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New Treasures: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 8, edited by Jonathan Strahan

New Treasures: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 8, edited by Jonathan Strahan

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The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 8-smallHurrah!  The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 8 is in the house.

You’d think that after seven outstanding previous volumes, one more would be a slam dunk. But no. There was drama. The original publisher was in peril and no one knew if there would be an eighth. Well, maybe somebody knew, but it wasn’t me. And I’m the one with 9 column inches to fill every day.

At length, cooler heads prevailed and Volume 8 reappeared on the schedule from a new publisher, Solaris Books. It’s been redesigned so it looks slightly funky standing next to the uniform previous volumes, like a red-headed stepchild at a family reunion. But looks aren’t important to us here at Black Gate, which explains our love for Paul Giamatti and five dollar haircuts.

Well, enough superficiality. What’s in the book?

28 stories by some of the best writers at work in the field today, including multiple Hugo and Nebula award nominees — such as “Selkie Stories are for Losers” by Sofia Samatar (Hugo and Nebula nominee), “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling,” by Ted Chiang (Hugo), and “The Ink Readers of Doi Saket,” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (Hugo). See the complete table of contents in our previous article.

(And while we’re on the topic of Hugos, editor Strahan is on the ballot this year for Best Professional Editor, Short Form. You go, Jonathan! We’ve got ten bucks on you, buddy.)

Strahan’s Best of the Year volumes include both SF and fantasy, and year after year are some of the best values in the industry. If you’re not reading them, you’re missing out on some of the finest new writing in the field.

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 8 was edited by Jonathan Strahan and published by Solaris on May 13, 2014. It is 614 pages, priced at $19.99 in paperback and $7.99 for the digital edition. We last covered Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year with Volume 7.

The Shout of a Young Man Who Finds the World a Complicated Place: The Eternal Champion by Michael Moorcock

The Shout of a Young Man Who Finds the World a Complicated Place: The Eternal Champion by Michael Moorcock

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oie_272267fTHTh1HnWhen I was a kid, all my friends read Michael Moorcock’s sprawling Eternal Champion series. Endlessly resurrected and reincarnated, the Eternal Champion exists to right the balance between Law and Chaos. According to Moorcock in the introduction to the 1994 edition of the novel, The Eternal Champion:

I use the ideas of Law and Chaos precisely because I am suspicious of simplistic notions of good and evil. In my multiverse, Law and Chaos are both legitimate ways of interpreting and defining experience. Ideally, the Cosmic Balance keeps both sides in equilibrium. By playing “the Game of Time”… the various participants maintain that equilibrium. When the scales tip too far toward Law we move toward rigid orthodoxy and social sterility, a form of decadence. When Chaos is uppermost we move too far towards undisciplined and destructive creativity.

Seemingly deep stuff for teenagers to be reading, but I think it was part of the series’ appeal. Teenagers are constantly pushing boundaries and trying to get a grip on right and wrong. I think many of them are as suspicious of supposedly “simplistic notions of good and evil” as Moorcock was. It appeared to be presenting a more nuanced way of looking at the world.

Most of the guys (and it was all guys) I knew who read swords & sorcery back in the 1970s and early ’80s were SF/F geeks, potheads, or metalheads and there was a lot of overlap amongst those groups. In my experience, gaming had a lot to do with bringing those tribes together and we all loved Moorcock’s stories and heroes.

Most preferred the morose albino, Elric, of doomed Melniboné. Dressed in black armor, wielding the evil soul-drinking sword Stormbringer, and riding a dragon — I totally get it. A few liked Dorian Hawkmoon von Koln and his adventures across post-apocalyptic Europe and America better. Personally, I did and still do enjoy the two trilogies about Corum Jhaelen Irsei, last of the Vadhagh. Steeped in Irish myth and a gloomy Celtic miasma, I think they’re the most intense and beautiful books in the series.

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Vintage Treasures: The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XIII edited by Karl Edward Wagner

Vintage Treasures: The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XIII edited by Karl Edward Wagner

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Year's Best Horror Stories 13-smallI’m still working my way through the fabulous collection of pulps, digest magazines, and paperbacks I brought back from the Windy City Pulp & Paperback show in April.

I found the artifact at left mixed in with a delightful assortment of 80s horror paperbacks near the back of the Dealer’s Room. It’s the 13th volume of The Year’s Best Horror Stories, which Karl Edward Wagner took over from editor Gerald W. Page in 1980 with the eighth volume.

The Year’s Best Horror was a long-running paperback horror anthology published by DAW. Like Donald Wollheim’s World’s Best SF and Lin Carter and Arthur Saha’s Year’s Best Fantasy, both also from DAW, it was a staple on bookstore shelves through the late 70s and early 80s, and served as a terrific introduction to a wide range of new and established writers every year.

