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Category: Future Treasures

Future Treasures: The Book of Swords, edited by Gardner Dozois

Future Treasures: The Book of Swords, edited by Gardner Dozois

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The Book of Swords-smallA while back Gardner Dozois asked if I wanted a review copy of his upcoming “Sword & Sorcery” anthology, The Book of Swords.

Now, Gardner does not do small anthologies — neither in the physical sense, nor in the sense of their impact on the field. If the premier anthologist in the SF community was putting his time and energy into a collection of original sword & sorcery tales, then clearly the genre still has some life in it.

It wasn’t that long ago that I thought the era of big-budget (or even modest-budget) S&S anthologies was long over. What’s changed? The global phenomena that is GRRM’s Game of Thrones, that’s what’s changed. I don’t consider GoT to be sword & sorcery… but there’s no denying that publishers (and film producers) are a lot more interested in adventure fantasy all of a sudden. If the results are anything like The Book of Swords, I’m all for it.

The Book of Swords arrives next week in hardcover from Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire publisher Bantam Books, with sixteen brand new stories by Lavie Tidhar, Robin Hobb, Ken Liu, Matthew Hughes, Walter Jon Williams, C. J. Cherryh, Garth Nix, Ellen Kushner, Scott Lynch — and, yes, a brand new Song of Ice and Fire story from George R. R. Martin.

Fantasy fiction has produced some of the most unforgettable heroes ever conjured onto the page: Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian, Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné, Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Classic characters like these made sword and sorcery a storytelling sensation, a cornerstone of fantasy fiction — and an inspiration for a new generation of writers, spinning their own outsize tales of magic and swashbuckling adventure.

Now, in The Book of Swords, acclaimed editor and bestselling author Gardner Dozois presents an all-new anthology of original epic tales by a stellar cast of award-winning modern masters — many of them set in their authors’ best-loved worlds. Join today’s finest tellers of fantastic tales, including George R. R. Martin, K. J. Parker, Robin Hobb, Scott Lynch, Ken Liu, C. J. Cherryh, Daniel Abraham, Lavie Tidhar, Ellen Kushner, and more on action-packed journeys into the outer realms of dark enchantment and intrepid derring-do, featuring a stunning assortment of fearless swordsmen and warrior women who face down danger and death at every turn with courage, cunning, and cold steel.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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Future Treasures: John Silence–Physician Extraordinary / The Wave by Algernon Blackwood

Future Treasures: John Silence–Physician Extraordinary / The Wave by Algernon Blackwood

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John Silence Physician Extraordinary - The Wave-back-small John Silence Physician Extraordinary - The Wave-small

I’ve heard a lot of praise heaped on Algernon Blackwood’s 1908 collection John Silence–Physician Extraordinary over the years. In his review of Blackwood’s 1914 collection Incredible Adventures, Ryan Harvey wrote:

Of all the practitioners of the classic “weird tale,” which flourished in the early twentieth century before morphing into the more easily discerned genres of fantasy and horror, none entrances me more than Algernon Blackwood. Looking at the stable of the foundational authors of horror — luminaries like Poe, James, le Fanu, Machen, Lovecraft — it is Blackwood who has the strongest effect on me. Of all his lofty company, he is the one who seems to achieve the most numinous “weird” of all…

In my view, Blackwood achieved his finest work in his earlier collections The Listener and Other Stories (1907), John Silence — Physician Extraordinary (1908), and The Lost Valley and Other Stories (1910), where he combined his weird adventures with aspects of horror and fear. These earlier classics are supernatural horror, but are also superb works of mood.

Josh Reynolds discussed the collection in detail as part of his occult detective series The Nightmare Men here at Black Gate.

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Future Treasures: The Tiger’s Daughter by K Arsenault Rivera

Future Treasures: The Tiger’s Daughter by K Arsenault Rivera

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Check out the cool bookmark that came with my review copy of The Tiger’s Daughter, the debut novel by K Arsenault Rivera!

It’s instructing me to “Plant flower seed paper under 1/8″ of soil. Water thoroughly.” Okay, but…. what does it GROW? A geranium? Violets? An alien seed pod like that horrifying episode of Johnny Sokko?

I guess there’s only one way to find out. And it involves sticking this super-cool book collectible in a bunch of dirt. Marketing departments, man. They thrive on cruelty.

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Future Treasures: Quillifer by Walter Jon Williams

Future Treasures: Quillifer by Walter Jon Williams

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Quillifer-smallIt’s been a good week for review copies here at Black Gate (see some of the recent arrivals here). But the moment Quillifer arrived, I knew it was the most significant release of the current crop, by a pretty good margin.

