Black Gate

Happy release day to Mission Critical, the brand new anthology from Jonathan Strahan, editor of Engineering Infinity (2010), Drowned Worlds (2016), and thirteen volumes of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year.

In a Facebook post announcing the release today, Jonathan said:

My new book is out in the world! With stories by by Peter F. Hamilton, Yoon Lee, Aliette de Bodard, Greg Egan, Linda Nagata, Gregory Feeley, John Barnes, Tobias Buckell, Jason Fischer & Sean Williams, Carolyn Ives Gilman, John Meaney, Dominica Phetteplace, Allen M. Steele, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and Peter Watts, [it’s] a mix of great science fiction adventure all based on the idea that when things go wrong you have to do *something*!

I love the stories in the book and am really proud of it. If you’ve ever enjoyed one of my anthologies, if you liked stories like The Martian, if you just want to keep anthologies coming out, or if you just love good short fiction, consider ordering this one.

I’ll second that notion. Jonathan has become one of the most respected and successful anthologists in the field. Back in 2015 I talked about how his book Meeting Infinity was the Most Successful Anthology of the year, and just last year Todd McAulty (author of The Robots of Gotham) opined about How Science Fiction Was Saved by Solaris and Jonathan Strahan.

Todd’s point was that short fiction is still critically important to the field, and that prestige anthologies like Strahan’s Infinity project are still the most reliable way for readers to discover new authors. It’s a premise that a lot of Black Gate readers agree with.

If you enjoy short fiction, or science fiction at all, supporting books like Mission Critical — and the publishers who produce them — is important. I hope you’ll give it a try. And if you enjoy it, I hope you’ll spread the word far and wide. (And if you don’t, why not shut the hell up about it.)

Mission Critical was published in paperback by Solaris today. Here’s the publisher’s description.

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Richard Kadrey is the author of ten novels in the bestselling Sandman Slim dark fantasy series. His latest is a significant departure from those books, a standalone fantasy that looks like a breakout book, and it’s winning him new fans and getting a lot of attention. NPR calls The Grand Dark “the work of a major science fiction/fantasy creator,” and Kirkus says it’s “Wildly ambitious and inventive fantasy from an author who’s punching above his weight in terms of worldbuilding — and winning.” Here’s the publisher’s description.

The Great War is over. The city of Lower Proszawa celebrates the peace with a decadence and carefree spirit as intense as the war’s horrifying despair. But this newfound hedonism — drugs and sex and endless parties — distracts from strange realities of everyday life: Intelligent automata taking jobs. Genetically engineered creatures that serve as pets and beasts of war. A theater where gruesome murders happen twice a day. And a new plague that even the ceaseless euphoria can’t mask.

Unlike others who live strictly for fun, Largo is an addict with ambitions. A bike messenger who grew up in the slums, he knows the city’s streets and its secrets intimately. His life seems set. He has a beautiful girlfriend, drugs, a chance at a promotion — and maybe, an opportunity for complete transformation: a contact among the elite who will set him on the course to lift himself up out of the streets.

But dreams can be a dangerous thing in a city whose mood is turning dark and inward. Others have a vision of life very different from Largo’s, and they will use any methods to secure control. And in behind it all, beyond the frivolity and chaos, the threat of new war always looms.

The Grand Dark was published by Harper Voyager on June 11, 2019. It is 432 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $12.99 in digital formats. The cover was designed by Will Staehle. Listen to a 5-minute audio excerpt at the HarperCollins website.

We lost Gardner Dozois, one of the greatest editors the SF field has ever seen, in May of last year. As devastating as that was, many of us took some solace in the fact that he had a handful of very exciting books still in the pipeline, and we’d have the opportunity to celebrate and remember him a few times yet.

The first of those, the 35th and final volume in his legendary Year’s Best anthology series, was published last July, and the monumental The Book of Magic (companion to The Book of Swords) arrived in October. The third and final book from Gardner, The Very Best of the Best, was published by St. Martins’ in February. It’s a massive tome, with a Hwarhath novella by Eleanor Arnason, an India 2047 novella by Ian McDonald, a Mars novella from Kage Baker, a novella by Robert Reed, a Quiet War novelette by Paul J. McAuley, and stories by Yoon Ha Lee, Peter Watts, Nancy Kress, Rich Larson, Maureen F. McHugh, Charles Stross, Eleanor Arnason, Michael Swanwick, Carrie Vaughn, Lavie Tidhar, James S. A. Corey, Stephen Baxter, Alastair Reynolds, Greg Egan, and many others.

While the subtitle is 35 Years of The Year’s Best Science Fiction, implying that the stories are selected from all 35 years of Gardner’s Year’s Best, that’s not true. The earliest tale is from 2002, and the most recent from 2017, meaning it’s really a retrospective looking back at the fifteen years between 2002-2017. It’s a rather idiosyncratic book, neglecting many of the most acclaimed stories from those years in favor of the authors and tales that Gardner loved best. Nonetheless, it is one final gift from Gardner, and if this truly is his final book, it’s a magnificent capstone to his career.

I owe a pretty big debt to Gardner — and not just because (for reasons unknown to me) he included me in the acknowledgments of his Year’s Best anthologies for over a decade. He edited some of the best science fiction I’ve ever read, and discovered, promoted and championed many of my favorite writers — and helped me discover many, many more.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents for The Very Best of the Best.

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