This page is updated as books are received throughout the month.
Eternal Pleasure by Nina Bangs
(Gods of the Night, book one), Leisure, $7.99, 384pp, pb, 9780843959536. Paranormal romance. On-sale date: 1 July 2008.
New York Times bestselling author Nina Bangs has taken dark, dangerous and sexy to a whole new level with her Gods of the Night series. In this innovative new series, Bangs incorporates the mysterious Mayan 2012 prophecy, which some believe to predict the end of the modern age on December 21, 2012. Bangs has created a brotherhood of eleven immortal warriors, the Gods of the Night, with the souls of prehistoric predators that must battle the forces of evil to save earth and the human race from extinction.
The first book of the series, Eternal Pleasure, finds Kelly Maloy accepting a new job as a chauffeur to make quick and easy money in order to finish her music degree. Little does she know that the man she’s chauffeuring, the amazingly sexy, yet foreboding, Ty, has the soul of one of nature’s fiercest predators, Tyrannosaurus Rex. Even as his animal nature frightens her, Kelly is strangely drawn to the deadly warrior. Armed with her flute and the support of Ty’s brotherhood of strong and powerful warriors, Kelly must help Ty save the world from certain chaos and destruction, and maybe find love along the way.
The H-Bomb Girl by Stephen Baxter
Faber and Faber, £6.99, 268pp, tp, 9780571232802. YA science fiction.
Liverpool 1962.
A place and time of danger and passion.
A thrilling new music is bursting onto the grey streets of the post-war city: a music that electrifies, a music that promises to change everything.
But in Cuba, on the other side of the earth, nuclear tensions are at breaking point. The end of the whole world could be just days away.
At the heart of it all is fourteen-year-old Laura Mann. She’s on the run, hunted by strange forces fighting over the future of humanity. Laura is The H-Bomb Girl. And Laura’s about to discover that her own life is at stake—in ways she could never have imagined…
City at the End of Time by Greg Bear
Del Rey, $27.00, 512pp, hc, 9780345448392. Science fiction. On-sale date: 12 August 2008.
Do you dream of a city at the end of time? Three young people do. Though they live in contemporary Seattle, they can’t get the vision of a far-future, decaying cityscape out of their heads, or understand why they can’t recall anything about their own pasts. When the three stumble across a newspaper ad asking that question, each responds, to find themselves drawn into a desperate mission to save their own universe.
City at the End of Time contains sweeping future vistas populated by creatures spawned from a decaying universe: characters such as the Librarian, the Chalk Princess, and the Fateshifters. Our young heroes, each assigned to protect a fragment of the universe’s history, must survive long enough to pass that knowledge onto the new universe that is being born.
Hungers of the Heart by Jenna Black
(a tale of the Guardians of the Night), Tor, $6.99, 370pp, pb, 9780765357182. Paranormal Romance.
Drake is a Killer vampire. Unlike the other Guardians of the Night, Drake feeds on human blood, choosing victims who deserve to die. But still he works with the Guardians to protect those humans who still have some good in them.
When fellow Guardian Gabriel is taken hostage by an old enemy, Drake finds himself alone, facing a legion of Killer vampires. Not even the European delegation sent to negotiate between Drake and the French Seigneur seems to be able to control the situation—especially since the European vampires aren’t exactly impartial. Drake’s only hope is the Seigneur’s concubine—an unwilling vampire fledgling—and her sixteen-year-old human sister.
Then someone begins killing the members of the European vampire delegation and Drake is the only suspect. Will he be saved by love, or will he suffer the true death?
Call of the Highland Moon by Kendra Leigh Castle
Sourcebooks Casablanca, $6.99, 375pp, pb, 9781402211584. Paranormal romance.
In the haunting Scottish Highlands, one werewolf destined to be his clan’s next Alpha decides to chance fate and run away to upstate New York. Running into trouble and wounded in his wolf form, he never expects to find his soul mate so far from home.
Sourcebooks Casablanca is pleased to present Call of the Highland Moon by Kendra Leigh Castle, the exciting new paranormal romance that USA Today best-selling author Alyssa Day says, “thrills with seductive romance and breathtaking suspense!”
Gideon runs away from his duty to his clan to upstate New York and has every intention of returning home when a snow storm leaves him stranded. Attacked by a group of rogue wolves working for a strange and unknown enemy with endless amounts of power, Gideon trudges his way to a doorstep, leading him into the care of Carly, owner of a tiny romance book shop.
While Carly hasn’t had much luck when it comes to her own romances, but she has a great way with animals. Carly takes home what she thinks is an injured dog and treats his wounds, but wakes up to discover a devastatingly handsome man in her bed. Trapped together in the storm, the pair realizes they have found true love. Struggling with her own fate, Carly is given a tough decision: becoming a werewolf and taking on the task of protecting mankind from an evil otherworld, or giving up the one man she has ever truly loved.
The Word of God by Thomas M. Disch
Tachyon, $14.95, 192pp, tp, 9781892391773. Science Fiction. On-sale date: July 2008.
There are few writers of the intellectual caliber, dark humor, and stark originality of Thomas M. Disch. In addition to Disch’s stellar reputation as a critic, poet, theorist, and satirist, he is considered one of science fiction’s most important writers, having the distinction of being the only author with three novels (Camp Concentration, 334, and On Wings of Song) selected for the quintessential 100 Best Science Fiction Novels.
In his newest novel, The Word of God, Disch writes from the perspective of a self-appointed divinity whose good works will be legendary—unless his enemies can stop him from ever being born. Embroiled in a race for the fate of humanity and his very existence, pitted against a maniacally minded and recently reincarnated Philip K. Dick, the result is as roundly entertaining as it is enlightening.
About The Word of God, Disch comments:
It is one of the few books in existence that can claim to be written by a god, and is therefore infallibly true and a guide to the Good Life and the Good Afterlife.
Authors with whom I share my audience? Well, for starters, Mohammed, St. Matthew (Mark and John as well), and Joseph Smith, author of the Book of Mormon. They have been pretty popular, but as word gets out I’;m sure we can sell more copies.
Potential customers? Astronauts, astrologers, painters of genius, Scrabble aces, the better sort of ballroom dancer, porn stars, the heirs of millionaires, and trust-funders of high moral principles. They would read the Holy Scriptures, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, and the more high-toned graphic novels.
As contemporaries, Thomas Disch and the late Kurt Vonnegut were darkly humorous and satirical writers, beginning their careers writing science fiction, and crossing over to write cerebral, political fiction with science fictional elements. The Word of God, while retaining the iconic individualism of its author, shares with Vonnegut’s classic Slaughterhouse-Five its irreverence, innovative plotting, and self-referentiality, as well as protagonists based upon their authors, and time travel that drives the plot.
Here is Thomas M. Disch’s first novel in nine years: a unique, witty, and most thoroughly Dischean experience.
A Darkness Forged in Fire by Chris Evans
(Book One of the Iron Elves), Pocket, $26.00, 464pp, hc, 9781416570516. Fiction. On-sale date: July 2008.
Shaking up the science fiction world this summer will be the highly entertaining debut novel A Darkness Forged in Fire by Chris Evans—a world of epic traditional fantasy and advenure in the traditions of Terry Brooks, Terry Pratchett, Robert Jordan, and J.R.R. Tolkien, where musket and cannon, bow and arrow, magic and diplomacy all vie for supremacy as the human-dominated Calahrian Empire teeters on the brink of war within and without.
