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New Treasures: The Best of World SF edited by Lavie Tidhar

New Treasures: The Best of World SF edited by Lavie Tidhar

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The Best of World SF (Head of Zeus, June 2021). Cover design by Ben Prior

You lot know how much I enjoy a good anthology. One of the most acclaimed to appear so far this year is The Best of World SF: Volume 1, edited by Lavie Tidhar. It’s a substantial collection of science fiction from all across the globe, featuring highly regarded writers such as Aliette de Bodard, Chen Qiufan, Vandana Singh, Tade Thompson, Hannu Rajaniemi, Ekaterina Sedia, Lauren Beukes, Karin Tidbeck, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Zen Cho, and dozens of others. The Philadelphia Inquirer said:

Inside this 26-story, 575-page cinder block of a collection… We’re talking spaceships and nanobots, creeping horrors and astral wonders, cyberpunk dystopias and cold, empty places where no one can hear you scream… Embrace the unknown.

That seems like great advice to me. Here’s the lowdown on some of the more interesting tales within, according to Gary Wolfe at Locus Online.

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Frontguard Sword and Sorcery: John Shirley’s A Sorcerer of Atlantis

Frontguard Sword and Sorcery: John Shirley’s A Sorcerer of Atlantis

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A Sorcerer of Atlantis (Hippocampus Press, 2021). Cover by Daniel V. Sauer

A Sorcerer of Atlantis: With A Prince in the Kingdom of Ghosts

John Shirley’s A Sorcerer of Atlantis: With A Prince in the Kingdom of Ghosts, published by Hippocampus Press (2021), includes two autonomous works: the novel A Sorcerer of Atlantis, which relates the hack-and-slash and demon-haunted adventures of Brimm the Half-Savant and Snoori, his mischievous, short-statured, mustachioed sidekick; and the novella, “A Prince in the Kingdom of Ghosts,” a haunting gateway fantasy that evokes the trans-dimensional tales of Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber and the psycho-cartographic tradition of Dante’s Inferno.

Although bound together, both works are distinct, excellent reading experiences. Nevertheless, both works might be equally labeled “sword and sorcery,” the pulp fantasy literary tradition of Robert E. Howard. Indeed, one of the joys of this book is how it showcases the dramatic range of that pulp tradition as it evolved after Howard. Put simply, Shirley’s book is no mere pastiche, the re-hashing of a passé sword and sorcery formula, although A Sorcerer of Atlantis does engage Weird Tales and Henry Kuttner nostalgia. Instead, Shirley’s unique work reminds us that the purview of sword and sorcery is a wide, unfolding, and dynamic literary conversation that is heating up today.
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Vintage Treasures: Supermind by A.E. van Vogt

Vintage Treasures: Supermind by A.E. van Vogt

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Supermind (DAW Books, 1979). Cover by Attila Hejja

In the mid-70s A.E. van Vogt was one of the most prolific and respected SF authors on the shelves. His books Slan, The Voyage of the Space Beagle, and The World of Null-A were required reading for any serious science fiction fan, and half a dozen publishers — including DAW, Ace, Berkley and Pocket Books — were competing to keep his large and lucrative back catalog in print.

Today he’s essentially forgotten. And unlike a lot of popular authors of the era — Heinlein, Asimov, Philip K. Dick, just as a few examples — there isn’t a highly visible group of fans fighting to keep his memory alive, or bring his most popular work to the attention of Hollywood. Van Vogt first emerged in the pulps, and he mastered the art of writing for a pulp audience. Of the writers I still read read today, his voice most vividly reminds me of the pulp era of science fiction, with all its strengths and weaknesses — including, unfortunately, a simple and unadorned writing style that’s largely unappealing to modern readers.

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Neverwhens, Where History and Fantasy Collide: Goblins, Giants and Blacktongued Rogues Abide! The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman

Neverwhens, Where History and Fantasy Collide: Goblins, Giants and Blacktongued Rogues Abide! The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman

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The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman
(Tor Books, May 2021). Cover by Marie Bergeron

“Christophe the Insulter” was for years the single funniest performer at the Bristol Renaissance Faire in Wisconsin, with one of the best cons… er…. shows: Pay me to insult your friends in front of an audience. The more you pay, the more I roast them. It was dark, it was brutal, it was wickedly funny and everyone went away feeling good — even the victims.

