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Librarians to the Rescue: Worldsoul by Liz Williams

Librarians to the Rescue: Worldsoul by Liz Williams

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1540901072Worldsoul
Liz Williams
Prime (311 pp, $14.95 in paperback, August 2012)

Reviewed by David Soyka

The stereotypical image of your local librarian is that of a dowdy, matronly spinster who is constantly telling you to “shush” while your adolescent self is trying to do something vastly more interesting (usually involving a person with whom you are sexually attracted) than figure out the Dewey Decimal system. And, these days with whatever we need to find out only a Google away, who needs librarians anyway?

Well, it would seem the preservation of the underlying fabric of the universe does.

While it’s unlikely that Liz Williams will make librarians cool the way that William Gibson made noirish anti-heroes out of computer nerds, in Worldsoul, librarians brandish magical swords that speak. Not to hush people, but to help defend ancient texts against rogue storylines amongst book stacks that date to the fabled Library of Alexandria before it burned to the ground (at least on Earth).

The novel’s title is the name of an otherworldly realm quartered into distinct cultural, climatic and political realms (and probably having something to do with maintaining the “soul” of the mundane world as we in ordinary life understand it): a hot desert land of ancient Cairo; a cold Nordica where Loki the trickster is an imprisoned nutcase, albeit not totally powerless; the Court inhabited by beings called the “disir” who take human form but aren’t; and the Citadel, the land of the library. This city of Worldsoul somehow or another connects Earth with something called the Liminality, a multi-dimensional storehouse of storylines, the integrity of which no doubt has something to do with the preservation of life as we know it here in realityland.

Our librarian heroine, Mercy Fane, is struggling to counteract strange beings that have escaped from primeval manuscripts and the boundaries of their original storylines. And which take on a female personality that seems to have an agenda to fix some longstanding wrong:

[Mercy] thought of the thing she had seen; the thing that, mentally, she had started calling “the female.” Part of a story from so long ago that any humanity had surely been leached from her, if indeed she had ever possessed any. Something forgotten, that raged, like so many forgotten things. Something that wanted to be known.

And something that, now, would be.

p. 35

…

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Steamgothic

Steamgothic

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steamgothicSteampunk is a literary subgenre that has also sprouted a lifestyle that encompasses fashion, music, and art based loosely on a philosophy of hands-on, do-it-yourselfness in an age of touchscreen virtual experience. To my knowledge, Sean McMullen’s “Steamgothic” is the first steampunk story that is also about the sensibility of the steampunk community. The narrator is an expert restorer of steam engines whose day job is to customize ultralight aircraft motors. He’s approached by a couple who have possession of an 1852 Aeronaute, a steam-powered aircraft which, had it actually flown, would predate the Wright Brothers by a half-century. He’s invited to participate in a restoration with the intent of proving this possibility. The initiative becomes the subject of a reality TV show called The Aeronauteers, and plenty of drama ensues, much of it more human than mechanically-related, with hidden motivations gradually revealed beyond postulating how if the Aeronaute had actually flown, would history have changed?

Recommended reading, even if you have only a slight interest in how the cogs actually turn. You can find it in the current Interzone.

Apex Magazine #39

Apex Magazine #39

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apexmag0812August’s Apex Magazine features  “Armless Maidens of the American West” by Genevieve Valentine (who is interviewed by Maggie Slater), “Murdered Sleep” by Kat Howard, “Waiting for Beauty” by Marie Brennan and “Undercity” by Nir Yaniv. Cover art by Ekaterina Zagustina. Nonfiction by Jim C. Hines and editor Lynne M. Thomas.

Apex is published on the first Tuesday of every month.  While each issue is available free online from the magazine’s website, it can also be downloaded to your e-reader from there for $2.99.  Individual issues are also available at  Amazon, Nook, and Weightless.

Twelve-issue (one year) subscriptions can be ordered at Apex and Weightless for $19.95; Kindle subscriptions are available for $1.99 a month.

Interzone 241

Interzone 241

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482The July-August issue of Interzone features new stories by Sean McMullen (”Steamgothic”), Aliette de Bodard (”Ship’s Brother”), David Ira Cleary (”One Day in Time City”), Gareth L. Powell (“Railroad Angel”), and the 2011 James White Award-winning story “Invocation of the Lurker” by C.J. Paget; cover artwork by Ben Baldwin; an interview with Juliet E. Mckenna by Elaine Gallagher;  “Ansible Link” genre news and miscellanea by David Langford; “Mutant Popcorn” film reviews by Nick Lowe; “Laser Fodder” DVD/Blu-Ray reviews by Tony Lee; and book reviews by various contributors.

Interzone alternates monthly publication with sister dark horror-focused Black Static, published by the fine folks at TTA Press.

Here’s the opening of the lead novelette:

There is something special about things that change the world. I cannot say what it is, but I can feel it. I have stood before the Vostok capsule that carried the first man into space. Influence glowed from it, I knew where it was even with my eyes closed. In the Spurlock Museum I saw the strange, twisted, lumpy thing that was the first transistor. The significance that it radiated was like the heat from a fire. The Babbage Analytical Engine of 1871 had no such aura, yet the whole of Bletchley Park did. There was no doubt in my mind about which of them had really launched the age of computers.

