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Future Treasures: The Wrong Stars by Tim Pratt

Future Treasures: The Wrong Stars by Tim Pratt

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The Wrong Stars Tim Pratt-smallI’ve been reading a bit more space opera recently, and I welcome the recent resurgence of the sub-genre. Alien races, hardened crews, derelict spacecraft, ancient mysteries in space… how can you go wrong with a mix like that? Tim Pratt kicks off a new series next month with The Wrong Stars; it sounds like it has all the right ingredients.

A ragtag crew of humans and posthumans discover alien technology that could change the fate of humanity… or awaken an ancient evil and destroy all life in the galaxy.

The shady crew of the White Raven run freight and salvage at the fringes of our solar system. They discover the wreck of a centuries-old exploration vessel floating light years away from its intended destination and revive its sole occupant, who wakes with news of First Alien Contact. When the crew break it to her that humanity has alien allies already, she reveals that these are very different extra-terrestrials… and the gifts they bestowed on her could kill all humanity, or take it out to the most distant stars.

Tim Pratt has been nominated for the Nebula, World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Stoker, and Mythopoeic Awards, and won the Hugo Award for his short story “Impossible Dreams” (Asimov’s SF, July 2006). His novels include The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, and the Pathfinder Tales novels Liar’s Island and Liar’s Bargain. Several of his short stories have been adapted at Podcastle; C.S.E. Cooney reviewed two of them for us here (“HECK YEAH TIM PRATT!”). As T. A. Pratt, he’s also the author of the 10-volume Marla Mason fantasy series (Blood Engines, Poison Sleep, etc.), the first four of which were published by Bantam Spectra; the remainder were self-published.

Of his new series, Angry Robot says:

We’ve signed Tim up for books two and three in the Axiom series! He’ll never get away from us now; the chips are implanted too deeply in his cerebral cortex.

The Wrong Stars, Book One of the Axiom series, will be published by Angry Robot on November 7, 2017. It is 400 pages, priced at $7.99 in mass market paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Paul Scott Canavan. Read the first chapter at SFF World.

A Tale of Two Covers: More Human Than Human by Neil Clarke

A Tale of Two Covers: More Human Than Human by Neil Clarke

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More Human Than Human Donato-small More Human Than Human Neil Clarke

Neil Clarke has produced some standout anthologies in the last few years, including Galactic Empires, two volumes of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, and of course his annual Clarkesworld collections. His upcoming book More Human Than Human: Stories of Androids, Robots, and Manufactured Humanity, with original tales from Rachel Swirsky, Robert Reed, Ian McDonald, Lavie Tidhar, Alastair Reynolds, Ken Liu, Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow, Catherynne M. Valente, Genevieve Valentine, Jeff VanderMeer, and many others, looks like one of his best.

I’m rather taken with the cover, as well. It’s by Donato Giancola, one of my favorite artists, who did the cover of Black Gate 15 for us. You can see the original artwork at left above, and how it appears on the cover of More Human Than Human, above right. Donato is a master of small details, and is marvelously skilled at integrating those details into a visually striking whole. His covers frequently tell a story, as this one does, although the key to the story is often hidden in the details… just as it is here.

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Future Treasures: Valiant Dust by Richard Baker

Future Treasures: Valiant Dust by Richard Baker

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Valiant Dust-smallRichard Baker began his career at TSR where, with Colin McComb, he designed the Birthright campaign setting in 1994, the first D&D campaign setting to support PCs as rulers, creating a hybrid game based on “diplomacy, politics, trade, construction and (of course) war” (Pyramid magazine). His next major release was the fondly remembered Alternity SF RPG in 1998, with Bill Slavicsek.

His first novel was Forgotten Realms: The Adventures: The Shadow Stone (1997); it was followed quickly by nearly a dozen others for TSR, including two novels in the Star*Drive setting (1999), the New York Times bestselling War of the Spider Queen: Condemnation (2003), and the Blades of the Moonsea trilogy (2008-2010).

Valiant Dust marks his first non-licensed project, and I’m glad to see it. It’s the opening volume of the military science fiction series Breaker of Empires, set in an era of great interstellar colonial powers. It arrives in hardcover from Tor in two weeks.

Sikander Singh North has always had it easy ― until he joined the crew of the Aquilan Commonwealth starship CSS Hector. As the ship’s new gunnery officer and only Kashmiri, he must constantly prove himself better than his Aquilan crewmates, even if he has to use his fists. When the Hector is called to help with a planetary uprising, he’ll have to earn his unit’s respect, find who’s arming the rebels, and deal with the headstrong daughter of the colonial ruler―all while dodging bullets.

Sikander’s military career is off to an explosive start ― but only if he and CSS Hector can survive his first mission.

Our previous coverage of Richard Baker’s game books includes:

Lost Empires of Faerûn
Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave
Shadowdale: The Scouring of the Land

Valiant Dust will be published by Tor Books on November 7, 2017. It is 349 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Larry Rostant. Read the complete first chapter here. Read all of our recent coverage of the best upcoming SF and fantasy here.