For young readers new to science fiction, fantasy, and horror, DAW’s annual Best collections were a terrific way to explore the field. They were ubiquitous, extremely well edited, and — best of all — marvelously inexpensive.

Wagner edited fifteen installments in the series, until he drank himself to death in 1994. The last one was volume XXII, and the series died with him.

If you want to collect DAW’s World’s Best SF and Year’s Best Fantasy, you’re on your own, relegated to tracking down tattered paperbacks in the collector’s market — and paying a pretty penny when you found them. Karl Edward Wagner Year’s Best Horror volumes, however, established an early and enviable reputation as a treasure trove of high-quality horror… so much so that Underwood Miller made the unprecedented decision in the early 90s to collect them  in hardcover omnibus editions, three per volume, under the title Horrorstory — and what gorgeously packed volumes they were.

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Love in War and Realms Beyond Imagining: The Fish, the Fighters and the Song Girl by Janet Morris and Chris Morris

Love in War and Realms Beyond Imagining: The Fish, the Fighters and the Song Girl by Janet Morris and Chris Morris

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The Fish, the Fighters and the Song Girl-small

“Your commander reaches for yonder stars and gods do eye him. And there are more Fates in the wide worlds of men than those whom he has aided.” – from The Fish, the Fighters and the Song Girl.

The Fish, the Fighters and the Song Girl
Janet Morris and Chris Morris
Revised Author’s Cut, published by Perseid Press (386 pages, May 24, 2012, $24.95)
Cover art: Peter Paul Rubens, “The Consequences of War” (detail), 1637-1638

The team of Janet Morris and Chris Morris once again grace us with another excellent collection of Homeric Heroic Fantasy, featuring Tempus, Niko and their Sacred Band of Stepsons. This compilation is comprised of both new stories and earlier tales, herein revised from the original Thieves’ World® series, stories such as “What Women Do Best,” “Power Play,” and “Sanctuary is for Lovers.” Brand-new tales, written especially for this book, include “Shelter from the Storm,” “Lemnian Deed,” “Ravener, Where Art Thou?” and the title story.

All the magic, action, adventure, humor and human drama I’ve come to expect from Janet and Chris Morris are here in spades, and there are enough revelations and plot twists along the way to keep you on your toes.

This collection takes place after the Morris’ masterpiece, The Sacred Band, and gives us more of the history of the Sacred Band as Tempus takes his Stepsons and Thebans north, a world away, into unexplored regions and a mythic country. Though they are courageous, these fighters, they are no strangers to fear. Though they are warriors, hard and tough, they are not immune to love and compassion, to decency and common humanity.

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Future Treasures: Thrones & Bones: Frostborn by Lou Anders

Future Treasures: Thrones & Bones: Frostborn by Lou Anders

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Thrones and Bones Frostborn-smallLou Anders is the editorial director of Pyr Books, one of the most exciting publishers on the market for adventure fantasy fans. Last month, while talking about the latest upcoming title from Pyr, I described Lou as “the closest we have to Lin Carter in the field today: an editor with impeccable taste and boundless energy, who has also been a tireless champion for sword & sorcery.”

Here’s a secret: one of the reasons I described Lou as “tireless” is that — just like Lin Carter — he’s also a talented fantasy writer in his own right. His debut novel Frostborn, an adventure-filled Viking-inspired middle grade series featuring two charming and humorous heroes, arrives in two months from Crown Books. Keep an eye out for it — you won’t want to miss it.

Meet Karn. He is destined to take over the family farm in Norrøngard. His only problem? He’d rather be playing the board game Thrones and Bones. Enter Thianna. Half human, half frost giantess. She’s too tall to blend in with other humans but too short to be taken seriously as a giant.

When family intrigues force Karn and Thianna to flee into the wilderness, they have to keep their sense of humor and their wits about them. But survival can be challenging when you’re being chased by a 1,500-year-old dragon, Helltoppr the undead warrior and his undead minions, an evil uncle, wyverns, and an assortment of trolls and giants.

Readers will embark on a sweeping epic fantasy as they join Karn and Thianna on a voyage of discovery. Antics and hair-raising escapades abound in this fantasy adventure as the two forge a friendship and journey to unknown territory. Their plan: to save their families from harm.

Frostborn, the first book of Thrones & Bones, will be published by Crown Books on August 5, 2014. It is 310 pages, priced at $16.99 in hardcover and $10.99 for the digital version.

