Covering Covers & Contents: Lightspeed: Year One - John Joseph Adams (ed.)

Like good fiction but hate eReading? What the hell is wrong with you? You're in luck!

 

 

Prime Books is collecting the first twelve issues of Lightspeed in a handsomely covered and bug-splatteringly physical edition. Lightspeed, if you're not aware, is an online-only monthly magazine that publishes a mix of original and classic reprint science fiction shorts. In its first year of publication, Lightspeed produced 4 genre award nominees in 2010, all of which are included in the Year One collection.

 

Here's the full list of contents:

• Introduction – John Joseph Adams
• June 2010, Issue One
• I'm Alive, I Love You, I'll See You in Reno – Vylar Kaftan (Nebula Award Nominee)
• The Cassandra Project – Jack McDevitt
• Cats in Victory – David Barr Kirtley
• Amaryllis – Carrie Vaughn (Hugo Award Nominee)
• July 2010, Issue Two
• No Time Like the Present – Carol Emshwiller
• Manumission – Tobias S. Buckell
• The Zeppelin Conductors' Society Annual Gentlemen's Ball – Genevieve Valentine
• ...For a Single Yesterday – George R. R. Martin
• August 2010, Issue Three
• How to Become a Mars Overlord – Catherynne M. Valente
• Patient Zero – Tananarive Due
• Arvies – Adam-Troy Castro (Nebula Award Nominee)
• More Than the Sum of His Parts – Joe Haldeman
• September 2010, Issue Four
• Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain – Yoon Ha Lee (Sturgeon Award Nominee)
• The Long Chase – Geoffrey A. Landis
• Amid the Words of War – Cat Rambo
• Travelers – Robert Silverberg
• October 2010, Issue Five (SF-Horror Hybrids Issue)
• Hindsight – Sarah Langan
• Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man's Back – Joe R. Lansdale
• The Taste of Starlight – John R. Fultz
• Beachworld – Stephen King
• November 2010, Issue Six
• Standard Loneliness Package – Charles Yu
• Faces in Revolving Souls – Caitlin R. Kiernan
• Hwang's Billion Brilliant Daughters – Alice Sola Kim
• Ej-Es – Nancy Kress
• December 2010, Issue Seven
• In-Fall – Ted Kosmatka
• The Observer – Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• Jenny's Sick – David Tallerman
• The Silence of the Asonu – Ursula K. Le Guin
• January 2011, Issue Eight
• Postings from an Amorous Tomorrow – Corey Mariani
• Cucumber Gravy – Susan Palwick
• Black Fire – Tanith Lee
• The Elephants of Poznan – Orson Scott Card
• February 2011, Issue Nine
• Long Enough And Just So Long – Cat Rambo
• The Passenger – Julie E. Czerneda
• Simulacrum – Ken Liu
• Breakaway, Backdown – James Patrick Kelly
• March 2011, Issue Ten
• Saying the Names – Maggie Clark
• Gossamer – Stephen Baxter
• Spider the Artist – Nnedi Okorafor
• Woman Leaves Room – Robert Reed
• April 2011, Issue Eleven
• All That Touches the Air – An Owomoyela
• Maneki Neko – Bruce Sterling
• Mama, We are Zhenya, Your Son – Tom Crosshill
• Velvet Fields – Anne McCaffrey
• May 2011, Issue Twelve
• The Harrowers – Eric Gregory
• Bibi From Jupiter – Tessa Mellas
• Eliot Wrote – Nancy Kress
• Scales – Alastair Reynolds

That's 48 stories for less than 15 bucks. A quarter per short works for me. While there's no denying the quality of the reprinted material from King, Le Guin, Card, and GRRM, I'm equally excited by the newer authors. John Joseph Adams is one of the premiere genre anthology editors working today, and he does a great job recognizing upcoming and underread talent of the likes of Ted Kosmatka, Nnedi Okorafor, Charles Yu, Alice Sola Kim, and Genevieve Valentine.

 

I'm not sure when this one is out, but I'll be sure to pick it up when it arrives. In the mean time, consider buying an issue or two of Lightspeed to keep the good stuff coming.

Community

Over on io9, (which is a pretty good site as long as you ignore their shameless plagiarism) they've got a quote from Community executive producer Dan Harmon discussing how "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" one of Season 2's best episodes almost never happened. Here's a snippet:

"They [the studio and the network] were so upset about the crime of this episode having been written. The note session as a whole was preceded by a 45-minute period of them walking around the lot whispering to each other. They told me they would come up to my office and meet me privately. When they came up, I had the director and all of the writers in the office with me, because I was terrified. They sat down, and they said, ‘Look, where do we start?'

The full quote is even more disturbing, as Harmon gets so frustrated with the network execs that he contemplates quitting one of the funniest shows on TV. If you haven't seen it, you're really missing out on a wealth of brilliant material. It gets fairly low ratings but I'd attribute that to the frequent meta-fictional dissections of common TV and film tropes (particularly in the genre space) going over the average viewer's head. I would assume that the people who enjoy Two and a Half Men and the ones who like Community fall are for the most part mutually exclusive. I mean they had a freaking clip show made up of clips from episodes that never existed! People who watch the same episode of CSI week after week won't catch on to that one.

