Future Treasures: The Year’s Best Military and Adventure SF, Volume 4 edited by David Afsharirad

Future Treasures: The Year’s Best Military and Adventure SF, Volume 4 edited by David Afsharirad

The Year's Best Military and Adventure SF Volume 4-smallOne of the things I’ve appreciated about David Afsharirad’s Best Military and Adventure SF, now in its fourth year, is that he seeks out the kind of fiction that routinely gets overlooked by the editors of the other Year’s Best SF books. The newest volume, coming in trade paperback next week from Baen, is no exception. Check out the table of contents.

Contest
Preface by David Afsharirad
“The Secret Life Of Bots,” by Suzanne Palmer (Clarkesworld, September 2017)
“The Snatchers,” by Edward Mcdermott (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, March/April 2017)
“Imperium Imposter,” by Jody Lynn Nye (Infinite Stars, 2017)
“A Thousand Deaths Through Flesh And Stone,” by Brian Trent (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/June 2017)
“Hope Springs,” by Lindsay Buroker (Beyond the Stars: New Worlds, New Suns, 2017)
“Orphans Of Aries,” by Brad R. Torgersen (Rocket’s Red Glare, 2017)
“By The Red Giant’s Light,” by Larry Niven (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November/December 2017)
“Family Over Blood,” by Kacey Ezell (Forged in Blood, 2017)
“A Man They Didn’t Know,” by David Hardy (Rocket’s Red Glare, 2017)
“Swarm By Sean,” by Patrick Hazlett (Terraform, December 2017)
“A Hamal In Hollywood,” by Martin L. Shoemaker (Rocket’s Red Glare, 2017)
“Lovers,” by Tony Daniel (Forged in Blood, 2017)
“The Ghost Ship Anastasia,” by Rich Larson (Clarkesworld, January 2017)
“You Can Always Change The Past,” by George Nikolopoulos (Galaxy’s Edge, March 2017)
“Our Sacred Honor,” by David Weber (Infinite Stars, 2017)
Contributors

To see what I mean, you can compare Afsharirad’s selections versus other Year’s Best volumes coming out this year. Here’s a list with Tables of Contents for the other major 2018 volumes from Rich Horton, Gardner Dozois, Jonathan Strahan, Neil Clarke, John Joseph Adams, Paula Guran, Jane Yolen, and Michael Kelly.

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Birthday Reviews: Harlan Ellison’s “Pennies, Off a Dead Man’s Eyes”

Birthday Reviews: Harlan Ellison’s “Pennies, Off a Dead Man’s Eyes”

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Cover by Jack Gaughan

Harlan Ellison was born on May 27, 1934.

Ellison has received 8 Hugo Awards, beginning with his short story “’Repent Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman.” His other Hugo Award winners include the short stories “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream,” “The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World,” “The Deathbird,” “Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54′ N, Longitude 77° 00′ 13″ W,” “Jeffty is Five,” and “Paladin of the Lost Hour.” His screenplay for the Star Trek episode “City on the Edge of Forever” also earned him a Hugo. Ellison has also won four Nebula Awards for his stories “’Repent Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman,” “A Boy and His Dog,” “Jeffty is Five,” and “How Interesting: A Tiny Man.” SFWA has also given him the Bradbury Award for 2000x, in collaboration with Yuri Rasovsky and Warren Dewey. He has also won the World Fantasy Award, Bram Stoker Award (5 times), British Fantasy Award, British SF Association Award, the Jupiter Award (twice), the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, and has three Worldcon Special Convention Awards.

LASFS presented Ellison with the Forry Award in 1970. He received a Milford Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1986, a World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1993, an International Horror Guild Living Legend Award in 1995 and he received a Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award the following year. He won the Gallun Award from I-Con in 1997. Ellison was named a World Horror Grandmaster in 2000. SFWA named him a Grand Master in 2006. In 2011, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and received the Eaton Award for Lifetime Achievement. He was a Worldcon Guest of Honor at IguanaCon II in 1978 and a World Horror Con Guest of Honor in 2005.

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A Fresh Look at X-Men Continuity: Ed Piskor’s Grand Design

A Fresh Look at X-Men Continuity: Ed Piskor’s Grand Design

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When I started collecting X-Men comics in 1981, there was one universe. There had never been a Marvel reboot, and DC had only had one — the 1956-1958 transition from the Golden Age to the Silver Age. By the time I left comics in the early 1990s, DC had brought us through the second major reboot in history, the classic and brilliant Crisis on Infinite Earths.

