Black Gate

Jonathan Strahan’s Infinity books have gradually earned a reputation as the finest ongoing anthology series in the genre — and perhaps, one of the finest in the history of the genre. In my June article The Most Successful Anthology of 2015, I pointed out that over half of the contents of the fourth book in the series had been selected for Year’s Best volumes. If that’s not a record, it has to be close.  In just two weeks the fifth volume in the series, Bridging Infinity, arrives in trade paperback from Solaris, and I am very much looking forward to it.

BUILDING TOWARDS TOMORROW

Sense of wonder is the lifeblood of science fiction. When we encounter something on a truly staggering scale – metal spheres wrapped around stars, planets rebuilt and repurposed, landscapes re-engineered, starships bigger than worlds – the only response we have is reverence, admiration, and possibly fear at something that is grand, sublime, and extremely powerful.

Bridging Infinity puts humanity at the heart of that experience, as builder, as engineer, as adventurer, reimagining and rebuilding the world, the solar system, the galaxy and possibly the entire universe in some of the best science fiction stories you will experience.

Bridging Infinity continues the award-winning Infinity Project series of anthologies with new stories from Alastair Reynolds, Pat Cadigan, Stephen Baxter, Charlie Jane Anders, Tobias S.Buckell, Karen Lord, Karin Lowachee, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Gregory Benford, Larry Liven, Robert Reed, Pamela Sargent, Allen Steele, Pat Murphy, Paul Doherty, An Owomoyela, Thoraiya Dyer and Ken Liu.

The previous volumes in the series are:

Engineering Infinity (2010)
Edge of Infinity (2012)
Reach For Infinity (2014)
Meeting Infinity (2015)

And here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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Simon Curtis is a young musician who’s had a lot of success as an independent recording artist. His debut novel introduces us to seventeen-year-old Isaak, who discovers he’s not truly human…  and that there’s a secret government organization dedicated to eradicating those like him. Boy Robot is is fast-paced science fiction debut from SImon & Schuster’s teen imprint, Simon Pulse, arriving in hardcover at the end of the month.

There once was a boy who was made, not created.

In a single night, Isaak’s life changed forever.

His adoptive parents were killed, a mysterious girl saved him from a team of soldiers, and he learned of his own dark and destructive origin. An origin he doesn’t want to believe, but one he cannot deny.

Isaak is a Robot: a government-made synthetic human, produced as a weapon and now hunted, marked for termination. He and the Robots can only find asylum with the Underground — a secret network of Robots and humans working together to ensure a coexistent future.

To be protected by the Underground, Isaak will have to make it there first. But with a deadly military force tasked to find him at any cost, his odds are less than favorable.

Now Isaak must decide whether to hold on to his humanity and face possible death… or to embrace his true nature in order to survive, at the risk of becoming the weapon he was made to be.

Boy Robot will be published by Simon & Schuster on October 25, 2016. It is 415 pages, priced at $17.99 in hardcover and $10.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Will Staehle.

Southern California exists on borrowed life. Four hundred miles of water, sucked from the Sierra Nevada into a river of steel and rebar and concrete. It plows through hot basins of Joshua trees, up barren hills dusted with scrub oaks, through sunblasted pumping stations that roil and hiss. It traces a line along the edge of Lancaster, California, springing tract homes and strip malls, green lawns and chlorine-wet children. It is a thing that does not belong, and like all such things, there is an old story at its heart.
~  Five Tales of the Aqueduct, By Spencer Ellsworth

I have a few distinct childhood memories: racing through my great-grandfather’s orange groves on his retired cowponies with my cousins; attending a funeral for the son of my grandfather’s clients, Mexican ranchers from Monterey, after the man was gunned down by an LA gang; the colors and scents of San Francisco’s Chinatown; learning how to avoid stumbling over cartel drug fields; the effigy hanging over Main Street, celebrating my hometown’s violent judicial past; visiting my uncle, who was employed as an electrical engineer on the Predators. A mélange of cultures and histories, the weird and illegal and far-future all mixed into that wild, weird empire-state known as California.

It’s no wonder that California is the land of science fiction and weird fantasy. There’s a little bit of everything there, all mixed together and blurring together, and where the lines cross, it can get weird. One of my favorite authors, Clark Ashton Smith, wrote about my hometown, referencing El Dorado moonshine and the Placerville Bank. He corresponded with H.P. Lovecraft, the masters of Eastern and Western Weird frequently mingling their tales and sharing characters and mythologies.

And that’s just one example. A small sample of founding SF authors from, inspired by, or living in California includes Bradbury, Le Guin, Dick, Vance, Gibson, Powers, and Heinlein. The state still inspires many authors and series, and Silicon Valley itself is like something out of a science fiction novel.