Quick, Engrossing and Weird: A Review of Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

Quick, Engrossing and Weird: A Review of Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

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Jeff VanderMeer Annihilation-smallWhen I first read about Annihilation, the opening novel in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, it was described as a cross between Lovecraft and the television show Lost. Given VanderMeer’s well-known and impressive status in the SF&F field and since I’m such a sucker for anything described as “Lovecraftian” — and since I also loved Lost (at least the first few seasons) — I waited with eagerness for it to arrive in the mail.

As soon as it did, I plowed through it in about four hours — it was a quick and engrossing page-turner. It is very much a “weird” book, filled with many mysteries and queer goings-on.

The story centers on a small expedition that sets out to explore Area X, an expanse of southern coastland that has evidently been “captured” (it’s difficult to describe exactly what has happened in Area X) by some sort of unexplained anomaly, making entering and exiting the area very difficult.

The expedition in question is peopled by four unnamed women, designated by only their respective professions: the Anthropologist, the Psychologist, the Surveyor, and the Biologist — our viewpoint character. Their purpose is to collect data about Area X and report back to their government agency, The Southern Reach.

We know that this particular expedition is the most recent in a series of unsuccessful missions. We are told that previous expeditions either failed to return, ended badly in some way, or had group members who returned traumatized with little or no knowledge of their trips to Area X.

This setup is intriguing on its own. But the mysteries begin to pile upon one another very quickly as we progress into the story.

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The Series Series: Cursed by S.J. Harper

The Series Series: Cursed by S.J. Harper

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Cursed S.J. Harper-smallOnce in a while, I check in with the paranormal romance subgenre. Most times, I conclude I’m the wrong reader and move on. What makes the check-in worthwhile is that there are books out there like Laura Anne Gilman’s Heart of Briar (which I reviewed here), books that use the conventions of paranormal romance to do something surprising, something stranger or more complex than the usual spectacle of exogamy-as-extreme-sport.

Cursed, the first volume in S.J. Harper’s Fallen Siren series, promises a bit more strangeness and depth than the average paranormal romance does. Harper’s heroine is a Siren, and it turns out there’s more to the Sirens’ myth than we all remember from reading Homer in high school. According to several actual ancient sources, the Sirens were Persephone’s companions and for their failure to save Persephone from Hades, Demeter cursed them. The Ancient Greek and Roman versions of the story disagree about the precise nature of the curse, which is just the sort of wiggle room modern writers love.

Since S. J. Harper is the pen name for a team of established romance writers, their version of the Sirens’ curse is that, until the Sirens have rescued enough innocents from abduction to satisfy Demeter for the loss of her daughter, they cannot die no matter what they suffer and they can never know love without losing the beloved. Losing in the worst possible ways. Harper’s interpretation of Demeter is the winter goddess of the barren Earth, all wrath and vengeance. As when the mythic Demeter would have allowed all humanity to starve while she went on strike, this Demeter has no qualms about destroying innocent men to torment the fallen goddesses who love them.

Do you sense that it’s a problem when the villainous dea ex machina in reverse is more interesting than the protagonists who get most of the time on stage? Yes, that would be the mismatch between book and reader showing. Or it might be an actual weakness of the book, but I don’t have the right readerly dopamine receptors to get romance novels, so I can’t be sure how its merits would look to a reader who does.

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Spotlight on Interactive Fiction: Choice of the Deathless by Max Gladstone

Spotlight on Interactive Fiction: Choice of the Deathless by Max Gladstone

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Between keeping up with my usual webcomics, Marvel: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and several writing projects (one of them my own current work for Choice of Games), I haven’t had as much time to play games (or review them) as I’d like. But back in my December 20 post, I promised an upcoming review of Choice of the Deathless by Max Gladstone. Max is a writer friend of mine and I’m not shy about proclaiming my love for his Craft Sequence — of which Choice of the Deathless is a corollary. Since Max is currently a John W. Campbell nominee, and his Three Parts Dead just made Reddit’s list of under-read fantasy, I thought now would be a great time to spend some time on Choice of the Deathless — and mention his novels as well.

Choice of the Deathless, art by Ron Chan
Choice of the Deathless, art by Ron Chan

The world of the Craft Sequence is one in which human wizards — usually necromancers, most of whom wear pin striped suits and run corporations called Concerns — rose up against the gods in a huge war and won, leaving most of the gods dead. Lest you think this means the conceit of the world is all about the virtues of Progress over Faith, I assure you I don’t read the stories at all that way. Progress has its own failings, Faith has its strengths, and the stories told in Max’s books and game strike me as being about characters who try to find a way to reconcile the two to make the world a better place. Also: necromancers who are, effectively, lawyers, and fantasy novels that are also legal thrillers. Sometimes about ecoterrorism, corporate espionage, or just trying to find a good cup of coffee. What’s not to love?