So if you've got a few minutes, watch the first part of "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons," the episode that was received as anathema to the NBC execs. As the title suggests, it's basically 23 minutes of a bunch of people sitting around a table making up a story together. Who could possibly enjoy that?

If you enjoyed the first half of the episode, find a way to track it down [preferably in a way that actually gives the show some support such as iTunes or on DVD]. If not, at least tune in next season. Community is a brilliant show and I would hate to see it go the way of Arrested Development or Better Off Ted [may they Rest In Piece] just because it didn't have the fanbase of some lowest common denominator sitcom.

Please.

YetiStomper Picks for June

June's slate is a curious one, full of questions and impracticalities.

Zombie books shouldn't work. The antagonists are brain-dead, dialogue is minimal, and the visual gore factor simply doesn't translate from the screen to the page. They shouldn't happen. Why then, does June bring us not one, but two, zombie novels? And even more curious, why are both of them fantastic?

Science Fiction is dead. Everyone knows it. We are stuck on this planet until we bleed it dry so why even bother speculating scientifically? And will someone please let James S. A. Corey know, whoever that is? I'd hate for him to try to save SF by himself. It's doomed.

Anthologies don't sell. If speculative fiction is a literary ghetto, then anthologies are the genre equivalent of the projects, housing all the poor disenfranchised short stories on the publisher dime. But if that's the case, how do you explain the Wild Cards and Bordertown books which have an impressive 29 installments and counting between them? Where do they keep coming from? And why?

What's going on? Doesn't anyone know anything?

As usual, I blame the authors.  Let's get started.

Raising Stony Mayhall - Daryl Gregory

Standalone - You might not know where GenRenaissance Author Daryl Gregory's fiction will take you next, but there's no denying that when you reach the destination, you'll have enjoyed the trip. Whether he's writing pulp demons, mutant noir, or zombie orphans, Gregory always strikes a delicate balance between humor, heart, and horror in his abstract exploration of what the word "family" really means. Raising Stony Mayhall is the third novel in Daryl Gregory's young career and he amazes once again in his narration of the the curious life of one Stony Mayhall. Mayhall was made an orphan during the the first zombie outbreak. Unfortunately for him, he was born to parents on the losing side. But can his adoptive human family keep him secret from the government that would destroy him? And what to do when you find your relatives aren't as (un)dead as you once thought? (June 28th from Del Rey)

Deadline - Mira Grant

Newsflesh, Book 2 - Somehow, someway, Campbell Award winning author Seanan McGuire manages to maintain an absurd level of quantity and quality in her work, publishing seven novels as two authors in under three years. McGuire's latest (written by alter ego Mira Grant) continues the zombie tale started in 2010's Hugo nominated Feed in which bloggers Georgia and Shaun Mason set out to unravel the conspiracy behind a global pandemic in a world where viral information is the only defense against a viral hunger. (May 31 from Orbit)

Leviathan Wakes - James S. A. Corey

The Expanse, Book 1 - And here I thought 2011 was supposed to be a good year for Fantasy. But with the last three months bringing readers Up Against It, Fuzzy Nation, The Quantum Thief, and now Leviathan Wakes, a veritable Sci-Fi revival appears to be in the works. James S. A. Corey is a pseudonym for a talented pair of writers: Yeti-favorite Daniel Abraham and relative newcomer Ty Francks. Together as Corey, they set out to remind the SF landscape that story and science aren't mutually exclusive. Hard without being immutable, Leviathan Wakes follows Captain Jim Holden and Detective Miller across the solar system as they pull on different threads of the same conspiracy. (June 28 from Orbit)

Chasing the Moon - A. Lee Martinez

Standalone - A. Lee Martinez is just one of those writers who experiences life on a different wavelength. Frequently starting with a concept past the point where other authors would draw the line, Martinez's fiction is absurd, hilarious, and, above all else, unpredictable. His latest, Chasing the Moon, sees a woman move into her dream apartment. Unfortunately for her, there are a couple of unadvertised tenants who are hellbent on making it less of a dream and more of nightmare. But even Vom the Hungering is a potential ally when the fate of the world is on the line. (May 25 from Orbit)

City of Ruin / Book of Transformations - Mark Charan Newton

Legends of the Red Sun, Books 2 and 3 - No matter what side of the pond you're on, June is a good month for fans of Mark Charan Newton. UK fans get The Book of Transformations, the third in Newton's popular Legends of the Red Sun series, while his US followers continue to play catch up with City of Ruin, the sequel to last year's Nights of Villjamur. Either audience will delight in Newton's capital-w Weird approach to fantasy as he expertly crafts another tale in one of his frequently troubled cities. (June 28 from Spectra)

The Final Evolution - Jeff Somers

Avery Cates, Book 5 - After failing to satisfy his personal vendetta in the four previous volumes, Cates' ongoing war with Canny Orel is finally coming to a head in the fifth (and final?) installment. But what price is Cates willing to pay to enact his revenge? Somers' cinematic cyberpunk stylings aren't for everyone but if you like gritty anti-heroes and fun, fast-paced science fiction, The Final Evolution is worth a look.