Walter Jon Williams has had an extraordinary career, displaying an easy mastery of cyberpunk (Hardwired, Angel Station), military SF (Dread Empire’s Fall), SF police procedural (Days of Atonement), light-hearted fantasy (the Majistral series), space opera (Aristoi), contemporary disaster (The Rift), and even the Star Wars universe (The New Jedi Order: Destiny’s Way).

Quillifer, the tale of a young man forced to flee his beloved home and find his fortune among goddesses, pirates, war, and dragons, is his long-awaited foray into epic fantasy. It’s the first in an ambitious new series from one of the most respected authors in the genre.

Quillifer is young, serially in love, studying law, and living each day keenly aware that his beloved homeport of Ethlebight risks closure due to silting of the harbor. His concerns for the future become much more immediate when he returns from a summery assignation to find his city attacked by Aekoi pirates, leading to brigands in the streets and his family and friends in chains.

First, he has to survive the night. Then, he has to leave his home behind and venture forth into the wider world of Duisland, where he can find friends and allies to help avenge his losses and restore Ethlebight to glory. His determination will rock kingdoms, shatter the political structure of Duisland, and change the country forever.

Quillifer will be published by Saga Press on October 3, 2017. It is 530 pages, priced at $27.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Gregory Manchess. Learn more at Williams’ website, and read Emily Mah’s interview with the author (“Why UFOs Are Actually Made of Bread, and Other Little Known Facts”) here.

Rock Stars, Bloggers, and Hidden Magic: The Wind in His Heart by Charles de Lint

Rock Stars, Bloggers, and Hidden Magic: The Wind in His Heart by Charles de Lint

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The Wind in His Heart Charles de Lint-smallI met Charles de Lint when he was an unpublished author in the early 80s. We both hung out at the best bookstore in town, the much-missed House of Speculative Fiction in downtown Ottawa. There was a big fuss about his first novel, The Riddle of The Wren (1984), plucked out of the slush at Ace Books by legendary editor Terri Windling, but it was the bestselling Moonheart (Ace, 1984) that made us realize that Charles wasn’t just a local boy who done good — he was a major artist embarking on an extraordinary career.

71 books later, Charles is one of the most revered writers in fantasy. He’s been enormously kind to us over the years, even contributing a terrific story to the very first issue of Black Gate.  I asked Charles to tell us a bit about his latest book, and he was generous enough to send me this yesterday.

I’m excited to get back to writing for adults. It took me three years to write my new novel, The Wind in His Heart, pretty much double the time I’d normally take to complete a book, but this 545-page story was tricky to put together. It’s about a young man who works at a trading post and is the sole supporter in his family yet longs to go and explore the world; a rock star hiding from fame out in the desert; a teenage girl from an abusive family who gets tossed out of her dad’s car in the middle of the desert, and a blogger trying to come to terms with the suicide of her best friend. The story is about how their lives collide, and how they deal with their past and future. Many of my readers have been asking if it’s a Newford book, and the short answer is no, but it does have some Newford threads and connections.

This is a major new novel from one of the most important writers at work today. When word broke in our offices that it was arriving this month, there was frenzy to settle who would have the privilege of reading it first (Zeta Moore won; she’ll be reviewing it for us in a few weeks.)

The Wind in His Heart will be published by Triskell Press on September 19, 2017. It is 545 pages, priced at $7.99 for the digital edition. Read an excerpt in the Autumn issue of Faerie Magazine, and learn more at Charles’ website. And check out all our coverage of his previous books here.

Future Treasures: The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 1 by Poul Anderson

Future Treasures: The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 1 by Poul Anderson

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The Psychotechnic League-small Cold Victory-small Starship Poul Anderson-small

Poul Anderson was one of the most acclaimed and prolific science fiction writers of the 20th Century, and one of his most popular series was The Psychotechnic League, which told the story of the rise of a new civilization after a devastating nuclear war in the late 1950s that very nearly obliterated mankind.

The Psychotechnic League began as a Future History, a popular beast among short SF writers of the 40s and 50s. Anderson published the first story, “Entity,” in the June 1949 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, and set the opening of his series a decade in the future. The series continued for the next two decades, (appearing in Astounding, Planet Stories, Worlds Beyond, Science Fiction Quarterly, Cosmos, Fantastic Universe, and other fine magazines), eventually extending into the 60s. In the process, his “Future History” gradually became an “Alternate History,” as actual history trampled all over his carefully constructed fictional timeline.

