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The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog on the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of June 2018

The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog on the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of June 2018

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June has been a fantastic month for new books. My TBR (to-be-read) pile is reaching structurally unsound heights already, and Jeff Somers at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog isn’t helping matters any by showcasing nearly two dozen of the best new releases. Here’s a few of his more interesting selections.

Brief Cases, by Jim Butcher (Ace Books, 448 pages, $28 hardcover/$14.99 digital, June 5, 2018)

Butcher offers up 12 stories set in the world of Harry Dresden, wizard and private investigator working an alternate, magic-filled Chicago. Several stories follow Harry’s adventures with River Shoulders, a smart sasquatch with a half-human son. Others involve Harry’s apprentice Molly Carpenter, crime boss John Marcone, and even Wyatt Earp. The novella “Zoo Day” follows Harry as he takes his young daughter Maggie to the zoo — and since this is Harry Dresden, you know there’s more in store than daddy/daughter bonding. Dresden fans may have encountered some of these stories before, but rereading them in this collection, alongside one all-new tale, should help ease the pain for waiting for Harry’s next novel-length adventure.

Our previous coverage of Harry Dresden includes Barbara Barrett 2014 article “A Wizard is a Wizard is a Wizard — Except When He’s Harry Dresden.”

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Robots! Spies! The Toronto Star on the Best New Science Fiction Books

Robots! Spies! The Toronto Star on the Best New Science Fiction Books

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Last Friday the Toronto Star selected the Best New Science Fiction Books of the summer, and it’s an auspicious list: four new novels by Todd McAulty, Patrick S. Tomlinson, Peng Shepherd, and Hannu Rajaniemi. At the top of the list is The Robots of Gotham by Todd McAulty, released Tuesday by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

SF fans rejoice! Your summer beach reading has arrived. Todd McAulty’s debut novel is a massive, fast-paced, action-packed epic… with robots!

Lots of robots. In the year 2083 the world’s geopolitical order has been shaken up by the rise of sentient machines, with many countries now being ruled by godlike sovereign AIs, and robots of all different shapes, sizes and functionality rubbing shoulders in the streets with humans.

Canadian tech entrepreneur Barry Simcoe is visiting Chicago, which is now part of an occupied zone governed by a Venezuelan-led consortium of powers, when he gets sucked into a complicated web of plots and counterplots that lead all the way to the top of the global machine hierarchy, with the fate of humanity hanging in the balance.

Even more than the fascinating and fully realized world it presents, what makes The Robots of Gotham such a great ride is its sheer narrative drive. Every page has the fierce readability of early Neal Stephenson, which is as high praise as it gets. Enjoy the summer.

Read the first chapter of The Robots of Gotham at The Portalist, and see the complete list of Best New Science Fiction Books here.

Gods and Robots: Booklist‘s Best New Books Include Starless and The Robots of Gotham

Gods and Robots: Booklist‘s Best New Books Include Starless and The Robots of Gotham

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The good folks at Booklist, the flagship publication of the American Library Association, regularly select the Best New Books, and this week two genre releases made the cut: Jacqueline Carey’s Starless, which “may well be the epic fantasy of the year,” and Todd McAulty’s debut The Robots of Gotham, which they proclaim is “thrilling, epic SF.”

John Keogh’s starred review of The Robots of Gotham appeared online this week:

Machine intelligences rule most of the world, human governments are rapidly losing their power, a war-ravaged U.S. is on the brink of descending into chaos, and a mysterious new plague is on the loose. In Chicago, one man finds himself at the nexus of a complex web of secrets that threatens to upend the world as we know it. This debut novel beautifully combines a postapocalyptic man-versus-machine conflict and a medical thriller. The world is immersive and detailed, the characters have depth, the writing is assured, the plotting intelligent, and the pacing about perfect. McAulty’s take on how AI might evolve gives the premise a unique twist. The story is action-packed, starting with a boom (literally) and driving you along from one crisis to the next. The action rarely lets up, yet it never becomes tiresome… This is thrilling, epic sf.

And here’s a snippet from Diana Tixier Herald’s review of Starless.

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Birthday Reviews: Richard Parks’s “Golden Bell, Seven, and the Marquis of Zeng”

Birthday Reviews: Richard Parks’s “Golden Bell, Seven, and the Marquis of Zeng”

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Black Gate Issue 1
Black Gate Issue 1

Richard Parks was born on June 15, 1955.

At the beginning of his writing career, Parks published a few works as B. Richard Parks. He has also used the pseudonym W.J. Everett. Parks received a World Fantasy Award nomination for his collection The Ogre’s Wife: Fairy Tales for Grownups. In 2012, his novel The Heavenly Fox was nominated for a Mythopoeic Award.

