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The Dark Net, Encryption Keys, and Lethal Secrets: The Silence of Six by E. C. Myers

The Dark Net, Encryption Keys, and Lethal Secrets: The Silence of Six by E. C. Myers

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The Silence of Six-smallThe Silence of Six
E. C. Myers
Adaptive Books (368 pages, November 5, 2014, $17.99 in hardcover)

When we meet Max Stein, he and his friends are attending a presidential debate hosted at their high school. This isn’t just any debate — the candidates are there to discuss education and internet regulations, both of which are topics of great concern to the youth of America. To highlight this, the moderator fields questions posted through Panjea, a popular social network. As the debate is about to begin, Max gets a text from an anonymous number: a passcode several digits long from a person who identifies himself as STOP.

Max instantly knows STOP’s identity: Evan Baxter, his best friend and fellow hacker. Moments later, Evan — wearing a hood and masking his voice — hacks into the debate’s live feed and posts a live video question: “What is the silence of six, and what are you going to do about it?” Then, horribly, Evan kills himself with a gun on camera.

Max is devastated. While he and Evan had grown apart over the past several months — Max had left the hacking world behind to pursue soccer and girls and popularity — he still considers Evan his best friend. He knows Evan wouldn’t have committed such a heinous, irreversible act without a good reason; he also knows the passcode that Evan gave him is the key that will unlock everything.

With no one to trust and the Feds on his tail, Max goes on the run in search of what Evan knew. His discovery will change how the world views social media forever. That is, if he can make it public before he becomes the seventh person silenced…

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Adventures In Italy: Calvino’s Italian Folktales

Adventures In Italy: Calvino’s Italian Folktales

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Blue FolktalesI grew up on Hans Christian Anderson, the Brothers Grimm, and the myriad anthologies of Andrew Lang: The Blue Book Of Fairy Tales, The Brown Book Of Fairy Tales, The Red Book Of Fairy Tales, etc. Most of these were read aloud by my father, so I received them as part of humanity’s long oral tradition, a fact for which I am now very grateful. Aesop, too, arrived in my life as something overheard rather than read.

All of the above work shared a common heritage. In fact, prior to high school at least, they led me to believe that fairy tales were specific to Europe, something vaguely Nordic, and familiar to the degree that the characters within the stories were uniformly white and spoke English. Who knows when it finally occurred to me that these stories were translated, and that many had international sources that transcended culture, race, and geography.

By 1980, when Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales finally arrived in an English-language edition (translated by George Martin), I was moving into different myths: Tolkien, certainly, but also the grittier, street-savvy story-telling of S.E. Hinton, Robert Cormier, and early Bruce Springsteen. The publication of Italian Folktales made not a ripple in my life. Indeed, I eventually read several other Calvino classics (If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler…, The Baron In the Trees, and The Non-Existent Knight) before realizing his omnibus folktales even existed.

It took me another ten years to order a copy and crack the covers, and ten more still to really delve into this enormous, 760 page trade paperback (Harcourt). What finally tipped me over the edge was the need for a new book to read to my adventure-obsessed youngest son.

At the outset, I admit to being worried that Calvino might not be a hit.

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Tell Me Why

Tell Me Why

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The Dark Tower The Gunslinger-smallSomeone please tell me. Why? Why do we do this to ourselves, we devotees of science fiction, horror, and (especially) fantasy? What did we do to deserve this? What crime did we commit in some previous existence that we now have to expiate with such bitter tears? Judge, I deserve to know! I demand answers!

But… I see that you too have questions, like, “What the hell are you talking about?”

Let me explain. I just finished The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger by Stephen King. Seduced by the very cool Michael Whelan cover, I bought this damn thing in 1988 when it first came out and this week I figured it was finally time to read it.

There can be no rational explanation for my behavior, as the book is only the first of seven volumes that King wrote to tell this story (not counting a standalone book that he added after the main sequence was finished), and of course (of course!) they get longer and longer. This one was not much over 200 pages, but apparently King soon shook off his delirium and said “What am I doing? I’m STEPHEN FLIPPING KING!!!” and the succeeding volumes rapidly ballooned to 600 pages, 700… until the final book, 2004’s The Dark Tower, tipped the scales at almost 1,100 pages.

