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Travel the Magic Highways with The Early Jack Vance, Volume Three, edited by Terry Dowling and Jonathan Strahan

Travel the Magic Highways with The Early Jack Vance, Volume Three, edited by Terry Dowling and Jonathan Strahan

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Magic Highways The Early Jack Vance-smallLast February, I wrote about how excited I was to find a copy of Dream Castles: The Early Jack Vance, Volume Two in the Dealer’s Room at Capricon. I had purchased Volume One, Hard Luck Diggings, when it was released in 2010; it is now long out of print and new copies start at around $450 at Amazon.com. Dream Castles is now sold out as well and prices are already starting to creep up, so I was pretty jazzed to find a copy when I did.

When I wrote enthusiastically about Dream Castles last year, I said:

Jack Vance, who at 96 years old is still with us, is one of the last remaining writers from the Golden Age of Science Fiction (the only other one I can think of is Fred Pohl). He is the author of some of the most celebrated SF and fantasy of the 20th Century, including “The Dragon Masters,” “The Last Castle,” and The Dying Earth novels.

Jack Vance died on May 26th of last year, and Frederik Pohl passed away less than four months later, robbing us of two of our genre’s brightest lights.

Still, their words are still with us — and what words they are. I have no idea how many volumes are projected in The Early Jack Vance (Volume Four, Minding the Stars, is scheduled to be released this month), but every one is a delight.

Part of that is the gorgeous covers by Tom Kidd; part is the high quality production and design from publisher Subterranean, and of course part of it is simply finally having the early pulp fiction of one of the greatest fantasy writers of the 20th Century collected for the first time.

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An Origin Story Mashed With a First-Contact Story: A Review of The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu

An Origin Story Mashed With a First-Contact Story: A Review of The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu

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The Lives Of Tao-smallThe Lives of Tao is the rare science fiction book set in modern times. No space exploration here, unless you mean the Quasing, the alien race that’s been quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) orchestrating human events since… well, since there were humans to orchestrate.

Quasing are beings so ethereal that they must live within a corporeal host to survive. Once inside a host, the Quasing can only leave if the host organism dies. In essence, Quasings are immortal as long as there is a living host nearby.

The Quasing’s main goal used to be to get humans to create interstellar travel so they could get to their home planet. Now, however, the Quasing are split into two factions (the good-guy Prophus and the bad-guy Genjix), whose main goal seems to be defeating the other. Tao is a member of the Prophus faction.

When Tao’s host dies during a mission against the Genjix, Tao needs to find a new host, pronto. Enter Roan Tan: an overweight programmer with low self-esteem who’s never run a mile, let alone held a gun, in real life. The next few months finds Tao whipping Roan into some semblance of a covert operative so they can thwart the Genjix’s secret project.

There’s plenty here to enjoy. Chu choreographs vivid action scenes, he injects humor seamlessly into dialogue, and he makes the world-building fun. Chu had all of history at his disposal, after all, and he took full advantage.

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Unearthing Solomon’s Vineyard

Unearthing Solomon’s Vineyard

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latimersolomonslatimer_solomons_vineyardJonathan Latimer is sadly forgotten today. There was a time when his screwball private eye series featuring the rarely sober Bill Crane were bestsellers and even made the transition to the silver screen in the late 1930s, courtesy of Universal Pictures, in a fun trio of B-movies. Latimer was a respected Hollywood screenwriter of the 1940s who crossed over to television from the 1950s through the early 1970s, writing for such series as Perry Mason and Columbo. He also achieved instant notoriety as the author of the hardboiled detective novel, Solomon’s Vineyard, which was banned almost upon publication in 1941 and remained unavailable in its original form in the U.S. for decades.

The general consensus is with Solomon’s Vineyard, Latimer turned up the heat on hardboiled detective fiction and blurred the line between pulp and pornography. Most critics will claim that even today, readers would be hard-pressed to find a tougher or more shocking private eye novel. While public domain copies riddled with typos are easy to come by, I finally tracked down an affordable copy of an earlier edition and read the book for myself. I was shocked as well, not by the content, but to learn the book is clearly intended as yet another of Latimer’s laugh-out-loud farces, despite its reputation.

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En Garde!

En Garde!

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Robin Hood towerA few weeks ago, my colleague Jon Sprunk gave us a marvelous post on the weapons of fantasy. Like Jon, the weapons were very much what attracted me to fantasy in the first place. But I loved swords and sword fighting before I ever picked up my first fantasy novel (The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, in which, by the way, the tradition of named weapons is followed with Peter’s sword Rhindon).

I’m not sure what got Jon started off, but what attracted me to sword fighting, and prepared me for the fight scenes in my favourite genre, were movie sword fights, beginning particularly with those in Errol Flynn’s Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin Hood.

It was from this last movie that I also gained my life-long love of archery, and the great archer Howard Hill, who did all the trick shots for Flynn, including the iconic splitting of the arrow.