“Golden Bell, Seven, and the Marquis of Zeng” is the first story to appear in the first issue of Black Gate magazine in the Spring 2001 issue, published by John O’Neill. The story was picked up by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer for inclusion in the inaugural volume of their Year’s Best Fantasy anthology series. Parks also used the story in his 2002 collection The Ogre’s Wife: Fairy Tales for Grownups.

In “Golden Bell, Seven, and the Marquis of Zeng,” Seven is a young man living in an ancient China. On a trip to the city, he sees a woman, Jia Jin, and falls immediately in love with her. When it is explained to him that she is a gift to the Marquis of Zeng, who is near to death, and will be entombed with the Marquis along with his other concubines, Seven determines that he must rescue her and marry her.

Seven’s quest takes him far from the capital city and along the way he learns more of Chinese burial customs and a spirit tells him to seek a woman named Golden Bell. Upon finding her, he learns that he must sacrifice his heart and his soul to her in order to gain the knowledge to save Jia Jin from her fate. Although Parks glosses over it, the idea that Seven can give his heart and soul to one woman but later give it to another is glossed over, although it is an interesting point not often included in stories.

Eventually, Seven finds himself confronting the Marquis of Zeng in an attempt to marry Jia Jin, whose desires are not particularly important to either the Marquis or Seven.

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The Verge on 13 Enthralling Science Fiction and Fantasy Books You Need to Check Out This June

The Verge on 13 Enthralling Science Fiction and Fantasy Books You Need to Check Out This June

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Andrew Liptak at The Verge has dipped into the thundering production pipelines at America’s publishing houses for the month of June, and returned with a secret list of the 13 very best science fiction and fantasy books — including novels by Paul Tremblay, Yoon Ha Lee, Peter Watts, Katie Williams, Alex White, Rob Boffard, Melissa F. Olson, and Black Gate‘s own Todd McAuty. Many bothans died to bring us this information. Use it wisely.

The Robots of Gotham by Todd McAulty (John Joseph Adams/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 676 pages, $26 in hardcover/$12.99 digital, June 19, 2018)

In this future, the United States waged — and lost — a war against a coalition of machines, and it’s now under robotic occupation. A businessman named Barry Simcoe meets a Russian medic working with the occupying armies after his hotel is attacked. Together, they learn of a plot to unleash a plague that could wipe out humanity once and for all. Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review, saying that the book has a “breathless momentum,” and that McAulty “extrapolates a scary AI-overrun 2083 that’s only a few steps removed from today’s reality.”

Todd McAulty was the most popular writer in the print version of Black Gate. His stories included “There’s a Hole in October” in Black Gate 5, which Locus labeled “magnificent storytelling, begging expansion into a novel,” and Tangent Online called “one of my favorite stories so far this year.” It was reprinted this month in Lightspeed.

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Signal Horizon on 5 Science Fiction Books That Should Be Made Into Movies Right Now

Signal Horizon on 5 Science Fiction Books That Should Be Made Into Movies Right Now

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Hollywood, take note! Over at Signal Horizon, Tracy Palmer identifies the future media superstars in this year’s crop of summer SF blockbusters. At the top of the list is the debut novel from Black Gate‘s own Todd McAulty, The Robots of Gotham, the story of a future on the verge of complete subjugation by machines.

I was lucky enough to get an advance copy and I’m reading this right now. This is the political Terminator we have been waiting for. Its brainy look at technology surpassing the inventor is tailor made for the big screen. With a very clear enemy and hero it will delight the action enthusiasts as much as those looking for more astute moral ambiguity. With many films preceding it like the aforementioned Terminator franchise and Robocop the audience is primed for another robots gone wild movie. What makes this unique is the timeline and mystery. Who or what are the machines hiding and where have the Americans been all this time? Stan Winston Studio who did the incredible robots for Terminator 3 should be hired immediately!

The Robots of Gotham will be published in hardcover by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on June 19. Get more details here.

The complete list includes The Rig by Roger Levy, Semiosis by Sue Burke, and novels by Neal Stephenson and Pierce Brown. Read the whole thing here.

The Late May Fantasy Magazine Rack

The Late May Fantasy Magazine Rack

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Analog Science Fiction Science Fact May June 2018-small Apex May 2018-small The Dark magazine May 2018-small Lightspeed May 2018-small
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The back half of May is filled with great print magazines, including the latest Analog, with the concluding installment of our very own Derek Künsken’s debut novel The Quantum Magician. Asimov’s SF has new novellas from two sets of collaborators, Rick Wilber & Alan Smale, and David Gerrold & Ctein, plus lots of shorter fiction. And last but not least, just before we went to press I received a copy of the June issue of The Digest Enthusiast, a handsome magazine with plenty of reviews, articles and artwork of interest to anyone who collects vintage fiction magazines from the mid-20th Century and later.