Keep Up With the Latest Releases from Black Gate Authors — October Edition

Keep Up With the Latest Releases from Black Gate Authors — October Edition

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The Harbors of the Sun-small After the End of the World Jonathan L. Howard-small The Robots of Gotham-small

As we head into fall, the list of upcoming novels, stories and features from Black Gate‘s authors and bloggers continues to expand — and grow more and more impressive. Here’s a partial list of the current and upcoming releases from some of your favorite BG writers.

The Harbors of the Sun by Martha Wells, the last in the Books of the Raksura series, came out in July from Night Shade Books
After the End of the World by Jonathan L. Howard, Volume 2 in the Carter & Lovecraft series, will be published in hardcover by Thomas Dunne on November 14
Todd McAulty’s debut novel The Robots of Gotham arrives in hardcover from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on June 19
Howard Andrew Jones’ For the Killing of Kings, the opening novel in a brand new epic fantasy series, arrives in hardcover from Thomas Dunne in July 2018
Derek Kunsken’s debut novel The Quantum Magician will be published by Solaris in 2018, and serialized in Analog starting with the January/February issue

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In 500 Words or Less: An Advance Review of the The Nine by Tracy Townsend

In 500 Words or Less: An Advance Review of the The Nine by Tracy Townsend

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The Nine Tracy Townsend-smallThe Nine (Thieves of Fate #1)
By Tracy Townsend
Pyr (400 pages, $17.99 paperback, $9.99 eBook, November 2017)

As an emerging author, I know that even once I land that coveted debut book deal, that’ll be the point when the real work begins. Completing a novel is one thing; afterward there’s the terrifying and unpredictable world of promoting the book and hoping that it does well enough that you can write a few more.

If my first novel is even half as good as Tracy Townsend’s The Nine, I will be well on my way.

Imagine a world where science and theology have been woven together, so that people believe not just in God, but in God the Experimenter, a rational entity controlling a world of Reason. Sort of like what the Enlightenment philosophes wanted – not to disprove God through science, but to show just how brilliant His world is by discovering more of its intricacies. Then imagine that God isn’t just observing His creation, but specifically testing nine individuals and recording everything they do, as a measure about whether His experimental world is a success. I’m not a religious person, but I’d be lying if I said that thought didn’t terrify me.

That’s the crux of The Nine, which explores a sort of steampunk world with just a hint of the magical, where people have electricity and gunpowder but tree- and ogre-like creatures coexist with humans (sort of) and people worry that magic might actually be real (until Reason proves otherwise!)

It’s an intricate and beautiful world that comes together slowly, but what really drew me in was the characters. For example, you have Anselm, the borderline cat burglar turned businessman and crime lord, who calls his lover Rare “kitten” in a way that’s almost a cliché – until he nicknames the young street urchin Rowena “cricket.” At first I thought he was following the same pattern of, well, lechery … but over time I realized Anselm was more honorable than I thought.

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Future Treasures: Ka by John Crowley

Future Treasures: Ka by John Crowley

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Ka John Crowley-smallMatthew David Surridge says John Crowley’s World Fantasy Award-winning Little, Big is “the best post-Tolkien novel of the fantastic I’ve read,” and Mark Rigney calls it “among the best and most endearing fantasy novels ever written… If there’s another book I’ve encountered in my adult life that calls louder to be re-read, and which reveals an even richer experience on doing so, I cannot imagine what it is.” Crowley’s thirteenth novel Ka, a fable about the first crow in history with a name of his own, arrives in hardcover from Saga Press next week.

A Crow alone is no Crow.

Dar Oakley — the first Crow in all of history with a name of his own — was born two thousand years ago. When a man learns his language, Dar finally gets the chance to tell his story. He begins his tale as a young man, and how he went down to the human underworld and got hold of the immortality meant for humans, long before Julius Caesar came into the Celtic lands; how he sailed West to America with the Irish monks searching for the Paradise of the Saints; and how he continuously went down into the land of the dead and returned. Through his adventures in Ka, the realm of Crows, and around the world, he found secrets that could change the humans’ entire way of life — and now may be the time to finally reveal them.

Our previous coverage of John Crowley includes:

In Praise of Little, Big by Mark Rigney
John Crowley’s Aegypt Cycle, Books One and Two by Mark Rigney
The Deep

Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr will be published by Saga Press on October 24, 2017. It is 442 pages, priced at $28.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Melody Newcomb.

Future Treasures: Barbary Station by R. E. Stearns

Future Treasures: Barbary Station by R. E. Stearns

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Barbary Station-smallPirates, space stations, and a killer A.I… these are the promising ingredients in R. E. Stearns’ debut SF novel Barbary Station, in which two engineers hijack a spaceship to join a band of space pirates — only to discover the pirates are hiding from a malevolent AI. To join the pirate crew, they first have to prove themselves by outwitting the AI… how hard can that be? Barbary Station arrives in hardcover from Saga Press on Halloween.