Disgraced elf officer Konowa Swiftdragon of the Calahrian Imperial Army is forcible returned from exile to resurrect the regiment he once led, the Iron Elves. These elves, native of the Hyntaland and the Great Forest, are shunned by their own tribe. Their crime was to be born bearing the mark of the Shadow Monarch, an elf-witch dwelling in an unnatural forest high on a mountain where she explores deeper into the roots of the world seeking power long forgotten.
In hopes of proving the mark false, the elves volunteered to fight for the Calahrian Empire in its Crusade-like quest to rid the world of dark magics and beliefs. The regiment became legendary for its fighting ability, but all of that was lost in an instant when their commanding officer, Konowa, murdered the Calahrian Viceroy of Elfkyna, casting the loyalty of the elves to the Empire in question. The regiment was banished to the desert wastes while Konowa was court-martialed and disappeared. Now, the regiment is tasked with finding a mythical Star that is rumored to have fallen from the sky in a remote land, a prophetic harbinger of conflict to come as all seek to harness its power.
Death’s Head: Maximum Offense by David Gunn
Del Rey, $25.00, 359pp, hc, 9780345500014. Science fiction.
Last year, David Gunn rocketed onto the science fiction scene with Death’s Head, one of the most explosive and entertaining science fiction debuts since Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon. Now, Gunn is back with Death’s Head: Maximum Offense, a book just as brutal and unforgiving as its protagonist: Lieutenant Sven Tveskoeg. Sven is antisocial, an antihero, anti-you-name-it. A one-man killing spree whose best friend is an intelligent handgun with a bad attitude, Sven’s worst enemy is, well, just about everybody else. While these qualities would normally doom a man to prison or worse in any decent society, Sven’s society is anything but decent, it’s the status quo.
Set in a chillingly realistic far-future world, this second book in the Death’s Head series takes Sven to the hardboiled planet of Hekati. A harsh, grim, and desolate place, Hekati is the location where the powers of the universe have whimsically decided to stage a major battle, a battle Sven can not avoid. Sven realizes he must not only win the battle against impossible odds but protect a key figure in the political machinatiosn of an endless universe… and Sven isn’t much for politics. Featuring more of the same pulse pounding thrills and gritty action that Gunn unleashed in Death’s Head, Death’s Head: Maximum Offense is a relentless, electric thrill ride.
The Book of Wizards selected and illustrated by Michael Hague
HarperCollins Children’s, $19.99, 160pp, hc, 9780688140052. Illustrated children’s fantasy anthology.
Are you cunning enough to outwit an evil witch who wants to boil you alive? Are you brave enough to embark on a quest to defeat the dragon that terrorizes kingdoms far and wide? Can you spot a ruse when you see one, withstand the enchantments of a sorceress, and win the hand of the fair princess?
In this magical anthology, master of children’s fantasy Michael Hague brings us tales that transcend time and place, from Shakespeare to Homer, Arthurian legend to tribal folklore. the nine tales will cast their spell over all who open these pages, and Hague’s richly imagined paintings will enchant even the most stalwart young rogue, valiant knight, or steely lass.
Daughters of the North by Sarah Hall
Harper Perennial, $13.95, 209pp, tp, 9780061430367. Science fiction.
Known for her revelatory prose and provocative subject matter, Booker and Orange Prize nominated Sarah Hall is rapidly building her star as “one of the most significant and exciting of Britain’s young novelists” (The Guardian). This April, Harper Perennial is thrilled to be publishing her most powerful work to date, Daughters of the North.
Sarah Hall has also recently won the 2006/2007 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for the Faber UK edition of the novel. “Sarah Hall’s fierce, uncomfortable story tackle[s] the most urgent and alarming questions of today,” said Suzy Feay, literary editor of The Independent. “We need writers with Hall’s humanity and insight.” Daughters of the North has also recently been shortlisted for the UK’s Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction.
In Daughters of the North, Sarah Hall draws on the work of Margaret Atwood, George Orwell and Joseph Conrad to imagine a new dystopia set in the not too distant future. England is in a state of depression after global economic collapse, and all citizens have been herded into the urban centers. Terrifying new systems of control are in place; not only has the government created a military police force to monitor the population, but reproduction has become a lottery, with contraceptive coils fitted to every female of child-bearing age. A girl who will become known only as “Sister” escapes the confines of her increasingly repressive marriage to find an isolated group of women living as “unofficials” in Carhullan, a remote northern farm. Run by Jackie Nixon, the organization, once considered sexually eccentric and cult-like, has now become militarized, and Sister must find out whether she has it in herself to become an active insurgent. This fascinating novel poses very pertinent questions about feminine instincts and capabilities, and in a brutalized world it considers what lengths women will go to in order to resist their oppressors, what tactics they must employ to survive and remain free.
Succubus in the City by Nina Harper
Del Rey, $6.99, 392pp, pb, 9780345495068. Fantasy.
When you’re a single, hard-working woman in New York City, it’s hard enough to find a good man. When you’re a succubus, you’ve got a completely different problem altogether! In Succubus in the City, it’s Lily’s job to find the bad boys and make sure they get their just desserts in the underworld. But after three thousand years of one-night stands, a girl just wants a little more…
Working for Satan is a hot gig. The Devil really does wear Prada, and Lily can sport all the dazzling fashion she desires, eat all the fabulous food she craves, and hang for all eternity with her three demon girlfriends. But serving up bad boys to the fiery pits of Hell is just getting… lonely.
Lily gives the jerks, the creeps, and the liars the best (and last) night of their lives, but she’s tired of waking up to a pile of ashes. She wants a guy who will stick around.
Nathan Coleman is a devilishly handsome, laid-back P.I. who wants to ask Lily a few questions about a missing man. But someone—or something—wants Lily and her friends dead, and Nathan seems to know more than he’ll admit to. Can a sweet talking mortal and a girl from Hell find true love?
As the first book in a new series, Succubus in the City combines the sexiness and complexity of what it means to be a succubus with love, fashion and friendship—New York City-style!
Year’s Best Fantasy 8 edited by David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer
Tachyon, $14.95, 384pp, tp, 9781892391766. Fantasy anthology. On-sale date: July 2008.
The most experienced editing team in the genre returns, presenting the finest fantasy stories of 2007. With its distinctive blend of bestselling authors and exciting newcomers, this classic series, in its seventh volume, remains the essential guide to fantasy.
[Contributors: Holly Black, Michael Moorcock, Neil Gaiman, Kage Baker, Chris Roberson, Daryl Gregory, Elizabeth Hand, David Ackert & Benjamin Rosenbaum, Pat Cadigan, Bruce McAllister, Mark Chadbourn, Jeffrey Ford, Andy Duncan, M. Rickert, Tad Williams, Nalo Hopkinson, Garth Nix, Liz Williams, Laird Barron, Don Webb, Fred Chappell, T.A. Pratt, and Theodora Goss.]
Dead@17: Compendium Edition by Josh Howard
Viper Comics, $24.95, 336pp, tp, 9780979368073. Graphic novel collection.
When seventeen year old Nara Kilday is murdered at the hands of an unknown assailant, the quiet suburb of Darlington Hills is turned upside down. As Nara’s best friend Hazy races to unravel the mystery of her friend’s untimely demise, shocking secrets are uncovered that reveal a darker side to Nara that she never knew. Meanwhile, a hidden evil has emerged, raising an army of the undead bent on reshaping the world in its own image. Among the undead is Nara herself, whose miraculous return may be the only thing standing in the way of Armageddon.