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Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a Mexican born Canadian fantasy writer. Her debut novel, Signal to Noise, was a finalist for the British Fantasy, Locus, Aurora and Solaris awards, and made seven year’s best lists, including B&N’s Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, Buzzfeed, i09, and Tor.com. Earlier this year she was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award for her Lovecraftian anthology She Walks in Shadows.

Her second novel, Certain Dark Things, is one of the most highly anticipated releases of the fall. Paul Tremblay (A Head Full of Ghosts) says it “is steeped in the history of Mexico City and vampire lore and yet manages to deftly re-invent the bloodsucker… Certain Dark Things packs a wallop.” And Lavie Tidhar says:

Not since Anne Rice’s seminal Interview with the Vampire has the vampire story been so radically reimagined. Silvia Moreno-Garcia reinvents it for the 21st century in this high-concept, explosive tale of narco-vampires in Mexico City, and just when you thought it was safe to step out of the coffin. Certain Dark Things is dark, inimitable, and so very, very cool. Unmissable.

Sounds pretty intriguing already! Here’s the description.

Welcome to Mexico City… An Oasis In A Sea Of Vampires…

Domingo, a lonely garbage-collecting street kid, is busy eeking out a living when a jaded vampire on the run swoops into his life.

Atl, the descendant of Aztec blood drinkers, must feast on the young to survive and Domingo looks especially tasty. Smart, beautiful, and dangerous, Atl needs to escape to South America, far from the rival narco-vampire clan pursuing her. Domingo is smitten.

Her plan doesn’t include developing any real attachment to Domingo. Hell, the only living creature she loves is her trusty Doberman. Little by little, Atl finds herself warming up to the scrappy young man and his effervescent charm.

And then there’s Ana, a cop who suddenly finds herself following a trail of corpses and winds up smack in the middle of vampire gang rivalries.

Vampires, humans, cops, and gangsters collide in the dark streets of Mexico City. Do Atl and Domingo even stand a chance of making it out alive?

Certain Dark Things will be published by Thomas Dunne Books on October 25, 2016. It is 323 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover was designed by Kerri Resnick. Get more details at Silvia’s website.

Every once in a while a really stellar anthology comes along that generates a lot of pre-publication whispers, gradually growing to a steady buzz of excitement. This year that anthology is The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales.

The Starlit Wood was assembled by Dominik Parisien, editor of the highly acclaimed Clockwork Canada, and Navah Wolfe, editor at one of the most exiting new imprints in the industry, Saga Press. Several of my friends have privately tipped me off that this is the best fantasy anthology of the year, and the public accolades have just started to pour in. Terri Windling calls it “Excellent… I loved it,” Jeff VanderMeer says it’s “Classy, smart, and entertaining… and featuring the best and most exciting fantasy writers working in the field today.” And Publishers Weekly raved, saying it’s “A rich sample of what awaits us in the world of fairy tales.”

For anyone looking to revisit the wondrous (and frequently dark!) world of fairy tales — or who just wants to a taste of what the best writers in fantasy are doing today — The Starlit Wood is your best opportunity this year. It contains stories by Aliette de Bodard, Amal El-Mohtar, Jeffrey Ford, Max Gladstone, Margo Lanagan, Seanan McGuire, Garth Nix, Naomi Novik, Sofia Samatar, Catherynne M. Valente, Genevieve Valentine, and many others, and will be released in hardcover this month by Saga Press.

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I write about a lot of upcoming books in my Future Treasures columns. But I can honestly say I haven’t been this excited for a pair of books in years.

Saga Press is publishing a massive two-volume collection of short stories and novellas from the legendary Ursula K. Le Guin, one of the finest writers we have. Le Guin has published 21 novels — including The Left Hand of Darkness (1970) and The Dispossessed (1974), both of which won Hugo and Nebula awards, and the Wizard of Earthsea series — but my love for Le Guin began with her brilliant short fiction. Stories like “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” “Vaster Than Empires and More Slow,” the World Fantasy and Nebula Award winner “Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight,” and the Nebula Award-winning “Solitude.”

The two books, sold separately or in a deluxe box set, are must-have volumes for any serious science fiction collector.

The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin collects virtually all of her award-winning longer fiction, starting with 1971’s “Vaster Than Empires and More Slow,” the tale of a scientific expedition doomed to end in madness and death unless two of its members can unravel the secrets of a very alien planet, through 2002’s “Paradises Lost,” in which the fifth generation on a giant colony ship find their way of life — and their mission — threatened when a strange new religion sweeps through the ship.

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