Adda and Iridian are newly minted engineers, but aren’t able to find any work in a solar system ruined by economic collapse after an interplanetary war. Desperate for employment, they hijack a colony ship and plan to join a famed pirate crew living in luxury at Barbary Station, an abandoned shipbreaking station in deep space.

But when they arrive there, nothing is as expected. The pirates aren’t living in luxury — they’re hiding in a makeshift base welded onto the station’s exterior hull. The artificial intelligence controlling the station’s security system has gone mad, trying to kill all station residents and shooting down any ship that attempts to leave — so there’s no way out.

Adda and Iridian have one chance to earn a place on the pirate crew: destroy the artificial intelligence. The last engineer who went up against the AI met an untimely end, and the pirates are taking bets on how the newcomers will die. But Adda and Iridian plan to beat the odds.

There’s a glorious future in piracy… if only they can survive long enough.

Barbary Station will be published by Saga Press on October 31, 2017. It is 448 pages, priced at $27.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition.

See all our recent coverage of the best upcoming SF ans Fantasy here.

Future Treasures: The Art of the Pulps edited by Douglas Ellis, Ed Hulse and Robert Weinberg

Future Treasures: The Art of the Pulps edited by Douglas Ellis, Ed Hulse and Robert Weinberg

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The Art of the Pulps Doug Ellis-small

Ed Hulse, editor and co-founder of pulp zine Blood ‘n Thunder, collector extraordinaire Robert Weinberg, and collector (and Black Gate blogger) Doug Ellis have teamed up to produce what may be my most anticipated book of 2017: The Art of the Pulps, a gorgeous 240-page celebration of the magazines that gave birth to the heart and soul of modern Pop Culture. Miss this book at your peril.

Experts in the ten major Pulp genres, from action Pulps to spicy Pulps and more, chart for the first time the complete history of Pulp magazines — the stories and their writers, the graphics and their artists, and, of course, the publishers, their market, and readers.

Each chapter in the book, which is illustrated with more than 400 examples of the best Pulp graphics (many from the editors’ collections — among the world’s largest) is organized in a clear and accessible way, starting with an introductory overview of the genre, followed by a selection of the best covers and interior graphics, organized chronologically through the chapter. All images are fully captioned (many are in essence “nutshell” histories in themselves). Two special features in each chapter focus on topics of particular interest (such as extended profiles of Daisy Bacon, Pulp author and editor of Love Story, the hugely successful romance Pulp, and of Harry Steeger, co-founder of Popular Publications in 1930 and originator of the “Shudder Pulp” genre).

With an overall introduction on “The Birth of the Pulps” by Doug Ellis, and with two additional chapters focusing on the great Pulp writers and the great Pulp artists, The Art of the Pulps covers every aspect of this fascinating genre; it is the first definitive visual history of the Pulps.

F. Paul Wilson provides the Foreword. The Art of the Pulps will be published by IDW Publishing on October 24, 2017. It is 240 pages, priced at $49.99 in hardcover. There is no digital edition.

Future Treasures: Vallista by Steven Brust

Future Treasures: Vallista by Steven Brust

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Vallista-smallI read Jhereg, the first book in Steven Brust’s long-running Vlad Taltos series, when my brother Mike thrust it on me in 1983. It was fun, fast-paced, and totally different from anything I’d ever read before.

Steven Brust was a fast-rising literary star in 1983, but Jhereg, and the series it spawned, established him as a major name. He’s produced numerous popular and acclaimed novels in the intervening years — including To Reign in Hell (1984), Brokedown Palace (1985), The Phoenix Guards (1991), and his ongoing Incrementalists series with Skyler White — but it’s the Vlad Taltos series that he remains most closely associated with. There have been thirteen additional novels in the series since Jhereg appeared 34 years ago, and this month marks the arrival of the fifteenth, Vallista, a deep dive into the mysteries of the world of Dragaera.

Vlad Taltos is an Easterner ― an underprivileged human in an Empire of tall, powerful, long-lived Dragaerans. He made a career for himself in House Jhereg, the Dragaeran clan in charge of the Empire’s organized crime. But the day came when the Jhereg wanted Vlad dead, and he’s been on the run ever since. He has plenty of friends among the Dragaeran highborn, including an undead wizard and a god or two. But as long as the Jhereg have a price on his head, Vlad’s life is…messy.

Meanwhile, for years, Vlad’s path has been repeatedly crossed by Devera, a small Dragaeran girl of indeterminate powers who turns up at the oddest moments in his life.

Now Devera has appeared again ― to lead Vlad into a mysterious, seemingly empty manor overlooking the Great Sea. Inside this structure are corridors that double back on themselves, rooms that look out over other worlds, and ― just maybe ― answers to some of Vlad’s long-asked questions about his world and his place in it. If only Devera can be persuaded to stop disappearing in the middle of his conversations with her…

The entire series has been kept in print by Ace in deluxe trade paperback omnibus editions — pretty extraordinary for a series that’s over three decades old.

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