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New Treasures: Far Out: Recent Queer Science Fiction and Fantasy edited by Paula Guran

New Treasures: Far Out: Recent Queer Science Fiction and Fantasy edited by Paula Guran

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Far Out (Night Shade, July 2021). Cover by Julie Dillon

I had the privilege of interviewing Paula Guran back in September, in honoring of the upcoming release of her 50th book. We discussed a lot of her recent projects; one of the more interesting was Far Out, a huge new anthology. Here’s what Paula said about it, in part.

I have another one that just came out that’s not getting a lot of attention that I will mention. It’s called Far Out: Recent Queer Science Fiction and Fantasy… I’m very proud of that book. It is a great book, and it really has a nice look at the last ten years, and… the publisher it came out from is just kind of not supporting it. I just want to get it out there; it’s a good book, it would be great in college courses that are looking at any kind of LGBT fiction and just as a great introduction to a lot of authors that are very familiar to us, but may be new to people out there…

It’s been one that I wanted to do for a while… it was the last book I had under contract [with Night Shade]… I isolated myself on Far Out to a ten-year period…  of course there were people that I knew I wanted to go back and look for stories from in that period, like Chris Barzak for instance, who’s a gay writer… but just on that cusp of 2020 that I was ending at, there’s this sudden boom in 2020 and 2021 of just in the last year, even more [writers] that you can pick from now. It’s really exciting to see that.

Far Out is a reprint anthology with a “table of contents [that] reads like the glitterati of queer fiction,” according to Arley Sorg at Lightspeed. Here’s the complete TOC.

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A Grand Scale Conspiracy and an Interstellar War: The Nova Vita Protocol Trilogy by Kristyn Merbeth

A Grand Scale Conspiracy and an Interstellar War: The Nova Vita Protocol Trilogy by Kristyn Merbeth

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Fortuna, Memoria and Discordia (Orbit Books, 2019-21). Covers by Shutterstock and Lisa Marie Pompilio

Ooof. Things are really busy at Chateau O’Neill. Like, super busy. They’re always sorta busy, but this month has taken it to a new level. I’d share the details, but I’m too busy.

I don’t get much much time to read when I’m faced with this kind of deadline pressure. But I can still daydream about it, in between sales meetings and hitting my weekly pitch deadlines. This week I’m especially excited about the third novel in Kristyn Merbeth’s Nova Vita Protocol trilogy, Discordia, arriving from Orbit next month. Kirkus praised the opening volume Fortuna, saying “”The narrative is powered by a cast of deeply developed characters… The nonstop action and varying levels of tension make this an unarguable page-turner.” I’m looking forward to finally having all three volumes of this popular series in my hot little hands… and some vacation time to enjoy them.

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Burger Creatures and Halloween Stories: DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III (1975), edited by Richard Davis

Burger Creatures and Halloween Stories: DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III (1975), edited by Richard Davis

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The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III (DAW, 1975). Cover by Michael Whelan

The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III was the third volume in DAW’s Year’s Best Horror Stories, copyright 1975, printed in that same year. Like the first two, British author and anthologist Richard Davis was the editor, though he would not continue with DAW after this volume. The cover was by Michael Whelan (1950–), his first for the series. Whelan was becoming more and more ubiquitous on sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks at the time. I think Whelan’s cover is horror-based but it does seem to lean toward the surreal, psychedelic vibe that was common in the 70s. Unlike Volume Two, this one contains no inner art.

Of the thirteen stories in The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III, three were originally published in books, three in magazines, and two in fanzines; five appeared here for the first time, which I’ll come back to in a moment. At least five of the authors were British, five were American, one was Canadian (Allan Weiss) and Eddy C. Bertin is the lone Belgian, for the third volume in a row. Like the last installment, this anthology contains only male authors. All three of Davis’ DAW volumes have had a bit of a British slant, but this is unsurprising given that Davis was British as well. We’ll see if that changes when we switch to an American editor, Gerald W. Page, for the fourth book.

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Vintage Treasures: Through the Reality Warp by Donald J. Pfeil

Vintage Treasures: Through the Reality Warp by Donald J. Pfeil

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Through the Reality Warp (Ballantine Books, 1976). Cover by Boris Vallejo

Donald J. Pfeil had a brief and mostly undistinguished literary career. He’s chiefly remembered today as the editor of the well-regarded SF magazine Vertex, which ran for three years in the early 70s. He wrote some short fiction (all published in Vertex), and four novels, including a Planet of the Apes tie-in with the undisputed greatest title of the 1970s, Escape From Terror Lagoon. (If I could dream up titles like that, the entirety of Western Civilization would be helpless before me.)

