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Vintage Treasures: The Space Barbarians by Tom Godwin

Vintage Treasures: The Space Barbarians by Tom Godwin

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The Space Barbarians, by Tom Godwin (Pyramid, 1964). Cover by John Schoenherr

Tom Godwin is something of a tragic figure in SF. He’s remembered today for a single short story which remains hugely influential. Here’s the third and fourth sentence of his Wikipedia entry:

He is best known for his short story, “The Cold Equations.” Published in 1954… [its] controversial dark ending helped redefine the genre.

That’s not an exaggeration. “The Cold Equations” is still sparking conversations today, nearly 70 years after it was written. (I noticed Mark Kelly kicked off a lively discussion in Facebook’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction group just last week by asking “Can anyone recall specific fictional responses to Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations”?” Last time I looked there were 35 responses from Rich Horton, Sheila Williams, Piet Niel, and many others).

Godwin wrote three novels, beginning with Space Prison (1958) and its sequel The Space Barbarians (1964). The former has a much better reputation with modern readers, although it’s the second book which interests me today.  Here’s another tidbit of history from Wikipedia:

Godwin had a spinal disorder known as Kyphosis, which results in a curvature of the spine, making him appear hunchbacked… In the early 1960s, Godwin was living in a remote area of northwestern Arizona with his father writing and making his own drywashers to sell. It was in the summer of 1961 that he met his future wife, Laureola Godwin, and then twelve-year-old step-daughter who he later adopted, Diane Godwin Sullivan, through the sale of one of his drywashers. He went on to base two of the main characters in his second novel, The Space Barbarians, after them.

After Laureola Godwin died, Tom Godwin lost his lifelong battle with alcohol. He died in a Las Vegas hospital in 1980 without any identification; Diane Godwin Sullivan eventually had to identify his body after it was held at a funeral home for a long period.

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New Treasures: City of the Uncommon Thief by Lynne Bertrand

New Treasures: City of the Uncommon Thief by Lynne Bertrand

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You lot know how much I enjoy a good fantasy debut. The only thing that changes is how I go about finding them.

I use to browse bookstores, like a normal person. Then came the internet, and this blog. Gradually I grew to rely on review copies and contacts with publicists. Then came the pandemic, and I turned to the professional review sites I knew I could trust, like Locus Online, Tor.com, and Publishers Weekly.

But lately I find that I’m being guided successfully by reader reviews, at places like Goodreads and Amazon. For example, the best review I’ve found for Lynne Bertrand’s debut YA novel City of the Uncommon Thief — and the one that made me want to track down a copy immediately — was this one by Melissa Mitchell at Amazon. Check it out:

In a quarantined city of mile-high buildings, the streets are full of monsters, and people pass their entire lives indoors. No one has ever seen this city on a map. There are no animals within the wall shielding it. And an entire year passes between supply deliveries from the outside world. In the prime of their lives, teenagers are chosen from each guild building as runners, where they dwell on the rooftops, zipping from roof to roof among the clouds, playing pranks on each other, delivering supplies between guilds. They are the only form of connection in a city that may as well consist of a hundred ships on the water. When Errol Thebes, well known hero among runners of all guilds, steals a powerful weapon, uncommon in ever way, he learns exactly what kind of darkness lurks beneath the city…

We all have tales to tell, especially Odd Thebes, and what a tale he weaves! The world building is fascinating, centered around the runners who fly from roof to roof, carrying messages, supplies, and bridging the connection between each building…

There’s something dark happening in the city. What starts as a very tight scope, broadens. Everyone who lives in the city accepts things for the way they are… They live in mystery. But Errol Thebes rips everything apart when he finds himself on the streets below. He becomes the hero the city needs.

City of the Uncommon Thief was published by Dutton Books on February 9, 2021. It is 400 pages, priced at $19.99 in hardcover, $10.99 digital, and $34.99 for the audio edition. Read a 2-page excerpt at The Nerd Daily. See all our recent New Treasures here.

Space-faring Creatures and Ancient Secrets: The Escaping Exodus Series by Nicky Drayden

Space-faring Creatures and Ancient Secrets: The Escaping Exodus Series by Nicky Drayden

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Escaping Exodus, Books 1 & 2, by Nicky Drayden (Harper Voyager, 2019 and 2021). Cover: Courtney ‘Seage’ Howlett, unknown

Nicky Drayden won the Compton Crook Award for her first novel The Prey of Gods. I was even more intrigued by Escaping Exodus, the opening volume in a far-future saga in which human society exists in the literal belly of a beast. In his enthusiastic review at Locus Online Tom Whitmore wrote “I don’t think I could have imagined such a book be­fore reading this one. This is something I’ve been missing.”

