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New Treasures: Under Fortunate Stars by Ren Hutchings

New Treasures: Under Fortunate Stars by Ren Hutchings

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Under Fortunate Stars (Solaris, May 9, 2023). Cover design by Dominc Forbes

According to the Solaris website, Under Fortunate Stars was published in the US nearly a year ago. But I just found it at my local Barnes & Noble, so it’s new to me. Let’s fire up the New Treasures floodlights and have a look at this thing.

First off, it’s a first novel, and that’s a plus in my book. New writers are the lifeblood of science fiction. And also, if I find the good ones before my friends, I get good street cred. And street cred is tough to come by in your late 50s, believe me.

It’s also space opera. We like space opera. Especially when it’s been well reviewed, like this one has. Gizmodo says “Under Fortunate Stars is a time-twisting homage to classic space opera and science fiction, taking well-beloved tropes and twisting them on their head. It’s a paradoxical puzzle-box of a novel,” and SF Book Review calls it, “One of the most entertaining time travel space adventures that you will ever read today, tomorrow — or even yesterday.”

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Datlow’s Latest Treat: The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Fifteen, edited by Ellen Datlow

Datlow’s Latest Treat: The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Fifteen, edited by Ellen Datlow

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The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Fifteen (Night Shade, January 16, 2024)

Once again legendary editor Ellen Datlow has released her annual anthology featuring the Best horror stories that appeared in print the previous year.

And once again the volume includes, in the front, a detailed, invaluable overview of the year in horror (this time 2022). Being a short story lover I am particularly interested in anthologies and collections and, as it happens, once again I discovered how many interesting books I missed…

I always enjoy Datlow’s selections but, naturally enough, some I found particularly accomplished. Here they are.

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New Treasures: Your Shadow Half Remains by Sunny Moraine

New Treasures: Your Shadow Half Remains by Sunny Moraine

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Your Shadow Half Remains (Tor Nightfire, February 6, 2024). Cover by David Seidman

Nightfire is Tor’s new horror imprint, and it’s made quite an impact on the field in the the past two years. Some of its releases include the Locus Award-winning What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher, Cassandra Khaw’s Stoker nominee The Salt Grows Heavy, and Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey’s The Dead Take the A Train.

Sunny Moraine’s novella Your Shadow Half Remains arrived from Nightfire last month, and while I was browsing Sally Kobe’s booth at Capricon it leaped enthusiastically into my hands.

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The Martian Chronicles Meet True Grit: The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud

The Martian Chronicles Meet True Grit: The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud

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The Strange (Saga Press, March 21, 2023). Cover uncredited

I wish I could take credit for the headline of The Martian Chronicles Meet True Grit for Nathan Ballingrud’s terrific novel, but according to the author, Karen Jay Fowler came up with it. I hope she won’t mine me stealing it because it is as spot on as any description I could come up with.

The more prosaic version is that The Strange is a Western riff on Ray Bradbury’s vision of Mars, but without the canals. A Mars in an alternate 1930s timeline when interplanetary space travel first began during the Civil War, an oblique reference (among a slew of oblique references to classic SF tropes and personages) to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter, an ex-Confederate Barsoom warlord. Just as Bradbury had no interest in explaining how humans could actually exist on Mars sans space suits in a sort of off-world version of 1950s Illinois, or Burroughs how you can get astrally projected from an Arizona cave to Mars, Ballingrud just wants you to suspend disbelief and enjoy the ride.

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New Treasures: The Water City Trilogy by Chris Mckinney

New Treasures: The Water City Trilogy by Chris Mckinney

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Midnight, Water City; Eventide, Water City; and
Sunset, Water City (Soho Crime, 2021-2023). Covers by Vlado Krizan

I was in Barnes & Noble last week, and saw an intriguing set of books on the shelves: The Water City Trilogy. It’s not often an entire trilogy manages to sneak past me, especially one with covers this colorful. The back of the first volume had this enticing blurb from Buzzfeed.

This gritty noir set in a sci-fi landscape is a real page turner.

I’m not familiar with the publisher, Soho Crime, and I’ve never heard of the author, Chris McKinney. But I’m not known in this business as a crazy risk taker for nothing. I put down my money and brought Midnight, Water City home.

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Future Treasures: Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg, edited by Robert Friedman and Gregory Shepard

Future Treasures: Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg, edited by Robert Friedman and Gregory Shepard

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Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg
(Stark House, March 8, 2024). Cover by Jeff Jordan

Barry N. Malzberg has had an enormously prolific career. He published his first science fiction story the August 1967 issue of Galaxy magazine, and over the next six decades has produced an astounding 500+ short stories, dozens of novels, eleven anthologies, and nearly two dozen collections. These days he’s well known as a genre historian and critic. That’s him on the back cover above, looking suitably curmudgeonly.

He’s currently enjoying something of a career renaissance, courtesy of editor Robert Friedman and publisher Gregory Shepard at Stark House Press, who together have returned some thirty-five Malzberg books to print. To mark that accomplishment, their latest Malzberg volume is something special. Not a reprint at all, but a brand new volume gathering thirty-five uncollected short stories. Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg will be available on March 8.