This volume collects the entire original Dead@17 trilogy—completely revised and expanded, featuring new and enhanced artwork and extended sequences. Also included: a new introduction by creator Josh Howard, cover and pin-up galleries, and a section devoted to the fans of Dead@17.
The Year of Disappearances by Susan Hubbard
Simon & Schuster, $22.95, 287pp, hc, 9781416552710. Fantary.
With The Year of Disappearances, Susan Hubbard continues the fascinating new vampire series that began with The Society of S, which Carolyn Parkhurst, author of The Dogs of Babel, called “a triumph of modern gothic storytelling.” Picking up the story of 14-year-old Ariella Montero just after the chemical fire that almost killed her and her father—the dashing, intellectual vampire, Raphael—The Year of Disappearances finds Ari living with her mother in Homosassa Springs, Florida, and navigating the emotional torrents of an adolescence made all the more complicated by her secret vampirism. Over the course of a dramatic year, Ari will encounter abduction and murder, leave for college, and be immersed in a new world of poltiical engagement with international implications.
The vampire world that Ari, her parents, and their friends inhabit is not the clichéd realm of countless horror films. These are ethical vampires, who eschew the drinking of blood by imbibing alternative sera and, by taking precautions, live among ordinary mortals. Imbued with special powers, in particular the ability to read others’ thoughts, they cluster in vampire colonies that are an invisible part of ordinary communities around the world. While Ari has been home-schooled and somewhat sequestered by her mother, whom she calls Mãe, she is nonetheless drawn to the world of average teenagers. So when the possibility of friendship with two Homosassa girls—Mysty and Autumn—presents itself, she seeks out their company, although she finds their obsession with mundane teenage affairs hard to embrace.
It is not long before Mysty disappears, presumed dead by the police. Ari reports that she has seen a beige van, driven by a menacing, blank-eyed man, lurking nearby before Mysty vanished. But, the fact that Ari once had been closely linked to the death of a young girl—her friend Kathleen back in Saratoga Springs, New York—raises many of the townspeople’s suspicions about the role she herself may have played. In order to protect her daughter, Mãe arranges for the precocious Ari to enroll in college at her own alma mater, an alternative Georgia school called Hillhouse. Once there, Ari enjoys a new world of independence and intellectual stimulation, becomes more interested in environmental issues, and begins her first serious relationship with a boy—aspiring magician Walker Pearson.
But trouble again follows Ari. When Autumn comes to visit the campus and her corpse later turns up in the Okefenokee Swamp, suspicion surrounds Ari. Then, on a field trip to Savannah to attend a Third-Parties Caucus with her political science class, Ari quickly realizes that the leading presidential candidate just happens to be a vampire. Suddenly, the collision of her world and the world of ordinary humans could take on much farther-reaching ramifications.
“Hubbard creates… mainstream characters, ones whose desires and fears, plans and dreams have nothing to do with the thrill of the kill,” said Booklist about The Society of S. As Ari’s story is further revealed, Hubbard once again works her narrative magic, deftly imagining the “mystery, romance, poetry and self-exploration” (Lifetimetv.com) of a world where vampires and mortals coexist, though not always easily. The Year of Disappearances is a spellbinding yet topical novel of politics and current affairs delivered in the form of a gripping supernatural quest.
Blood Bank by Tanya Huff
(a Blood Ties collection), DAW, $7.99, 322pp, pb, 9780756405076. TV Tie-in / Fantasy collection.
The Blood Books center around three main characters: Vicki Nelson, a homicide cop turned private detective, her former partner Mikel Celluci, who is still on the force, and vampire Henry Fitzroy, who is the illegitimate son of Henry VIII and makes his living as a writer of bodice rippers. Not only are the three of them caught in a love triangle, but they are, time and again, involved in mysteries with a supernatural slant—from demons, to werewolves, to mummies—and inevitably must join forces to solve crimes and defeat supernatural enemies.
Now all of Tanya Huff’s short stories about Henry, Vicki, and Mike are being released in this collection entitled Blood Bank. As an added bonus for fans of the TV series, Blood Bank will include the actual screenplay for “Stone Cold,” the episode Tanya herself wrote for the Blood Ties series along with a special introduction by Tanya, detailing her own experiences with the show.
The Martian General’s Daughter by Theodore Judson
Pyr, $15.00, 253pp, tp, 9781591026433. Military Science Fiction.
Set two thousand years from now, in a world very much like Imperial Rome, this is the story of General Peter Black, the last decent man, as told through the eyes of his devoted (and illegitimate) daughter, Justa.
General Black served the noble emperor Mathias, and, out of loyalty to the father, continues to serve his son, even though the son has degenerated into insane tyranny worthy of Nero or Caligula. When the empire has dissolved into rival factions, Black must become political for the first time in his life in order to save his family. Only then does he remember the love he bears for his last surviving child.
Justa, whom he once considered an embarrassment, a reminder of his one and only indiscretion, evolves to become his most trusted ally and adviser, his best friend and only real family. In the end, Black decides to turn his back on institutions and men who have never loved him nearly as much as he did them or as his daughter loves him.
The Martian General’s Daughter expertly conveys the SF theme once noted by Robert Charles Wilson: “No human institution, good or bad, secular or religious, cultural or technological, is fore-ordained or guaranteed to last.”
Personal Demons by Stacia Kane
Juno, $6.99, 336pp, pb, 9780809672557. Urban Fanasy/Paranormal.
Dr. Megan Chase promises llisteners to her new radio call-in show that she’ll “slay their personal demons,” and they believe her. So do the personal demons. Although she doesn’t know it, Megan is the only human without a personal demon on her shoulder. This, coupled with her psychic abilities, makes her a valuable weapon for any demon “family” that can gain her allegiance. It also makes her a serious threat—not just to the personal demons, but to a soul-sucker known as The Accuser who has an old score to settle. Megan and her allies—a demon lover who both protects and seduces her with devilish intensity, a witch with poor social skills, and three cockney guard demons—have to deal with not only The Accuser, the personal demons, and the ghosts of Megan’s past, but a reporter who threatens to destroy Megan’s career.
The Wreck of the Godspeed and Other Stories by James Patrick Kelly
Golden Gryphon, $24.95, 358pp, hc, 9781930846517. Science fiction/fantasy collection.
For thirty years James Patrick Kelly has been writing award-nominated and -winning short fiction, and these thirteen stories of his recent work are of the high quality and cutting style that is synonymous with him. In Nebula-winner “Burn” a supposedly idyllic world comes to grip with environmental responsibility and environmental terrorists, coupled with the personal decisions that are never clear or easy. In “Men Are Trouble,” nominated for the Nebula award, “devils” have eliminated men from Earth and “seed” women for procreation. In the Hugo nominated “The Best Christmas Ever” mechanicals must keep the last man on Earth happy, and do so by throwing him the best, and possibly last, Christmas ever. In the Hugo-nominated morality tale “Bernardo’s House” we meet a high-tech house and artificial woman, controlled by an AI, pining away awaiting the return of Bernardo—that is, until someone does visit. A HAL-like interstellar ship and a colorful group of pilgrims seek new worlds to explore in “The Wreck of the Godspeed,” but is the ship’s AI acting a bit strange? Is the AI going insane, or is something unique happening? The man who killed the last mammoth; will he be remembered as the hero, with “Luck”? To what extent will TV programs of the future go to get ratings? Ask the sentient “The Leila Torn Show.” In “The Dark Side of Town” the problems and temptations of a happy virtual reality versus a dismal real life are examined. What would it be like if one had to pass a test before one could become a “Mother”? A colony ship’s captain is behaving weirdly on “Dividing the Sustain,” and the ship needs a fully functional captain. Where is he, and how will he make his appearance? The Garden of Eden story is retold from the serpent’s view, in “Serpent.” What hath God wrought? Where is “The Edge of Nowhere” and what is past nowhere? “The Ice is Singing” in harmony? Does it sing to you? This collection of Kelly’s recent work provides the reader with new insights into the human psyche, as well as some of the best speculative fiction available.