The Boy at the End of the World - Greg van Eekhout

Middle Grade SF Novel - Van Eekhout's 2nd middle grade novel (after the excellent Kid vs. Squid) is just as strong as the first, delivering an intelligent yet humorous story in a post-apocalyptic package. Fisher is, as far as he knows, the last living human on earth and he's determined to do what he can to change that, even if it means crossing the country with a robot guardian that makes C-3PO seem serene and a cloned woolly mammoth that answers to Protein. If you are looking for a book that will challenge your kids without exposing them to Twilight-esque perversions, The Boy at the End of the World is a great place to start. But don't take my word for it, go read what 10 year old Junior YetiStomper Keegan had to say on the subject in his review. And don't be surprised if you end up reading it as well. I did. (June 21 from Bloomsbury)

Mistification - Kaaron Warren

Standalone - If Angry Robot is determined to bring about a robotic revolution, they are going about it the wrong way. Rather than stockpiling ammunition or energy sources, they seem determined to snap up all the fleshy faced writing talent they can find. One of their deadliest weapons, Kaaron Warren, still owes me several hours worth of sleep after her profoundly good but equally disturbing debut novel, Slights. Later this month, our future robot overlords are unleashing the Astonishing Australian on an unsuspecting populace once again. Mistification, her third novel, tells the story of a stage magician who can't do a single trick, mostly because his magic is completely real. Besides entertaining audiences, Marvo is responsible for shielding the rest of humanity from the unfathomable experience of undiluted reality. Dark, moody, and magnificent, Warren is poised to put on a show.  (June 28 from Angry Robot)

Welcome to Bordertown - Holly Black & Ellen Kushner, eds.

Bordertown Anthologies, Book 5 - After a multi-year hiatus, Bordertown is once again open to tourists. Come visit B-town, a mysterious metropolis juxtaposed between "The World" and "The Elflands" where technology and magic coexist, but not without consequence. Old enough to legally drink,  the shared narrative world of Bordertown was originally conceived back in 1986 by Terri Windling and Mark Alan Arnold but the editing duties have been passed down to long time contributor Ellen Kushner and newcomer Holly Black. In Welcome to Bordertown, a new generation of writers is on display, many of which grew up on Bordertown books decades ago. This latest volume includes original work from Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, Catherynne M. Valente, and well as series regulars Will Shetterly, Emma Bull, Charles de Lint and Windling herself. If you like Urban Fantasy, you owe it to yourself to see where it all started. (May 24 from Random House)

Wild Cards: Fort Freak - George R. R. Martin, ed.

Wild Cards Mosaic, Book 21 - It's a good summer to be GRRM. Hit TV show. Long awaited novel hitting shelves. Plus a handful of passion projects coming to fruition, including Fort Freak, the latest entry in the Wild Cards Mosaic. In case you weren't aware, the long running Wild Card Mosaic  is a series of shared world novels and anthologies written by a cornucopia of talented writers and [mostly] edited by George R. R. Martin himself. The books themselves are set in an alternate 20th century America in which 1% of the world's population was given superpowers, 9% horrible disfigurements and the remaining 90% an early grave. This particular volume concerns Fort Freak, Manhattan's Fifth Police Precinct, in which half the men are more than human and features David Anthony Durham, Ty Franck, Cherie Priest, and Melissa M. Snodgrass among others.  (June 21 from Tor)

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YetiStomper Pick Of The Month: I have a love/hate relationship with books. There are so many good books worth reading. But there are SO MANY good books worth reading. But even among June's decathlon of worthy selections, a few titles stand out. Mark Charan Newton [The Book of Transformations] is writing some of the best (and weirdest) fantasy in the game. Mira Grant [Deadline] is looking to take over the entire industry, even if she has to write it herself. And then there are Daryl Gregory and Daniel Abraham, two palindromic authors who are both FTW and WTF. As in "That book was FTW, WTF haven't you read it yet?" In the end, it comes down to these two: Gregory for his cold skinned but warm hearted Raising Stony Mayhall and Abraham (along with Ty Francks) for their "hard without being hard to read" space opera, Leviathan Wakes. As always, it's a tough call. Book books are outstanding and all three authors are promising talents who could use whatever small support my mention provides. Ultimately, I'm going with Gregory's Raising Stony Mayhall as my YetiStomper Pick of the Month for reasons that should be clear in about one paragraph.

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YetiStomper Debut Of The Month: Ok, I'm cheating a little. I couldn't really decide between Raising Stony Mayhall and Leviathan Wakes. Read them both if you can. Fortunately, James S. A. Corey is at least partially a debut author (even if the Daniel Abraham half of him isn't) which means I can still give Leviathan Wakes top billing as the YetiStomper Debut of the Month. It was also the only [kinda] debut novel this month. So it both deserved recognition enough to make an exception and won by default. If that makes any sense. Please post in the comments if you know of any other worthy debut contenders even if it means putting them up against the Leviathan itself. Otherwise, go read Leviathan Wakes and Raising Stony Mayhall. The order doesn't matter, just that you read them. And/or any of the great books on this list.

YetiStomper Cover Of The Month: Hmmmm.... Where did this go? Stay tuned to find out!

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Anyway, as always, if you are interested in more details regarding any of the above books, just click on through the Amazon links. And don't worry, thanks to new state legislation, I don't get a single penny, nickel, or dime from it. It's been hard restructuring my budget without that extra $10 a year but I think I'll survive. Be sure to let me know if there is anything I may have missed in the comments.

