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Future Treasures: Meeting Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan

Future Treasures: Meeting Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan

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Meeting Infinity-smallI’ve been very impressed with Jonathan Strahan’s Infinity anthology series. There have been four so far: Engineering Infinity (2010), Edge of Infinity (2012), Reach For Infinity, and now Meeting Infinity, due December 1st. Publisher Solaris has abandoned the mass market format, which makes me sad, but the new trade paperback is still reasonably priced, especially for the digital version.

The world we are living in is changing every day. We surf future shock every morning when we get out of bed. And with every passing day we are increasingly asked: how do we have to change to live in the future we are faced with?

Whether it’s climate change, inundated coastlines and drowned cities; the cramped confines of a tin can hurtling through space to the outer reaches of our Solar System; or the rush of being uploaded into some cyberspace, our minds and bodies are going to have to change and change a lot. Meeting Infinity will be one hundred thousand words of SF filled with action and adventure that attempts to answer the question: how much do we need to change to meet tomorrow and live in the future? The incredible authors contributing tho this collection are: Gregory Benford, James S.A. Corey, Aliette de Bodard, Kameron Hurley, Simon Ings, Madeline Ashby, John Barnes, Gwyneth Jones, Nancy Kress, Yoon Ha Lee, Ian McDonald, Ramez Naam, An Owomoyela, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, Bruce Sterling and Sean Williams

The books of the “Infinity Project” trace an arc: from the present day into the far future, and now from the broad canvas of interstellar space to the most intimate space of all — ourselves.

Meeting Infinity will be published by Solaris on December 1, 2015. It is 272 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback, and $8.99 for the digital edition.

Halloween Reads: The Best Spooky Short Fiction

Halloween Reads: The Best Spooky Short Fiction

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The Bloody Chamber-smallHalloween is upon us, and there’s no better way to get into the spirit than with some spooky short fiction. While I love candy, I’d rather have a holiday where people hand out their favorite creepy stories from their stoops and porches, so I’ve gathered my list of the recent releases I would give out this year here (if I had infinite funds and didn’t live in a third-floor walkup, that is). Instead of upsetting your dentist and risking a sugar high, I heartily recommend that you go forth and gorge on some wickedly delicious fiction this weekend!

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter: Carter is, of course, a seminal figure in speculative fiction and horror, and the recent edition of The Bloody Chamber: And Other Stories released in celebration of what would have been her 75th birthday reminds us all why. These dark fairytales still have a spine-tingling effect, no matter how often you read them: Kelly Link, who keeps a copy of The Bloody Chamber with her wherever she’s living, calls Carter’s writing “electrifying” in her introduction. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a tale as suspenseful and gory as “The Bloody Chamber,” and the mood and visceral images will haunt you hours after you’ve taken your eyes off the page.

Of Sorrow and Such by Angela Slatter: Another Angela who’s a master of dark fantasy and horror, Slatter has been sending shivers down readers’ spines with her short stories for years. Of Sorrow and Such takes place in Edda’s Meadow, where the witch Patience Gideon lives in peace with her adopted daughter, Gilly: until a wounded shapeshifter comes to their door, reviving old secrets and bringing new danger. It’s an ideal Halloween tale, filled with macabre magic, where the witches are by turns sympathetic and iron hearted, and where the evil of ordinary men proves the most dangerous threat of all.

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New Treasures: Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson

New Treasures: Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson

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Shadows of Self-smallTwo years ago, after the release of his novel The Rithmatist, I noted that Brandon Sanderson was one of the hardest-working writers in this industry. By my count, I put his production for 2013 at 2,046 pages of fiction — still less than his output for 2010, but who’s counting.

It’s 2015, and what the heck — let’s count. Using Al von Ruff’s Internet Science Fiction Database, I did a very rough tabulation of Sanderson’s output over the last six years, considering fiction books only (no short stories or non-fiction).

2015 (4 books, so far) 980 pages
2014 (4 books) 1,802 pages
2013 (6 books) 2,046 pages
2012 (2 books) 264 pages
2011 (3 books) 364 pages
2010 (4 books) 2,162 pages

It’s up and down, as you might expect. But for those counting along at home, that’s 7,618 pages over six years, or 1,270 pages per year. That’s pretty damned impressive.

Of course, we don’t count success as a writer by raw output, but by quality. And there, too, Sanderson excels. In 2006 and 2007 he was nominated for the John W. Campbell award for best New Writer, and he has won the David Gemmell Legend Award twice, for The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance, the first two novels in his ambitious ten-volume series The Stormlight Archive. His 2013 novella The Emperor’s Soul was nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and won the Hugo Award.