For a series as vast in scope and ambition as this one, the arrival of a sequel is something to celebrate. Escaping Exodus: Symbiosis was published by Harper Voyager yesterday; here’s the description.

Nearly a thousand years removed from Earth, the remnants of humanity cling to existence inside giant, space faring creatures known as the Zenzee. Abused and exploited by humans for generations, these majestic animals nearly went extinct, but under the command of its newly minted ruler, Doka Kaleigh, life in the Parados I has flourished. Thanks to careful oversight and sacrifice by all of its crew, they are now on the brink of utopia, and yet Doka’s rivals feel threatened by that success.
The Senate allowed Doka to lead their people believing he’d fail spectacularly — a disaster that would cement the legitimacy of their long-standing matriarchy. Despite vocal opposition and blatant attacks on his authority, Doka has continued to handle his position with grace and intelligence; he knows a single misstep means disaster. When a cataclysmic event on another Zenzee world forces Doka and his people to accept thousands of refugees, a culture clash erupts, revealing secrets from the past that could endanger their future. For Doka, the stakes are bigger and more personal than ever before — and could cost him his reign and his heart.

He has fallen for the one woman he is forbidden to love: his wife, Seske.

Doka and Seske must work closely together to sway the other Zenzee worlds to stop their cycles of destruction. But when they stumble upon a discovery that can transform their world, they know they must prepare to fight a battle where there can be no winners, only survivors.

Escaping Exodus: Symbiosis was published by Harper Voyager on February 23, 2021. It is 336 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback, $11.99 in digital formats, and $26.99 in audio versions. No idea who did the cover, but I like it. Read an excerpt here.

See all our recent coverage of the best new SF and fantasy series here.

Future Treasures: Dead Space by Kali Wallace

Future Treasures: Dead Space by Kali Wallace

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Kali Wallace is the author of Salvation Day (July 2019), which Jeff Somers at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog called a “sci-fi horror thriller [that] looks do outdo the scares of Alien, and comes damn close.”

Her new novel is Dead Space, and it got a rave from Publisher’s Weekly (“a locked-room mystery set on an asteroid mining colony… a gripping, cinematic sci-fi thriller that readers won’t want to put down.”) I’m liking these comparisons to Alien, and mysteries set on mining colonies. I’m thinking I need to check this one out. Here’s the publisher’s description.

An investigator must solve a brutal murder on a claustrophobic space station in this tense science fiction thriller from the author of Salvation Day.

Hester Marley used to have a plan for her life. But when a catastrophic attack left her injured, indebted, and stranded far from home, she was forced to take a dead-end security job with a powerful mining company in the asteroid belt. Now she spends her days investigating petty crimes to help her employer maximize its profits. She’s surprised to hear from an old friend and fellow victim of the terrorist attack that ruined her life — and that surprise quickly turns to suspicion when he claims to have discovered something shocking about their shared history and the tragedy that neither of them can leave behind.

Before Hester can learn more, her friend is violently murdered at a remote asteroid mine. Hester joins the investigation to find the truth, both about her friend’s death and the information he believed he had uncovered. But catching a killer is only the beginning of Hester’s worries, and she soon realizes that everything she learns about her friend, his fellow miners, and the outpost they call home brings her closer to revealing secrets that very powerful and very dangerous people would rather keep hidden in the depths of space.

Dead Space will be published by Berkley on March 2, 2021. It is 336 pages, priced at $17 in trade paperback, $11.99 in digital formats, and $24.50 for the audio version. Read a lengthy excerpt at the Penguin website.

See all our recent coverage of the best upcoming SF and fantasy releases here.

Science Fiction is a Small Community

Science Fiction is a Small Community

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The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1953, edited by Everett F. Bleiler and T. E. Dikty (Frederick Fell, 1953). Cover art uncredited.

Two weeks ago I bought a handsome copy of The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1953, edited by Everett F. Bleiler and T. E. Dikty, from a seller on eBay. As I carefully opened the package, I noticed the return address said “Stephen E. Fabian.”

Huh. Like, Stephan Fabian, the artist? Naturally I did what any of you would have done. I dashed off a quick message to the seller, and in due course I received this friendly response:

Yes, I am Stephen E. Fabian, the artist, though I’ve been semi-retired since way back in 1992. Thanks for asking. Stay safe, Steve

Well, that was cool. Fabian, of course, is one of the most talented artists to ever work in the field of SF and fantasy. We’ve covered his work here many times, and you can see some of his gorgeous pen & ink work here.