The Wright Brothers’ Flyer had no feeling of significance for me. This made no sense. It was the first heavier than air machine to fly, it proved the principle, it changed the world, yet my strange intuition said otherwise. Then I saw the Aeronaute, and everything should have become clear to me.

484
Black Static 29

Black Static 29

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491

The latest Black Static has new look, with a gloss laminated cover and spine in a new size that expands to 96 pages. Same high quality horror  fiction.  This month features the work of Nina Allan, Ray Cluley, Renee Carter Hall, Tim Lees, and Baph Tripp.

Nonfiction by the usual suspects, Peter Tennant, Christopher Fowler, Tony Lee, and Mike O’Driscoll. The editor is Andy Cox.

Black Static alternates monthly publication with sister SF and fantasy focused Interzone.

Here’s how Allan’s “Sunshine” gets started:

You asked me where I came from. I was born in Paris, in the shadow of Montmartre, but my mother soon moved me first to Brighton, on England’s south coast, and then to London. I have no memories of Paris from when I was a baby, though I have visited that city more than a dozen times since. My mother’s name is Michaela Olsen, and I am Daniel Clement Olsen. I don’t know my father’s name, and nor do I wish to.

I am a shade under six feet tall, light of build and with a knock-kneed, somewhat stooping deportment. I have been called scrawny, though my victims seem to find me good looking. I have wide, slightly flaring nostrils, fine shoulder-length hair the colour of barley water. My eyes are a watery blue.

I am a student of philosophy, though I am unlikely to ever gain my degree. If anyone asks me my age, I say twenty-six.

Apex Magazine #38

Apex Magazine #38

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apex-38July’s Apex Magazine features  ”Coyote Gets His Own Back” by Sarah Monette, “The Silk Merchant” by Ken Liu, “Ironheart” by Alec Austin and “Wolf Trapping” by Kij Johnson  (who is interviewed by Maggie Slater). Bruce Holwerda provides the cover art. Nonfiction by Christopher J. Garcia and editor Lynne M. Thomas round out the issue.

Apex is published on the first Tuesday of every month.  While each issue is available free on-line from the magazine’s website, it can also be downloaded to your e-reader from there for $2.99.  Individual issues are also available at  Amazon, Nook and Weightless.

Twelve issue (one year) subscriptions can be ordered at Apex and Weightless for $19.95; Kindle subscriptions are available for $1.99 a month.

Chicks Kick Butt

Chicks Kick Butt

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ckI recently reviewed Chicks Kick Butt over at The SF Site. My reaction was a little less than enthusiastic, certainly less so than fellow Black Gater Alana Joli Abbott’s review.  Here’s probably why:

…an anthology called Chicks Kick Butt sounded like something that would appeal to me, even if I’d never read anything by the female authors collected here, nor the editors. But, half the fun of picking up a story collection is discovering the work of people you’ve never heard of, or have heard of but never read.

In this case, however, that’s part of the problem. Some of these stories will no doubt resonate with their fan base. Not being part of them, I’m left to wonder what the fascination is. In part, that’s because I don’t get the whole vampire deal. Though I understand the charismatic kink of the guy (or girl) who drinks your blood and consumes your soul, maybe the first time someone thought of putting a cell phone in the hands of the attractive undead to use their curse for good instead of evil, or at least have highly charged sex, but still have problems just like the rest of us whose throats are unblemished, it was kind of fun. But an entire genre with multiple sub-genres of this stuff, really?

Apex #37 and Interzone #240

Apex #37 and Interzone #240

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apexmag0612June’s Apex Magazine features  ”Winter Scheming” by Brit Mandelo, “In the Dark” by Ian Nichols and “Blocked by Geoff Ryman  (who is interviewed by Maggie Slater), as well as Seanan McGuire’s poem, “Wounds.” Ken Wong provides the cover art. Nonfiction by Tansy Rayner Roberts and editor Lynne M. Thomas round out the issue.

Apex is published on the first Tuesday of every month.  While each issue is available free on-line from the magazine’s website, it can also be downloaded to your e-reader from there for $2.99.  Individual issues are also available at  Amazon and Weightless.

467_large2A version for the Nook will also be available in the near future.  Twelve issue (one year) subscription can be ordered at Apex and Weightless for $19.95; Kindle subscriptions are available for $1.99 a month.

The May–June issue of Interzone has stories by Vylar Kaftan, Ray Cluley, Lavie Tidhar, Elizabeth Bourne and Tracie Welser. Cover art is ‘The Hanged Man’ by Ben Baldwin, the third of his covers commissioned for 2012.

The issue also includes all the usual suspects: “Ansible Link” by David Langford (news and obits); “Mutant Popcorn” by Nick Lowe (film reviews); “Laser Fodder” by Tony Lee (DVD/Blu-ray reviews); along with book reviews by Jim Steel and others, and an interview with Nancy Kress.

Interzone alternates monthly publication with sister dark horror focused Black Static, published by the fine folks at TTA Press.

Yes, The New Yorker

Yes, The New Yorker

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the-new-yorker-science-fiction-issue2This week’s issue of The New Yorker (yes, The New Yorker!) is a science fiction issue, featuring fiction by Jonathan Lethem, Jennifer Egan, and Junot Diaz, among others.

Here’s the complete table of contents.  Now you can have your science fiction fix and feel literary about it at the same time.