All told it’s a star-studded crop of fresh reading, and no mistake. The magazines above include brand new stories from Nancy Kress, Paul Park, Jane Lindskold (twice!), Nalo Hopkinson, Carolyn Ives Gilman, Wil McCarthy, Mary Soon Lee, William Ledbetter, Stephen L. Burns, Sam J. Miller, Robert Reed, Marissa Lingen, Cherie Priest, Rich Larson, Sue Burke, Marc Laidlaw, Bo Balder, A Que, Pat Murphy and Paul Doherty, Michael F. Flynn, Michael Wehunt, and plenty more.

Here’s the complete list of magazines that won my attention in late May (links will bring you to magazine websites).

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Announcing the Black Gate Book Club: Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh

Announcing the Black Gate Book Club: Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh

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oie_2755519pv4ckfCiLast year, when I reviewed C.J. Cherryh’s The Pride of Chanur, Adrian Simmons mentioned he had been thwarted by her Hugo-winning Downbelow Station (1981). That led to him suggesting another go at it, but this time with the impetus of a reading group to spur him on and to discuss it. Thus the idea of the Black Gate Book Club was born. It’s taken a year to actually get around to getting this off the ground, but here we are.

For forty years, C.J. Cherryh has been a powerful voice in science fiction. Her work is noted for its “intense third person” style, where only things noticed by or of importance to the point of view character are included in the narration. Her science fiction is notable for its complex and detailed societies and its relative hardness.

Many of her books are set in the Alliance-Union universe. By the 24th century, humanity has spread to the stars. While Earth, overpopulated and culturally and economically stagnant, is ostensibly in charge of the merchant space stations and the few planetary colonies, that is not actually the case. Under the direction of a scientific elite, the planet Cyteen has declared its independence. In response, Earth has built a massive fleet of military vessels and sent them out to retake Cyteen.

Downbelow Station opens in the late days of the consequent war, when the forces of Earth are in retreat from the seemingly invincible fleets of Cyteen. Downbelow Station, a trading orbital above a planet in the Tau Ceti system, becomes the focal point of both military forces as well as a nascent third one: the independent merchants.

The plan is to read Downbelow Station over the month of June and post a discussion of it each Monday afternoon. This time around, the Book Club participants will include Adrian Simmons, Charlene Brusso, Chris Hocking, and me. We’d love it if you’d read along with us and join in the conversation.

 

Occult Detective Quarterly #4 Now Available

Occult Detective Quarterly #4 Now Available

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It’s tough to be an amateur Occult Detective. Think of it as a fringe hobby with a high mortality rate. Not to mention one that brings with it intimate familiarity with a whole host of… well, let’s call them “mental health issues.”

Thank God for Occult Detective Quarterly, the magazine for determined supernatural hobby investigators. It keeps me up to date on all the latest spectral sleuthing gear, unsolved paranormal crimes, and the best nationwide heath care plans for Occult Detectives. Plus the ads are great — and believe me, the obituaries are required reading.

The latest issue, #4, has reviews of the newest ghosthunting equipment, a thoughtful opinion piece on dowsing, and an explosive tell-all on the recent bathroom haunting at the Library of Congress. Turns out it was all a hoax perpetuated by a corrupt senator from Oklahoma. He would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those darn kids.

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Birthday Reviews: Vera Nazarian’s “Salmon in the Drain Pipe”

Birthday Reviews: Vera Nazarian’s “Salmon in the Drain Pipe”

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Vera Nazarian was born on May 25, 1966.

Nazarian was nominated for a WSFA Small Press Award for her short story “Port Custodial Blues” in 2007. The following year she received a nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story for “The Story of Love.” She also received a Nebula nomination in 2009 for her novella The Duke in His Castle. In addition to writing, Nazarian has worked as the editor and publisher of Norilana Books since the company’s founding in 2006.

“Salmon in the Drain Pipe” was published as an original story in Nazarian’s collection After the Sundial, in 2010. The story has not been reprinted.

Nazarian’s “Salmon in the Drain Pipe” is a relatively short piece that has her protagonist looking at the wonders of nature in an unspecified future. As he looks more closely, however, he discovers that rather than being flora or fauna, what he is really seeing is the detritus of civilization filling lakes and grasslands. Fish moving through algae have been replaced by collections of bottlecaps.

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