbling — broken machines are not being repaired, there’is no innovation, and society has been in decline for over two centuries. Tasked with saving the planet, the human agents find themselves up against strange and sinister opposition.

We last covered Sydney J. Van Scyoc with her 1989 fantasy novel Feather Stroke. Assignment Nor’ Dyren was published in October 1973 by Avon Books. It is 222 pages, priced at 75 cents. Believe it or not, the gorgeously baroque cover is uncredited, and no one seems to know for sure who painted it. It looks a lot like the work of Paul Lehr, but it’s hardly likely there’s an unidentified Lehr out there. Click the images above for bigger versions.

New Treasures: Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror, edited by Christopher Golden

New Treasures: Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror, edited by Christopher Golden

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Do you remember when vampires were terrifying creatures of the night? Not moody boyfriends who sparkled in sunlight, or lovers who assisted their tough private investigator girlfriends in a series of encounters with deadly yet also strangely sexy werewolves and other paranormal beasts?

I sure do. And so does Christopher Golden, editor of the new anthology Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror, which gathers tales of terror in which vampires are figures of overwhelming terror once more. It includes brand new stories from Charlaine Harris, Scott Smith, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Michael Kortya, Kelley Armstrong, Brian Keene, David Wellington, Seanan McGuire, and Tim Lebbon. This is old-school vampire fiction, for fans who wouldn’t have it any other way.

Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror was published by Gallery Books on October 6, 2015. It is 544 pages, priced at $18 in trade paperback and $13.99 for the digital edition. Click on the images above for larger versions of the front and back covers.

A Concentrated Dose of the Best Our Field Has to Offer: Jonathan Strahan’s Best Short Novels 2004-2007

A Concentrated Dose of the Best Our Field Has to Offer: Jonathan Strahan’s Best Short Novels 2004-2007

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Best Short Novels 2004-small Best Short Novels 2005-small Best Short Novels 2006-small Best Short Novels 2007-small

Jonathan Strahan is one of the most accomplished and acclaimed editors in the genre. He’s edited the annual Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year since 2007, as well as some of our most highly regarded original anthologies — including the Infinity series (Engineering Infinity, Edge of Infinity, etc) and the Fearsome books (Fearsome Journeys and Fearsome Magics), all for Solaris. He’s also edited (with Terry Dowling) one of my favorite ongoing series, the five volumes in the monumental Early Jack Vance from Subterranean Press.

But the work that truly made me a Strahan fan was a brief (four volume) series he did exclusively for the Science Fiction Book Club, Best Short Novels. I’d been a member of the SFBC since the age of twelve but, after leaving Canada for grad school in 1987 and moving around after that, I’d let my membership lapse. I received plenty of invites to rejoin after settling here in St. Charles, but it was Strahan’s first volume in the series, Best Short Novels: 2004, that finally enticed me to do it. I’ve never regretted it.

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Future Treasures: A Gathering of Shadows, Book 2 of A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

Future Treasures: A Gathering of Shadows, Book 2 of A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

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A Darker Shade of Magic-small A Gathering of Shadows-small

V.E. Schwab made a considerable splash with her first book from Tor, the superhero tale Vicious, which Matthew David Surridge called “a well-paced and sharply-structured novel” in his BG review. She began an ambitious two-volume series with A Darker Shade of Magic, published last year by Tor. The second and concluding volume, A Gathering of Shadows, arrives in hardcover next month.

A Darker Shade of Magic introduced us to Kell, a magician and ambassador who travels between parallel Londons, carrying royal correspondence between universes. He’s also a smuggler. When a thief named Delilah Bard robs him, and then saves him from a nasty fate, the two find themselves on the run, jumping between worlds. As the second volume begins, Kell is visited by dreams of ominous magical events… as strange things begin to emerge from Black London, the place of which no one speaks.

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Vintage Treasures: The Compleat Enchanter by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt

Vintage Treasures: The Compleat Enchanter by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt

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I’ve been on something of a Fletcher Pratt kick recently, ever since I purchased a fine collection of old paperbacks that included five of his books, including The Well of the Unicorn and Tales From Gavagan’s Bar (co-written with L. Sprague de Camp), both of which I recently wrote up as Vintage Treasures.

Way down in the bottom of that box was a copy of The Compleat Enchanter. I didn’t pay much attention to it at first. Everyone who collects classic American fantasy has two or three (or five or six) copies of The Compleat Enchanter. It’s something of a classic, in a worn sort of way. It doesn’t get much attention these days, because it’s a light, humorous tale, the very opposite of the kind of thing that usually interests me. And so, out of habit, I didn’t give it much attention.

That was a mistake. I’ve ignored The Compleat Enchanter for the better part of 40 years, but when I finally picked it up this week I was quickly captivated. Yes, it is a screwball fantasy, about a psychology professor named Harold Shea who stumbles on equations that transport him into parallel universes, and who uses this ability to visit magical worlds shaped by the mythologies and legend of Earth. But it’s also crammed full of crisp dialog and surprising twists, and the unique charm of De Camp and Pratt, two American masters who were obviously having a lot of fun with the their creation.

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Aliens, Space Battles, and Crazy Artificial Intelligences: The Free Online Original Saga The Last Angel

Aliens, Space Battles, and Crazy Artificial Intelligences: The Free Online Original Saga The Last Angel

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The Last Angel-smallIf you are at all interested in science fiction, aliens, space battles, crazy artificial intelligences, or beautifully well written stories, then a very, very good place to indulge yourself would be the Spacebattles.com forum thread The Last Angel. A quick summary lies below, but comes nowhere near doing the work justice.

Humanity, in a final stand against the hordes of the alien Compact, builds a dreadnought, the UECNS Nemesis, and an AI, Red One, to command it. Red One makes its first mark in life by destroying a Compact god-ship and its attendant fleet.

It’s not enough. Heavily damaged during the battle, the Nemesis is unable to return to Earth in time to prevent its destruction. With no humanity left to protect, and repair systems slowly but surely bringing function back to damaged systems, Red One makes a decision to echo that of the Compact Expeditionary Fleet:

All Shall Burn.

The whole story is available free in the forums, and is still being updated. The first act is 50 chapters long (plus a prologue and epilogue), with a sequel, Ascension, currently in progress. There is also a six-chapter side story, The Angel’s Fire. The author, the pseudonymous Proximal Flame, has attached links to every chapter (including Ascension and The Angel’s Fire) in the first post, and frequently responds to questions about the universe from commentators with clarifying responses and teasing remarks.

The entire work is beautifully well written, with high quality characters, generally good pacing, and an incredible formation of atmosphere. Check it out here.