Black Gate

I first met Yves Meynard at the World Fantasy Convention in Montreal in 2001. He was already a rising star, and since then he’s had a stellar career — his novel The Book of Knights was a finalist for the Mythopoeic Award, and when Tor published his fantasy novel Chrysanthe in 2012, Locus called him “[David] Hartwell’s major discovery this year.” This is his first collection.

In these twelve sombre tales, ranging from baroque science fiction to bleak fantasy, Yves Meynard brings to life wonders and horrors. From space travellers who must rid themselves of the sins their souls accumulate in transit, to a young man whose love transcends time; from refugees in a frozen hold at the end of space, to a city drowning under the weight of its architectural prayer; from an alien Jerusalem that has corrupted the Earth, to a land still bleeding from the scars of a supernatural war; here are windows opened onto astonishing vistas, stories written with a scientist’s laser focus alloyed with a poet’s sensibilities.

At Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog, Yves offered this marvelous comment about how own search for wonder in fiction:

The natural world is an endless source of amazement; human culture all across the planet ceaselessly produces works of stunning beauty. You shouldn’t need anything else to satisfy your need for wonderment… And yet it still twitches inside me, that urge for the miraculous. I read stories of the fantastic and write them myself, to assuage it. And I tell myself it’s better to have it only inside of stories. Because if such a miraculous world were real, loaded with revelations and terrible marvels, a world in whose oceans swam hybrids and monsters, a world where everything was charged with transcendent meaning, and all our human conceits were true — that world would devour us.

Angels & Exiles was published by ChiZine Publications on February 26, 2015. It is 291 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback and $7.99 for the digital version. The cover art is by Vince Haig, with a design by Samantha Beiko.

As I mentioned in my post on The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, Tor has really been on a tear recently with some top-notch debuts. They’ve always been willing to take a chance on new authors, but recently some of their most exciting releases have come from new authors. That continues with Updraft, the first novel from Fran Wilde, whose short fiction has been getting notice in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Nature, and Asimov’s SF.

Welcome to a World of Wind and Bone, Songs and Silence, Betrayal and Courage

Kirit Densira cannot wait to pass her wingtest and begin flying as a trader by her mother’s side, being in service to her beloved home tower and exploring the skies beyond. When Kirit inadvertently breaks Tower Law, the city’s secretive governing body, the Singers, demand that she become one of them instead. In an attempt to save her family from greater censure, Kirit must give up her dreams to throw herself into the dangerous training at the Spire, the tallest, most forbidding tower, deep at the heart of the City.

As she grows in knowledge and power, she starts to uncover the depths of Spire secrets. Kirit begins to doubt her world and its unassailable Laws, setting in motion a chain of events that will lead to a haunting choice, and may well change the city forever — if it isn’t destroyed outright.

Read an excerpt at Tor.com, and read Fran’s new short story set in the same world, “Bent the Wing, Dark the Cloud,” just released in the latest issue of online magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

Updraft will be published by Tor Books on September 1, 2015. It is 364 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Stephan Martinere.

Professor Challenger is one of the great explorer-heroes of the genre. Created by Arthur Conan Doyle in his 1912 novel The Lost World, Challenger also appeared in The Poison Belt and The Land of Mist, and a pair of short stories. Now editors J.R. Campbell and Charles Prepolec have assembled a brand new collection of exciting tales featuring the irrepressible Professor Challenger, with contributions from Mark Morris, Stephen Volk, Guy Adams and James Goss, Black Gate blogger Josh Reynolds, and many others.

Brilliant, belligerent and bearded in equal measure, incapable of suffering fools, or journalists, gladly, the greatest scientific mind of his generation — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor George Edward Challenger — returns in ten all-new tales of scientific adventure and wonder. He is the discoverer of The Lost World, the prophet of The Poison Belt, the destroyer of The Disintegration Machine, and the man who made the World Scream! Who can deliver mankind from the shackles of ignorance? Who else but that great self-proclaimed champion of science? We give you, ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, the one, the only, Professor George Edward Challenger!

This original anthology, from the authors and editors who brought you the Gaslight Sherlock Holmes series, sees Challenger and his stalwart company including the reporter Malone, big game hunter Lord John Roxton and the skeptical colleague Professor Summerlee, travel across space and witness the ravages of time, narrowly eluding a dinosaur’s bite only to battle against the invasive red bloom of alien foliage, then plunge deep into the mysteries hidden within the Earth and reach out to the moon and into the heart of the unknown. Strap yourself in for chills, thrills and challenges to the unknown in exciting new worlds and lost places with literature’s foremost scientific adventurer.

Professor Challenger: New Worlds, Lost Places was edited by J.R. Campbell and Charles Prepolec and published by EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing on August 15, 2015. It is 250 pages, priced at $15.95 in trade paperback, and $5.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Dave Elsey.