However, Marvel still hadn’t really messed up its continuity, although the reprint title X-Men Classics was retconning a number of elements into the early Claremont-Cockrum-Byrne stories.

By the time I came back to comics almost 15 years later, I was bewildered by the X-Men and didn’t know where to pick up. The Age of Apocalypse had happened in an alternate universe as far as I could tell, and while the Onslaught event had apparently killed everyone, they were somehow back in time for there to be not just a few dozen or a few hundred mutants, but over a million.

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Who Is Mysterio? The Early Days of the Spider-Man Villain with the Fishbowl on His Head

Who Is Mysterio? The Early Days of the Spider-Man Villain with the Fishbowl on His Head

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News dropped on Monday that actor Jake Gyllenhaal will likely play the part of Mysterio in the sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming, whatever it’s called. (Spider-Man: Back from the Ashes would work.) Gyllenhaal is an excellent choice to play a whole range of Spidey villains — the actor’s earned trust on that front thanks to his performance in Nightcrawler. But the real news for me is Mysterio, regardless of who’s putting on the mesh green outfit with eye-brooch accessories. He’s a Spider-Man villain overdue for the big screen treatment.

(Oh, and we now know for certain that Michael Keaton will return as the Vulture, probably to stoke the fires about the Sinister Six getting together. Bokeem Woodbine’s Shocker is still alive, and it looks like Scorpion is in play as well. Only two more slots to fill! Maybe Kraven the Hunter and … The Kangaroo? I hope it’s the Kangaroo.)

So who is this Mysterio bloke? Short version: he’s a special effects wizard who decided to go into a life of crime and put a fishbowl on his head. Because comic books. He doesn’t have superpowers, but he can put on a helluva light and illusion show and he specializes in reality-bending tricks and mind games, making him an ideal movie bad guy.

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Birthday Reviews: Caitlín R. Kiernan’s “Glass Coffin”

Birthday Reviews: Caitlín R. Kiernan’s “Glass Coffin”

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Cover by Tom Canty

Caitlín R. Kiernan was born on May 26, 1964.

Kiernan novel The Drowning Girl was nominated for the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the British Fantasy Award, the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, the Shirly Jackson Award and the Mythopoeic Award. It received the Tiptree and Stoker Awards. Kiernan also won a Stoker Award for the graphic novel Alabaster: Wolves. She won two World Fantasy Awards in 2014 for her collection The Ape’s Wife and Other Stories and the short story “The Prayer of Ninety Cats.” Kiernan has won four International Horror Guild Awards for her novels Silk and Threshold and for her short fiction “Onion” and “Le Peau Verte.”

“Glass Coffin” was originally published in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s 1999 fairy tale anthology Silver Birch, Blood Moon. It is part of her Salmagundi Desvernine series of short stories. It was reprinted, along with the other three stories in the sequence, in Kiernan’s 2000 collection Tales of Pain and Wonder, along with several other short stories.

Although part of a series of stories featuring Salmagundi Desvernine and Jimmy DeSade, “Glass Coffin” can be read and understood on its own, although that understanding may be quite different for readers familiar with Kiernan’s other stories. “Glass Coffin” itself is a retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Replacing the woodland cottage of the more familiar setting is a salvage yard that was formerly Salmagundi’s family’s shipyard. The Dwarfs are replaced by the foster children Salmagundi has taken in. Each of the six children described have their own personality and abilities, with the seventh off stage. While they all await Jimmy DeSade’s return, Salmagundi cuts herself and dies for all intents and purposes.

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Occult Detective Quarterly #4 Now Available

Occult Detective Quarterly #4 Now Available

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It’s tough to be an amateur Occult Detective. Think of it as a fringe hobby with a high mortality rate. Not to mention one that brings with it intimate familiarity with a whole host of… well, let’s call them “mental health issues.”

Thank God for Occult Detective Quarterly, the magazine for determined supernatural hobby investigators. It keeps me up to date on all the latest spectral sleuthing gear, unsolved paranormal crimes, and the best nationwide heath care plans for Occult Detectives. Plus the ads are great — and believe me, the obituaries are required reading.

The latest issue, #4, has reviews of the newest ghosthunting equipment, a thoughtful opinion piece on dowsing, and an explosive tell-all on the recent bathroom haunting at the Library of Congress. Turns out it was all a hoax perpetuated by a corrupt senator from Oklahoma. He would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those darn kids.