The Shadow Isle by Katharine Kerr
(Book Three of The Silver Wyrm), $24.95, 405pp, hc, 9780756404765. Fantasy. On-sale date: 6 May 2008.
The long-awaited conclusion to the stunning Deverry fantasy saga is finally here! Katharine Kerr’s The Shadow Isle: Book Three of The Silver Wyrm follows The Gold Falcon and The Spirit Stone and takes readers into the wild Northlands.
The Born Queen by Greg Keyes
(the Triumphant Conclusion to The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone), Del Rey, $26.00, 464pp, hc, 9780345440693. Fantasy.
In The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, Greg Keyes has crafted a brilliant saga of magic, adventure, and love set against a backdrop of clashing empires and an ancient, reawakened evil. Locus magazine speculated that with a successful conclusion to the epic fantasy series The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, award-winning author Greg Keyes “may have a classic on his hands.” Now, with the foruth and final volume of this intelligent, powerful series, The Born Queen, Keyes brings his epic to a masterly close, gathering the strands of plot and character into a stunning climax that both completes and transcends all that has gone before.
The Briar King is dead, and the world itself follows him to ruin. Aspar White, wounded and tired, must embark on one last quest to save the forest and the people he loves, but he has little hope of success.
Anne Dare at last sits on the throne of Crotheny, but for how long? The Church, now led by the corrupt and powerful Marché Hespero, has declared a holy war against her, giving the king of Hansa the pretext he needs to unleash his vast might on the young queen and her unready army.
But Hansa is the least of Anne’s worries. The Hellrune, war seer of Hansa, strikes at her through vision and prophecy. The Kept—last of the elder Skasloi lords—weaves his own dark webs. Anne’s teacher and ally in the sedos world might also be her worst enemy, and Anne’s own mounting strength compels her toward madness.
Surviving these dangers and mastering her eldritch abilities are merely prelude to the real struggle. There are many—some with power matching or even exceeding Anne’s own—who are willing to kill in order to seize control. For whoever sits upon the throne will have the ultimate command to bring about the world’s salvation—or its apocalypse.
With powerfully engaging characters and exciting and realistic action, fans will be clamoring for this final book in an already beloved series.
Amulet by Kazu Kibuishi
(Book One of The Stonekeeper), Scholastic, $9.99, 188pp, tp, 9780439846813. Young adult fantasy graphic novel.
There’s something strange behind the basement door…
After a family tragedy, Emily, Navin, and their mother move to an ancestral home to start a new life. On the family’s very first night in the mysterious house, Em and Navin’s mom is kiidnapped by a tentacled creature. Now it’s up to Em and Navin to figure out how to set things right and save their mother’s life!
The Guin Saga Book 4: Prisoner of the Lagon by Kaoru Kurimoto; translated by Alexander O. Smith with Elye J. Alexander
Vertical, $9.95, 294pp, tp, 97819324287194. Fiction/Fantasy.
29 years ago when Kaoru Kurimoto began The Guin Saga, manga and anime—let alone classic fantasy from Japan—were not available in English. Now boasting 120 volumes in the world’s longest epic fantasy series, Kaoru Kurimoto’s heroic adventure spanning three decades has arrived to American shores.
The series continues in the fourth volume, Prisoner of the Lagon, in which Guin leaves his friends to seek the aid of the elusive Lagon, giant warriors hidden in the mountains of Nospherus. He uncovers their dwellings, but is held prisoner.
With unparalleled cover art by Naoyuki Katoh and seamless translation by Final Fantasy X localizer and translator Alexander O. Smith, the first five volumes of the series will be published in one complete story arc by Vertical. Vertical also released the series-inspired manga, The Guin Saga Manga: The Seven Magi with story by Kaoru Kurimoto and resplendent artwork by Kazuaki Yanagisawa.
Johnny Gruesome by Gregory Lamberson
Medallion, $15.95, 343pp, tp, 9781934755457. Horror. On-sale date: October 2008.
The village of Red Hill is about to learn the meaning of fear.
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
Scribner, $15.00, 184pp, tp, 9781416556961. Science fiction.
In a future world racked by violence and environmental catastrophes. George Orr wakes up one day to discover that his dreams have the ability to alter reality. He seeks help from Dr. William Haber, a psychiatrist who immediately grasps the power George wields. Soon George must preserve reality itself as Dr. Haber becomes adept at manipulating George’s dreams for his own purposes.
The Lathe of Heaven is an eerily prescient novel from award-winning author Ursula K. Le Guin that masterfully addresses the dangers of power and humanity’s self-destructiveness, questioning the nature of reality itself. It is a classic of the science fiction genre.
Front Lines edited by Denise Little
DAW, $7.99, 306pp, pb, 9780756404789. Science fiction anthology. On-sale date: 6 May 2008.
War will undoubtedly be an important issue in this year’s presidential election. Thanks to technological advances in recent years, journalists have changed how they report on the war. Now we can see actual wars in progress, put names to faces, meet soldiers and civilians caught up in the battles. War has become personal and the true price of combat has become real for civilians.
Denise Little asked twenty-one authors to look at this “small” picture, the up close and personal experiences of those who must fight on the front lines each and every day. Her anthology Front Lines contains 21 original stories that run the gamut from epic intergalactic struggles for the future of humankind to the microcosm of a single abandoned toy soldier in a boy’s backyard.
[Contributors: Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Dave Freer, Christina F. York, K.D. Wentworth, Diane A.S. Stuckart, Laura Resnick, Cynthia Ward, Jean Rabe, Josepha Sherman, Donald J. Bingle, Jody Lynn Nye, Meredith Simmons, Jim Fiscus, Dean Wesley Smith, M. Turville Heitz, Lisa Silverthorne, Peter Orullian, M.M. Hall, Janet Berliner & Jack Kirby, Nancy Jane Moore, and J. Steven York.]
Countdown by Michelle Maddox
Shomi, $6.99, 293pp, pb, 9780505527554. Action romance. On-sale date: August 2008.
Michelle Maddox’s imaginative, high stakes adventure, Countdown, is exactly what Dorchester Publishing’s Shomi speculative fiction line is all about. Countdown is an entertaining science fiction adventure with a unique blend of fast-paced action, riveting tension, and sexy romance. This boundary-breaking thrill ride will keep readers on the edge of their seats.
Countdown finds Kira Jordan waking up in total darkness, chained and trapped in a room with a stranger she dares not trust. Convicted felon Rogan Ellis spent years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, but make no mistake, he is far from innocent. Recruited with an unwilling Kira to participate in a viciously deadly reality competition where the stakes are high: win or die. Together, the unlikely pair must learn to trust each other if they want to live through the Countdown. There’s no place else to run or hide and the clock is ticking…
The Time Engine by Sean McMullen
(the fourth book of the Moonworlds Saga), Tor, $26.95, 304pp, hc, 9780765318763. Science Fiction/Fantasy. On-sale date: July 2008.
Swords, sorcery, and time travel are a strange and dangerous mix.