His best-remembered book is Through the Reality Warp, a dopey science fiction adventure featuring a ballsy soldier named ‘Billiard’ (get it?) who’s shot into an alternate dimension to smash stuff and seduce space babes. It has a dismal 2.67 rating at Goodreads (and some heartily entertaining 1-star reviews), but that’s beside the point.

The point — and the only reason this book is remembered at all after 45 long years — is that eye-popping Boris Vellejo cover, featuring a gorgeous alien landscape, a virile space hero. a slavering alien fiend, and…. oh, wow. A cringeworthy amount of exposed space butt, courtesy of an all-male art department.

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New Treasures: Beasts and Beauty: Dangerous Tales by Soman Chainani

New Treasures: Beasts and Beauty: Dangerous Tales by Soman Chainani

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Beasts and Beauty: Dangerous Tales (Harper, September 2021). Cover by Julia Iredale

I admit it, my reading tastes are susceptible to the changing seasons (and publishing dollars). When Halloween is over my interest in scary fiction abates a little… though I still like my late fall fiction to have a little bite.

Soman Chainani’s Beasts and Beauty: Dangerous Tales looks like a perfect choice. Chainani is the author of the bestselling School for Good and Evil series; his latest is a collection of a dozen re-told fairy tales, stories that include a dark-skinned Snow White, a South Asian Hansel and Gretel, and similar takes on Bluebeard, Little Red Riding Hood, and Rumpelstiltskin. Medium calls them “Terrifying, chilling, unexpected, and glorious. A must-read for any fairy tale devotee,” and Kirkus says they evoke “the wonder, terror, and magic of the fantasy realms.” Here’s a snippet from the Kirkus review.

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Always Then and Never Now: The 13 Clocks by James Thurber

Always Then and Never Now: The 13 Clocks by James Thurber

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ONCE upon a time, in a gloomy castle on a lonely hill, where there were thirteen clocks that wouldn’t go, there lived a cold, aggressive Duke, and his niece, the Princess Saralinda. She was warm in every wind and weather, but he was always cold. His hands were as cold as his smile and almost as cold as his heart. He wore gloves when he was asleep, and he wore gloves when he was awake, which made it difficult for him to pick up pins or coins or the kernels of nuts, or to tear the wings from nightingales. He was six feet four, and forty-six, and even colder than he thought he was. One eye wore a velvet patch; the other glittered through a monocle, which made half his body seem closer to you than the other half. He had lost one eye when he was twelve, for he was fond of peering into nests and lairs in search of birds and animals to maul. One afternoon, a mother shrike had mauled him first. His nights were spent in evil dreams, and his days were given to wicked schemes.

Wickedly scheming, he would limp and cackle through the cold corridors of the castle, planning new impossible feats for the suitors of Saralinda to perform. He did not wish to give her hand in marriage, since her hand was the only warm hand in the castle. Even the hands of his watch and the hands of all the thirteen clocks were frozen. They had all frozen at the same time, on a snowy night, seven years before, and after that it was always ten minutes to five in the castle. Travelers and mariners would look up at the gloomy castle on the lonely hill and say, “Time lies frozen there. It’s always Then. It’s never Now.”

So begins James Thurber’s wonderful fairytale The 13 Clocks. Best known as a cartoonist, humorist, and one of the stalwarts of the New Yorker during the Harold Ross and William Shawn years, he also wrote several fairytales for children. I haven’t read the others — Many Moon and The White Deer — but I have come back to this one several times. An effervescent read, it never fails to delight.

As described in that magnificently menacing opening, the evil Duke spends his days setting his niece’s suitors impossible tasks such as cutting a slice of the moon or turning the ocean to wine. Sometimes, for no better reason than failing to describe his different-length legs properly (they differed in length because he spent his youth “place-kicking puppies and punting kittens”) or not praising his wine, staring at his niece too long, or having a name that started with X, he would just kill them.

