Fall 2012 issue of Subterranean Magazine now Available

Fall 2012 issue of Subterranean Magazine now Available

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subterranean-magazine-fall-2012One of my favorite online magazines, Subterranean, has just released its 24th issue. Before issue 23, it was presented in a rolling format, with new fiction and articles available every week; but they’ve now switched to posting the complete contents all at once. That means you can now enjoy new novellas by Nnedi Okorafor and Kealan Patrick Burke, and novelettes by Maria Dahvana Headley and Brian Lumley.

The fiction this issue runs the gamut from apocalyptic horror to the mysteries of deepest Africa. Here’s the complete table of contents:

  • “African Sunrise,” by Nnedi Okorafor (31,000 word novella)
  • “Game,” by Maria Dahvana Headley (11,000 word novelette)
  • “Two-Stone Tom’s Big T.O.E.,” by Brian Lumley (14,000 word novelette)
  • “When the Shadows are Hungry and Cold (A Milestone Story),” by Kealan Patrick Burke (18,000 word novella)

Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death won the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and was nominated for the 2010 Nebula Award. Maria Dahvana Headley’s memoir, The Year of Yes, an account of the year she spent saying yes to anyone who asked her out, has been optioned for the screen by Paramount Pictures; her debut novel, Queen of Kings, was published in 2010. Brian Lumley is the author of the Necroscope novels; he received a World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2010. Kealan Patrick Burke’s novel, The Hides, was a Bram Stoker Award nominee, and his novella, “The Turtle Boy,” was a Stoker Award Winner in 2004.

Subterranean has just announced that in the next couple of weeks, they’ll offer an electronic edition of the current issue for just $2.99 for those who prefer to read it on ereaders. Watch the website for availability information.

Subterranean is edited by William Schafer and published quarterly. The Fall 2012 issue is completely free and available here; see their complete back issue catalog here. We last covered Subterranean magazine with their previous issue, Summer 2012.

Mars: A Planetary Star

Mars: A Planetary Star

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fourth-planet-from-the-sunJohn O’Neill’s August 5th blog article,  “All Eyes on Mars as Curiosity Prepares to Land,” focused on the suspense of waiting for the rover to land safely on Mars. The two-thousand pound (900 kg) rolling geology lab did in fact make a flawless landing on August 6th and with its touchdown, it revived interest in the Red Planet. From the description of Curiosity given on Jet Propulsion Lab’s website, the rover truly belongs in a science fiction tale.

  • body: a structure that protects the rover’s “vital organs”
  • brains: computers to process information
  • temperature controls: internal heaters, a layer of insulation, and more
  • “neck and head”: a mast for the cameras to give the rover a human-scale view
  • eyes and other “senses”: cameras and instruments that give the rover information about its environment
  • arm and “hand”: a way to extend its reach and collect rock samples for study
  • wheels and “legs”: parts for mobility
  • energy: batteries and power
  • communications: antennas for “speaking” and “listening”

The size of a small SUV, the rover has already begun its mission to “search areas of Mars for past or present conditions favorable for life, and conditions capable of preserving a record of life.” It is equipped to gather data, take photographs and then send the information back to JPL. In other words, Curiosity is our roving reporter on Mars. Kind of gives a whole new concept to being a “foreign” correspondent, doesn’t it?

With Curiosity running around on Mars, what better time is there to combine science with fiction and review some of the stories written about the Red Planet? A good start is Gordon Van Gelder’s anthology, Fourth Planet From The Sun. It was published by Thunder’s Mouth Press in 2005, about a year after the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity started to send back their photos of Mars. It is fitting that with the successful landing of Curiosity, we take another look at it.

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New Treasures: Tim Waggoner’s The Nekropolis Archives

New Treasures: Tim Waggoner’s The Nekropolis Archives

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the-nekropolis-archivesOn Tuesday I wrote about Dead Mann Running, the second volume of Stefan Petrucha’s zombie detective series. As I mentioned at the time, it wasn’t the only zombie detective novel I was going to cover this week. For those of you I’ve kept in suspense all week, I can finally reveal that Tim Waggoner’s The Nekropolis Archives is the second.