Flynn did do all his own fencing in the films, but unlike his frequent opponent and co-star, Basil Rathbone, he didn’t take it up as a sport.

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Future Treasures: Nebula Awards Showcase 2014, edited by Kij Johnson

Future Treasures: Nebula Awards Showcase 2014, edited by Kij Johnson

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Nebula Awards Showcase 2014-smallI love the Nebula Awards Showcase volumes. For one thing, they have a glorious history — stretching all the way back to the very first volume in 1966, edited by the founder of SFWA himself, Damon Knight.

And for another thing… they include some damn good stories. The Nebula Award winning short fiction from the previous year (and as many nominees as will fit), as chosen by the members of Science Fiction Writers of America. Alongside those stories are excerpts from the award-winning novel; appreciations of this year’s Grand Master Winner, Gene Wolfe, by Neil Gaiman and Michael Dirda, a Wolfe story, and more. If you’re looking for a survey of the best in SF and fantasy from last year, you’d be hard pressed to do better than this.

The Nebula Awards Showcase volumes have been published annually since 1966, reprinting the winning and nominated stories in the Nebula Awards, voted on by the members of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America . The editor selected by SFWA’s anthology committee (chaired by Mike Resnick) is American fantasy writer Kij Johnson, author of three novels and associate director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas.

This year’s Nebula winners, and expected contributors, are Kim Stanley Robinson, Nancy Kress, Andy Duncan, and Aliette de Bodard, with E.C. Myers winning the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy Book.

Nebula Awards Showcase 2014 is edited by Kij Johnson and will be published on May 13, 2014 by Pyr. It is 291 pages, priced at $18 in trade paperback and $11.99 for the digital edition. New publisher Pyr has put together a handsome package for the book, with a colorful cover by Raoul Vitale. Keep an eye out for it — and don’t forget to have a look at the 2013 Nebula Award Nominations, announced earlier this week.

New Treasures: Shadow Ops: Breach Zone by Myke Cole

New Treasures: Shadow Ops: Breach Zone by Myke Cole

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Shadow Ops Breach Zone-smallApparently, Myke Cole never gets tired of being awesome. He wrote the awesome short story “Naktong Flow” for Black Gate 13 and all that awesome spilled over into his first novel Shadow Ops: Control Point, which Peter V. Brett called “Black Hawk Down meets the X-Men.” He was awesome when our roving reporter Patty Templeton interviewed him (totally awesome!), and in his essay “Selling Shadow Point,” which busted open a lot of myths about publishing your first fantasy novel. His second book Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier was, guess what, awesome, and he was even awesome last month at ConFusion (according to Howard Andrew Jones, who knows all about being awesome.)

Now here he is with his third novel, Shadow Ops: Breach Zone. And it’s awesome. Next time you run into Myke, do yourself a favor and ask how you, too, can become awesome.  On top of everything else, Myke’s a very gracious guy and I’m sure he’ll give you some pointers. And I bet they’ll be awesome.

The Great Reawakening did not come quietly. Across the country and in every nation, people began “coming up Latent,” developing terrifying powers — summoning storms, raising the dead, and setting everything they touch ablaze. Those who Manifest must choose: become a sheepdog who protects the flock or a wolf who devours it…

In the wake of a bloody battle at Forward Operating Base Frontier and a scandalous presidential impeachment, Lieutenant Colonel Jan Thorsson, call sign “Harlequin,” becomes a national hero and a pariah to the military that is the only family he’s ever known.

In the fight for Latent equality, Oscar Britton is positioned to lead a rebellion in exile, but a powerful rival beats him to the punch: Scylla, a walking weapon who will stop at nothing to end the human-sanctioned apartheid against her kind.

When Scylla’s inhuman forces invade New York City, the Supernatural Operations Corps are the only soldiers equipped to prevent a massacre. In order to redeem himself with the military, Harlequin will be forced to face off with this havoc-wreaking woman from his past, warped by her power into something evil…

Shadow Ops: Breach Zone is the third novel in the Shadow Ops series. It was published on January 28, 2014 by Ace Books. It is 370 pages, priced at $7.99 for both the paperback and digital versions.

J.K. Rowling, The Solitary House, and the Public Shaming of Lynn Shepherd

J.K. Rowling, The Solitary House, and the Public Shaming of Lynn Shepherd

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The Solitary House Lynn Shepherd-smallLynn Shepherd’s latest novel The Solitary House, set in the gas-lit world of London in 1850, features a pair of detectives — one of whom appears to be suffering from early stage Alzheimer’s — in the employ of a powerful financier with a dark past. It sounds fascinating, actually, exactly the kind of book I’d be interested in reading.

Of course, that was before she took a swipe at the world’s most popular fantasy writer in an ill-conceived and mean-spirited article last week at The Huffington Post, “If JK Rowling Cares About Writing, She Should Stop Doing It.”

