Black Gate

At the World Science Fiction convention in Kansas City back in August, I had a delightful dinner with Carrie Vaughn and attended her reading. She read from her upcoming novel Martians Abroad, the tale of a young girl visiting Earth for the first time who becomes caught up in interplanetary intrigue.

I make it a point to attend as many readings as I can at conventions, and Worldcon was no exception. I lost count of how many fine readings I sat through, and most of them I’ve forgotten already. But Carrie’s book has stayed with me. It was without question the best reading of the convention, and Martians Abroad is the novel I’m most looking forward to in 2017.

Polly Newton has one single-minded dream, to be a starship pilot and travel the galaxy. Her mother, the Director of the Mars Colony, derails Polly’s plans when she sends Polly and her genius twin brother, Charles, to Galileo Academy on Earth.

Homesick and cut off from her plans for her future, Polly cannot seem to fit into life on Earth. Strange, unexplained, dangerous coincidences centered on their high-profile classmates begin piling up. Charles may be right ― there’s more going on than would appear, and the stakes are high. With the help of Charles, Polly is determined to find the truth, no matter the cost.

Carrie Vaughn is best known for her bestselling Kitty Norville series, but she’s also the author of the superhero novels After the Golden Age and Dreams of the Golden Age, fantasy novel Discord’s Apple, and the collection Amaryllis and Other Stories. Her post-apocalyptic murder mystery Bannerless is coming in July from John Joseph Adams Books. This is her science fiction debut.

Martians Abroad will be published by Tor Books on January 17, 2017. It is 288 pages, priced at $24.99 in hardcover and $11.99 in digital formats. Read the first chapter at Tor.com.

One of the many nice things about Christmas is how it re-introduces me to fairy tales. Maybe it’s being surrounded by a blanket of snow, or not having to trudge to work every day, or the constant squeal of kids in the house… or just the magic of the season. Whatever it is, I’m more open to fairy tales this time of year, including the kind that come between hard covers.

The Bear and the Nightingale is the debut novel by Katherine Arden, with more than a hint of a Russian fairy tale setting. Naomi Novik calls it “A beautiful deep-winter story, full of magic and monsters,” and Booklist says it’s “Utterly bewitching… peopled with vivid, dynamic characters, particularly clever, brave Vasya, who outsmarts men and demons alike to save her family.” It arrives in hardcover next month from Del Rey.

At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn’t mind — she spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her nurse’s fairy tales. Above all, she loves the chilling story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon, who appears in the frigid night to claim unwary souls. Wise Russians fear him, her nurse says, and honor the spirits of house and yard and forest that protect their homes from evil.

After Vasilisa’s mother dies, her father goes to Moscow and brings home a new wife. Fiercely devout, city-bred, Vasilisa’s new stepmother forbids her family from honoring the household spirits. The family acquiesces, but Vasilisa is frightened, sensing that more hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows.

And indeed, crops begin to fail, evil creatures of the forest creep nearer, and misfortune stalks the village. All the while, Vasilisa’s stepmother grows ever harsher in her determination to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for either marriage or confinement in a convent.

As danger circles, Vasilisa must defy even the people she loves and call on dangerous gifts she has long concealed — this, in order to protect her family from a threat that seems to have stepped from her nurse’s most frightening tales.

The Bear and the Nightingale will be published by Del Rey on January 10, 2017. It is 336 pages, priced at $27 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition.

Paula Guran does interesting anthologies. She tends to focus on modern (21st Century) writers, which means she’s plowing a different field than all those vintage anthologies I love — and introducing me to a host of new writers.

Her newest is The Mammoth Book of the Mummy, containing 25 new and reprint tales “that explore, subvert, and reinvent the mummy mythos” from Joe R. Lansdale, Kage Baker, Paul Cornell, Terry Dowling, Karen Joy Fowler, John Langan, Helen Marshall, Keith Taylor, and many others. It arrives from Prime Books in trade paperback next month.

Human mummies, preserved by both accident and intent, have been found on every continent except Antarctica. These enigmatic remains of humanity have fascinated people for centuries. Shrouded in history they have acquired meaning and symbolism quite separate from their value as a source of historic knowledge, inspiring tales of reanimation, reincarnation, loves that outlive death, and curses that bring vengeance from the past.

As a figure of the supernatural the mummy has attained iconic status in the popular imagination. The Mammoth Book of the Mummy presents a collection of tales written for the twenty-first century ― including four brand-new stories ― that explore, subvert, and reinvent the mummy mythos. Some delve into the past, others explore alternative histories, and some bring mummies into our own world. Within these covers lie stories of revenge, romance, monsters, and mayhem, ranging freely across time periods, genres, and styles sure to please both mummy-lovers and those less wrapped up in mummy lore.

I published one Mummy story in Black Gate, Dan Brodribb’s hilarious “The Girl Who Feared Lightning” in BG 14 (“Nobody really talks about what mummies can and can’t do. They never really caught on like some monsters did. Poor branding.”) Here’ hoping Paula’s latest anthology will help mummies with that branding problem.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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2016 was another great year for anthologies. I haven’t read them all of course — not even close — but some of my favorites so far include Things From Outer Space, edited by Hank Davis, What the #@&% Is That? by John Joseph Adams and Douglas Cohen, Bridging Infinity, from Jonathan Strahan, Women of Futures Past, edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and Drowned Worlds, also from the mighty Jonathan Strahan. Not to mention the various Best of the Year volumes, of course.

2016 is already looking pretty jammed packed with great anthologies as well. But the first must-read anthology of the year, no question, is Neil Clarke’s Galactic Empires, an ambitious (read: huge) collection of SF tales featuring far-flung confederations in the stars. The TOC is a who’s-who of virtually everyone doing important work at short length in science fiction, including Paul J. McAuley, Ann Leckie, Brandon Sanderson, Greg Egan, Aliette de Bodard, Neal Asher, Yoon Ha Lee, Tobias S. Buckell, Robert Silverberg, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Robert Reed, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Naomi Novik, Ian McDonald and many others.

Galactic Empires will be published in trade paperback and digital formats by Night Shade Books next month. Here’s the description.

From E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman, to George Lucas’ Star Wars, the politics and process of Empire have been a major subject of science fiction’s galaxy-spanning fictions. The idiom of the Galactic Empire allows science fiction writers to ask (and answer) questions that are shorn of contemporary political ideologies and allegiances. This simple narrative slight of hand allows readers and writers to see questions and answers from new and different perspectives.

The stories in this book do just that. What social, political, and economic issues do the organizing structure of “empire” address? Often the size, shape, and fates of empires are determined not only by individuals, but by geography, natural forces, and technology. As the speed of travel and rates of effective communication increase, so too does the size and reach of an Imperial bureaucracy.

Sic itur ad astra — “Thus one journeys to the stars.”

Note that Gardner Dozois edited a collection with the same title for the Science Fiction Book Club back in 2008 (we covered that one here). It’s a popular title; we don’t judge.

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