Wayfarer Inspector Danolarian saw his world’s future and did not approve. The inspector knew about time travel because he had once met his future self. What he did not know was that he would be abducted into the future, and wind up on the run with a constable who had shape-shifted into a cat.
Danolarian would also find himself marooned in the ancient past, where he would have to recover his time engine from five thousand naked, psychopathic horsemen.
A faulty repair plunges him another three million years back in time, to a world of strange, beautiful people living idyllic lives in splendid castles. But things are not always as they seem. After being attacked, he learns from his unlikely rescuer that time travel is not entirely real. A furious Danolarian returns to his own time, planning revenge against the time engine’s true builders.
Rhetorics of Fantasy by Farah Mendlesohn
Wesleyan University Press, $27.95, 344pp, tp, 9780819568687. Literary Studies.
In her new book, Rhetorics of Fantasy, Farah Mendelsohn transcends arguments over the definition of fantasy literature to introduce a provocative new system of classifications for the genre. Mendlesohn looks at four categories that arise out of the protagonist’s relationship to the fantasy world. These categories are the portal-quest, immersive, intrusion, and liminal fantasies.
Mendlesohn argues that authors’ stylistic decisions are shaped by the inescapably political demands of the category in which they choose to write. For example, Mendlesohn writes, “portal fantasies require that we learn from a point of entry. They are almost always quest novels and they almost always proceed in a linear fashion with a goal that must be met. Like the computer games they have spawned, they often contain elaborate descriptive elements. Yet while the intrusion fantasy must be unpacked or defeated, the portal fantasy must be navigated.” In contrast, the liminal fantasy is one in which “the fantastic leaks back through the portal.… The tone of the liminal fantasy could be described as blasé.… While liminal fantasy casualizes the fantastic within the experience of the protagonist, it estranges the reader.”
Using the four categories, Mendlesohn looks at nearly 200 examples of fantasy fiction, ranging from 19th century works to some of the best books in the contemporary field. With its wide-ranging discussion and insightful comparative analysis, Rhetorics of Fantasy provides a wealth of material for fans and scholars to consider.
The King & The Shadows by David J.A. Milne
iUniverse, $29.95, 585pp, tp, 9780595484126. Science fiction / fantasy.
An age of dying magic. A galaxy torn apart by war. A nation hidden in darkness. A fight that will change everything.
Utilising all the classic elements of contemporary science-fiction (intergalactic space travel, alien races, future weapons) and combining them with the best of fantasy literature (kings and queens, elves and dwarves, perilous quests and of course dragons), The King & the Shadows relates an epic adventure spanning the width and breadth of the galaxy.
After five years of ceaseless fighting, the Attrition War continues to divide and ravage the galaxy.
Having spent two years in forced exile, all Naytan desired was to assist in the liberation of his violently occupied home-world. But when a coded transmission begins to issue across the vacuum of space, unexpectedly threatening to turn the tide of battle, the very survival of his people is called into question.
Faced with seemingly insurmountable odds, Naytan must now travel to the code’s source and discover the truth before all is lost.
With time quickly running out, he soon discovers that it is not just the fate of his home-world that hangs in the balance, but that of the entire galaxy as well. For within the darkest reaches of space, a long hidden nation stirs restlessly, preparing to join the conflict—a nation comprised of terrifying supernatural warriors.
Magic Pickle by Scott Morse
Scholastic, $9.99, tp, 9780439879958. Young adult fantasy graphic novel.
Pickle Power!
Meet the world’s greenest, bumpiest, briniest superhero, the Magic Pickle! Now in full color, here is the graphic novel that started it all.
With his feisty sidekick, Jo Jo Wigman, the Magic Pickle faces his worst nightmare: the Brotherhood of Evil Produce! Will he save the world from those foul fiends the Romaine Gladiator, Peashooter, Phantom Carrot, Squish Squash, and Chili-Chili Bang Bang? Or will the world as we know it be conquered by vegetables gone wild?
Includes a bonus story featuring the Loconut and how-to-draw guide for creating your own evil produce!
Abhorsen by Garth Nix
Eos, $9.99, 340pp, tp, 9780061474330. Teen Fantasy. On-sale date: May 2008.
Abhorsen, the sequel to Lirael and Sabriel by New York Times bestselling author Garth Nix, is now available in paperback. A spectacular conclusion to the Abhorsen trilogy. Abhorsen is a whirlwind in which courage, love and sacrifice vie to save the living from an ancient terror.
Abhorsen continues the story of Lirael, who is now Abhorsen-in-Waiting, charged with maintaining the border between Life and Death—a heavy, perhaps impossible, burden for a young girl. Working against the combined powers of an evil necromancer and the Unnamed One he serves, Lirael, together with Prince Sameth, Mogget, and the Disreputable Dog, will learn what is required of the Abhorsen. Newly come into her powers, she has no idea how to stop this evil, and to make matters worse, Sam’s best friend is helping the enemy. What Lirael will learn is that to free life, the Abhorsen must enter Death.
This stunning new trade edition of Garth Nix’s best-selling Abhorsen trilogy will thrill fantasy readers of all ages.
Lirael by Garth Nix
Eos, $9.99, 464pp, tp, 9780061474347. Teen Fantasy. On-sale date: May 2008.
Lirael, the sequel to the award-winning fantasy title Sabriel by New York Times bestselling author Garth Nix, is now available in paperback. In this stunning trade edition, lovers of science fiction will discover a magical and spellbinding tale of destiny, danger and more.
Lirael has never felt like a true daughter of the Clayr. Abandoned by her mother, ignorant of her father’s identity, she looks like no one else in her large extended family. She doesn’t even have the Sight—the ability to see into possible futures—that is the very birthright of the Clayr.
Nonetheless, it is Lirael in whose hands the fate of the Old Kingdom lies. She must undertake a desperate mission under the growing shadow of an ancient evil which blocks the sight of the Clayr and threatens to break the boundary between life and death itself. With only her companion, the disreputable dog, to help, Lirael must leave the Clayr’s glacier for the first time. Will she find the courage to save her home and seek her own true identity?
With its rich and compelling plotline, Lirael will continue to draw readers deeper into the magical landscape of the Old Kingdom.
Sabriel by Garth Nix
Eos, $9.99, 311pp, tp, 9780061474354. Teen Fantasy. On-sale date: May 2008.
Sabriel, the first installment in the award-winning Abhorsen trilogy by New York Times bestselling author Garth Nix, is now available in paperback. In this stunning trade edition, lovers of science fiction will discover a magical and spellbinding tale of dark secrets, deep love and dangerous magic.
Sent to a boarding school in Ancelstierre as a young girl, Sabriel has had little experience with the random power of Free Magic or the Dead who refuse to stay dead in the Old Kingdom.
But during her final semester, her father, the Abhorsen, goes missing, and Sabriel knows she must enter the Old Kingdom to find him. Fantasy readers will fall in love with this exciting journey that brings Sabriel face-to-face with her own destiny.
With its rich and exciting plot, Sabriel will take readers to a world where the line between the living and the dead isn’t always clear—and sometimes disappears altogether.
Running Scared by Cheryl Norman
Medallion, $7.95, 402pp, pb, 9781933836416. Romantic Suspense. On-sale date: September 2008.
Although newly divorced Ashley Adams thinks her ex-husband is trying to kill her, she’s not Running Scared. Months of therapy and determination have strengthened her resolve to stop being a victim, while months of dedicated training have prepared her to run her first marathon.
Homicide detective Rick Edwards is coping with the deaths of his wife and daughter the only way he knows how—by focusing on his work. He is hoping to solve the murder Ashley witnessed during a training run, but first he must win her trust. And keep her alive.