You can view previous installments of YetiStomper Picks here.

Covering Covers: Southern Gods - John Hornor Jacobs

Yeah, I didn't get YetiStomper Picks for June done today. Blame beach volleyball, dinner with friends, and Portal 2.

Instead, here are two versions of John Hornor Jacobs' upcoming horror novel, Southern Gods. One was made by Jacobs himself, the other by Night Shade Books' marketing department.

But which one is which? And which do you prefer?

I personally like the one on the left. What do you think?

Recent World War II veteran Bull Ingram is working as muscle when a Memphis DJ hires him to find Ramblin' John Hastur. The mysterious blues man's dark, driving music - broadcast at ever-shifting frequencies by a phantom radio station - is said to make living men insane and dead men rise. Disturbed and enraged by the bootleg recording the DJ plays for him, Ingram follows Hastur's trail into the strange, uncivilized backwoods of Arkansas, where he hears rumors the musician has sold his soul to the Devil. But as Ingram closes in on Hastur and those who have crossed his path, he'll learn there are forces much more malevolent than the Devil and reckonings more painful than Hell... In a masterful debut of Lovecraftian horror and Southern gothic menace, John Hornor Jacobs reveals the fragility of free will, the dangerous power of sacrifice, and the insidious strength of blood.

Expect Southern Gods from Night Shade Books in August 2011.

Covering Covers: Goliath - Scott Westerfeld

In the continuing adventures of cover art gone wrong, I present to you the third and final book in Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan Trilogy, Goliath.

Has there ever been a larger disparity between internal and external art?

Interior Illustrations by Keith Thompson

At least the writing quality is consistent. Goliath will be out from Simon Pulse on September 20th, 2011.

For The Win: A Guide To 2011's Best of the Best

The world today is a terrible place. Poverty is rampant. The economy is falling apart. The rapture is coming The Situation is poised to make $5,000,000 next year. Everything causes cancer. Bees are dying. Transformers 3 is a real movie...

And of course, the most lamentable of them all - the lack of a single, definitive award for speculative fiction.

As it stands, there's a heaping handful of awards, each award with it's own handful of categories, and each category with it's own handful of nominations. That's a borderline Cthulu number of hands. Good luck comprehending that, spellcheck certainly can't. And to make matters worse, each award maintains its own eligibility, nomination, and voting criteria. Some prizes are only for works by US authors, others for those books unlucky enough to be published in paperback only. A few selections are made by informed but potential biased juries. A few more honors are awarded by the masses. The same slavering masses that decided that Twilight was okay for a ten-year-old girl. But don't worry, they can only vote if they buy a voting membership to last year's conference's cousin's friend's book signing. Or click a button online. And everything depends on how many words are in the story to begin with. In fact, the length of the story is inversely propotional to how many people will read it and the how long the word used to describe it is. And god help us if Neil Gaiman, Ted Chiang, China Mieville, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Connie Willis ever end publishing a novelette in the same year. That's a true end-world scenario.


Never re-examine your childhood.



Needless to say, it's a mess.

Trying to figure out what is clearly the best book is like trying to collect all the Pokemon - just when you think you've got a handle on it, there's a brand new batch of innocent creatures to enslave for forced gladiatorial combat books to read. Which is where the calculus comes in.

By deriving the mathematical mean of the page counts of each book's negative inverse matrix within three standard deviations and then integrated the eigenvectors with an acceleration vector aligned to a rotating coordinate frame, I was able to prove what the best books were as well as recalculate the timing of the much discussed rapture event. It's a Thursday. Oh, that bullshit you say? Did you forget to carry the one?

Suck it, Newton.

What I really mean to leverage from calculus is the Leibniz-Newton model, the core premise of which is if multiple people come to the same conclusion independently, it's more likely to be true.

To support this hypothesis, I compiled a list of every nominated work for every major science fiction, fantasy, and horror award I could find and combined them into one glorious glut of celebrated fiction, conveniently sorted below for your perusal. Every novel, novella, novelette, and short story on this list (told you the words get longer) received at least two major award nominations which, in my mind at least, is a sign that they are worth taking another look at.

Note: This list is currently is based on the 2011 nominations for Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Philip K. Dick, Andre Norton, BSFA, Arthur C. Clarke, Gemmell, Bram Stoker, and Shirley Jackson awards. World Fantasy nominations are not currently available. Feel free to suggest other awards in the comments.

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Novels

The Dervish House - Ian McDonald [4 Nominations: Hugo, Locus, BSFA, Arthur C. Clarke]

It begins with an explosion. Another day, another bus bomb. Everyone it seems is after a piece of Turkey. But the shockwaves from this random act of 21st century pandemic terrorism will ripple further and resonate louder than just Enginsoy Square.

Welcome to the world of The Dervish House; the great, ancient, paradoxical city of Istanbul, divided like a human brain, in the great, ancient, equally paradoxical nation of Turkey. The year is 2027 and Turkey is about to celebrate the fifth anniversary of its accession to the European Union; a Europe that now runs from the Arran Islands to Ararat. Population pushing one hundred million, Istanbul swollen to fifteen million; Turkey is the largest, most populous and most diverse nation in the EU, but also one of the poorest and most socially divided. It's a boom economy, the sweatshop of Europe, the bazaar of central Asia, the key to the immense gas wealth of Russia and Central Asia.