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In 500 Words or Less: THE YEAR’S BEST AFRICAN SPECULATIVE FICTION, VOLUME ONE, ed. by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki

In 500 Words or Less: THE YEAR’S BEST AFRICAN SPECULATIVE FICTION, VOLUME ONE, ed. by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki

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The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction
edited by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki
Cover design by Maria Spada
Jembefola Press (358 pages, $6.99 eBook, Sept 28, 2021)

So… it’s about freaking time we have one of these, right?

Having already demonstrated impressive editing chops with Dominion (co-edited with Zelda Knight), Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki has created an even greater anthology with this Year’s Best, distilling twenty-nine stories into one of the most cohesive anthologies I’ve ever read. Common threads make this feel like so much more than just a “here’s who we think are the top authors” sort of Year’s Best. We’re being shown part of what African SF is saying right now, and honestly, we should feel lucky to be given this insight.

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A Con Artist in a Magical City: The Rook & Rose Trilogy by M.A Carrick

A Con Artist in a Magical City: The Rook & Rose Trilogy by M.A Carrick

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The Mask of Mirrors and The Liar’s Knot (Orbit, January and December, 2021). Covers by Nekro

I don’t know about you, but this recent trend in young adult fantasy for covers with elaborate designs and colorful crowns instead of cover art does nothing for me. There’s so many on the shelves, and after a while they all look the same.

At least the book descriptions are different — and that’s what grabbed me in the case of The Mask of Mirrors, the opening novel in a new fantasy trilogy by “M.A Carrick,” the writing team of Marie Brennan (author of the Hugo-nominated A Natural History of Dragons) and Alyc Helms (author of the splendidly pulpy Missy Masters novels). The two met on an archaeological dig in Wales and Ireland, which is exactly where I’d want to meet my future writing partner.

The second novel in the series, The Liar’s Knot, is due next month, and there’s a third volume on the way. Here’s the description on the back of The Mask of Mirrors that caught my eye.

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Exorcists Take Warning: DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories II (1974), edited by Richard Davis

Exorcists Take Warning: DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories II (1974), edited by Richard Davis

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The Year’s Best Horror Stories Series II (DAW, July 1974). Cover by Hans Arnold

The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series II was the second volume in DAW’s Year’s Best Horror Stories. Copyright 1972, 1973, but printed in 1974. Like the first, it was edited by Richard Davis. The cover, by Swiss artist Hans Arnold (1925–2010), was much more in line with a horror themed anthology than the first one. Clearly the cover is an homage to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, though there’s no story with a similar theme found within.

It had been two years since the release of DAW’s first The Year’s Best Horror Stories, which had been adopted — story for story — from Davis’ first British Sphere edition with same name. But for DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series II, Davis did more than simply bring over every tale from the second Sphere volume. Some stories were dropped, and some added. Comparing the tables of contents, both volumes contain the Foreword by actor Christopher Lee, “David’s Worm” by Brian Lumley, “The Price of the Demon” by Gary Brandner, “The Knocker at the Portico” by Basil Copper, “The Animal Fair” by Robert Bloch, “Napier Court” by Ramsey Campbell, and “Haunts of the Very Rich” by T. K. Brown, III.

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Vintage Treasures: Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction edited by Gardner Dozois

Vintage Treasures: Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction edited by Gardner Dozois

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Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction (St. Martin’s Griffin, 1994). Cover by Kim Poor

When I talked about Gardner Dozois’ 1997 anthology Modern Classics of Fantasy a few years ago, I called it “a book that makes you yearn to be stranded on a desert island” (or anywhere you could read interrupted for a few days, really.) That description applies equally well to his 1994 volume Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction, a book that over the last few decades has become one of my favorite fall reads. It’s packed with a surprising assortment of 13 novellas from some of the greatest SF writers of the 20th Century.

I say surprising because the first time I opened it, I was a bit taken aback at Dozois’ selections. There’s no sign of Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, or any of the usual suspects you might expect — no “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell, Jr., nor Kornbluth’s “The Marching Morons,” or Kuttner and Moore’s “Vintage Season,” or Theodore Sturgeon’s “Baby Is Three” for that matter. No “Rogue Moon” by Algis Budrys, or “The Witches of Karres” by James H. Schmitz, or “The Big Front Yard” by Clifford D. Simak. Not even H.G. Well’s The Time Machine.

In fact, there’s not a single story overlap between this book and The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume II, which for many of us old timers is the gold standard of classic SF novella anthologies.

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