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Wrestling with Genre: Robert V. S. Redick on Master Assassins

Wrestling with Genre: Robert V. S. Redick on Master Assassins

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AN INTRODUCTION

I think I stumbled on my first Robert V. S. Redick book in the Westerly Public Library. Oh, those Halcyon days where I wandered at whim through the SFF stacks, idly selecting titles and reading first pages. If they happened to catch my interest, well then! Together we went to the Self-Checkout, and thence for home — and blissful, blissful book-chomping time.

Is this how Red Wolf Conspiracy came to my hand? I seem to remember thinking, for whatever reason: “Probably not for me!”… and then, like two seconds later, it’s dawn of the third day, and my eyeballs are twitching, and I’ve just finished it.

At which point, knowing me, I probably friended him on Facebook.

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Birthday Reviews: Vera Nazarian’s “Salmon in the Drain Pipe”

Birthday Reviews: Vera Nazarian’s “Salmon in the Drain Pipe”

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Vera Nazarian was born on May 25, 1966.

Nazarian was nominated for a WSFA Small Press Award for her short story “Port Custodial Blues” in 2007. The following year she received a nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story for “The Story of Love.” She also received a Nebula nomination in 2009 for her novella The Duke in His Castle. In addition to writing, Nazarian has worked as the editor and publisher of Norilana Books since the company’s founding in 2006.

“Salmon in the Drain Pipe” was published as an original story in Nazarian’s collection After the Sundial, in 2010. The story has not been reprinted.

Nazarian’s “Salmon in the Drain Pipe” is a relatively short piece that has her protagonist looking at the wonders of nature in an unspecified future. As he looks more closely, however, he discovers that rather than being flora or fauna, what he is really seeing is the detritus of civilization filling lakes and grasslands. Fish moving through algae have been replaced by collections of bottlecaps.

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Goth Chick News: Just When You Think There Is No Originality Left in Hollywood…

Goth Chick News: Just When You Think There Is No Originality Left in Hollywood…

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This may be the greatest movie news I have had so far this year.

I’m a tad embarrassed to admit this one completely snuck up on me but I recently got a link to the red band trailer (aka: too naughty for the average viewer) for the movie The Happytime Murders. Thinking this might be some sort of serial killer bloodbath, I skeptically had a look only to discover the greatest thing ever.

Per its logline, The Happytime Murders is a “filthy comedy set in the underbelly of Los Angeles where puppets and humans coexist.”

Directed by Brian Henson, puppeteer, son of Muppets creator and master puppeteer Jim Henson and current chair of The Jim Henson Company, The Happytime Murders tells the story of two detectives with a shared secret. The human detective, played by Melissa McCarthy and her puppet colleague are forced to work together to solve the brutal murders of the former cast of a beloved classic puppet television show.

So, two things before you watch this.

First, I warn you this trailer is “red band” for a reason. Don’t watch this at work without a screen protector and headphones. Second, in spite of the fact the level of humor here is so gutter that I feel I now need a hot shower, I laughed hard enough to cause the people in the upstairs offices to think there was something wrong with me.

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io9 on 28 New Sci-fi and Fantasy Books to Add to Your Shelves in May

io9 on 28 New Sci-fi and Fantasy Books to Add to Your Shelves in May

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Cheryl Eddy at io9 has a gift for you folks who’ve run out of things to read already this month (Seriously, how does that happen?? Whatever, we don’t judge.) A tidy list of 28 New Sci-fi and Fantasy Books to Add to Your Shelves.

28! How does she do that, and with astonishingly little overlap with John DeNardo’s list of the Best Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror in May? I have no idea, but perhaps dark magics were involved, and maybe we shouldn’t question it. Let’s just dive into the list, and see what grabs us.

The Glory of the Empress by Sean Danker (Ace, 352 pages, $4.99 digital, May 1, 2018)

Amid a raging interstellar war, a group of soldiers develops a new weapon they hope will turn the tide in their side’s favor — not realizing their test runs in a far-off pocket of the galaxy will have unexpectedly towering consequences.

The Glory of the Empress is the third book in the series that began with Admiral (2016), which was selected by Amazon as one of the Best Books of 2016, and continued with Free Space (2017). While the first two were published in print and digital formats, this one is only available digitally.

Eeep! Is that a thing now? Hope that doesn’t frustrate too many old school readers… I’m frustrated, and I haven’t even read the first one yet.

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