Gas is power. But it's power at a price, and that price is emissions permits. This is the age of carbon consciousness: every individual in the EU has a card stipulating individual carbon allowance that must be produced at every CO2 generating transaction. For those who can master the game, who can make the trades between gas price and carbon trading permits, who can play the power factions against each other, there are fortunes to be made. The old Byzantine politics are back. They never went away.

The ancient power struggled between Sunni and Shia threatens like a storm: Ankara has watched the Middle East emerge from twenty-five years of sectarian conflict. So far it has stayed aloof. A populist Prime Minister has called a referendum on EU membership. Tensions run high. The army watches, hand on holster. And a Galatasary Champions' League football game against Arsenal stokes passions even higher.

The Dervish House is seven days, six characters, three interconnected story strands, one central common core--the eponymous dervish house, a character in itself--that pins all these players together in a weave of intrigue, conflict, drama and a ticking clock of a thriller. (Pyr)

Blackout / All Clear - Connie Willis [3 Nominations: Hugo, Nebula, Locus]

Oxford in 2060 is a chaotic place, with scores of time-traveling historians being sent into the past. Michael Davies is prepping to go to Pearl Harbor. Merope Ward is coping with a bunch of bratty 1940 evacuees and trying to talk her thesis adviser into letting her go to VE-Day. Polly Churchill’s next assignment will be as a shopgirl in the middle of London’s Blitz. But now the time-travel lab is suddenly canceling assignments and switching around everyone’s schedules. And when Michael, Merope, and Polly finally get to World War II, things just get worse. For there they face air raids, blackouts, and dive-bombing Stukas—to say nothing of a growing feeling that not only their assignments but the war and history itself are spiraling out of control. Because suddenly the once-reliable mechanisms of time travel are showing significant glitches, and our heroes are beginning to question their most firmly held belief: that no historian can possibly change the past. (Spectra)

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - N.K. Jemisin [3 Nominations: Hugo, Nebula, Locus]

Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is the debut novel from a major new voice in fantasy fiction. (Orbit)

Ship Breaker - Paolo Bacigalupi [2 Nominations: Andre Norton, Locus]

In America's Gulf Coast region, where grounded oil tankers are being broken down for parts, Nailer, a teenage boy, works the light crew, scavenging for copper wiring just to make quota--and hopefully live to see another day. But when, by luck or chance, he discovers an exquisite clipper ship beached during a recent hurricane, Nailer faces the most important decision of his life: Strip the ship for all it's worth or rescue its lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl who could lead him to a better life. . . .

In this powerful novel, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi delivers a thrilling, fast-paced adventure set in a vivid and raw, uncertain future. (Little, Brown)

The Reapers Are the Angels - Alden Bell [2 Nominations: Philip K. Dick, Shirley Jackson]

Zombies have infested a fallen America. A young girl named Temple is on the run. Haunted by her past and pursued by a killer, Temple is surrounded by death and danger, hoping to be set free.

For twenty-five years, civilization has survived in meager enclaves, guarded against a plague of the dead. Temple wanders this blighted landscape, keeping to herself and keeping her demons inside her heart. She can't remember a time before the zombies, but she does remember an old man who took her in and the younger brother she cared for until the tragedy that set her on a personal journey toward redemption. Moving back and forth between the insulated remnants of society and the brutal frontier beyond, Temple must decide where ultimately to make a home and find the salvation she seeks. (Henry Holt & Co.)

Zoo City - Lauren Beukes [2 Nominations: BSFA, Arthur C. Clarke]

Where no one else date venture...

Zinzi has a Sloth on her back, a dirty online 419 scam habit – and a talent for finding lost things. But when her latest client, a little old lady, turns up dead and the cops confiscate her last paycheck, she’s forced to take on her least favourite kind of job: missing persons

An astonishing second novel from the author of the highly-acclaimed Moxyland. (Angry Robot)

Cryoburn - Lois McMaster Bujold [2 Nominations: Hugo, Locus]

Miles Vorkosigan is back!

Kibou-daini is a planet obsessed with cheating death. Barrayaran Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan can hardly disapprove—he’s been cheating death his whole life, on the theory that turnabout is fair play. But when a Kibou-daini cryocorp—an immortal company whose job it is to shepherd its all-too-mortal frozen patrons into an unknown future—attempts to expand its franchise into the Barrayaran Empire, Emperor Gregor dispatches his top troubleshooter Miles to check it out.

On Kibou-daini, Miles discovers generational conflict over money and resources is heating up, even as refugees displaced in time skew the meaning of generation past repair. Here he finds a young boy with a passion for pets and a dangerous secret, a Snow White trapped in an icy coffin who burns to re-write her own tale, and a mysterious crone who is the very embodiment of the warning Don’t mess with the secretary. Bribery, corruption, conspiracy, kidnapping—something is rotten on Kibou-daini, and it isn’t due to power outages in the Cryocombs. And Miles is in the middle—of trouble! (Baen)

Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins [2 Nominations: Andre Norton, Locus]

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But now that she’s made it out of the bloody arena alive, she’s still not safe. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge. Who do they think should pay for the unrest? Katniss. And what’s worse, President Snow has made it clear that no one else is safe either. Not Katniss’s family, not her friends, not the people of District 12. Powerful and haunting, this thrilling final installment of Suzanne Collins’s groundbreaking The Hunger Games trilogy promises to be one of the most talked about books of the year. (Scholastic)

Feed - Mira Grant [2 Nominations: Hugo, Shirley Jackson]

The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beat the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED.