But that brief exchange reminded me (as if I needed reminding) that the science fiction community is a small one, and you never know who you’re going to run into. It reminded me of that day I ran into Fred Pohl on the street in downtown Chicago, and the week I discovered that the Bill Johnson I’d been working with at Motorola for years was the same one who won a Hugo Award for “We Will Drink a Fish Together.”

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Vintage Treasures: Orphans of the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein

Vintage Treasures: Orphans of the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein

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Orphans of the Sky (Ace Books, 1987). Cover by Carl Lundgren

Robert A. Heinlein never really did it for me. Even in my teens, when I was devouring any science fiction between covers, I didn’t get the appeal. I never read his juveniles, and I bounced hard off of Friday. I found Stranger in a Strange Land dull and unbelievable, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress resisted every attempt I made to get past the first 20 pages.

Why’d I make so many attempts? Because the first Heinlein I ever read, the slender paperback novel titled Orphans of the Sky, was a slam-bang adventure tale set on a six mile-long spaceship that twisted my head around. It was packed full of interesting characters and genuine surprises, and fit in well with the pulp SF by Asimov, Charles R. Tanner, and Edmond Hamilton — and movies like Star Wars and Alien — that was filling my head up at the time.

Orphans of the Sky fit the mold of pulp SF because it was pulp SF. It was originally published (as two separate novelettes, “Universe” and “Common Sense”) in Astounding Science Fiction in 1941 and follows the adventures of Hugh Hoyland, a scientist’s apprentice on the enormous generation ship Vanguard, whose inhabitants have long since forgotten their origins. When Hugh is captured by mutants and begins to learn the true nature of the Vanguard, he leads an onboard mutiny that changes the fate of everyone.

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New Treasures: The Revisionaries by A. R. Moxon

New Treasures: The Revisionaries by A. R. Moxon

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I made my monthly pilgrimage to Barnes & Noble today, to pick up the latest issues of Asimov’s SF and Analog, and the last print issue of Interzone. And also to browse the SF section to see what was new.

I found a deep-sea horror novel by Mira Grant that I’ll probably write about later, the opening novel in a new Iron Druid spin-off series by Kevin Hearne, and The Revisionaries, a 600-page debut novel by A.R. Moxon that sounded very intriguing. When I came home and did a quick search, I found a lot of acclaim and tantalizing plot summaries — none of which gave me a true sense of what the book was about.

Martin Seay (author of The Mirror Thief) calls it “A headlong adventure yarn set in a vividly-imagined cityscape,” and The New York Times labeled it “A spectacular invention… One shudders to imagine what Moxon would do with the means to make a horror movie.” And writing at NPR, Black Gate blogger emeritus Amal El-Mohtar says “I’m almost irritated by how much I enjoyed it… I’m astonished by how compulsively readable it is.” Here’s a clip from her full review.

The Revisionaries takes place in at least three locales across at least four levels of reality and is composed in at least five typefaces. It is, by turns and often at once, surreal, absurd, horrifying, earnest and satirical….

I could say that it begins in a derelict place called Loony Island, with the sudden release of patients from a mental hospital, and becomes a retelling of the Biblical story of Jonah by way of a travelling circus and heaps of metafictional meditation on the difference between gods and authors, and that would be a start. It’s a literary puzzle-box that also put me in mind of a tidier, more self-conscious The Filth, and if I keep making comparisons to comics it’s because the book invites them, from its epigraph at the beginning quoting Scott McCloud to the transformation of a key character into a villainous caricature of Superman to the literal appearance, on page 415, of a really good cartoon.

Given all that, I’m astonished by how compulsively readable it is… Moxon’s a genuinely wonderful storyteller.

The Revisionaries was published by Melville House on December 1, 2020. It is 608 pages, priced at $19.99 in trade paperback. Get all the details here.

See all our recent New Treasures here.

Space Opera That Reshapes the Genre: A Desolation Called Peace, Book Two of Teixcalaan by Arkady Martine

Space Opera That Reshapes the Genre: A Desolation Called Peace, Book Two of Teixcalaan by Arkady Martine

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The first two novels in the Teixcalaan series from Tor Books. Covers by Jaime Jones

Arkady Martine’s debut novel A Memory Called Empire was published in 2019, and was nominated for major awards, including both the Nebula and Hugo. Debuts don’t usually win awards, but that didn’t stop Martine — her first book won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, beating out competition from Seanan McGuire, Tamsyn Muir, Kameron Hurley, Charlie Jane Anders, and others. Andrew Liptak summed up some of the reasons in his rave review at The Verge, which called it “a brilliant blend of cyberpunk, space opera, and political thriller.” Here’s an excerpt.

Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, an emissary from the distant Lsel Station, is called to the center of the vast Teixcalaanli Empire after her predecessor winds up dead… The novel is set in the very distant future: humanity has spread throughout the stars, traveling from system to system by way of a stargate-style network. That’s allowed the Teixcalaanli Empire — a hungry, expansion-minded society — to spread its influence throughout inhabited space, its culture and knowledge stretching from system to system. Mahit Dzmare is the ultimate fish-out-of-water when she’s abruptly assigned to replace Ambassador Yskandr Aghavn, who perished in the empire’s capital city. Her home, a self-sustaining habitat, has remained free of the empire’s oversight, something of paramount importance to the inhabitants of Lsel station…

Unbeknownst to the Teixcalaanlis, the inhabitants of Lsel Station have a particularly advanced technology at their disposal: an Imago, a thumb-sized device implanted in their brainstem that essentially grafts a digital persona into their mind…

It’s an excellent, gripping novel with a brisk plot, outstanding characters, and plenty to think about long after it’s over.

The much anticipated sequel, A Desolation Called Peace, will be published by Tor Books on March 2, 2021. It is 496 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $13.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Jaime Jones. Publishers Weekly calls the second volume “A dizzying, exhilarating story of diplomacy, conspiracy, and first contact… This complex, stunning space opera promises to reshape the genre.” Read an excerpt at Gizmodo.

See all our recent coverage of the best new series SF and Fantasy here.

Sunken Realms and a Road of Bones: Tales From the Magician’s Skull #5, edited by Howard Andrew Jones

Sunken Realms and a Road of Bones: Tales From the Magician’s Skull #5, edited by Howard Andrew Jones

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Tales From the Magician’s Skull #5 (Goodman Games, December 2020). Cover by Sanjulian

I don’t think there’s a magazine out there I look forward to as much as Tales From the Magician’s Skull, edited by Howard Andrew Jones and published twice a year by Goodman Games.

Yes, partly it’s because it regularly features so many people I consider friends, including James Enge, John C. Hocking, Ryan Harvey, Violette Malan, Adrian Simmons, and of course Howard, who was Managing Editor here at Black Gate for many years. If you’re a Black Gate reader in fact, you’re guaranteed to find a great deal you’ll love about the Skull — and not just because all of those lovely folks have written for BG over the years.

But I think the real reason I enjoy it is because the magazine is a tremendous amount of fun, and everything about it radiates an abiding love of adventure fantasy and sword & sorcery. Want an example? Here’s an excerpt from Howard’s introduction to the brand new issue — beginning with the welcome news that the magazine is open to submissions for the first time!

We will throw the gates wide on a trial basis for a limited time…. The Skull has decreed that we shall accept electronic manuscripts beginning on the anniversary of the birthday of the sacred genre’s father, Robert E. Howard, January 22, 2021, and close upon that date sacred to mortal fools, April 1, 2021…

Get more details on the Call for Submissions here.

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Future Treasures: Machinehood by S.B. Divya

Future Treasures: Machinehood by S.B. Divya

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Machinehood (Saga Press, March 2, 2021). Cover by Richard Yoo and Zi Won Wang

S.B. Divya was nominated for a Hugo award for her groundbreaking work with Mur Lafferty on the hugely popular Escape Pod podcast. She’s published over a dozen short stories since 2014 in top-tier markets like Lightspeed, Tor.com, and Uncanny magazine, but her breakout book was Runtime (Tor.com, 2016), which was nominated for a Nebula Award for Best Novella.

Her latest is a near-future thriller with plenty of cyberpunk elements, set in a gritty futurescape run mostly by AIs. Publishers Weekly called Machinehood “stunning” in a rave review; here’s an excerpt.

Bodyguard Welga Ramírez is a disillusioned former Special Forces soldier who makes her living protecting CEOs and celebrities, using mechanical implants and a course of high-tech drugs to enhance her combat skills… Welga especially enjoys the opportunity to perform for the ubiquitous microdrone swarms that film and broadcast her every move. She even adds stylish action moves to her fights to improve her tips from her viewers. But when a job goes wrong, Welga faces a mysterious pro-AI terrorist group called The Machinehood. Determined to learn who they are and what they want, Welga heads into the very heart of The Machinehood’s operation… Divya keeps the pace rapid, and her crack worldbuilding and vivid characters make for a memorable, page-turning adventure, while the thematic inquiries into human and AI labor rights offer plenty to chew on for fans of big idea sci-fi. Readers will be blown away.

Machinehood will be published by Saga Press on March 2, 2021. It is 404 pages, priced at $27 in hardcover, $9.99 in digital formats, and $44.99 on audio CD. The cover was designed by Richard Yoo and feature 3D art by Zi Won Wang.

See all our recent coverage of the best upcoming SF and fantasy releases here.