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Neither Beg Nor Yield, edited by Jason M. Waltz

Neither Beg Nor Yield, edited by Jason M. Waltz

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Sword & Sorcery is a clenched fist thrust into the sky, a raised middle finger in the face of the Unknown, an epithet spat into the dirt through a rictus of bared teeth. S&S demands an attitude of not merely surviving but of dominating living, all else—everything else—be damned. The heroes of S&S continue living deeply until there are no more breaths to take. The only -ism S&S promotes is LIVE!-ism. Absolutely a rebellion against meaninglessness, it also fully embraces an I-don’t-give-a-damn-if-it-is-all-meaningless creed. “I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.” Robert E. Howard, through Conan, again saying it best in “Queen of the Black Coast.”

Jason M. Waltz from “It’s Not Gentle,” the foreword to Neither Beg Nor Yield

I reviewed Return of the Sword: An Anthology of Heroic Adventure over at Stuff I Like: A Blog (called Swords & Sorcery: A Blog back then) twelve years ago. I had discovered the book by way of a mention here at Black Gate, which I had discovered while on the hunt for contemporary sword & sorcery. This book, more than anything else, convinced me there was a wealth of new and, more importantly, good S&S writing being done.

I had created my site to focus on ensuring the classics of S&S weren’t forgotten in the face of the seemingly irresistible tide of grimdark fiction that was new back then. Waltz’s book forced me to direct an increasing portion of my efforts toward the new stories. Howard Andrew Jones, James Enge, and John Fultz were all authors I first encountered in that period. There are also dozens of writers I found reviewing hundreds of new stories right here on the pages of Black Gate.

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New Treasures: Beyond Enemies by Marisa Wolf

New Treasures: Beyond Enemies by Marisa Wolf

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Beyond Enemies (Baen, February 6, 2024). Cover by Sam R. Kennedy

I was Capricon 44 here in Chicago over the weekend and, as usual, brought home a bag full of books. I picked up the latest from local author R.J. Howell (including the Wicked West anthology), and found a bunch of treasures at Sally Kobe’s delightfully well-stocked booth, including debut SF novel Under Fortunate Stars by Ren Hutchings, the new volume of The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror from Paula Guran, Sunny Moraine’s creepy novella Your Shadow Half Remains, and lots more.

But the book that really leaped into my hands was Beyond Enemies, the debut novel by Marisa Wolf, who’s appeared in a couple of Baen anthologies and co-authored a number of titles from Seventh Seal Press. Beyond Enemies is the story of a girl and her tank on a backwater planet that becomes the pivot point in an interstellar war. Just what I’m in the mood for.

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New Treasures: The Soulfire Saga by Matthew Ward

New Treasures: The Soulfire Saga by Matthew Ward

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The first two books in The Soulfire Saga: The Darkness Before Them and The Fire
Within Them (Orbit, November 7, 2023 and June 11, 2024). Covers by Joe Wilson

I spent the Christmas break working on a number of projects, and not doing any of the catch-up reading I promised myself. I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions, but I did grit my teeth on January 1st and resolve to read more this year. Especially books from new writers.

I have a break coming up as I complete a big writing project, and as a reward I have my eye on the new fantasy series from Matthew Ward. He’s the author of the Legacy Trilogy, and this new project — featuring a thief caught up in a failed heist, on her way to the capital to be turned into an animated skeleton — sounds like just what I need. Adrian Collins at GrimDark Magazine says it’s “full of action, heart, betrayal, and set in a dark, engaging world,” and that’s all the recommendation I need.

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Brutal, Evocative, & Sad: Michael Moorcock’s Elric the Dreaming City by Julien Blondel, Jean-Luc Cano, and Julien Telo

Brutal, Evocative, & Sad: Michael Moorcock’s Elric the Dreaming City by Julien Blondel, Jean-Luc Cano, and Julien Telo

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Michael Moorcock’s Elric Vol. 4: The Dreaming City
(Titan Comics, April 5, 2022). Art by Julien Telo

Elric of Melniboné, the White Wolf, is exiled from his home and cursed to walk the land under the influence of Arioch, the Lord of Chaos. With his soul-eating sword, Stormbringer, Elric must find his way to the Dreaming City – the mysterious ancient birthplace of his ancestors. Hoping to unlock the secrets of his destiny, Elric is unaware he is being hunted by his long-lost love, Cymoril, who has only one sinister agenda: vengeance.

I must admit, when I first saw Titan Comics advertising this hardcover graphic novel, Elric: The Dreaming City, I was skeptical.

How could this be worth my shelf space when I already have the same Michael Moorcock story adapted in 1982 by the great Roy Thomas, with art by the legendary P. Craig Russell? That is what I asked myself. The bar was set rather high.

But after picking this up and more recently perusing it, I’ve concluded that this adaptation by Blondel and Cano, with art by Telo, is indeed a worthy addition to any Elric fan’s collection. It is brutal, evocative, sad, and violent – all the hallmarks of a tragically epic Elric story.

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