I was pretty busy manning the Black Gate booth at Worldcon two weeks ago, and didn’t have much time to venture forth and explore the rest of the cavernous dealers’ room. But when I learned that Angry Robot had a booth, I left Tina Jens and S. Hutson Blount in charge of my stack of magazines and went in search of it. Angry Robot has published some of the most exciting new SF and fantasy in the past two years, and best of all, they’ve been doing it in attractive and inexpensive paperbacks.

Their booth did not disappoint. Not only did I get to meet North American Sales Manager Michael R. Underwood, whose debut novel Geekomancy was a highlight of my Wiscon reading circuit, but — just as I expected — I discovered a fabulous array of exciting new fantasy titles. I was especially taken with their omnibus editions: fat, 900+page trade paperbacks collecting Andy Remic’s The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles, Aliette de Bodard’s three-volume Aztec Mystery series Obsidian and Blood, and Tim Waggoner’s The Nekropolis Archives.

Priced at just $15.99 each, all three are terrific bargains. But it was Tim Waggoner’s The Nekropolis Archives that drew my eye first:

Meet Matt Richter. Private Eye. Zombie.

His mean streets are the city of the dead, the shadowy realm known as Nekropolis. You’ve got to keep your head in Nekropolis. But when you’re a zombie attempting to battle the vampire lords, that’s not as easy as it seems…

This massive omnibus edition collects all three Matt Richter novels – Nekropolis, Dead Streets and Dark War – plus a swathe of short stories too.

Sounds like exactly what I’ve been looking for to cuddle up with under my blanket on windy autumn nights in Chicago. The Nekropolis Archives is $15.99 for a handsome 907-page trade paperback, or just $6.99 for the Kindle version. It was published by Angry Robot on April 24, 2012.

Electric Velocipede Kickstarter Funded! Started First Stretch Goal!

Electric Velocipede Kickstarter Funded! Started First Stretch Goal!

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Less than a week ago, we posted here to talk about the Kickstarter campaign we launched to fund next year’s Electric Velocipede issues. We hit our $5,000 goal with two weeks to go.

Wow.

I guess people want to see more Electric Velocipede! Once you hit your goal on Kickstarter, in a lot of ways you’re done. However, since people can cancel their pledge at any time before your campaign ends, you want to keep talking it up so that more people pledge to cover the chance that a few might drop out. Also, with so much time left, it felt wasteful to just do nothing.

A lot of Kickstarter campaigns will run stretch goals once they reach their initial funding request. That way, there’s a reason for people who want to give to keep giving (you’d hate for someone who wanted to donate to feel like they missed their chance).

With that in mind, we’ve started our first stretch goal: we want to digitize all of Electric Velocipede‘s back issues (you can see the glorious cover to issue #1 on the right) and make them available as epubs, mobi files, and PDFs so that people can read them on whatever device they want to. We’ve had a number of people asking about it, often international backers, and we think it’s a good idea. We’ll need about $2,500 to do this, and we’re already more than $1,o00 of the way there!

It will take some doing for this; we need to get electronic rights from the first thirteen/fourteen issues’ worth of authors and then we need to convert the files. Neither of which is terribly complicated, but it is time-consuming. But it will be worth the effort. We’ve got a lot of fans that have come to us recently who have never been able to read copies of older issues since we always really small print runs.

We have a bunch of different things in mind for stretch goals, but this felt the most important, given how much it will benefit our readers. If we achieve this stretch goal, anyone who’s backed at $25 or more will receive electronic copies of all back issues of Electric Velocipede. That’ll be issues #1 – #21/22. That’s almost $1 an issue! Plus, at $25 you’ll get a print copy of a back issue, and a electronic four-issue subscription starting with issue #25. You’ll get almost the entire issue run for your $25 investment. You won’t regret it.

Apex Magazine #40

Apex Magazine #40

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apexmagissue40Apex Magazine turns 40 with its September issue, featuring  “During the Pause” by Adam-Troy Castro (who is interviewed by Maggie Slater), “Sexagesimal” by Katherine E. K. Duckett, “Sacrifice” by Jennifer Pelland, and “Sonny Liston Takes the Fall” by Elizabeth Bear (reprinted from The Del Ray Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, a review of which you can read here) . Cover art by Julia Dillon. Nonfiction by Peter M. Ball and editor Lynne M. Thomas.