Now, twenty years after the Rising, Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives-the dark conspiracy behind the infected. The truth will out, even if it kills them. (Orbit)

Shades of Milk and Honey - Mary Robinette Kowal [2 Nominations: Nebula, Locus]

Shades of Milk and Honey is an intimate portrait of Jane Ellsworth, a woman ahead of her time in a world where the manipulation of glamour is considered an essential skill for a lady of quality. But despite the prevalence of magic in everyday life, other aspects of Dorchester’s society are not that different: Jane and her sister Melody’s lives still revolve around vying for the attentions of eligible men.

Jane resists this fate, and rightly so: while her skill with glamour is remarkable, it is her sister who is fair of face, and therefore wins the lion’s share of the attention. At the ripe old age of twenty-eight, Jane has resigned herself to being invisible forever. But when her family’s honor is threatened, she finds that she must push her skills to the limit in order to set things right--and, in the process, accidentally wanders into a love story of her own.

This debut novel from an award-winning talent scratches a literary itch you never knew you had. Like wandering onto a secret picnic attended by Pride and Prejudice and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Shades of Milk and Honey is precisely the sort of tale we would expect from Jane Austen…if only she had been a fantasy writer. (Tor)

Who Fears Death? - Nnedi Okorafor [2 Nominations: Nebula, Locus]

The critically-acclaimed novel-now in paperback.

In a far-future, post-apocalyptic Saharan Africa, genocide plagues one region. When the only surviving member of a slain village is brutally raped, she manages to escape, wandering farther into the desert. She gives birth to a baby girl with hair and skin the color of sand, and instinctively knows her daughter is different. She names her daughter Onyesonwu, which means "Who Fears Death?" in an ancient African tongue.

Reared under the tutelage of a mysterious and traditional shaman, Onyesonwu discovers she possesses a remarkable and unique magic. The journey to fulfill her destiny will force her to confront nature, tradition, history, the spiritual mysteries of her culture, and eventually to learn why she was given the unusual name she bears: Who Fears Death? (DAW)

I Shall Wear Midnight - Terry Pratchett [2 Nominations: Locus, Andre Norton]

It starts with whispers.

Then someone picks up a stone.

Finally, the fires begin.

When people turn on witches, the innocents suffer. . . .

Tiffany Aching has spent years studying with senior witches, and now she is on her own. As the witch of the Chalk, she performs the bits of witchcraft that aren’t sparkly, aren’t fun, don’t involve any kind of wand, and that people seldom ever hear about: She does the unglamorous work of caring for the needy.

But someone—or something—is igniting fear, inculcating dark thoughts and angry murmurs against witches. Aided by her tiny blue allies, the Wee Free Men, Tiffany must find the source of this unrest and defeat the evil at its root—before it takes her life. Because if Tiffany falls, the whole Chalk falls with her.

Chilling drama combines with laugh-out-loud humor and searing insight as beloved and bestselling author Terry Pratchett tells the high-stakes story of a young witch who stands in the gap between good and evil. (Haper Collins)

A Dark Matter - Peter Straub [2 Nominations: Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson]

On a Midwestern campus in the 1960s, a charismatic guru and his young acolytes perform a secret ritual in a local meadow.  What happens is a mystery—all that remains is a gruesomely dismembered body and the shattered souls of all who were present.  Forty years later, one man seeks to learn about that horrifying night, and to do so he’ll have to force those involved to examine the unspeakable events that have haunted them ever since. Unfolding through their individual stories, A Dark Matter is an electric, chilling, and unpredictable novel that proves Peter Straub to be the master of modern horror. (DoubleDay)

Lightborn - Tricia Sullivan [2 Nominations: BSFA, Arthur C. Clarke]

Lightborn, better known as 'shine', is a mind-altering technology that has revolutionised the modern world. It is the ultimate in education, self-improvement and entertainment - beamed directly into the brain of anyone who can meet the asking price. But in the city of Los Sombres, renegade shine has attacked the adult population, resulting in social chaos and widespread insanity in everyone past the age of puberty. The only solution has been to turn off the Field and isolate the city. Trapped within the quarantine perimeter, fourteen-year-old Xavier just wants to find the drug that can keep his own physical maturity at bay until the army shuts down the shine. That's how he meets Roksana, mysteriously impervious to shine and devoted to helping the stricken. As the military invades street by street, Xavier and Roksana discover that there could be hope for Los Sombres - but only if Xavier will allow a lightborn cure to enter his mind. What he doesn't know is that the shine in question has a mind of its own ... (Orbit)

Behemoth - Scott Westerfeld [2 Nominations: Andre Norton, Locus]

The behemoth is the fiercest creature in the British navy. It can swallow enemy battleships with one bite. The Darwinists will need it, now that they are at war with the Clanker powers.

Deryn is a girl posing as a boy in the British Air Service, and Alek is the heir to an empire posing as a commoner. Finally together aboard the airship Leviathan, they hope to bring the war to a halt. But when disaster strikes the Leviathan's peacekeeping mission, they find themselves alone and hunted in enemy territory.