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Hearing Gulf: A Conversation With Allyson Johnson

Hearing Gulf: A Conversation With Allyson Johnson

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This Gulf of Time and Stars-smallI’m delighted to have the chance to introduce you to the voice of the audible.com audiobook edition of This Gulf of Time and Stars, as well as the Trade Pact trilogy. Hi Allyson!

Allyson: Hi Julie! It is truly a pleasure to be having a conversation with you about the Trade Pact world. Ordinarily, the only person I’m able to speak with about a book is the engineer who’s recording me. So this is a real treat!

For me too. I didn’t expect to be involved with the audiobook process at all, let alone meet the actor! You and I have had a few phone calls to discuss vocabulary over the four books. Anyone who clicks on the sample of the latest will know at once what a wonderful job you’ve done, Allyson. I know you prepared well in advance. You told me you listened to your own recordings of A Thousand Words For Stranger, Ties of Power, and To Trade the Stars before you tackled Gulf. What did that help you accomplish?

Thanks so much for your kind words. To be honest, although I tuned into a few choice sections of the other two titles, I only had time to listen to Trade all the way through, prior to recording Gulf. But I always take copious notes about character descriptions, vocal characteristics, accent choices, pronunciations, etc. whenever I prep a book. So I was able to refer back to the index cards I’d previously created for the trilogy and create a spreadsheet that would allow for quick and easy reference in the booth. It had, however, been three years since I’d last entered Trade Pact space, as it were, and there’s nothing like hearing long passages of dialogue to refresh my mind. Listening also reminded me of plot points I hadn’t thought about in a long time, which allowed me to pick up where the story left off once I actually began narrating Gulf. I try to be mindful of the fact that listeners sometimes elect to hear books in a series back-to-back. So I need to make the transitions between those stories as seamless as possible.

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Future Treasures: The Geomancer by Clay and Susan Griffith

Future Treasures: The Geomancer by Clay and Susan Griffith

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The Geomancer-smallClay and Susan Griffith are the authors of The Vampire Empire trilogy from Pyr, set in an alternate future in which a horrible plague of vampires swept first over the northern regions of the world in 1870, and the popular Crown & Key trilogy from Del Rey. Now they’ve launched a brand new urban fantasy series set in the Vampire Empire universe, featuring the vampiric couple Gareth and Adele.

The uneasy stalemate between vampires and humans is over. Adele and Gareth are bringing order to a free Britain, but bloody murders in London raise the specter that Adele’s geomancy is failing and the vampires might return. A new power could tilt the balance back to the vampire clans. A deranged human called the Witchfinder has surfaced on the Continent, serving new vampire lords. This geomancer has found a way to make vampires immune to geomancy and intends to give his masters the ability to kill humans on a massive scale.

The apocalyptic event in Edinburgh weakened Adele’s geomantic abilities. If the Witchfinder can use geomancy against humanity, she may not have the power to stop him. If she can’t, there is nowhere beyond his reach and no one he cannot kill.

From a Britain struggling to rebuild to the vampire capital of Paris, from the heart of the Equatorian Empire to a vampire monastery in far-away Tibet, old friends and past enemies return. Unexpected allies and terrible new villains arise. Adele and Gareth fight side-by-side as always, but they can never be the same if they hope to survive.

The Geomancer: Vampire Empire will be published by Pyr on November 3, 2015. It is 319 pages, priced at $17 in trade paperback and $11.99 for the digital version. The cover is by Chris McGrath.

Werewolves, Haunted Castles, and Scottish Legends: Terror By Night by R. Chetwynd-Hayes

Werewolves, Haunted Castles, and Scottish Legends: Terror By Night by R. Chetwynd-Hayes

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Terror by Night Chetwynd-Hayes-small

Terror By Night
By R. Chetwynd-Hayes
Tandem (186 pages, $1, June 1974)

I’m reasonably familiar with the horror and SF genres, but I have to admit that the name R. Chetwynd-Hayes didn’t ring any bells. But the kind of tacky cover — and the fact that this collection dated from 1974, before the great horror boom of the Eighties kicked in — was enough for me to take this one out for a spin. Chetwynd-Hayes wrote about ten novels and many more collections during his long career, most of them in the horror genre but some leaning more toward SF.

I’d place most of the stories in this collection in the category of solid but not exceptional, with the exception of a pair of stories that stood out. I liked it well enough that I’ll be keeping an eye out for more of his books in the future. I’ve listed all of the stories but only reviewed the ones I found interesting.

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New Treasures: Shadows of Carcosa, edited by D. Thin

New Treasures: Shadows of Carcosa, edited by D. Thin

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Shadows of Carcosa-smallI think there’s something about October that drives publishers to repackage classic horror tales for a new generation.