Apex is published on the first Tuesday of every month.  While each issue is available free online from the magazine’s website, it can also be downloaded to your e-reader from there for $2.99.  Individual issues are also available at  Amazon, Nook, and Weightless.

Twelve-issue (one year) subscriptions can be ordered at Apex and Weightless for $19.95; Kindle subscriptions are available for $1.99 a month.

This Week’s Bargain SF & Fantasy Books at Amazon.com

This Week’s Bargain SF & Fantasy Books at Amazon.com

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swords-dark-magic-256I need a better system for tracking these discount books at Amazon. Way I do it now, I just add candidates to my cart whenever I find them. Which means my cart fills up pretty quick, and I have to keep emptying it.

Don’t tell me I should create a wishlist. I already have over a dozen wishlists. Compulsive people shouldn’t be allowed to use Amazon.

Anyway, what do we have in the bag for you this week? Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery, the excellent anthology edited by Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders, has been marked down from $15.99 to just $6.40; David Weber’s new standalone SF novel, Out of the Dark, is just $2.98 in hardcover; and Tanya Huff’s latest hardcover, The Truth of Valor, is just $2.54. All that, plus two novels by Charles de Lint, Spirits in the Wires and Spiritwalk, for roughly six bucks; three Hawkmoon novels by Michael Moorcock for six bucks or less: The Mad God’s Amulet, The Jewel in the Skull, and The Sword of the Dawn; The New Space Opera, volumes One and Two, edited by Gardner Dozois for under 7 bucks; Gene Wolfe’s latest novel, Home Fires, in hardcover for $10; and over a dozen more.

Crux – Albert E. Cowdrey – $9.98 (was $24.95)

The New Space Opera – Gardner Dozois; Paperback – $6.38 (was $15.95)

The New Space Opera 2 – Gardner Dozois; $6.40, (was $15.99)

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The Numenera Roleplaying Game

The Numenera Roleplaying Game

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blackmonolith3I’m very proud to announce that next summer I will be releasing a brand new roleplaying game called Numenera. The game system behind Numenera, the Cypher System, is designed to be very simple to play and in particular to run as a GM, allowing the focus to be on role-playing, action, stories, and ideas. Numenera will be released under the Monte Cook Games banner.

Numenera’s setting is Earth, a billion years in the future, after eight great civilizations have risen and fallen. Thus, the setting is also called the Ninth World. The PCs are part of a new civilization rising in the Ninth World, hoping to forge its own destiny. But they must do so amid the remnants of a remarkable and in many ways unknowable past. The ancient peoples of prior eras mastered nanotechnology, interstellar travel, cosmic engineering, genetic engineering, and far stranger things. If the people of the Ninth World think of such things as magic, who are we to blame them?

Player characters explore this world of mystery and danger to find these leftover artifacts of the past, not to dwell upon the old ways, but to help forge their new destinies, utilizing the so-called “magic” of the past to create a promising future.

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Horror on the Orient Express Kickstarter

Horror on the Orient Express Kickstarter

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Horror on the Orient ExpressChaosium is conducting a Kickstarter to update and re-release their legendary 1991 campaign, Horror on the Orient Express, for the Call of Cthulhu RPG.

Set in 1920s Europe (the new edition will include rules for the 1890s too), the campaign arrives in London with a bizarre murder mystery, then runs to Paris and along the route of the Orient Express to a very terminal conclusion in Constantinople. Its storyline, centering on a bloodthirsty artifact, induces trainspotting-like fanaticism among many previous passengers, with original copies selling for hundreds on eBay. There’s even a soundtrack!

Pledge perks include T-shirts, tote bags, bumper stickers, and other freight. Donate $60 or more to receive a hardcopy of the finished product.

If you want to climb aboard but worry you’ve missed your connection, don’t — this high-speed rail already surpassed its goal of $20,000 six times over. Next stop: at $125,000, Chaosium will commission an anthology of Express-inspired fiction, featuring contributors such as Elaine Cunningham, Ken Hite, and James Sutter.

