The Body Scout (Orbit, September 2021). Cover by Lauren Panepinto
I rejoined the Science Fiction Book Club over fifteen years ago, because it was the only way to get Jonathan Strahan’s fabulous Best Short Novels anthologies. After a corporate shake-up in 2007 led to the retirement of editor Ellen Asher — who’d been at the helm since 1973 — and Andrew Wheeler was laid off, the SFBC sadly stopped producing original anthologies and those delicious omnibus volumes. I miss them.
I’m still a member, even though their Things to Come newsletter isn’t as interested as it used to be. Partly it’s because they choose my novel The Robots of Gotham as a Feature Selection back in 2018 (a dream I’d had since I was a kid). But also because I still discover interesting books through the club that I don’t find anywhere else. Like Lincoln Michel’s debut novel The Body Scout, a near-future SF noir that looks very intriguing indeed. Here’s the description.
Giving the Devil His Due (Running Wild Press, September 2021). Cover uncredited
I’m getting word from a number of readers that a recent charity anthology, Giving the Devil His Due, is well worth a look. Published in September by The Pixel Project in partnership with Running Wild Press, it contains reprints and new fiction from Stephen Graham Jones, Kelley Armstrong, Nicholas Kaufmann, Nisi Shawl, Peter Tieryas, Dana Cameron, Jason Sanford, and many others. It was compiled by ex-Ace/Roc editor Rebecca Brewer; here’s the intriguing description.
Giving The Devil His Due is inspired by award-winning Horror author Stephen Graham Jones’s story “Hell On The Homefront Too” about a battered wife who finally gets rid of her abusive war-hero-turned-zombie husband. The theme of the anthology is the comeuppance of men who commit violence against women and girls. With a Twilight Zone vibe, this anthology evokes the spirit of Rod Serling to tell compelling stories that will help get the conversation about violence against women started amongst book lovers and fandoms worldwide while sending a clear message that misogyny, toxic masculinity, and violence against women is unacceptable.
Clarence Young was the first one to tip me off to the book, and it wasn’t long before I found Seven Jane’s enthusiastic review at Nerd Daily. Here’s a slice.
Passchendaele: A New History (Penguin, 2017). Cover by Jeremy Sancha
What a book this is. An absolutely brilliant new assessment of one of the hardest and bloodiest battles ever fought. The engagement, technically Ypres III, popularly called Passchendaele, which was launched to capture the U-boat pens on the Belgian coast, and pitted the British Expeditionary Force (including divisions from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa) and parts of the French Army against the forces of the German Empire, lasted from June to November 1917, took place in a landscape from Hell, and claimed over half a million casualties. Nick Lloyd’s new book takes a number of different perspectives on the battle and tells many untold stories.
We get POVs from everywhere, including the High Command, the Royal Flying Corps, the politicians in London and of course, the mud-spattered Tommies in the teeth of the maelstrom. It’s a very accessible and informative read, painting vivid pictures of bitter hand-to-hand fighting for possession of railway heads, blockhouses, bunkers and trenches. It brings you closer than you could imagine to the terror of unrelenting shellfire, flame-throwers, poison gas and machine guns, but it isn’t all a story of doom.
Manifest Destiny (Berkley Books, 1980). Cover by John Rush
I started buying science fiction magazines in 1977, after learning such things existed in the pages of paperback anthologies edited by my new favorite author, Isaac Asimov. I pedaled my bike off Rockcliffe air base in Ottawa in search of a corner store, and found one with a well stocked magazine rack. Hiding behind Better Homes and Gardens and the latest issue of Newsweek I found a row of compact marvels with colorful covers depicting spaceships and far planets. They included Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Amazing, and the second issue of Asimov’s very own magazine, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.
I still recall that bike ride home, clutching Asimov’s and Analog in one hand, and staying up late to read them. It was a good time to discover SF magazines. A lot of new writers were exploding on the scene. One of the biggest was Barry B. Longyear, who published his first story in Asimov’s in 1978, and in 1980 became the first person to win the Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in the same year.
Out of the Ruins (Titan Books, September 2021). Cover by Shutterstock
I’ve spent a lot of energy over the past few years decrying the death of paperback science fiction anthology. So when they do still occasionally appear, I’m inclined to celebrate them — especially when they’re as promising as Out of the Ruins, a collection of apocalyptic tales old and new from a stellar list of contributors: Samuel R. Delany, Ramsey Campbell, Lavie Tidhar, Emily St John Mandel, Carmen Maria Machado, Charlie Jane Anders, Nina Allan, China Miéville, Clive Barker, Paul Di Filippo, and many others.
This abandoned and unfinished long draft section may not make a great deal of sense unless you’ve already read IMMORTAL MUSE (DAW Books 2014), an alternate history fantasy novel about exactly what the title implies: a genuine muse who is immortal, who also happens to have been Perenelle Flamel (b. October 13, 1320), the wife of the alchemist Nicolas Flamel.
