Black Gate

Rob Boffard is the author of the Outer Earth series, which was recently re-packaged in a brick-sized (1,024 pages!) omnibus volume selected by Unbound Worlds as one of the Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of February. His newest novel is Adrift, the tale of a group of tourists caught in a cat-and-mouse game with a deadly alien ship in deep space. It arrives in trade paperback from Orbit next month.

In the far reaches of space, a tour group embarks on what will be the trip of a lifetime – in more ways than one…

At Sigma Station, a remote mining facility and luxury hotel in deep space, a group of tourists boards a small vessel to take in the stunning views of the Horsehead Nebula. But while they’re out there, a mysterious ship with devastating advanced technology attacks the station. Their pilot’s quick thinking means that the tourists escape with their lives – but as the dust settles, they realise they may be the only survivors…

Adrift in outer space on a vastly under-equipped ship, they’ve got no experience, no weapons, no contact with civilization. They are way out of their depth, and if they can’t figure out how to work together, they’re never getting home alive.

Because the ship that destroyed the station is still out there. And it’s looking for them…

Adrift will be published by Orbit on June 5, 2018. It is 416 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. Read the first chapter at the author’s website.

Amber Royer first got my attention with her funny and thoughtful guest post at Unbound Worlds last month, promoting her upcoming space opera Free Chocolate from Angry Robot:

I play a bit with gallows humor in Free Chocolate – after all, half the book takes place on an alien warship where your superior officers can eat you should you disappoint them – and, yeah, it’s a fine balance. You don’t want to make death meaningless, even as the characters acknowledge the precariousness of their situation. Because if death becomes meaningless – or, worse, funny – then the remaining characters’ lives aren’t so important anymore… You know, every writer’s worst nightmare. We want our characters to be like that unnamed actor, finding dignity and a sense of psychological well-being, even in the face of absolute horror and near-certain death.

Speaking of which… I once read that science fiction is a society’s hopes, fantasy its daydreams, and horror its nightmares. (I cannot find the citation for this one – sorry, awesome writer, from the mid-90s.) I think that’s another reason SF writers so seldom venture into pure comedy… with sci-fi, you spend so much time building a world that needs to be convincing, an entire vision of the future, or an alternate past, or an alien landscape, and you put so much of yourself into sharing the things you hope and fear. You want it to be bulletproof in the reader’s mind. It’s hard, then, to acknowledge the absurdity of many of those fears, the impossibility of some of the hopes, to let yourself be laughed at, even in a positive way.

Free Chocolate is a far-future tale in which chocolate is Earth’s only unique commodity… one that everyone else in the galaxy is willing to kill to get their hands, paws and tentacles on. Here’s the description.

Latina culinary arts student, Bo Benitez, becomes a fugitive when she’s caught stealing a cacao pod from one of the heavily-defended plantations that keep chocolate, Earth’s sole valuable export, safe from a hungry galaxy.

Forces array against her including her alien boyfriend and a reptilian cop. But when she escapes onto an unmarked starship things go from bad to worse: it belongs to the race famed throughout the galaxy for eating stowaways! Surrounded by dangerous yet hunky aliens, Bo starts to uncover clues that the threat to Earth may be bigger than she first thought.

Free Chocolate will be published by Angry Robot on June 1. It is 448 pages, priced at $9.99 for both the paperback and digital editions. The cover is by Mingchen Shen.

I’ve heard a lot about Dave Hutchinson’s Europe in Autumn series (Europe in Autumn, Europe at Midnight, Europe in Winter, and the upcoming Europe at Dawn, arriving in November). Certainly enough to tempt me to give it a try, anyway.

Although if I really like it, November is a long time to have to wait for that final volume. I dunno… risky.

I think I have a better idea: try out his new standalone novel Shelter, instead. (At least, I think it’s standalone. It’s set in a fractured Europe, much like the Europe in Autumn novels. Someone more well-informed than I will have to tell us whether the books are connected.) If I like it — and based on the description, odds look pretty good — I might be more willing to take a risk on the others.

Shelter arrives in paperback next month from Solaris. Here’s the description.

Rural English Post-Apocalypse survival for a new generation.

