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Month: April 2017

April 2017 Clarkesworld Now Available

April 2017 Clarkesworld Now Available

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Clarkesworld 127-smallIn his editorial in the April issue, Clarkesworld founder Neil Clarke reflects on his first few months as a full time editor.

I left my day job at the beginning of February, but it’s only now beginning to feel real. Previously, whenever I had vacation time, I’d shift to full-time editor, so when I finally did quit, it just felt like one of those vacations: lots of work, little downtime. The same here, initially: I had a small mountain of tasks on my to-do list and I’ve been head-down plowing through them. It’s hard to notice your world has changed when you are that focused.

It took nearly two months for me to clearly notice that this is my new life. I’ve been doing some freelance consulting for my former employer — a few hours here and there — so I haven’t fully disconnected from them. It’s all been remote assistance, so when I stopped by to help them with a more difficult problem, I noticed that stress that I had felt while working there, was gone. While there, I talked with friends about the ongoing situation and I sympathized, but it didn’t generate any anxiety. I walked to my car knowing that I was free.

A few days later, I left for a week of back-to-back events… Coming back from all the travel was a return to my new routine. Taking care of a sick child, reading story submissions, sending out contracts, paying the insurance bill, vacuuming the house . . . This is my career now. It’s no longer just what I do on the side. It’s not a vacation, so maybe I need to add one of those to my to-do list. I like the sound of that.

Read Neil’s complete editorial here.

The April Clarkesworld contains original fiction from Robert Brice, Bogi Takács, Vajra Chandrasekera, Juliette Wade, and Fei Dao, plus reprints from Adam Roberts and Michael Swanwick.

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The Pride of Chanur by C.J. Cherryh

The Pride of Chanur by C.J. Cherryh

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oie_172136AgOgCew8My first encounter with C.J. Cherryh was in Merchanter’s Luck, a short, action-packed story set in Cherryh’s super-dense Alliance-Union Universe. While the plot could have been drafted by any number of skilled space opera purveyors, I’d never before encountered one who wrote with Cherryh’s level of near contempt for explaining things to the reader. She writes in what she’s variably called  “very tight limited third person” and “intense internal voice.” This means characters only think or talk about what actually interests them. Descriptions will not be forthcoming when a character is observing what is commonplace to him. Exposition, well, don’t count on her books having much.

While Merchanter’s Luck, with its thrilling races through hyperspace and deadly mysteries, is quite good, what made me a lifelong fan of Cherryh is a slim volume from 1982, The Pride of Chanur. The title refers to the merchant ship of the same name, one of several operated by the Chanur clan. The Chanur are hani: an alien, leonine race of which only females travel into space, the males being considered too violent and psychologically unstable. The title takes on a second, humorous meaning when the crew of the Pride find themselves harboring and protecting a lone human male.

Since then, I’ve read Pride and its sequels three or four times. They are among the very best space opera stories I have ever read. Cherryh’s writing demands you keep up and are as willing as her heroes to leap into the dark of the cosmos at times. The payoff is a tale of incredible thrills in a highly complex and believably detailed universe.

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John DeNardo on The Science Fiction & Fantasy Books Everyone Will be Talking About in April

John DeNardo on The Science Fiction & Fantasy Books Everyone Will be Talking About in April

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Void Star Zachary Mason-small Change Agent Danial Suarez-small Entropy in Bloom Stories-small

At the end of March, John DeNardo crafted a brief article at Kirkus Reviews highlighting “The Science Fiction & Fantasy Books Everyone Will be Talking About in April.” Wait, wait, wait. How the heck does he know that? I’m still not sure what books people were taking about in February.

Well, no sense trying to suss out the roots of DeNardo’s uncanny forecasting abilities (’cause they’re probably supernatural, involving dark underworld pacts. Best not to know.) But we can share a few of his recommendations with you here, as long as you don’t ask too many questions.

Void Star by Zachary Mason (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 400 pages, $27 hardcover/$12.99 digital, April 11, 2017)

Void Star is a mind-bending story set in the near-future that follows three characters. There’s Irina, possessing an artificial memory that lets her earn a living by acting as a medium between her employers and their complex artificial intelligences; there’s Kern, a refugee who lives in a drone-built slum who gets by as a thief and paid enforcer; and Thales, the mathematically-inclined scion of a Brazilian political clan, who has fled to L.A. after the attack that left him crippled and his father dead. Strangers at the outset, events – or more specifically forces that remain just out of sight – conspire to push these characters towards the same path.

