Black Gate

Robyn Bennis’s debut novel The Guns Above, a steampunk military fantasy about a female airship captain, arrives in hardcover from Tor in two weeks. The book sounds interesting enough, but it’s Bennis’s riff on the cover at Tor.com that really got my attention.

Why do I love this cover so much? Let me direct your attention first to the badass lady jumping over a gondola rail with pistol in hand. That’s Josette, Garnia’s newest airship captain… let’s be honest, when a woman sees a job that needs doing, her first instinct is always to roll up her sleeves and do it herself. And sometimes that means leaping from your airship with pistol in hand. Back me up here, ladies.

Here’s the description.

They say it’s not the fall that kills you.

For Josette Dupre, the Corps’ first female airship captain, it might just be a bullet in the back.

On top of patrolling the front lines, she must also contend with a crew who doubts her expertise, a new airship that is an untested deathtrap, and the foppish aristocrat Lord Bernat, a gambler and shameless flirt with the military know-how of a thimble. Bernat’s own secret assignment is to catalog her every moment of weakness and indecision.

So when the enemy makes an unprecedented move that could turn the tide of the war, can Josette deal with Bernat, rally her crew, and survive long enough to prove herself?

The Guns Above will be published by Tor Books on May 2, 2017. It is 352 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Tommy Arnold, whose done several recent covers for Tor.com, including Kai Ashante Wilson’s A Taste of Honey, David Dalglish’s Fireborn, and Corey J. White’s upcoming Killing Gravity.

Kieran Shea is the author of Koko Takes a Holiday and its sequel, Koko the Mighty. His latest, Off Rock, is a fast-paced and funny tale of a bank heist set in space, which is not the kind of thing I come across very often. The B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog calls it “a fast-moving sci-fi heist with a hard-edged sense of humor and another motley crew of bad guys and not-so-good guys (and gals).” It’s available in trade paperback from Titan Books next week.

In the year 2778, Jimmy Vik is feeling dissatisfied.

After busting his ass for assorted interstellar mining outfits for close to two decades, downsizing is in the wind, his ex-girlfriend/supervisor is climbing up his back, and daily Jimmy wonders if he’s played his last good hand.

So when Jimmy stumbles upon a significant gold pocket during a routine procedure on Kardashev 7-A, he believes his luck may have changed — larcenously so. But smuggling the gold “off rock” won’t be easy.

To do it, Jimmy will have to contend with a wily criminal partner, a gorgeous covert assassin, the suspicions of his ex, and the less than honorable intentions of an encroaching, rival mining company. As the clock ticks down, treachery and betrayal loom, the body count rises, and soon Jimmy has no idea who to trust.

Off Rock will be published by Titan Books on April 18, 2017. It is 240 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback and $7.99 for the digital version. The cover was designed by Amazing 15. Read an excerpt from the first chapter at the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog.

See all our recent coverage of the best in upcoming fantasy an SF here.

Holy cats, have we started the Best of the Year season already? How did that sneak up on me?

However it happened, I take great pleasure in cataloging the new additions to some of my favorite anthologies every year. Jonathan Strahan is one of the top editors in the field, and his ongoing Infinity anthology series (Meeting Infinity, Bridging Infinity, etc.) has produced some of the most acclaimed short SF of the past decade. Strahan has been editing The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year for eleven straight years, the first seven with Night Shade, and the last three with Solaris, and he shows no sign of stopping. It’s a book I cherish every year, and Volume 11 — with fiction by Amal El-Mohtar, Paolo Bacigalupi, Aliette de Bodard, N.K. Jemisin, Rich Larson, Yoon Ha Lee, Ken Liu, Ian R. MacLeod, Paul McAuley, Geoff Ryman, Delia Sherman, Lavie Tidhar, Catherynne M Valente, Genevieve Valentine, and many others — is no exception.

It arrives in trade paperback in two weeks. Here’s the Table of Contents.

“Two’s Company,” Joe Abercrombie (Tor.com, Jan 16, 2016)
“The Art of Space Travel,” Nina Allan (Tor.com)
“Seasons of Glass and Iron,” Amal El-Mohtar (The Starlit Wood)
“Mika Model,” Paolo Bacigalupi (Slate)
“A Salvaging of Ghosts,” Aliette de Bodard (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 01/03/16)
“Laws of Night and Silk,” Seth Dickinson (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 26 May 2016)
“Touring with the Alien,” Carolyn Ives Gilman (Clarkesworld 115, 4/16)
“Red as Blood and White as Bone,” Theodora Goss (Tor.com)

…

Read More Read More

John Joseph Adams has edited two previous Saga Anthologies: Loosed upon the World: The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction (2015) and What the #@&% Is That?: The Saga Anthology of the Monstrous and the Macabre (2016). His latest is a collection of epic SF tales “for fans who want a little less science and a lot more action, inspired by movies like Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars.” It contains brand-new fiction from the top authors in the genre.

Okay, I try to be objective in these future-book summaries, but I think JJA and Saga Press have just discovered the keys to my heart. There have been some terrific anthologies published in 2017 (and the year is still young) but, dang. Already this one looks like my favorite.

Just check out the list of contributors: Alan Dean Foster, Dan Abnett, Aliette De Bodard, Kameron Hurley, Charlie Jane Anders, Yoon Ha Lee, Linda Nagata, Seanan McGuire, Caroline M. Yoachim, Tobias S. Buckell, and many others. Here’s the complete table of contents.

“A Temporary Embarrassment in Spacetime,” Charlie Jane Anders
“Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance,” Tobias S. Buckell
“The Deckhand, the Nova Blade, and the Thrice-Sung Texts,” Becky Chambers
“The Sighted Watchmaker,” Vylar Kaftan
“Infinite Love Engine,” Joseph Allen Hill
“Unfamiliar Gods,” Adam-Troy Castro, with Judi B. Castro
“Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World,” Caroline M. Yoachim
“Our Specialty is Xenogeology,” Alan Dean Foster

…

Read More Read More