Alek and Deryn will need great skill, new allies, and brave hearts to face what's ahead. (Simon & Schuster)

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Anthologies 

Haunted Legends - Ellen Datlow & Nick Mamatas, eds. [2 Nominations: Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson]

Darkly thrilling, these twenty new ghost stories have all the chills and power of traditional ghost stories, but each tale is a unique retelling of an urban legend from the world over.

Multiple award-winning editor Ellen Datlow and award-nominated author and editor Nick Mamatas recruited Jeffrey Ford, Ramsey Campbell, Joe R. Lansdale, Caitlin Kiernan, Catherynne M. Valente, Kit Reed, Ekaterina Sedia, and thirteen other fine writers to create stories unlike any they've written before. Tales to make readers shiver with fear, jump at noises in the night, keep the lights on.

These twenty nightmares, brought together by two renowned editors of the dark fantastic, are delightful visions sure to send shivers down the spines of horror readers. (Tor)

Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery - Jonathan Strahan & Lou Anders, eds. [2 Nominations: Locus, Shirley Jackson]

Seventeen original tales of sword and sorcery penned by masters old and new

Elric . . . the Black Company . . . Majipoor. For years, these have been some of the names that have captured the hearts of generations of readers and embodied the sword and sorcery genre. And now some of the most beloved and bestselling fantasy writers working today deliver stunning all-new sword and sorcery stories in an anthology of small stakes but high action, grim humor mixed with gritty violence, fierce monsters and fabulous treasures, and, of course, swordplay. Don't miss the adventure of the decade! (Harper Voyager)

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Collections

Occultation - Laird Barron [2 Nominations: Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson]

Laird Barron has emerged as one of the strongest voices in modern horror and dark fantasy fiction, building on the eldritch tradition pioneered by writers such as H. P. Lovecraft, Peter Straub, and Thomas Ligotti. His stories have garnered critical acclaim and been reprinted in numerous year's best anthologies and nominated for multiple awards, including the Crawford, International Horror Guild, Shirley Jackson, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards. His debut collection, The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, was the inaugural winner of the Shirley Jackson Award.

He returns with his second collection, Occultation. Pitting ordinary men and women against a carnivorous, chaotic cosmos, Occultation's eight tales of terror (two never before published) include the Theodore Sturgeon and Shirley Jackson Award-nominated story "The Forest" and Shirley Jackson Award nominee "The Lagerstatte." Featuring an introduction by Michael Shea, Occultation brings more of the spine-chillingly sublime cosmic horror Laird Barron's fans have come to expect. (Night Shade Books)

What I Didn't See: Stories - Karen Joy Fowler [2 Nominations: Locus, Shirley Jackson]

In her moving and elegant new collection, New York Times bestseller Karen Joy Fowler writes about John Wilkes Booth's younger brother, a one-winged man, a California cult, and a pair of twins, and she digs into our past, present, and future in the quiet, witty, and incisive way only she can.

The sinister and the magical are always lurking just below the surface: for a mother who invents a fairy-tale world for her son in "Halfway People"; for Edwin Booth in "Edwin's Ghost," haunted by his fame as "America's Hamlet" and his brother's terrible actions; for Norah, a rebellious teenager facing torture in "The Pelican Bar" as she confronts Mama Strong, the sadistic boss of a rehabilitation facility; for the narrator recounting her descent in "What I Didn't See."

With clear and insightful prose, Fowler's stories measure the human capacities for hope and despair, brutality and kindness. This collection, which includes two Nebula Award winners, is sure to delight readers, even as it pulls the rug out from underneath them. (Small Beer Press)

The Ones That Got Away - Stephen Graham Jones [2 Nominations: Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson]

These thirteen stories are our own lives, inside out. A boy's summer romance doesn't end in that good kind of heartbreak, but in blood. A girl on a fishing trip makes a friend in the woods who's exactly what she needs, except then that friend follows her back to the city. A father hears a voice through his baby monitor that shouldn't be possible, but now he can't stop listening. A woman finds out that the shipwreck wasn't the disaster, but who she's shipwrecked with. A big brother learns just what he will, and won't, trade for one night of sleep. From prison guards making unholy alliances to snake-oil men in the Old West doling out justice, these stories carve down into the body of the mind, into our most base fears and certainties, and there's no anesthetic. Turn the light on if you want, but that just makes for more shadows. (Prime Books)

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Novellas

"The Lifecycle of Software Objects" - Ted Chiang - Subterranean - Read Online [3 Nominations: Hugo, Nebula, Locus]

"The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window" - Rachel Swirsky - Subterranean Press - Read Online  [3 Nominations: Hugo, Nebula, Locus]

"The Sultan of the Clouds" - Geoffrey A. Landis - Asimov’s September 2010 - Read PDF [2 Nominations: Hugo, Nebula]

"Troika" - Alastair Reynolds - Godlike Machines [2 Nominations:  Hugo, Locus]

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Novelettes 

"Plus or Minus" - James Patrick Kelly - Asimov’s December 2010 - Read Online [3 Nominations: Hugo, Nebula, Locus]

"The Jaguar House, in Shadow" - Aliette de Bodard - Asimov’s July 2010 - Read Online [2 Nominations: Hugo, Nebula]