The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series IV (DAW, July 1976). Cover by Michael Whelan
The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series IV was the fourth volume in DAW’s Year’s Best Horror, copyright and printed in 1976. This one introduced a different editor, American author Gerald W. Page (1939–). Page had edited the successful weird tales magazine Witches & Sorcery from 1971 to 1974, and some stories from his ‘zine had made the earlier volumes of Year’s Best Horror. My guess is this put him on Don Wollheim’s radar when he sought out a new editor. I couldn’t find any information on why British editor Richard Davis had been replaced; but as I said in my review of The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III, I was disappointed by his last volume, especially since his first two were so good.
Michael Whelan (1950–) returns as the cover artist. Whelan is a great artist and though this cover is in something of a sci-fi, surrealistic mode, I think it sufficiently announces the book as a horror anthology.
Under Page’s editorship, The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series IV definitely has a different flavor and lineup. The front cover proclaims at the bottom that it is “The unique annual of weird tales.” And many of the authors included are indeed associated with the older Weird Tales pulp era, including Frank Belknap Long, Joseph Payne Brennan, E. Hoffman Price, H. Warner Munn, and Fritz Leiber.
Far Out (Night Shade, July 2021). Cover by Julie Dillon
When The Sin in the Steel, the opening novel in Ryan Van Loan’s Fall of the Gods trilogy, arrived last year, I was immediately intrigued. Well, I was once I read Aidan Moher’s review at Tor.com, anyway. Especially this part:
The Sin in the Steel is a rip-roaring epic fantasy that mixes a genuinely unique world with an equally standout magic system. It’s full of characters you’ll root for and despise, who’ll make your skin crawl, and who you’ll cheer on from the sidelines. Packed full of action, tempered by genuinely thoughtful themes about mental health and trust. The Sin in the Steel tells a good self-contained narrative… If Scott Lynch wrote Pirates of the Caribbean, it’d be a lot like The Sin in the Steel.
Yeah, it was that last sentence that got me. At least I’m predictable.
Left, Paperback cover (artist unknown); Right cover art by Tim O’Brien.
Stephen Leigh is a Cincinnati-based, award-winning writer of science fiction and fantasy, with thirty novels and nearly sixty short stories published. He has also published fantasy under the pseudonym S.L. Farrell. He has been a frequent contributor to the Hugo-nominated shared-world series Wild Cards, edited by George R.R. Martin. Stephen taught creative writing for twenty years at Northern Kentucky University, and has recently retired (but not from writing). His most recent novels have been Amid The Crowd Of Stars, the SunPath duology of A Fading Sun and A Rising Moon, The Crow of Connemara, and Immortal Muse. His latest novel, Bound To A Single Sun, will be published by DAW Books next year. Stephen is married to Denise Parsley Leigh; they are the parents of a daughter and a son; he is a musician and vocalist too, active in several Cincinnati bands.
In 2014, Stephen Leigh published his Immortal Muse novel (check out the 2014 Black Gate release), an alternative-history, fantasy fictionalizing alchemy’s role in artistic muses. Wow! Of course, Leigh had to be interviewed as part of the “Beauty in Weird Fiction” interview series. Indeed he was interviewed in 2016 before the interview series merged into Black Gate. If you are interested in the aesthetics of horror and weird fantasy, check out the thoughts of our recent guests like Darrell Schweitzer, Sebastian Jones, Charles Gramlich, Anna Smith Spark, Carol Berg, & Jason Ray Carney (full list of interviews at the end of this post).
This post wraps up (1) a review of Immortal Muse, (2) the interview with the author on Leigh’s muses, and (3) teases readers within an announcement. Okay, we’ll cover that last one first. There is a missing/deleted chapter from Immortal Muse that Stephen Leigh will be posting on Black Gate soon, over 11K words with annotations on (a) why it was left out of the final book and (b) how facts were woven into this fantastical alternative-history. It serves as both a stand-alone short story and an engaging behind-the-scenes look at writing. The article with the missing chapter is posted (look here).
Let this review and interview stoke your creative fires. …
Isolate (Tor Books, November 2021). Cover by Chris McGrath
Lee Modesitt is one of the most popular fantasy authors on the shelves, with multiple bestselling series to his credit, including The Saga of Recluce, Corean Chronicles, and the Imager Portfolio. But for all his success, I don’t think he gets a lot of critical attention, so it’s a real pleasure to see his latest — Isolate, arriving in hardcover from Tor next week — generate some authentic pre-publication buzz.
Both Publishers Weekly and Library Journal gave it a starred review; Library Journal says “anyone who likes to delve into the way worlds work will be riveted.” Here’s an excerpt from Judith Utz’s enthusiastic coverage at Booklist. …