But it doesn’t take Rick long to realize Ashley Adams is hardly a damsel in distress. In fact, she may be the one woman who can save him. He has found danger—has he also found love?—in the must unexpected of places.
Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik
(the fifth Temeraire novel), Del Rey, $25.00, 384pp, hc, 9780345496881. Fantasy. On-sale date: 8 July 2008.
Naomi Novik’s triumphant debut, His Majesty’s Dragon, introduced a dynamic new pair of heroes to fantasy fiction: the noble fighting dragon Temeraire and his master and commander, Capt. Will Laurence, who serves Britain’s peerless Aerial Corps in the thick of the raging Napoleonic Wars. His Majesty’s Dragon, first published in paperback format in April 2006, was immediately followed with two paperback sequels: Throne of Jade (May 2006) and Black Powder War (June 2006). The series received rave reviews at the start and Novik’s fan base grew rapidly.
Since the publication of His Majesty’s Dragon, the Temeraire series has been translated into twenty-six different languages. In September 2006, Peter Jackson, the Academy Award-winning director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, optioned the entire Temeraire series. One year later, Novik’s fourth book, Empire of Ivory, became a New York Times bestseller. In 2007, Naomi Novik won the John W. Campbel Award for Best New Writer. Now, in Victory of Eagles, the first hardcover in this dazzling series, Temeraire and Laurence soar to new heights of breathtaking action and brilliant imagination.
It is a grim time for the dragon Temerarie. On the heels of his mission to Africa, seeking the cure for a deadly contagion, he has been removed from military service—and his captain, Will Laurence, has been condemned to death for treason. For Britain, conditions are grimmer still: Napoleon’s resurgent forces have breached the Channel and successfully invaded English soil. Napoleon’s prime objective: the occupation of London. Separated by their own government and threatened at every turn by Napoleon’s forces, Laurnence and Temeraire must struggle to find each other amid the turmoil of war and to aid the resistance against the invasion before Napoleon’s foothold on England’s shores can become a stranglehold. If only they can be reunited, master and dragon might rally Britain’s scattered forces and take the fight to the enemy as never before—for kind and country, and for their own liberty. But can the French aggressors be well and truly routed, or will a treacherous alliance deliver Britain into the hands of her would-be conquerors?
Dying to Live: a novel of life among the undead by Kim Paffenroth
Permuted Press, $12.95, 192pp, tp, 9780978970734. Horror.
Jonah Caine, a lone survivor in a zombie-infested world, struggles to understand the apocalypse in which he lives. Unable to find a moral or sane reason for the horror that surrounds him, he is overwhelmed by violence and insignificance.
After wandering for months, Jonah’s lonely existence dramatically changes when he discovers a group of survivors. Living in a museum-turned-compound, they are led jointly by Jack, an ever-practical and efficient military man, and Milton, a mysterious, quizzical prophet who holds a strange power over the dead. Both leaders share Jonah’s anguish over the brutality of their world, as well as his hope for its beauty. Together with others, they build a community that reestablishes an island of order and humanity surrounded by relentless ghouls.
But this newfound peace is short-lived, as Jonah and his band of refugees clash with another group of survivors who remind them that the undead are not the only—nor the most grotesque—horrors they must face.
History is Dead: a Zombie Anthology edited by Kim Paffenroth
Permuted Press, $14.95, 289pp, tp, 9780978970796. Horror anthology.
Our team of crack historians has uncovered the truth you never learned in school: the living dead have walked among us since the dawn of time. In this collection of gruesome tales from throughout the ages, the ravenous undead shamble through bloody battlefields, plague-ridden cities, genteel country estates, and dusty frontier towns. They emerge from foggy cemeteries, frozen barrows, loamy bogs, cursed mines, and gore-spattered operating rooms to prey on the living.
But these zombies don’t just eat people. They help painters and writers save their faltering careers. They unwittingly push humankind on the quest for fire. They topple evil capitalists and their corporate empires. They fight crime. They fall in love.
Join us on a journey into our zombie-filled past… Neither history nor the living dead have ever been this exciting!
[Contributors: Jonathan Maberry, Scott Johnson, Joe McKinney, Derek Gunn, Christine Morgan, David Dunwoody, Leila Eadie, Jenny Ashford, James Roy Daley, Linda Donahue, Juleigh Howard-Hobson, Rick Moore, John Peel, Patrick Rutigliano, Paula Stiles, Rebecca Brock, Douglas Hutcheson, Carole Lanham, Ed Turner, and Raoul Wainscoting.]
The Walking-Away World by Kenneth Patchen (introduction by Jim Woodring
New Directions, $19.95, 304pp, tp, 9780811217576. Poetry/Art. On-sale date: 28 July 2008.
Kenneth Patchen’s last words to New Directions founder James Laughlin were “When you find out which came first, the chicken or the egg, you write and tell me.” Answering his own question comes Patchen’s “picture-poem.” The Walking-Away World reissues three of his picture-poem classics: Wonderings, But Even So, and Hallelujah Anyway. Inspired by the “illuminated printing” of William Blake, Patchen worked in a spirited fervency with watercolor, cassein, inks, and other media to create absurdly compelling works. His entire process was a simultaneous fusion of painting and poetry: neither the poem nor the painting preceded one another. Each picture-poem is inhabited by strange beings uttering everything from poignant poetic adages to cheeky satire. One confides, “I have a funny feeling / that some very peculiar-looking creatures out there are watching us,” which sums up the suspicious joys of The Walking-Away World.
We Meet by Kenneth Patchen (preface by Devendra Banhart)
New Directions, $17.95, 304pp, tp, 9780811217583. Poetry. On-sale date: 25 July 2008.
We Meet highlights Patchen’s more outlandish side and includes, like fabrics stitched into a crazy quilt, Because It Is, A Letter to God, Poemscapes, Hurrah for Anything, and Aflame & Afun of Walking Faces. “Because to understand one must begin somewhere,” opens Patchen’s fabulous book of poems Because It Is: perhaps the most ideal reason for reading such a melting pot of poetry. Open any page at random and find Patchen protesting the Second World War (A Letter to God), or telling the tale of how hot water first came to be tracked onto bedroom floors (Aflame and Afun of Walking Faces), or informing the reader what happened when the nervous vine wouldn’t twine (Because It Is), or why he loathes those who act as if a cherry were something they personally thought up (Hurrah for Anything), or answering what he wants out of life: “let’s say—no matter” (Poemscapes).
Agnes Hahn by Richard Satterlie
Medallion, $7.95, 417pp, pb, 9781933836454. Horror. On-sale date: August 2008.
When Agnes Hahn was only four she was taken in by her aunts.
Now one is dead and one is in a care home.
The Coming Convergence: The Surprising Ways Diverse Technologies Interact to Shape Our World and Change the Future by Stanley Schmidt, PhD
Prometheus, $27.95, 275pp, hc, 9781591026136. Nonfiction.
Imagine direct communication links between the human brain and machines, or tailored materials capable of adapting by themselves to changing environmental conditions, or computer chips and environmental sensors embedded into everyday clothing, or medical technologies that eliminate currently untreatable conditions such as blindness and paralysis. Now imagine all of these developments occurring at the same time. Far-fetched? Not so. These are actually the reasonable predictions of scientists attempting to forecast a few decades into the future based on the rapid pace of innovation.
