Black Gate

Nebula Awards Showcase 55 (SFWA, August 2021). Cover by Lauren Raye Snow

I’m hearing some grousing about the latest Nebula Awards Showcase, edited by the distinguished Catherynne M. Valente.

This is the 55th volume in the long-running series, and the second to be published directly by SFWA, the Science Fiction Writers of America. As is customary, it contains the complete Nebula award-winning stories, as selected by that august body, as well as a tasty selection of the other nominees, as selected at the whim of the editor.

Well — not exactly. And that seems to be the crux of the problem. For the first time I can remember, the Nebula Awards Showcase contains only one of the winners from last year, A. T. Greenblatt’s short story “Give the Family My Love,” originally published in Clarkesworld. All the others — including the winners in novelette, novella, and novel category — are represented only by brief excerpts.

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The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021 (Mariner Books, October 2021). Cover uncredited

John Joseph Adams was my editor on my first novel, The Robots of Gotham, so naturally I assume he is the leading editor in the field (you should too.) For the past seven years he has been editing The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy with a strong line-up of annual co-editors, including Karen Joy Fowler, N.K. Jemisin, and Carmen Maria Machado. This year Veronica Roth joins him at the podium, the bestselling author of The Divergent series and Chosen Ones.

The 10 fantasy tales in this year’s volume are by Kate Elliott, Ken Liu, Yohanca Delgado (with two stories), and others; the ten SF stories are from Daryl Gregory, Ted Kosmatka, Karen Lord, Tochi Onyebuchi, Yoon Ha Lee, and others. Also within are Celeste Rita Baker’s World Fantasy Award Winner “Glass Bottle Dancer,” Meg Elison’s Locus Award winner “The Pill,” and Sarah Pinsker’s Nebula winner “Two Truths and a Lie.” Here’s a look at some recent reviews.

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Neodymium Exodus (WordFire Press, October 2021)). Cover design by Janet McDonald

Kevin J. Anderson’s Wordfire Press has published plenty of SF the last few years, including exciting books by Cat Rambo, Paul Di Filippo, D.J. Butler, Bill Ransom, R.M. Meluch, Mike Resnick, Lou Antonelli, Robert Asprin, Alan Dean Foster, Frank Herbert, Brenda Cooper — and even the first Nexus novel by Mike Baron.

Of course, any publisher worth its salt really proves itself by discovering and promoting new authors. So I was intrigued to see Neodymium Exodus cross my desk, the first novel in a “fun, frenetic space opera” (Publishers Weekly) featuring “sentient insectoids, purple jungles, and insane electromagnetic fields.” I don’t much about the author, Jen Finelli MD, except that she likes to put ‘MD’ after her name, which tells me that at some point in our relationship she’s likely to remind me I’m overdue for a colonoscopy.

Anyway, you lot know how I feel about space opera. I think I’ll settle down with this one in my big green chair.

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The Body Scout (Orbit, September 2021). Cover by Lauren Panepinto

I rejoined the Science Fiction Book Club over fifteen years ago, because it was the only way to get Jonathan Strahan’s fabulous Best Short Novels anthologies. After a corporate shake-up in 2007 led to the retirement of editor Ellen Asher — who’d been at the helm since 1973 — and Andrew Wheeler was laid off, the SFBC sadly stopped producing original anthologies and those delicious omnibus volumes. I miss them.

I’m still a member, even though their Things to Come newsletter isn’t as interested as it used to be. Partly it’s because they choose my novel The Robots of Gotham as a Feature Selection back in 2018 (a dream I’d had since I was a kid). But also because I still discover interesting books through the club that I don’t find anywhere else. Like Lincoln Michel’s debut novel The Body Scout, a near-future SF noir that looks very intriguing indeed. Here’s the description.