Years ago I embarked on a play-by-post HotOE campaign and made it as far as Lausanne before the Keeper was derailed by personal commitments. My character was an American mob accountant who had skipped to Europe after embezzling from his employers, and the Keeper strongly suggested the vengeful bootleggers would appear somewhere down the line. Of course, he didn’t say when they would attempt to punch my ticket, which added a whole new layer of paranoia to a seriously creepy game. Fun times!

New Treasures: The Scorpions of Zahir by Christine Brodien-Jones

New Treasures: The Scorpions of Zahir by Christine Brodien-Jones

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the-scorpions-of-zahirI can’t be the only one out there with a young teen daughter who likes to read.

I thought this would be easy. I’d give her a few books every month — books I treasured when I was her age, and carefully preserved for decades for just this moment — and she would retire in contentment to her reading nook, only popping out from time to time to comment on what a great Dad I am. Piece of cake.

Didn’t exactly work out like that.

For one thing, she’s really not interested in books from 40 years ago. She wants to read the books her friends are reading. And guess what? They’re not reading A Wrinkle in Time or Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators either. They’re reading The Hunger Games and Twilight and the Fallen novels and Vampire Academy and.. and…

And that’s the other thing. These kids read a lot. A few books a month? More like a few books a day. They’re voracious, and by the time I’ve ordered the book her friends are all taking about, they’re forgotten it and moved on. Forget being a great Dad… I’m left scrambling just so I don’t look like a clueless parent who’s perpetually “totally last week.”

Fortunately, I have people. People who work for publishing companies, and send me advance proofs. Of books that aren’t even out yet. Take that, bratty thirteen-year-old mean girls. I can still compete for my daughter’s attention by leaving these lying around.

She pretends not to be interested, but then picks one up. What’s this? she sez. Oh, that? The Scorpions of Zahir — just something some Manhattan publishers sent over. You wouldn’t be interested. Won’t even be on sale for another month or so. It’s about a girl in Morocco trying to keep a sacred city from being buried forever, or something. Your friends probably won’t be talking about it for weeks.

I know. I’m a bad person, but I’m desperate. And it works. Soon she’s curled up in her reading nook. She doesn’t come out to tell me I’m a great father or anything, but once she does ask where “Morocco” is. I show her on the map. We almost make eye contact for a moment, before she goes back to reading.

I get a quick hug the next morning. The book is tucked into her bag as she heads off to school. I’ll need to have a new book by the end of the day, but I’ll worry about that later.

Heaven help me when she turns sixteen. But this morning I’m a cool Dad again. Treasure the small victories.

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Mask of Fu Manchu – Part One

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Mask of Fu Manchu – Part One

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titan-maskoffumanchubenda2Sax Rohmer’s The Mask of Fu Manchu was originally serialized in Collier’s from May 7 to July 23, 1932. It was published in book form later that year by Doubleday in the US and the following year by Cassell in the UK. It became the most successful book in the series, thanks to MGM’s cult classic film version, starring Boris Karloff and Myrna Loy, that made it into theaters later that same year. Paramount’s option on the character had been exhausted after three pictures and one short starring Warner Oland as the Devil Doctor. The Paramount series had been responsible for Rohmer’s decision to revive the character with Daughter of Fu Manchu. The Mask of Fu Manchu served as a direct sequel and was again narrated by Shan Greville.

The novel gets underway with the brash Sir Lionel Barton having recently joined a colleague, Dr. Van Berg, in completing an excavation of the tomb of the notorious heretical Masked Prophet of Islam, El Mokanna, in Persia. Shan Greville, Sir Lionel’s foreman, is awakened in the middle of the night by his fiancée Rima Barton, Sir Lionel’s niece, who was disturbed by a strange wailing. Upon investigating, Dr. Van Berg is found dead in his room, his corpse slung over the jade chest containing the artifacts from the dig. The artifacts, still intact, are El Mokanna’s gold mask that hid his disfigured features, his heretical New Creed of Islam carved on gold tablets, and the bejeweled Sword of God with which the messianic prophet planned to conquer the world.

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