Author Stanley Schmidt—a physicist, a writer, and the editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact—explores these and many more amazing yet probably scenarios in this fascinating guide to the near future. He shows how past convergences have led to today’s world, then considers tomorrow’s main currents in biotechnology, cognitive science, information technology, and nanotechnology. Looking even further downstream he foresees both exciting and potentially dangerous developments:
* Longer, healthier lives
* Cheap, generally available food, energy, and technology
* Reduced pollution and environmental stress
* Excessive power in too few hands
* Increased vulnerability from overdependence on technology.
Schmidt notes that even a routine technology such as the CAT scan is the result of three wholly separate innovations started many decades ago which recently converged: the X-ray, the computer, and advances in medicine. On a more ominous note, he also observes that the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center was made possible by the malicious convergence of two separate trends in modern engineering and technology: the concentration of people in high rises wihtin cities and the success of the passenger airline industry. The message is clear: the choices we make now will converge to create a near and distant future that will be almost unbelievable wonderful or unimaginably catastrophic, or both. This knowledgeable, fascinating glimpse into the future is a must read for everyone interested in technology, upcoming innovations in business, science fiction, and the future.
Hellbent & Heartfirst by Kassandra Sims
Tor, $6.99, 322pp, pb, 9780765358011. Paranormal romance.
Steamy paranormal author Kassandra Sims seduces the beating heart of America in Hellbent and Heartfirst. In the Deep South, a woman and her cowboy lover contend with supernatural ghouls, the echoes of a national tragedy, and the dangerous attraction that draws them together time after time.
After Hurricane Katrina, Jacyn Boaz returns to her childhood home in Mississippi to help rebuild. She is haunted by the guilty belief that, were it not for a twist of fate, she would be among the many searching desperately for some semblance of their life “Before.”
The knowledge drives her into the arms of an old flame, a one-time rodeo cowboy—who also happens to hunt the supernatural. Jimmy Wayne Broadus proves to be anything but a simple distraction. He is on the trail of a demon that’s been eating the souls of Katrina’s refugees… and he needs Jacyn’s help.
Despite their many differences, Jacyn and Jimmy Wayne seem to be a perfect match—until he goes on a hunt and doesn’t return. Tired of waiting, Jacyn moves to Nashville, but her strange new life follows her in the form of a witch up to no good, and Jimmy Wayne himself.
The temperature may climb past the Mason-Dixon line, but Kassandra Sims knows how to make the South even hotter. Her characters’ unyielding desire is just as perilous—and just as surprising—as the supernatural realm Sims creates. With a timely subject and timeless love, Hellbent and Heartfirst is a thrilling chase through the worlds of desperation, lust, and maybe even love.
Wicked Game by Jeri Smith-Ready
Pocket, $14.00, 363pp, tp, 9781416551768. Fantasy.
Jeri Smith-Ready’s Wicked Game is a tart and romantic urban fantasy. Former con artist Ciara Griffin, trying to redeem herself, takes an internship at a local radio station. WMMP’s late-night time-warp format features 1940s blues, ’60s psychadelia, and ’80s goth, all with an uncannily authentic flair.
Soon, Ciara discovers how the DJs maintain their cred: they’re vampires stuck in the times in which they were turned. The DJs at the radio station WMMP have a secret. They’re vampires, each stuck musically and psychologically in the era in which they were changed. The station has become their home—without it, they would “fade,” like most old vampires, growing slowly insane, vulnerable in a world unaware of their existence. Ciara’s first instinct is to run.
But when a communications giant threatens to take over the station, fire the DJs, and turn it into another mainstream, hit-playing clone, Ciara decides to save the station. Realizing that without it the vampires would become little more than ghosts of the past, Ciara rebrands the station “WVMP, the Lifeblood of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” In the ultimate con, she hides the DJs’ vampire nature in plain sight. WVMP becomes the hottest thing around—next to Ciara’s complicated affair with grunge DJ Shane McAllister.
The marketing gimmick enrages a posse of ancient vampires who aren’t so eager to be brought into the light. Soon, the stakes are higher—and the perils graver—than any con game Ciara’s ever played.
Irrational Numbers by Robert Spiller
Medallion, $7.95, 360pp, pb, 9781933836881. Mystery. On-sale date: September 2008.
Leo Quinn is dead. Five years before his murder—tied to a barbed wire fence and shot through the heart on a back stretch of East Plains, Colorado dirt road, Leo came out of the closet in a speech at his own high school graduation. Full time math teacher and part time troublemaker Bonnie Pinkwater is drawn into the investigation when her phone number is found in Leo’s pocket. Busybody that she is, she—and her principal Lloyd Whittaker—start turning over rocks. Unfortunately everywhere she looks people end up dead. First a rodeo clown who manages to get himself shot in a County Fair Port-A-Potty. Then at Leo’s funeral the youth pastor, who just so happens to be Leo’s former lover, is the victim of a sniper.
Bonnie and Lloyd’s investigation lead them to the target range of Leo’s father, survivalist and former Marine Alf Rattlesnake Quinn, who has every reason to want revenge. Next on the list is Leo’s former fiancé, Seneca Webb, who now races quarter-horses. Also in the mix is Harold T. Dobbs, the intolerant, bull-horn wielding, homosexual baiting pastor of the Saved by the Blood Pentecostal Tabernacle. And don’t forget Moses Witherspoon and Dwight Furby, empty-headed bigots who, it just so happens, were out joyriding on a certain section of dirt road on a certain Saturday night.
Complicating Bonnie’s investigation is Superintendent of Schools Xavier Divine—The Divine Pain in the Ass to those who know and love him—who has made it his life’s ambition to keep one aging math teacher out of the murder business.
The Essential Science Fiction Television Reader edited by J.P. Telotte
University Press of Kentucky, $45.00, 368pp, hc, 9780813124926. Television/Media. On-sale date: 2 May 2008.
Perhaps more than any other television genre, science fiction has undergone an astonishing evolution of identity. From its primitive beginnings as an attempt to recreate the grandeur of science fiction cinema and literature, to its current status as an assured audience favorite, science fiction has developed its own distinctive qualities as a television genre. But how did these changes occur? What caused a genre once relegated to the periphery to now command such a massive audience, prompting the creation of a television channel devoted to science fiction?
The Essential Science Fiction Television Reader demonstrates the gradual transformation of the genre from low-budget cinematic knockoff to a fully developed genre with its own, independent identity. Examining such early hits as The Twilight Zone and Star Trek to more recent successes like The X-Files and Lost, the essays discuss the history, narrative approaches, and central thematic elements of the genre through a range of perspectives, clearly illustrating the key components that led to science fiction television as it is known today.
J.P. Telotte, a leading authority in the field of media studies, has compiled an impressive and qualified list of contributors to provide a synthesis of insight and analysis of the most important programs in the history of the genre’s progress. Contributors address the full scope of the genre, offering essays that are as varied as the shows themselves. In his essays “The Politics of Star Trek: The Original Series,” M. Keith Booker examines the ways in which Star Trek promoted cultural diversity while commenting on the pioneering attitude of the American West. Susan George takes on the refurbished Battlestar Galactica series, examining how the show reframes questions on gender. Other essays explore the very attributes that constitute science fiction television, calling into question the defining characteristics of the genre itself, as in David Lavery’s essay “The Island’s Greatest Mystery: Is Lost Science Fiction?”
The Essential Science Fiction Television Reader provides readers with a broad historical context, a sense of key issues involved in thinking about science fiction on television, models for considering specific series, speculation on the form’s future trajectory, and tools for learning more about the place of science fiction television in its broader contexts. In short, it aims to provide essential background for anyone interested in studying this increasingly influential form of narrative.