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Future Treasures: The Guns Above by Robyn Bennis

Future Treasures: The Guns Above by Robyn Bennis

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The Guns Above Robyn Bennis-smallRobyn Bennis’s debut novel The Guns Above, a steampunk military fantasy about a female airship captain, arrives in hardcover from Tor in two weeks. The book sounds interesting enough, but it’s Bennis’s riff on the cover at Tor.com that really got my attention.

Why do I love this cover so much? Let me direct your attention first to the badass lady jumping over a gondola rail with pistol in hand. That’s Josette, Garnia’s newest airship captain… let’s be honest, when a woman sees a job that needs doing, her first instinct is always to roll up her sleeves and do it herself. And sometimes that means leaping from your airship with pistol in hand. Back me up here, ladies.

Here’s the description.

They say it’s not the fall that kills you.

For Josette Dupre, the Corps’ first female airship captain, it might just be a bullet in the back.

On top of patrolling the front lines, she must also contend with a crew who doubts her expertise, a new airship that is an untested deathtrap, and the foppish aristocrat Lord Bernat, a gambler and shameless flirt with the military know-how of a thimble. Bernat’s own secret assignment is to catalog her every moment of weakness and indecision.

So when the enemy makes an unprecedented move that could turn the tide of the war, can Josette deal with Bernat, rally her crew, and survive long enough to prove herself?

The Guns Above will be published by Tor Books on May 2, 2017. It is 352 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Tommy Arnold, whose done several recent covers for Tor.com, including Kai Ashante Wilson’s A Taste of Honey, David Dalglish’s Fireborn, and Corey J. White’s upcoming Killing Gravity.

A Tale of Two Covers: Skullsworn by Brian Staveley

A Tale of Two Covers: Skullsworn by Brian Staveley

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Skullsworn-small Skullsworn UK-small

We covered the first three novels in Brian Staveley’s Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne right here last year. Skullsworn, the new standalone novel in the same world, features the adventures of a priestess-assassin for the God of Death. It will be published by Tor Books this week in both the US and the UK.

Although the US and UK editions have similar publishing dates, that’s pretty much all they have in common. The descriptions for each book are markedly different — and the covers are dramatically different. The US version by Richard Anderson (above left) has lush colors and and action scene, while the UK cover (above right), designed by Matthew Garrett, is heavily design-focused. In a guest post at Tor.com, Brian Staveley talks about the US cover.

This one hits all the right notes… it gives a feel for the city, but here Pyrre is in the shadows, close to the quotidian world of human affairs, but separate, unnoticed. She’s also motionless. Her knife is drawn, but the drama doesn’t come from the knife itself, or the imminent violence, but from what’s in her mind, from her struggle to understand her own motives and emotions, then to translate them into the life she wants to live. It’s not easy to fall in love, especially when you’re staying up late every night giving women and men to the god of death. That’s the book I’m trying to write… The final version of the cover is just perfect. The color, the claustrophobia of Dombang’s hot, narrow alleys, the fish-scale lanterns, Pyrre’s crouch, ready, predatory, but not yet committed — this cover captures everything I’d hoped about the book.

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A Cybernetic Detective in a Futuristic Japan: Ghost in the Shell

A Cybernetic Detective in a Futuristic Japan: Ghost in the Shell

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Ghost In The Shell banner-small

I prepared myself before going to see Ghost in the Shell, expecting an overly simplistic story full of action that vaguely resembled the 1995 anime release of the same title. Fortunately, my expectations were wrong.

Just to set some background: the franchise began with a manga titled The Ghost in the Shell, written in 1989 by Masamune Shirow (a pen name for Masanori Ota). It was later adapted as 1995 film with the same name (directed by Mamoru Oshii) and a subsequent anime series (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, one of my all-time favorite anime series).

The 1995 film is a really intriguing story, taking a closer look at humanity and robotics in a gritty, futuristic Japan. It took me a couple of viewings to understand everything; the story comes fast, as do the fantastic action sequences. It inspired the Wachowskis with The Matrix film series, and you can see some direct correlations between certain scenes.