Considering that I’m still waiting on George Martin to put up or shut up before death (his or mine) intervenes, and finish A Song of Ice and Fire, vindicating all of us who’ve already hacked our way through over 4,000 pages of that cursed tale, starting another ambitious, multivolume phonebook series is sheer, unadulterated insanity.

Why? WHY?! Why do we do this to ourselves? People who read westerns or mysteries know no such madness. Oh, they have series all right, but not like we do. Manacling ourselves to extended epics that take up half their writers’ and readers’ lives, built out of mile-high stacks of ever-expanding, elephantine tomes – this seems to be the particular curse of fantastic fiction readers. (I won’t even go into the fact that the 1988 edition I read has been rendered obsolete by a revised edition that King published in 2003; it took him so long to write the sequence that he felt the style of the first book didn’t fit with the rest any more. Thanks Steve, but by God, this is the one I paid my $10.95 for twenty seven years ago, and this is the one I’m reading!)

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Terry Pratchett’s ‘City Watch’

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Terry Pratchett’s ‘City Watch’

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CityWatch_GuardsCoverAs readers of this column are certainly aware, I’m quite the fan of detective and private eye novels. Beyond just the guy that the whole thing is named after. As I mentioned in last week’s post on Isaac Asimov’s Caves of Steel, I’ve made several posts about the genre.

Related yet distinct is the police procedural (though some stories, like the aforementioned Caves, fit in both genres). As you can guess from the name, these focus on police officers, rather than private operatives. They are all over television, such as Castle, CSI (insert name here), Hill Street Blues, and brand new shows like Battle Creek. Ranging from Dragnet and The Streets of San Francisco to Hawaii Five O (which lasted 12 seasons before coming back in its current incarnation).

The literary police procedural, while popular, has a lower profile than its television version and is definitely overshadowed by the private eye story.

Evan Hunter (better known as Ed McBain), who I consider THE master of the mystery short story, wrote more tales of New York’s 87th Precinct than I can count: and I can count to one, two, three, many (that’s a Terry Pratchett joke). Probably my favorite straight police procedurals are Tony Hillerman’s novels about The Navajo Tribal Police. The subject of a future post, they are superb police mysteries, set in the Indian reservation lands of the Four Corners. (I ended up doing a pretty solid three-part series on those fantastic books)

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New Treasures: The Haunting of Sunshine Girl by Paige McKenzie and Alyssa B. Sheinmel

New Treasures: The Haunting of Sunshine Girl by Paige McKenzie and Alyssa B. Sheinmel

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The Haunting of Sunshine Girl-smallThe Haunting of Sunshine Girl is a popular YouTube web series starring Paige McKenzie, created by Nick Hagen and Mercedes Rose. The series focuses of 16-year old Sunshine following her move to Washington state from Texas with her mother, as she enters a new school, meets new friends (and boys)… and discovers her hew house is haunted by a host of malevolent spirits.

The Haunting of Sunshine Girl is the first book based on the web serial, and it has received a lot of attention all on its own. Written by star Paige McKenzie and author Alyssa B. Sheinmel (Second Star, The Beautiful Between), it is the opening book in a promising horror series aimed at young adults.

Shortly after her sixteenth birthday, Sunshine Griffith and her mother Kat move from sunny Austin, Texas, to the rain-drenched town of Ridgemont, Washington. Though Sunshine is adopted, she and her mother have always been close, sharing a special bond filled with laughter and inside jokes. But from the moment they arrive, Sunshine feels her world darken with an eeriness she cannot place. And even if Kat doesn’t recognize it, Sunshine knows that something about their new house is just … creepy.