Earlier this week we looked at Leslie S. Klinger’s new anthology In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe, which collects tales published between 1816-1914; today it’s D. Thin’s handsome new book from New York Review Book Classics, Shadows of Carcosa: Tales of Cosmic Horror by Lovecraft, Chambers, Machen, Poe, and Other Masters of the Weird, published on October 6th. It collects tales from roughly the same era, 1833-1927, all with the theme of the cosmically weird.

“The true weird tale has something more than a secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains. An atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; a hint of that most terrible conception of the human brain — a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.” —H. P. Lovecraft

This collection features some of the greatest masters of extreme terror, among them Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Bram Stoker, and Henry James, and includes such classic works as Arthur Machen’s “The White People,” Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows,” and of course Lovecraft’s own weird and hideous “The Colour Out of Space.”

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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Down These Mean Streets the Obsessive Biographer Must Go

Down These Mean Streets the Obsessive Biographer Must Go

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NOTE: The following article was first published on February 28, 2010. Thank you to John O’Neill for agreeing to reprint these early articles, so they are archived at Black Gate which has been my home for over 5 years and 250 articles now. Thank you to Deuce Richardson without whom I never would have found my way. Minor editorial changes have been made in some cases to the original text.

Long EmbraceChandler catLiterary biographies can sometimes prove to be a peculiar form of torture. I suppose their purpose is to see if the reader is still capable of mustering the same affection for the author’s work after reveling in every personal flaw the biographer was able to uncover. Biographies are the ultimate way of evening the score with those whose talent we will never equal. They reassure us that the gifted individuals who gained immortality through their work were certainly no better and frequently even worse human beings than those of us who admire them. Thanks to literary biographies, many view the father of sword & sorcery as a clinically depressed mama’s boy angry at the world and the father of hardboiled fiction as…well, let’s face it… there was nothing you could ever say about Hammett he didn’t already tell you about himself. This article concerns itself with Judith Freeman’s biography of Raymond Chandler, The Long Embrace.

I would not say that the book is unworthy of attention. Judith Freeman is an exceptional writer. She traces Chandler’s footsteps (even though it has been more than half a century since his death) by visiting every place he lived, worked, and vacationed and describes what she finds in a voice that Chandler fans will frequently recognize. It is a voice that is as evocative of Chandler’s work as the book’s title. The trouble is that Freeman isn’t writing a new Philip Marlowe mystery so much as transposing herself in Chandler’s shoes as a fellow author and kindred spirit. As the book unravels, she comes to share Chandler’s devotion to his wife and muse of over thirty years. The result is a bit like watching Otto Preminger’s classic film noir, Laura (1944) in that The Long Embrace shifts its focus and unfolds into a growing love story between a living person and a dead woman the narrator never met. Some readers will find the result enchanting, others will just find it creepy.

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Cover Reveal: Mechanical Failure by Joe Zieja

Cover Reveal: Mechanical Failure by Joe Zieja

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Mechanical Failure-small

Saga has released over two dozen books in 2015 — pretty darn good for a brand spanking new imprint — and their 2016 line up promises to be even more stellar, with titles from Kat Howard, A. Lee Martinez, Genevieve Valentine, and Black Gate author Frederic S. Durbin. Last week we gave you a peek at Mike Brooks’ debut novel Dark Run, a space opera SFFWorld calls “a Firefly-like tale.”

This week we take a look at Zor Zieja’s Mechanical Failure, the tale of a smooth-talking ex-sergeant and smuggler forced back into military service just as rumors of war begin to escalate, on sale from Saga Press June 7, 2016.

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Ten Terrifying Canadian Books For Halloween

Ten Terrifying Canadian Books For Halloween

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Ten Terrifying Canadian Books

Helen Marshall tipped us off this morning to this marvelous little article at the CBC website, promoting “10 of the scariest Canadian reads… From horrific dystopias to creepy, creaky old mansions.”

There’s plenty of familiar titles on the list, from Margaret Atwood’s famous bestseller The Handmaid’s Tale to Nick Cutter’s breakout novel The Troop, to Nalo Hopkinson’s dark fantasy Brown Girl in the Ring. But there’s also a nice assortment of surprises, including James Grainger’s tale of a weekend reunion of old friends that goes horribly wrong, Harmless; Samuel Archibald’s upcoming collection Arvida, packed with tales of wild beasts, haunted houses and spooky road trips; Jacqueline Baker’s novel of H.P. Lovecraft’s secret assistant, The Broken Hours; and Helen Marshall’s own 2012 collection Hair Side, Flesh Side.

It’s a great guide to some of the best seasonal scares north of the border. Check it out — and click on any if the pics in the article to read the full review.