I was delighted to receive a copy of the latest issue of Weirdbook in the mail. The last one, Weirdbook 31, the first new issue in nearly 20 years, was an unqualified success. This one seems to be packed largely with unknowns, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Best of all, it appears barely 9 months after the previous issue, which is a hopeful sign — and no easy task for a trade-paperback sized magazine that clocks in at 173 pages.
The issue contains no less than 25 tales of dark fantasy and the weird, as well as 9 poems. Here’s the complete table of contents.
Among the many fascinating trailers shown for the first time at Comic-Con this weekend (including those for Justice League and Wonder Woman, which we showcased here, and the first official trailer for Dr. Strange) was a special Comic-Con trailer for Kong: Skull Island. Produced by the Legendary team behind the latest film version of Godzilla (see Ryan Harvey’s rave review here), the film is also a set-up for the upcoming Godzilla Vs. Kong megapicture.
All very cool. But this most interesting part of the trailer for me (next to the peek at actress Brie Larson, who’s just been cast as Captain Marvel) was John Goodman’s brief speech, which is straight out of H.P. Lovecraft.
This planet doesn’t belong to us… ancient species owned this Earth long before mankind. I’ve spent 30 years trying to prove the truth. Monsters exist.
You tell ’em, Goodman! The world needs to know this stuff. Also, you should let everyone in on the giant insects of Monster Island.
Kong: Skull Island is directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts and stars Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Jason Mitchell, Corey Hawkins, Toby Kebbell, Tom Wilkinson, Terry Notary, John Goodman, and John C. Reilly. It is scheduled for release on March 10, 2017.
See the Comic-Con Teaser Trailers for Justice League and Wonder Woman
I quite enjoyed Zack Snyder’s Batman vs. Superman. One of the things I liked best about it was the care it took in setting up follow-up features in the DC Universe. Yesterday at San Diego Comic-Con, Warner Bros. unveiled some of the fruits of that careful planning, with the first teaser trailer for Justice League, and a full-length trailer for Wonder Woman.
Justice League features Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg, and looks like a lot of fun. Clearly following in the successful footsteps of Marvel’s Avengers, the film gathers an ensemble cast (including Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa, Ray Fisher, Amy Adams, Jeremy Irons, J. K. Simmons, Amber Heard and Willem Dafoe) and sets up an epic battle between Earth’s mightiest heroes and an extra-planetary menace.
Principal photography began on April 11, 2016, so this is obviously very early footage. Not a lot is known about the plot, but we do know that Batman assembles the team to take on the interdimensional threat of Steppenwolf and his army of Parademons, as hinted in the closing scenes (and this deleted scene) from Batman vs. Superman. Justice League is directed by Zack Snyder and scheduled for release November 17, 2017.
Be sure to check out the first full-length trailer for Wonder Woman, also released this weekend at Comic-Con. Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins, and staring Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Connie Nielsen, and Robin Wright, is the fourth installment in what’s now being called the DC Extended Universe. The producers have whole-heartedly embraced Wonder Woman’s epic backstory, including her origin as Princess Diana of Themyscira, warrior princess of the Amazons of Greek mythology. Gadot surprised me in Batman vs. Superman, pretty much stealing all the scenes she was in, and she brings a marvelous gravity to the role. The film is scheduled to be released on June 2, 2017.
A new novel by David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas, The Bone Clocks) is a major event — and indeed, when Slade House appeared in hardcover last year, it was treated like a major event, listed as one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, Kirkus Reviews, the Los Angeles Times,The Guardian, The Telegraph, and many others.
I saw the trade paperback at my local bookstore last week and picked it up, curious. It’s a haunted house novel, of all things, and an intriguing one at that. BookPage calls it “The ultimate haunted house story… a work that almost demands to be read in a single sitting,” and The San Francisco Chronicle deems it “A ripping yarn… Like Shirley Jackson’s Hill House or the Overlook Hotel from Stephen King’s The Shining, [Slade House] is a thin sliver of hell designed to entrap the unwary.” And Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Doerr says it’s “Dracula for the new millennium, a Hansel and Gretel for grownups, a reminder of how much fun fiction can be.”
I ended up taking it home with me. Maybe I’m just a sucker for blurbs, but it’s hard for me to resist a really good haunted house story.
Slade House was published in hardcover by Random House in October of last year; the reprint edition appeared from Random House Trade Paperbacks on June 28, 2016. It is 255 pages, priced at $16, or $11.99 for the digital edition. The cover was designed by Nick Misani. Click on the images above for bigger versions. See all of our recent New Treasures here.
See the Table of Contents for The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016, edited by Karen Joy Fowler and John Joseph Adams
The Mariner Books Best American series is one of the more successful and highly regarded anthology series on the market. Their titles include Best American Short Stories, Best American Mystery Stories, Best American Essays, Best American Science and Nature Writing, and Best American Sports Writing.
Last year they added an inaugural SF and fantasy volume, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, with John Joseph Adams as series editor. The 2015 edition was edited by Joe Hill and was one of the stronger Best of the Year anthologies from last year; check out the compete TOC here.
This year’s volume is edited by Karen Joy Fowler. Earlier this month io9 presented the complete Table of Contents, including fantasy tales by Sofia Samatar, Rachel Swirsky, Salman Rushdie, Maria Dahvana Headley, Sam J. Miller, and others, and science fiction by Kelly Link, Catherynne M. Valente, Dale Bailey, Charlie Jane Anders, Ted Chiang, and many others.
It will be available in trade paperback in October, and will include a Foreword by John Joseph Adams, and an Introduction by Karen Joy Fowler. Here’s the complete TOC.