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New Treasures: The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Two, edited by Neil Clarke

New Treasures: The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Two, edited by Neil Clarke

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The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume Two Neil Clarke-small The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume Two Neil Clarke-back-small

Neil Clarke has been nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor for each of the last five years (not including 2015, when the Puppies took over the ballot and nominated pretty much exclusively their Puppy-aligned pals), and has won three Hugo Awards for his magazine Clarkesworld.

But recently he’s been gaining more recognition as a highly-regarded anthology editor, for books such as Galactic Empires, the cyborg anthology Upgraded, and The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 1. Volume 2 of his Best Science Fiction of the Year arrived earlier this month, with stories by Ian R. MacLeod, Nina Allan, Lavie Tidhar, Sam J. Miller, Xia Jia, Aliette de Bodard, Alastair Reynolds, Sarah Pinsker, Margaret Ronald, Robert Reed, Suzanne Palmer, Ken Liu, Carolyn Ives Gilman, and many others. Its arrival kicked off the Best of the Year season — nearly a dozen more Best of volumes are scheduled to arrive over the next few months.

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A Babe in the Woods: Derek’s Literary Adventures in New York

A Babe in the Woods: Derek’s Literary Adventures in New York

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Sheila Williams speaking at Asimov’s 40th Anniversary Celebration in Manhattan-small

Sheila Williams speaking at Asimov’s
40th Anniversary Celebration in Manhattan

For those of you who don’t know, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine turns 40 years old this spring, and a celebration was held at a New York book store. Asimov’s invited its writers and I finally, finally used this as my excuse to visit New York!

I’ve traveled lots of other places, but I’ve never been to the home of Spider-Man,  Dr. Strange, Saturday Night Live, and *all* the crime shows ever!

Like a lot of non-Americans, I’ve also been hesitant to cross the border more recently, in part because I have friends who might not be able to do so anymore, and in part because I wasn’t sure how I’d be treated.

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3×3 Illustration Annual #13 Now Available

3×3 Illustration Annual #13 Now Available

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3x3magazine interior

One of my most cherished annual purchases is the Spectrum anthology of Contemporary Fantastic Art, which collects some of the finest SF, fantasy, and comic art created every year. It’s a gorgeous volume that’s well worth a leisurely browse on a Sunday morning.

Volume 23, edited by John Fleskes, was released last November. We’ve previously covered Spectrum 20, with a Donato Giancola cover that’s a companion piece to his Red Sonja cover for Black Gate 15, and Spectrum 16, which contained Malcolm McClinton’s cover to Black Gate 13.

I know that Spectrum is unique in celebrating the best fantastic art every year, but I also knew — at least theoretically — that there had to be other illustration anthologies out there. But it was still a surprise to stumble on a copy of 3×3 Illustration Annual #13 in the magazine rack at Barnes & Noble last week. It’s a thick magazine printed on heavy stock, 400 pages crammed full of full color art. And such art!

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Witches, Time Travel, and Enchanted Manuscripts: The All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness

Witches, Time Travel, and Enchanted Manuscripts: The All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness

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A Discovery of Witches-small Shadow of Night Harkness-smlall The Book of Life Harkness-small

I’m not much of a fan of typographical covers — covers which feature the title, and not much else. I expect to be able to learn a lot about a book from the cover art and design, and typographical covers seem designed chiefly to keep a book mysterious. And they just don’t draw my eye the way a good piece of art does.

Mind you, that flaw didn’t seem to hurt A Discovery of Witches, the debut fantasy novel from Deborah Harkness which hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. She followed it with Shadow of Night and The Book of Life, which together comprise the All Souls Trilogy. The books are modern urban fantasies which feature reluctant witch Diana Bishop and vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont, and their search for the legendary lost manuscript Ashmole 782. The actions roams across Oxford’s Bodleian Library, a fantastical underworld, Elizabethan London, and Matthew’s ancestral home of Sept-Tours, France.

I was curious enough to purchase all three books in trade paperback. They’re also available in mass market paperback and digital formats from Penguin. Here’s a look at the back covers for A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night.

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