I didn’t much mind Rowling when she was Pottering about. I’ve never read a word (or seen a minute) so I can’t comment on whether the books were good, bad or indifferent. I did think it a shame that adults were reading them… But The Casual Vacancy changed all that… That book sucked the oxygen from the entire publishing and reading atmosphere… what can an ordinary author do, up against such a Golgomath?

And then there was the whole Cuckoo’s Calling saga… The book dominated crime lists, and crime reviews in newspapers, and crime sections in bookshops, making it even more difficult than it already was for other books — just as well-written, and just as well-received — to get a look in. Rowling has no need of either the shelf space or the column inches, but other writers desperately do.

Now Rowling’s legions of fans are venting their anger at Shepherd in a cascade of 1-star reviews at Amazon,com, which are quickly overwhelming legitimate reviews of the book. As of this morning, there are 59; here are just a few snippets from the more entertaining examples.

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Vintage Treasures: And All Between by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Vintage Treasures: And All Between by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

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Zilpha Keatley Snyder And All Between-smallI love doing these Vintage Treasures articles. I could tell you they’re popular, or they bring some historical weight to the blog, but really, they’re just an excuse to scan some of my favorite old paperbacks and happily yak about them for a few paragraphs. It’s the simple things that keep you happy.

But every once in a while, it’s interesting to feature a book, and an author, that I know absolutely nothing about. And that’s the case with today’s subject, And All Between, a 1985 paperback from Tor and the second volume in the Green-Sky trilogy, by an author I’ve never heard of:  Zilpha Keatley Snyder.

I picked it up in the Dealer’s Room at Capricon 34 two weeks ago. I bought it from Erin and Rich at Starfarer’s Despatch for two bucks, because the cover was so gorgeous that I couldn’t say no. I mean, just look at it.

Yes, it’s the second book in a trilogy. But that just makes it more intriguing to a paperback collector like me. Now I have two more to track down. Sweet! I hope their covers are just as luscious (turns out, they are.)

To be honest, the back cover text kinds of make the novel sound like an episode of The Smurfs, which isn’t really a selling point.

The Erdlings live in the underground world below the magical root — banished there forever by the Ol-zhaan, supreme members of the Kindar, who live in the lofty branches of their forest home in Green-sky.

The Erdlings are starving and escape through the iron-strong root is impossible. Yet, when eight-year-old Teera learns that her pet Lapin must be used for food, she runs away — and climbs through a break in the root to the forest floor above.

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SFWA Announces the 2013 Nebula Award Nominations

SFWA Announces the 2013 Nebula Award Nominations

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A Stranger in Olondria-smallHappy day! The Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) announced the nominees for the 2013 Nebula Awards today.

So many novels! Last year, there were only six nominated; this year there are eight. Yowsah. Does that mean there were 33% more awesome novels published this year? Probably. That’s the most logical explanation.

Remember to vote! These awards count on your input to pick the winner. Ha-ha — except they don’t, of course. Only active members of SFWA can vote. Which they do, when they’re not loudly denying there’s harassment of women writers or spending all their time actually harassing women writers. Let’s hope the spectacle of the awards puts all the recent ugliness behind us — at least until the inevitable next blow up.

This year’s nominees are:

Novel

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler (Marian Wood)
The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman (Morrow)
Fire with Fire, Charles E. Gannon (Baen)
Hild, Nicola Griffith (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie (Orbit)
The Red: First Light, Linda Nagata (Mythic Island)
A Stranger in Olondria, Sofia Samatar (Small Beer)
The Golem and the Jinni, Helene Wecker (Harper)

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For Want of a Dragon… The Dragon Lord by David Drake

For Want of a Dragon… The Dragon Lord by David Drake

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oie_2323565902PNa1BCOne of the greatest incentives to start blogging about S&S was that it would force me to read more.

For the three or four years before I started my blog, I was reading only a dozen or so books a year, instead of the fifty to sixty I had in the past. If I wanted to have something to write about, I would actually have to read. That part’s worked out very well for me.

Coupled with that was the hope of getting to all those books I’d bought and been meaning to read for years — even decades in a few cases. I would leave used book stores with shopping bags full of books, heady with plans to read them all some day. A lot of the S&S books I hoped to blog about had been in those bags.

One was The Dragon Lord, David Drake’s tale of an Irish adventurer in the days of King Arthur. Last week, after ten or fifteen years, I pulled it from its dusty purgatory on the bookshelf.

According to the ISFDB, Drake has written seventy novels and over a dozen collections of stories. I’ve read my share of his fiction over the years, including the early Hammer’s Slammers stories and the horror collection From the Heart of Darkness. A few years ago, I read and reviewed his stories about Vettius, a legate in the late Roman Empire. While I thoroughly enjoyed those stories, I had no plans to read Drake again any time soon.

For me to choose to read a David Drake book at this point means that something hooked me. It’s nothing against Drake, but at my age I’ve got stacks of other books picked out. I need a reason to pick out a back row book. In the case of The Dragon Lord, the impetus was a picture from Wayne Barlowe’s Guide to Fantasy.

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