[Contributors: Stan Beeler, M. Keith Booker, Mark Bould, Wheeler Winston Dixon, Gerald Duchovnay, Susan A. George, Rodney Hill, Lacy Hodges, Samantha Holloway, David Lavery, Christine Mains, Dennis Redmond, J.P. Telotte, Charles Tryon, Sherryl Vint, and Lisa Yaszek.]
Dororo by Osamu Tezuka
Vertical, $13.95, 300pp, tp, 9781934287163. Graphic Novel/Manga.
The “Godfather of Manga” is back this spring with the action-adventure series Dororo. The work is a seamless blending of Japanese folklore with Osamu Tezuka’s rich imagining of monsters and demons. His memorable protagonists adorn each page in the iconic Tezuka style, roaming a world of fiendish monsters and villainous humans. Osamu Tezuka’s timeless themes of human nature and morality, shared among all of his works, add the finishing touch to this classic action-packed adventure.
Originally serialized in Japan from 1967 to 1968, Dororo is now being released in English for the first time in three volumes. Dororo was made into an anime series airing in 1969 as well as a PlayStation videogame, Blood Will Tell, in 2004. A live action film was shot in New Zealand and released in Japan in early 2007, making a box-office record $30 million.
A samurai during Japan’s Warring States period (1467-1573), Daigo Kagemitsu wants complete control over Japan. He promises his unborn son’s 48 body parts to demons in exchange for that control. When the baby is born deformed, Daigo throws the newborn into the river to die, but it is miraculously found by a doctor, Jukai, who makes prosthetics for the child and adopts him as his own. When the boy Hyakkimaru is grown, he leaves home and begins a journey to recover his body parts. Along the way he runs into a brash young thief, Dororo, whom he teams up with; together they battle demon and monster on their adventure to reclaim Hyakkimaru’s wholeness.
Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989), encouraged by his mother to choose the profession he truly enjoyed, became a manga artist after studying and receiving a medical degree. The aftermath of war left Osamu Tezuka with a deep appreciation for life, and his later works are marked by that respect for all living beings. Tezuka’s manga and anime had an incredible impact on Japan’s postwar youth, inspiring artists in an array of genres, an influence still very much present in manga today.
Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit by Nahoko Uehashi, translated by Cathy Hirano, with illustrations by Yuko Shimizu
Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic, $17.99, 250pp, hc, 9780545005425. Fantasy (ages 10 and up). On-sale date: June 2008.
The Moribito series, which has sold more than a half a million copies in its native Japan, has finally been translated into English by Batchelder Award winner Cathy Hirano.
Balsa is a moribito, a female bodyguard, and her newest charge is the young Prince Chagum. Unknown to Chagum, he carries a secret that could destroy the foundation of the Empire; he is the Guardian of the Spirit, chosen to deliver the spirit to its home in a distant sea. If he fails, a drought could ravage the land. Together, he and Balsa must travel far and unravel the mystery of the Water Spirit or Chagum may perish. But they will find themselves pursued by two deadly enemies: the monster Rarunga with its deadly claws, and the prince’s own father.
Steampunk edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
Tachyon, $14.95, 373pp, tp, 9781892391759. Science fiction/fantasy anthology.
What is Steampunk?
Welcome to impossibly fantastic adventures you will never forget. The unrepentant sons of the Confederate rebellion are tempted by a miraculous zeppelin. The courageous Captain Napier battles the diabolical King Karl and Phyrefox. Inventor Cosmo Copperthwait is obliged to save the queen, because God knows nothing of whoring. The ladies of the Selene Gardening Society, planning beautification of the Moon, may instead rid their fair city of a most unsightly issue.
Steampunk is Victorian elegance and modern technoloyg: steam-driven robots, souped-up stagecoaches, and space-faring dirigibles fueled by gaslight romance, mad scientists, and very trim waistcoats. From the editors of The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases and The New Weird, this is steampunk.
Hang on tight.
[Contributors: Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, Jess Nevins, Rick Klaw, Bill Baker, Michael Moorcock, James P. Blaylock, Ian R. MacLeod, Mary Gentle, Jay Lake, Joe R. Lansdale, Molly Brown, Ted Chiang, Michael Chabon, Paul Di Filippo, Rachel E. Pollock, Stepan Chapman, and Neal Stephenson.]
Amber and Blood by Margaret Weis
(The Dark Disciple, Volume 3), Wizards of the Coast, $25.95, 340pp, hc, 9780786950010. Fantasy. On-sale date: 6 May 2008.
The dark disciple’s fate will alter the future of Krynn in the concluding volume of this post-War of Souls trilogy by Margaret Weis. In Amber and Blood, Mina learns the truth about herself and the terrible knowledge drives her insane. The gods of Darkness and of Light are all eager to claim her as one of their own. But Mina, enigmatic and mysterious as ever, has her own plans—regardless of what the gods might want and connive at.
If it’s not one thing, it’s a murder by Liz Wolfe
Medallion, $7.95, 405pp, pb, 9781933836393. Mystery. On-sale date: August 2008.
Corpses are turning up, and Skye’s best friend is the prime suspect.
Angelslayer: The Winnowing War by K. Michael Wright
Medallion, $25.95, 472pp, hc, 9781933836539. Fantasy. On-sale date: September 2008.
Believing in their right to rule, the Mother City of Etlantis, built in the shadows of Mt. Arom, sent ships to hunt the Western Seas and in them were the Nephilim, the Terrors, sons of Angels who had become addicted to human blood and flesh through the curse of Enoch. And when the skin of the earth became so weighted with the blood of its dead, it cried to heaven of the horrors it had witnessed…
Because when the earth passed through the endless dark it would be judged only by the souls of those left standing. And unless the unclean were bound in the heart of desert fire, unable to see the heavens that spawned them, the Aeon of time that was called Earth would end, and all existence would cease.
This is the story of mankind’s first stand against overwhelming dark, a story of Sunblades, Starwalker Queens, Nephilim, Blackships, the Mirrored Eye of Daath, the Fires of a Distant Star; the Light Whose Name is Splendor.
Lord of Lies by David Zindell
(volume three of the Lightstone series), Tor, $27.95, 548pp, hc, 9780765311306. Fantasy.
After the stunning revelations of The Silver Sword, David Zindell returns to the world of the Lightstone with Lord of Lies. In an epic war against evil and the cruelty of mortals, what looks like victory may instead bring chaos closer to home.
The seventh and youngest Valeri, Valashu Elahad, noble warrior and prince of the royal house of Mesh, has sought the mythical Lightstone in a quest to stop the dreaded Dark Angel Morjin from enslaving all of Ea. With his stalwart companions, Val braved great dangers and fought many battles in their search for this elusive totem. And find the sacred object they did.
But sometimes fulfilling a quest doesn’t bring serenity—but instead madness untold. Now that the Lightstone has finally been found, Morjin will use all of his talents to get it back. Val’s victory in Argattha was only the beginning of a war with Morjin.
Val knows that he alone must protect the sacred vessel. But he is coming to understand just what powers he is confronting and he is not sure that he is strong enough to follow the path of righteousness. He wonders who he can trust to help him as he encounters treasonous plots and betrayal by those closest to him—evidences of Morjin’s power to destroy him and take the Lightstone.
Nothing in this world is as it seems, and only David Zindell could so masterfully tell such a sweeping tale. Fueled by characters both complex and conflicted, Lord of Lies is a fantasy in which the greatest struggles against evil are the ones that occur inside the human soul.