I’m not intimately familiar with the work of Zenna Henderson…. but I know she is extremely highly regarded by those who are familiar with her, and that’s pretty telling.
She’s remembered today primarily for her stories of The People, an spacefaring alien race with strange metal powers that covertly settles in the American southwest after the destruction of their home planet. The stories appeared, like most of her short fiction, chiefly in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction; they were collected Pilgrimage: The Book Of The People (1961), People: No Different Flesh (1966), and in two omnibus volumes, The People Collection (1991) and the NESFA Press book Ingathering: The Complete People Stories (1995).
Much of her other short fiction was gathered in two handsome paperback collections: The Anything Box (1965) and Holding Wonder (1971). Her first published story was “Come On, Wagon!” in the December 1951 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, dozens more appeared over the next 30 years, until her death in 1983. Henderson was an elementary school teacher in rural Arizona for much of her adult life, in places as diverse as a “semi-ghost mining town” in Fort Huachuca, and a Japanese internment camp in Sacaton, Arizona, and many of her stories are narrated by elementary teachers. She was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, although later in life she described herself as Methodist. She never published a novel, which perhaps is why she’s virtually forgotten today.
Two years ago I wrote a brief article about Premonitions, the debut novel by Jamie Schultz, and the opening volume in an intriguing urban fantasy series from Roc. Curious, I did a quick Amazon search last week, and discovered that there are two more novels in the Arcane Underworld series — including the latest, Sacrifices, released exclusively in digital format earlier this week.
The fact that there isn’t a print edition of the third novel isn’t a good sign, and it tells me Arcane Underworld will almost certainly wrap up as a trilogy. That’s a pity, as it garnered a lot of attention in its short life. Seanan McGuire called it “One half heist and one half damn good urban fantasy,” and Publishers Weekly labelled it “An outstanding urban fantasy/horror series.” But my favorite one-sentence review came from The BiblioSanctum, which said “The Arcane Underworldseries has it all: Demons. Fanatical cultists. Dark magic… Schultz definitely knows how to bring it.”
All three books in the series were published by Roc, priced at $7.99 in both mass market paperback and digital editions. They are:
Premonitions (384 pages, July 1, 2014) Splintered (352 pages, July 7, 2015) Sacrifices (351 pages, July 19, 2016) — digital only
Anyone looking to try urban fantasy that doesn’t run into an endless series of volumes? I know you’re out there. Check out Arcane Underworld and let me know what you think.
Nick Mamatas is the author of Move Under Ground, Under My Roof, and several other novels. But his latest, I Am Providence, looks like a breakout book.
Set at a horror convention, where a grisly murder leads to the discovery of an unspeakable horror in the pages of ancient book bound in human skin, it is narrated by a faceless corpse in a morgue. Lavie Tidhar says it is “Dark and hilarious… that murder-mystery-in-a-writers-convention you didn’t even know you wanted.” And Publishers Weekly calls it “A heartfelt homage to Lovecraft lore, [which] perfectly captures the antics of conventioneers.”
I Am Providence will be published by Night Shade Books on August 9, 2016. It is 243 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback and $15.99 for the digital version. The cover art is by Magdalena Pagowksa. Click on the images above for bigger versions.
B&N on 10 Science Fiction & Fantasy Debuts to Watch for in the Second Half of 2016
Who doesn’t love a good debut novel? Science fiction and fantasy are all about discovering new and wonderful things… and what’s more new and wonderful than discovering a great new writer, capable of transporting you to amazing worlds?
Last month at the Barnes & Noble blog, Ross Johnson compiled a terrific list of 10 particularly promising debut novels of SF & fantasy. Over the last few weeks, I’ve read and seen enough to know that Johnson has a very keen eye. For example, here’s what he says about An Accident of Stars, the upcoming novel by Black Gate blogger Foz Meadows.
Hugo-nominated fan writer Foz Meadows’ hotly anticipated adult debut tells the story of Saffron Coulter, who falls through a looking glass of sorts into a richly detailed world of magic and intrigue. Saffron is quickly embroiled in a civil war lead by another Earth-born visitor, one who sorely regrets providing aid to the fantasy kingdom’s ruler, Leoden, recent claimant to the throne. The story is as much about the complex relationships between a large cast of (mostly) women characters as it is about the building and exploring the realm of Kena.
An Accident of Stars, Book I of The Manifold World, will be published in mass market paperback by Angry Robot on August 2, 2016. It is 496 pages, priced at $7.99, or $6.99 for the digital edition. Our previous coverage of the B&N blog includes:
I don’t know much about Carol Hightshoe’s online magazine The Lorelei Signal, but Amy Bisson has been nudging me to check it out. And now that she has a story in the latest issue, I promised I’d have a look. The website is clean and easy to navigate, and Carol has a fine intro on the first page that explains exactly what the magazine is all about.
The Lorelei Signal is a web based magazine dedicated to featuring 3 dimensional / complex female characters in Fantasy stories.
This does not mean I don’t want to see complex male characters either, balance is the key. I just don’t want to see female characters who are weak, having to be constantly rescued, etc. Females in the story should have the same strength of character as their male counterparts and not be there as window dressing. This has been changing over the years in fantasy writing – the idea of the female character being nothing more than a sidekick, the princess to be rescued, etc. has faded significantly. But, she still shows up occasionally.
The title of this magazine was taken from the Animated Star Trek episode by the same name. In that episode the men of the Enterprise fell under a siren song and it was Lt. Uhura who had to take command of the Enterprise.
It was a pretty hokey set-up to finally get a female in the command chair of the original Enterprise, but at least she got there.
This issue includes no less than a dozen short stories and one poem. Here’s the complete TOC.