"The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains" - Neil Gaiman - Stories: All-New Tales - Read Online [2 Nominations: Locus, Shirley Jackson]

"That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made" - Eric James Stone - Analog September 2010 - Read Online [2 Nominations: Hugo, Nebula]

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Short Stories

"The Things" - Peter Watts - Clarkesworld January 2010 - Read Online [4 Nominations: Hugo, Locus, BSFA, Shirley Jackson]

"Booth’s Ghost" - Karen Joy Fowler - What I Didn't See: Stories [2 Nominations:  Locus, Shirley Jackson]

"Ponies" - Kij Johnson - Tor.com - January 17th, 2010 - Read Online [2 Nominations: Hugo, Nebula]

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All in all, a pretty good list, no? I'll try to keep this up to date as further nominations and winners are announced.

Covering Covers: Unpossible - Daryl Gregory

Last week, Daryl Gregory debuted the cover of his upcoming Fairwood Press collection, Unpossible and Other Stories, as designed by Italian artist and illustrator, Antonello Silverini.

Cover Artist: Antonello Silverini

If you don't recognize the name, Daryl Gregory is a relatively new novelist whose first two novels, Pandemonium and The Devil's Alphabet, have earned him a sterling reputation here at Stomping on Yeti. While his work is undeniably genre-ic, it's never escapist. Gregory might dress his fiction in pulp demons and mutated monsters but at its core its some heavy stuff, reflecting on what it really means to "grow up", the double-edged sword of family, and the sheer terror of realizing your own place in this world. To put it more plainly, it's like my genretacular childhood and my angst-ridden twenty-something present met up, fell in love, and had a baby. With tentacles.

Returning to Silverini's brilliant cover, I can't help but admire the simplistic beauty of the composition. As is the case in many of his pieces, Silverini takes several disparate images and combines them in wondrous fashion. In doing so, he pulls the observer in to contemplate what each element represents. Why is there a cable car in a grassy field? Why does one figure have a different face? What does the faded American flag represent? What's with the dog? Why is the word sightseeing included?

To try suss a little bit more meaning out of this enigmatic image, I queried Gregory himself. Here's what he had to say:

As for the cover, Antonello's usual method is to read the text and start using the images that speak to him. The only parameters we gave him were (a) it's an eclectic collection, covering SF, fantasy, and weird stuff, so it shouldn't suggest that it's in one genre (for example, no spaceships, which he wouldn't do anyway) and (b) make it something he'd be proud to put in his portfolio.

He ended up using images from the title story, which is about a middle aged man who used to be one of those adventuresome kids, like the boys from Where the Wild Things Are and The Phantom Tollbooth. But now he's grown up, life has not gone as planned, and he's trying desperately to get back into "the lands beyond." And that's pretty much a metaphor for what I'm trying to do in these stories -- get back into the story.

To me the lack of clear thematic direction is also emblematic of Gregory's work as a whole. Like celebrated genre author, China Mieville, the only real commonality in Gregory's diverse portfolio is a uniform high level of quality. The only type of tale you can safely expect is a good one. While the Table of Contents of Unpossible is still in flux, I'd assume it would include the titular short, "Unpossible", as well as some of Gregory's more popular pieces in "Second Person, Present Tense" and "The Illustrated Biography of Lord Grimm." I follow Gregory's output pretty closely, so I'll be sure to provide an update when it's available.

Unpossible and Other Stories should be available from Fairwood Press in October 2011. In the meantime, go read Pandemonium and/or The Devil's Alphabet. You can thank me later.

Three Things to Think About: Douglas Adams

1. Douglas Adams died ten years ago today at the age of 49. Considering how productive many writers are late into their lives, it clear that the genre was robbed of one it's best much, much too soon. If you haven't read any of Adams' brilliant work, please do so. It's indescribably good.

2. He was 27 when he wrote A Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. That's about my age. I feel profoundly unproductive.

3. Is there a more perfect passage than the improbable appearance of a whale and a bowl of petunias in all of science fiction?

"Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet.


And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any more.


This is a complete record of its thoughts from the moment it began its life till the moment it ended it.


Ah ... ! What's happening? it thought.


Er, excuse me, who am I?


Hello?


Why am I here? What's my purpose in life?


What do I mean by who am I?


Calm down, get a grip now ... oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? It's a sort of ... yawning, tingling sensation in my ... my ... well I suppose I'd better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let's call it my stomach.


Good. Ooooh, it's getting quite strong. And hey, what's about this whistling roaring sound going past what I'm suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that ... wind! Is that a good name? It'll do ... perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I've found out what it's for. It must be something very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of it. Hey! What's this thing? This ... let's call it a tail - yeah, tail. Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty good can't I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn't seem to achieve very much but I'll probably find out what it's for later on. Now - have I built up any coherent picture of things yet?


No.


Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, I'm quite dizzy with anticipation ...


Or is it the wind?


There really is a lot of that now isn't it?


And wow! Hey! What's this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like ... ow ... ound ... round ... ground! That's it! That's a good name - ground!


I wonder if it will be friends with me?


And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.

Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now."

Excerpted from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Chapter 18.

42. Sigh...

Douglas Adams continues to be sorely missed. Thanks again for all the fish!