In the days that follow, things only get stranger. Sunshine is followed around the house by an icy breeze, phantom wind slams her bedroom door shut, and eventually, the laughter Sunshine hears on her first night evolves into sobs. She can hardly believe it, but as the spirits haunting her house become more frightening — and it becomes clear that Kat is in danger — Sunshine must accept what she is, pass the test before her, and save her mother from a fate worse than death.

The Haunting of Sunshine Girl was published by Weinstein Books on March 24, 2015. It is 304 pages, priced at $16 in hardcover and $9.99 for the digital edition. Check out the YouTube series here.

Future Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas: 2015 edited by Paula Guran

Future Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas: 2015 edited by Paula Guran

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The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2015-smallJust this morning, in my article on Peter Crowther’s anthology Cities, I observed that the novella is the natural length for fantasy and science fiction. The novella has an exceptional history in this field, from H.G. Wells “Time Machine” to John W. Campbell’s “Who Goes There?” to Clifford D. Simak’s “The Big Front Yard” and Fritz Leiber’s “Ill Met in Lankhmar.” Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of places that publish them these days… and even fewer that reprint them. Only a handful of Year’s Best volumes can afford to make space for novellas, which means that, if you miss their original appearance (frequently in small press outlets), you may never see some of the finest works published every year.

Paula Guran has set out to rectify that with a brand new anthology series: The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas: 2015, from Prime Books. It’s the companion volume to Rich Horton’s popular The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy from the same publisher, which publishes its seventh volume this year, and Paula’s own Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror. Here’s the description.

The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novellas: 2015 inaugurates a new annual series of anthologies featuring some of the year’s best novella-length science fiction and fantasy. Novellas, longer than short stories but shorter than novels, are a rich and rewarding literary form that can fully explore tomorrow’s technology, the far reaches of the future, thought-provoking imaginings, fantastic worlds, and entertaining concepts with the impact of a short story and the detailed breadth of a novel. Gathering a wide variety of excellent SF and fantasy, this anthology of “short novels” showcases the talents of both established masters and new writers.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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Vintage Treasures: Cities edited by Peter Crowther

Vintage Treasures: Cities edited by Peter Crowther

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Cities Peter Crowther-smallIt’s been said many times that the ideal length for SF and fantasy is the novella. Long enough to establish a fascinating setting, and short enough to pack a punch. It’s been my experience that this is very true — much of the best fantasy I’ve read has been at novella length, and the format has a long history of excellence.

Peter Crowther is one of the most accomplished editors in the genre, and he’s produced some terrific anthologies over the years. But I think perhaps I’m fondest of his 2004 collection of fantastic novellas featuring four very different fantasy cities, by four of the biggest names in the field: China Mieville, Michael Moorcock, Paul di Filippo, and Geoff Ryman.

The city has always loomed large in the imaginary landscape of fantasy. Cities celebrates the fantastic potential of the city, whether in the terrible grandeur of China Mieville’s ruined London, a city overrun by a sudden, fantastical invasion, or the unsettling high-tech, high-paranoia of Geoff Ryman’s urban future. Elsewhere, heaven and hell snap at the heels of the inhabitants of Paul di Filippo’s Linear City, and Michael Moorcock invites us to join Jerry Cornelius on a tour of the uneasy streets of a future built on the ruins of September 11th. Here is fiction from four of the genre’s most respected names: an A-to-Z to the streets of the imagination.

With four of the biggest names in fantasy fiction united in one volume, each with a novella that has never been available outside the collectors’ market, Cities is the fourth of Peter Crowther’s Foursight anthologies and is proof positive that the fantastic novella is alive and thriving.

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New Treasures: Unwrapped Sky by Rjurik Davidson

New Treasures: Unwrapped Sky by Rjurik Davidson

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Unwrapped Sky-smallWhen Unwrapped Sky, the debut fantasy novel by Australian writer Rjurik Davidson, appeared in hardcover last April, it got solid reviews for its innovative world building and original setting. Locus praised its “tough urban setting, influenced by noir mysteries as well as steampunk,” and Hannu Rajaniemi, author of The Quantum Thief, called it “Brilliant… Caeli-Amur is one of the more memorable cities in recent fantasy.”