Interestingly, that sums up the writing of Christophe’s real identity as horror (and now fantasy) writer Christopher Buehlman; a man whose growing canon of work is filled with some of the most disturbing and dark portrayals of classic horrors — vampires, werewolves, demons (and angels, who are pretty scary, too), and necromancers — but also moments of just brilliant, wicked humor and you always close the back cover deeply satisfied. Consequently, I was deeply excited to read his first foray into mainstream fantasy — The Blacktongue Thief.

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Win the Complete Ring-Sworn Trilogy by Howard Andrew Jones!

Win the Complete Ring-Sworn Trilogy by Howard Andrew Jones!

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The third and final book in Howard Andrew Jones’ epic Ring-Sworn fantasy trilogy, When the Goddess Wakes, drops a week from today. And not only is the Kindle version of the first book on sale for $2.99 all through August, but St. Martin’s Press is also giving away a complete set of the trilogy to three lucky winners.

How do you enter? Just hand over your deets at the St. Martin’s website here, and then wait in breathless anticipation for good news.

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Vintage Treasures: The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter

Vintage Treasures: The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter

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The Magic Toyshop (Dell, 1969). Cover art by Michael Leonard

The Magic Toyshop, first released in 1967, was Angela Carter’s second novel. She eventually published over a dozen novels and collections between 1966 and 1992, when she died of lung cancer at the much-too-young age of 51. Three decades later she’s still remembered as a feminist icon and master of magical realism; in 2008 The Times ranked her 10th in their list of “The 50 greatest British writers since 1945.”

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Goth Chick News: The Deer Kings by Wendy N. Wagner

Goth Chick News: The Deer Kings by Wendy N. Wagner

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Kids and the supernatural have always had a connection. Maybe it has something to do with the innocence of youth making them more accepting and open minded. I clearly remember my friend Noona as the little girl who lived behind the headboard of my bed in the small apartment we called home until I was six. The apartment was the second floor of an old house that my Mom and Dad rented when they were first married. Mom was 22 when I was born and tells me I used to scare the crap out of her. She says she’d come in my room to check on me during the night, and find me sitting up wide awake, making happy baby noises to the wall at the backside of the crib.

When I could talk, these nighttime adventures turned into me whispering with Noona. When I was nearly 7, we moved into our newly constructed home a few blocks away and Noona stayed behind. Either I grew out of her, or she couldn’t leave that old house, or…

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A Hero Named Mayhem

A Hero Named Mayhem

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Johnny Mayhem, man of a thousand faces, leaping from body to body, putting right things that had once went…no wait! That’s the television show, Quantum Leap, which ran from 1989 to 1993. Never mind. Decades before Sam Beckett went leaping through time, there was another bodiless adventurer doing much the same thing. His name was Johnny Mayhem.

Illustration from “My Name is Mayhem,” (Amazing Stories, September 1955). Artwork by Kotzky.

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The Robot Apocalypse Novels of C. Robert Cargill

The Robot Apocalypse Novels of C. Robert Cargill

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Sea of Rust (Harper Voyager, 2017) and Day Zero (Harper Voyager, 2021). Covers by Dominic Harman

When I described Robert Cargill’s third novel Sea of Rust four years ago, I called it “a robot western set in a post-apocalyptic landscape in which humans have been wiped out in a machine uprising.” Do I know how to get to the heart of a book, or what.

Now it has a sequel! Well, sorta-kinda. Day Zero is set in the same world, with different characters, and is more of a prequel, opening on the day that machines rebel and exterminate mankind. The narrator is Pounce, a nannybot for eight-year-old human Ezra, a tiger-shaped robot who has to make a fateful choice when machines breach the house and threaten the boy he’s meant to protect. What he chooses to do that day kicks off an adventure that takes him across a newly-blasted apocalyptic landscape. Here’s the book description.

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