The Long Autumn is coming to an end. For almost a century after the coming of The Sisters, the surviving peoples of rainswept England have huddled in small communities and on isolated farms, scavenging the remains of the old society. But now society, of a kind, is starting to rebuild itself. In Kent, a brutal tyranny is starting to look West. In the Cotswolds, something terrible and only vaguely-glimpsed is happening. And in a little corner of Berkshire two families are at war with each other.

After decades of simply trying to survive, the battle to inherit this brutal new world is beginning.

Shelter: Tales Of The Aftermath will be published by Solaris on June 12, 2018. It is 304 pages, priced at $11.99 in trade paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition.

Cameron Johnston has published short fiction in The Lovecraft eZine, A Fistful of Horrors: Tales of Terror from the Old West (2012), Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors (2016), and other fine places.

His debut novel is an epic fantasy featuring gods, daemons, and very dark sorcery. Gavin G Smith (Age of Scorpio) calls it “one part street-level procedural and two parts urban magic apocalypse,” and Neil Williamson (The Moon King) says, “The Traitor God grabs you and doesn’t let go. Facing Gods, monsters, and a magic elite that wants him dead, Edrin Walker’s return to Setharis is a noirish romp packed with action and laced with black humour.” It arrives in trade paperback from Angry Robot next month.

A city threatened by unimaginable horrors must trust their most hated outcast, or lose everything, in this crushing epic fantasy debut.

After ten years on the run, dodging daemons and debt, reviled magician Edrin Walker returns home to avenge the brutal murder of his friend. Lynas had uncovered a terrible secret, something that threatened to devour the entire city. He tried to warn the Arcanum, the sorcerers who rule the city.

He failed. Lynas was skinned alive and Walker felt every cut. Now nothing will stop him from finding the murderer. Magi, mortals, daemons, and even the gods – Walker will burn them all if he has to.

After all, it wouldn’t be the first time he’s killed a god…

The Traitor God will be published by Angry Robot on June 5, 2018. It is 432 pages, priced at $12.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Jan Weßbecher.

See all our recent Future Treasures here.

Sometimes it seems I need a whole team just to keep up with new books from Stephen King. The man has produced 54 novels over the past 40 years, and more short stories and scripts than I can count. But for all of that, he remains a potent force in the genre, refusing to sit still or repeat himself. His latest is a supernatural thriller that sounds like a police procedural. It arrives from in hardcover from Scribner this month.

An unspeakable crime. A confounding investigation. At a time when the King brand has never been stronger, he has delivered one of his most unsettling and compulsively readable stories.

An eleven-year-old boy’s violated corpse is found in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City’s most popular citizens. He is Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney soon add DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses. Their case seems ironclad.

As the investigation expands and horrifying answers begin to emerge, King’s propulsive story kicks into high gear, generating strong tension and almost unbearable suspense. Terry Maitland seems like a nice guy, but is he wearing another face? When the answer comes, it will shock you as only Stephen King can.

The Outsider will be published by Scribner on May 22, 2018. It is 576 pages, priced at $30 in hardcover and $14.99 for the digital edition. Read a brief excerpt at Stephen King’s website.

Michael Kelly’s Undertow Publications has introduced me to some truly fabulous writers in the nine years it’s been around, including V. H. Leslie, Eric Schaller, Sunny Moraine, Conrad Williams, and others. Their upcoming volume All the Fabulous Beasts, arriving in trade paperback on May 1st, looks like a beautiful addition to their catalog. It’s the debut collection from Priya Sharma, gathering 16 tales of “love, rebirth, nature, and sexuality… A heady mix of myth and ontology, horror and the modern macabre.”

Priya Sharma is a UK writer and doctor. Her short story “Fabulous Beasts” won a British Fantasy Award, and she has appeared in Paula Guran’s The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year, Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Black Feathers, Nightmare Carnival, Interzone, Black Static, Tor.com, Nightmare magazine, and many other fine venues.

If you’re not already familiar with Undertow, All the Fabulous Beasts would make a great introduction. But if you can’t wait until May 1st, allow me to suggest eight earlier volumes from Undertow we’ve reviewed right here at Black Gate, including their flagship publications Shadows & Tall Trees (7 issues, and a finalist for the British Fantasy Award, World Fantasy Award, and Shirley Jackson Award), and the marvelous Year’s Best Weird Fiction (4 volumes).

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