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Giving the Devil His Due (Running Wild Press, September 2021). Cover uncredited

I’m getting word from a number of readers that a recent charity anthology, Giving the Devil His Due, is well worth a look. Published in September by The Pixel Project in partnership with Running Wild Press, it contains reprints and new fiction from Stephen Graham Jones, Kelley Armstrong, Nicholas Kaufmann, Nisi Shawl, Peter Tieryas, Dana Cameron, Jason Sanford, and many others. It was compiled by ex-Ace/Roc editor Rebecca Brewer; here’s the intriguing description.

Giving The Devil His Due is inspired by award-winning Horror author Stephen Graham Jones’s story “Hell On The Homefront Too” about a battered wife who finally gets rid of her abusive war-hero-turned-zombie husband. The theme of the anthology is the comeuppance of men who commit violence against women and girls. With a Twilight Zone vibe, this anthology evokes the spirit of Rod Serling to tell compelling stories that will help get the conversation about violence against women started amongst book lovers and fandoms worldwide while sending a clear message that misogyny, toxic masculinity, and violence against women is unacceptable.

Clarence Young was the first one to tip me off to the book, and it wasn’t long before I found Seven Jane’s enthusiastic review at Nerd Daily. Here’s a slice.

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Out of the Ruins (Titan Books, September 2021). Cover by Shutterstock

I’ve spent a lot of energy over the past few years decrying the death of paperback science fiction anthology. So when they do still occasionally appear, I’m inclined to celebrate them — especially when they’re as promising as Out of the Ruins, a collection of apocalyptic tales old and new from a stellar list of contributors: Samuel R. Delany, Ramsey Campbell, Lavie Tidhar, Emily St John Mandel, Carmen Maria Machado, Charlie Jane Anders, Nina Allan, China Miéville, Clive Barker, Paul Di Filippo, and many others.

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Far Out (Night Shade, July 2021). Cover by Julie Dillon

I had the privilege of interviewing Paula Guran back in September, in honoring of the upcoming release of her 50th book. We discussed a lot of her recent projects; one of the more interesting was Far Out, a huge new anthology. Here’s what Paula said about it, in part.

I have another one that just came out that’s not getting a lot of attention that I will mention. It’s called Far Out: Recent Queer Science Fiction and Fantasy… I’m very proud of that book. It is a great book, and it really has a nice look at the last ten years, and… the publisher it came out from is just kind of not supporting it. I just want to get it out there; it’s a good book, it would be great in college courses that are looking at any kind of LGBT fiction and just as a great introduction to a lot of authors that are very familiar to us, but may be new to people out there…

It’s been one that I wanted to do for a while… it was the last book I had under contract [with Night Shade]… I isolated myself on Far Out to a ten-year period…  of course there were people that I knew I wanted to go back and look for stories from in that period, like Chris Barzak for instance, who’s a gay writer… but just on that cusp of 2020 that I was ending at, there’s this sudden boom in 2020 and 2021 of just in the last year, even more [writers] that you can pick from now. It’s really exciting to see that.

Far Out is a reprint anthology with a “table of contents [that] reads like the glitterati of queer fiction,” according to Arley Sorg at Lightspeed. Here’s the complete TOC.

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Beasts and Beauty: Dangerous Tales (Harper, September 2021). Cover by Julia Iredale

I admit it, my reading tastes are susceptible to the changing seasons (and publishing dollars). When Halloween is over my interest in scary fiction abates a little… though I still like my late fall fiction to have a little bite.

Soman Chainani’s Beasts and Beauty: Dangerous Tales looks like a perfect choice. Chainani is the author of the bestselling School for Good and Evil series; his latest is a collection of a dozen re-told fairy tales, stories that include a dark-skinned Snow White, a South Asian Hansel and Gretel, and similar takes on Bluebeard, Little Red Riding Hood, and Rumpelstiltskin. Medium calls them “Terrifying, chilling, unexpected, and glorious. A must-read for any fairy tale devotee,” and Kirkus says they evoke “the wonder, terror, and magic of the fantasy realms.” Here’s a snippet from the Kirkus review.

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