Choice of the Deathless gives the player a chance to take part in that world of exciting corporate magic, beginning at the low rung of a Concern’s ladder with hopes of climbing all the way up to Partner. But while student loans, crappy apartments, and a lack of sleep all add flavor to the game, things really start to get interesting when the PC starts dealing with literal demons. In one case, the PC needs to keep demons from finding a contractual loophole that would allow them to gain an unlimited foothold in the human world. In another, an oppressed demon wants out of an abusive contract, without getting sent back to the demon lands. In a third, the PC must decide whether to advise a minor goddess to seek out her own lawyer or take her to court for everything she has. And the larger story arc gives PCs the chance to eventually become a skeletal, undead, master of magic — if they play their cards right.

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Mary Stewart, September 17, 1916 – May 10, 2014

Mary Stewart, September 17, 1916 – May 10, 2014

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The Hollow Hills-smallMary Stewart, my wife’s favorite author, died last week.

I’ve read only a handful of Stewart’s novels. Her Merlin Trilogy — The Crystal Cave (1970), The Hollow Hills (1973), and The Last Enchantment (1979) — is one of the top-selling Arthurian sagas of all time, hitting bestseller lists around the world. It was her only fantasy series, but it instantly made her one of the most popular fantasy authors of the 70s.

But I got used to seeing the covers of her romantic mystery novels. My wife re-read them constantly. Alice is a voracious reader and she’s read widely in both mystery and contemporary fiction, but at least once a year she pulls out one of her tattered Mary Stewart paperbacks.

“Why are you constantly re-reading those, when you have so many others to choose from?” I asked her once, shortly after we were married.

“Because these are the best,” she said simply.

Mary Stewart’s Merlin Trilogy eventually extended to five novels, including The Wicked Day (1983) and The Prince and the Pilgrim (1995), but her gothic romance included Madam, Will You Talk? (1954), Thunder on the Right (1957), Nine Coaches Waiting (1958), My Brother Michael (1959), The Moon-Spinners (1962) — made into a 1964 Walt Disney film starring Hayley Mills, This Rough Magic (1964), The Gabriel Hounds (1967), Touch Not the Cat (1976), Thornyhold (1988), Stormy Petrel (1991), and her final novel, Rose Cottage (1997).

Mary Stewart lived in Edinburgh, Scotland. She died on May 10th at the age of 97.

Vintage Treasures: Marianne, The Magus, and the Manticore by Sheri S. Tepper

Vintage Treasures: Marianne, The Magus, and the Manticore by Sheri S. Tepper

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Marianne The Magus and the Manticore-smallI’ve written a lot of Vintage Treasures articles (over 400 now, believe it or not.) Most of them feature collectible paperbacks and virtually all of them — even the old Ace Doubles from the 1950s — are inexpensive to acquire for the patient collector. It’s very, very rare that I discuss one that costs as much as a new paperback, for example.

Sheri S. Tepper’s Marianne, The Magus, and the Manticore is an exception. Used copies start at $10 – 15 on both Amazon and eBay and copies in good shape will run you closer to $40. It’s not particularly old — published in 1985 — and it’s not even all that rare. So why is it so expensive? Because it was published just before her groundbreaking novel The Gate to Women’s Country (1988) and the Hugo-nominated Grass (1989). In other words, before Tepper became a Big Name in the industry. The book was reprinted once, in 1988, but has now been out of print for nearly 30 years. Tepper has a great many fans, and the law of supply and demand dictates that the volumes in this trilogy are likely to be hot properties for some time.

Legacy Of Magic

Marianne was born to luxury in the tiny nation of Alphenlicht, nestled in the mountains between Turkey and Iraq. The her parents died, leaving control of their fortune to the older brother she fears. Struggling to make her way as a student in America, Alphenlicht seems as unreal as a fairy tale, her childhood there as distant as a dream…

… Until the Magus comes to claim her, and the Black Madame to destroy her, and the Manticore to hunt her down through the streets of another world. For there is magic in the land of Alphenlicht. Magic in Marianne’s blood, and magic in her soul…

Marianne, The Magus, and the Manticore was followed by two sequels in what’s now known as the Marianne series: Marianne, The Madame, and the Momentary Gods (1988), and Marianne, the Matchbox, and the Malachite Mouse (1989). A 592-page omnibus volume, The Marianne Trilogy, was offered briefly in paperback by Corgi in 1990 — it’s a great value, if you can find it.

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