Rjurik Davidson is already being acclaimed as a young master of the New Weird. Unwrapped Sky arrived in paperback earlier this month, and I picked up a copy as soon as I saw it. This looks like the kind of book I could lose myself in.

A hundred years ago, the Minotaurs saved Caeli-Amur from conquest. Now, three very different people may hold the keys to the city’s survival.

Once, it is said, gods used magic to create reality, with powers that defied explanation. But the magic — or science, if one believes those who try to master the dangers of thaumaturgy — now seems more like a dream. Industrial workers for House Technis, farmers for House Arbor, and fisher folk of House Marin eke out a living and hope for a better future. But the philosopher-assassin Kata plots a betrayal that will cost the lives of godlike Minotaurs; the ambitious bureaucrat Boris Autec rises through the ranks as his private life turns to ashes; and the idealistic seditionist Maximilian hatches a mad plot to unlock the vaunted secrets of the Great Library of Caeli-Enas, drowned in the fabled city at the bottom of the sea, its strangeness visible from the skies above.

In a novel of startling originality and riveting suspense, these three people, reflecting all the hopes and dreams of the ancient city, risk everything for a future that they can create only by throwing off the shackles of tradition and superstition, as their destinies collide at ground zero of a conflagration that will transform the world… or destroy it.

Unwrapped Sky was published by Tor on March 3, 2015. It is 516 pages, priced at $8.99 for both the paperback and digital editions. The cover art is by Allen Williams.

Book Clubs. No, I Said BOOK Clubs. Not The Other Kind

Book Clubs. No, I Said BOOK Clubs. Not The Other Kind

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Station ElevenAre there many of you out there who are members of books clubs? I have other questions, but my first is: Why?

I know why I joined one, and, frankly, I’m trying to compare my own experiences to those of others, see if I can find some common ground. Answer some questions that have popped up over the last few months. Like, do men join book clubs? Do all clubs read the same kinds of books?

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start with why I joined a book club in the first place. In a way, it’s because I both read too much, and not enough. As a fantasy writer, my percentages probably break down something like this: 40% fantasy; 20% SF; 20% crime and mystery; 20% research and related materials (such as posts in Black Gate magazine).

That’s probably not entirely accurate, but it’s close enough to have made me feel that my reading was getting narrower than it has been in the past; maybe I was getting a little too comfortable and stuck in my ways, maybe I needed to shake things up. I think I was looking for the type of experience that’s often found in university and college, where there’s so much required reading, and so much that’s possibly outside of the student’s comfort zone.

Keeping in mind that outside of one’s comfort zone is a place writers often need to be.

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Launching in June: The Year’s Best Military SF and Space Opera edited by David Afsharirad

Launching in June: The Year’s Best Military SF and Space Opera edited by David Afsharirad

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The Year's Best Military SF and Space Opera-smallI count no less than nine Best New SF, Fantasy and Horror volumes on the market today. We’ve already covered four of the more interesting titles coming later this year:

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine, edited by Jonathan Strahan (May 12)
The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2015, edited by Paula Guran (June 24)
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, edited by John Joseph Adams and Joe Hill (October 6)
Year’s Best Weird Fiction Volume Two, edited by Kathe Koja (October)

and I’ll be reporting on some of the others in the coming weeks.

Still, I was intrigued to see Baen is launching a brand new volume with a very specific focus early this summer. The Year’s Best Military SF and Space Opera will be edited by David Afsharirad, and promises to be the first of its kind — a Best of the Year volume exclusively devoted to military and adventure SF tales. I enjoy adventure SF, and I especially enjoy Space Opera with pulp sensibilities. And that seems to be exactly what this volume has in mind, going by the blurb.

With an introduction by best-selling military science fiction author David Drake and selected by editor David Afsharirad from the top short story markets in the field, here are the most thrilling, pulse-pounding, and thought-provoking stories of the past year. Stories of future military men and women, space opera on a grand scale, and edge-of-your-seat adventure tales in the pulp tradition, from giants of the genre to brilliant up-and-comers.

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