That didn’t seem to bother readers though, and the tales of the Psychotechnic League remained popular well into the 80s. The series included some 21 stories, including three short novels: The Snows of Ganymede (1955), Star Ways (1956), and Virgin Planet (1957). The short stories and one of the novels were collected in a trilogy of handsome Tor paperbacks in 1981/82, with covers by Vincent DiFate (above). Now Baen books is reprinting the entire sequence in a series of deluxe trade paperbacks, starting with The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 1, on sale next month.

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Catch the Latest from Angry Robot in September

Catch the Latest from Angry Robot in September

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The Uploaded-small Skyfarer-small Immortal Architects-small

One of the reasons I love Angry Robot is their enthusiasm for new authors. Paired with their commitment to mass market, they’ve allowed me to take a chance on dozens of new writers over the last few years, and all for the price of a few $7.99 paperbacks. That’s a rare and precious thing these days, and it’s worth supporting.

John DeNardo tipped me off to a trio of great-looking Angry Robot paperbacks arriving September 5. Here’s all the deets.

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An Incomparable Voyage Through Dreamland: The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia A. McKillip

An Incomparable Voyage Through Dreamland: The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia A. McKillip

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The Forgotten Beasts of Eld-smallThe Forgotten Beasts of Eld
Patricia A. McKillip
Tachyon Publications (240 pages, $14.95 in trade paperback, September 19, 2017)
Reprint edition (originally published by Atheneum, August 1974)

The moment you begin The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, the World Fantasy Award-winning novel by Patricia A. McKillip, you understand you have put yourself in the hands of a masterful wordsmith. McKillip has no peer when it comes to incantatory prose, and her wizardry spells you into a waking dream in this breathtaking tale.

The young wizard Sybel comes from a legendary lineage of animal keepers. After calling a magisterial bounty of magical beasts to her castle, she protects them with the unwavering love of a lioness. When a knight entrusts an infant boy into her care, unbeknownst to the so-called ice-hearted wizard, her life unravels into the pursuit of true love, justice, and the attainment of one’s free will.

Though the animals play a prominent role in the tale, the action mainly revolves around Sybel and the two men who love her. Tam, the babe given to her not long after leaving the womb, cares for her throughout the story. Through the numerous hardships that befall Sybel in her quest for justice in a troubled world, he remains steadfast in his love for the woman he considers his mother.

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Future Treasures: Infinity Wars, edited by Jonathan Strahan

Future Treasures: Infinity Wars, edited by Jonathan Strahan

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Infinity Wars Jonathan Strahan-smallInfinity Wars is the sixth volume in what Jonathan Strahan calls The Infinity Project, a series of science fiction anthologies from Solaris that include Reach For Infinity (2014), Meeting Infinity (2015), and one of the most acclaimed anthologies of last year, Bridging Infinity (2016). Jonathan says he’s “already pushing ahead on the seventh.”

The success of the project is a huge vindication for Solaris, who took a chance on the ambitious series just when it was starting to look like the original SF and fantasy paperback anthology was dead. Infinity Wars arrives in trade paperback next month. Here’s the description.

Conflict is Eternal

We have always fought. Tales of soldiers and war go back to the very roots of our history, to the beginnings of the places we call home. And science and technology have always been inextricably linked with the deadly art of war, whether through Da Vinci’s infamous machineries of war or the Manhattan Project’s world-ending bombs or distant starships fighting unknowable opponents.

Oppenheimer once wrote that “the atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.” But unendurable or not, future always comes. War was integral to science faction at its birth and remains so today, whether on the page or on the screen.

Infinity Wars asks one question: what would Oppenheimer’s different country be like? Who would fight it? Because at the end of it all, it always come down to a soldier alone, risking life and limb to achieve a goal that may never really make sense at all. How would those soldiers feel? What would they experience?

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Repent Your Crimes: Marvel’s Black Bolt Series

Repent Your Crimes: Marvel’s Black Bolt Series

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I’ve been a Saladin Ahmed fan for a while. I probably heard his first fantasy fiction at Beneath Ceaseless Skies with Mister Hadj’s Sunset Ride, or in Podcastle’s Judgement of Swords and Souls (click on the links for free audio versions). I also met him in person in 2013 when I ended up at the same table as him during the Nebula Awards Banquet (where his first novel had been nominated).

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So I perked up when I saw that Marvel had Ahmed writing a new Black Bolt solo series. I picked up the first issue in June, put it in my backpack and promptly…. left it sitting in my TBR pile. For two months. And I didn’t even crack it open until issue #4 was already out.

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