Black Gate

Are you a Lovecraft fan? Are you just a little bit tired of nodding to yourself at the 5-page mark at every tale, thinking, “Well, this is going to end horribly.” And are you tired of being right every single time?

If you are, you’re not alone. And editors Jesse Bullington (The Enterprise of Death) and Molly Tanzer (Vermilion) have the answer: Swords v Cthulhu, a collection of brand new sword & sorcery Mythos fiction by a stellar list of contributors — including Black Gate authors Jonathan L. Howard and Jeremiah Tolbert, plus Michael Cisco, John Hornor Jacobs, John Langan, E. Catherine Tobler, Carrie Vaughn, and many others — featuring stalwart adventurers squaring off against the greatest horrors of the Lovecraftian pantheon. Okay, sure, most of the tales within probably still end horribly. By at least the protagonists go down swinging!

What hope has a humble adventurer when faced with a fight against Cthulhu himself? No matter; the true swordsperson cares not for hope — only for the bite of steel against flesh, whether that flesh be eldritch or more conventional. So, grab your khukuri knife, your iklwa spear, or a legendary blade and journey with us from ancient Rome to feudal Japan, from the Dreamlands to lands there are no names for in any of the tongues of men.

If you have any doubts, inside this tome you can consult ask some of Lovecraftiana’s hottest voices, be they seasoned veterans or relative newcomers… Hope be damned. Glory awaits!

Relentlessly hurtling you into madness and danger are: Natania Barron, Eneasz Brodski, Nathan Carson, Michael Cisco, Andrew S. Fuller, A. Scott Glancy, Orrin Grey, Jason Heller, Jonathan L. Howard, John Hornor Jacobs , John Langan, L. Lark, Remy Nakamura, Carlos Orsi, M. K. Sauer, Ben Stewart, E. Catherine Tobler, Jeremiah Tolbert, Laurie Tom, Carrie Vaughn, Wendy N. Wagner, and Caleb Wilson.

Swords v. Cthulhu: Swift Bladed Action in the Horrific World of H.P. Lovecraft will be published by Stone Skin Press on August 1, 2016. It is 368 pages, priced at $13.99 in paperback. No news yet on a separate digital edition. See more details at the Stone Skin website, including teaser excerpts from many of the stories.

I quite enjoy Nina Allen’s regular column in Interzone magazine. Which I guess is kind of an odd way to introduce her, but it’s true. She’s also a fine short story writer who’s earned a lot of accolades in a short period of time — including the British Science Fiction BSFA Award, the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, and the Aeon Award. She’s been shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award four times, and was a finalist for the 2014 Shirley Jackson Award.

The Race is her first novel. It was first published in the UK by NewCon, a small press. Tor.com described it as “a progressive sci-fi novel set in a future Great Britain scarred by fracking and ecological collapse,” and Kirkus Reviews praised it as “a brilliantly weird world that’s utterly riveting.” Titan Books is re-issuing it in trade paperback in the UK and the US this month, with a knockout new cover designed by Julia Lloyd. Here’s the description.

A child is kidnapped with consequences that extend across worlds… A writer reaches into the past to discover the truth about a possible murder… Far away a young woman prepares for her mysterious future…

In a future scarred by fracking and ecological collapse, Jenna Hoolman’s world is dominated by illegal smartdog racing: greyhounds genetically modified with human DNA. When her young niece goes missing that world implodes… Christy’s life is dominated by fear of her brother, a man she knows capable of monstrous acts and suspects of hiding even darker ones. Desperate to learn the truth she contacts Alex, who has his own demons to fight… And Maree, a young woman undertaking a journey that will change her world forever.

The Race will be published by Titan Books on July 19, 2016. It is 400 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback and $7.99 for the digital edition. The cover was designed by Julia Lloyd. Read a brief excerpt from Chapter One at Tor.com.

Jonathan Strahan has edited some extremely impressive anthologies. In fact, we assessed his recent Meeting Infinity as the most successful anthology of 2016 (using our own highly subjective yardstick, of course.) His latest, Drowned Worlds, contains all-original fiction by some of the biggest names in SF, including Kim Stanley Robinson, Ken Liu, Paul McAuley, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Rachel Swirsky, Charlie Jane Anders, Lavie Tidhar, Jeffrey Ford, and James Morrow, and it promises to be just as interesting. On his Coode Street blog, Jonathan summarizes it thusly:

I think it’s sharp, pointed, timely and sometimes satirical. I think it’s about who we are when faced with disaster, and not about disaster. I think it makes for good reading.

Here’s the publisher’s take:

Last call for the Gone World…

We live in a time of change. The Anthropocene Age – the time when human-induced climate change radically reshapes the world – is upon us. Sea water is flooding the streets of Florida, island nations are rapidly disappearing beneath the waves, the polar icecaps are a fraction of what they once were, and distant, exotic places like Australia are slowly baking in the sun.

Drowned Worlds asks fifteen of the top science fiction and fantasy writers working today to look to the future, to ask how will we survive? Do we face a period of dramatic transition and then a new technology-influenced golden age, or a long, slow decline? Swim the drowned streets of Boston, see Venice disappear beneath the waves, meet a woman who’s turned herself into a reef, traverse the floating garbage cities of the Pacific, search for the elf stones of Antarctica, or spend time in the new, dark Dust Bowl of the American mid-west. See the future for what it is: challenging, exciting, filled with adventure, and more than a little disturbing.

Whether here on Earth or elsewhere in our universe, Drowned Worlds give us a glimpse of a new future, one filled with romance and adventure, all while the oceans rise…

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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I really enjoy dark fantasy and horror, but my hands are full just keeping up with the latest fantasy magazines and anthologies. It’s almost impossible to simultaneously stay on top of the excellent work being done in horror, in magazines like Sirenia Digest, Lackington’s, The Dark, and Nightmare, and anthologies like Aickman’s Heirs, Innsmouth Nightmares, Horrorology, Sing Me Your Scars, and many others.

That’s why I’m so grateful to editor Paula Guran, whose excellent Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror volumes — published every year since 2010 — have guided me towards the writers and editors doing really exemplary work. I look forward to new editions every year, and this year’s installment arrives in trade paperback from Prime Books next week.

Macabre meetings, sinister excursions, and deadly relationships; uncanny encounters; a classic ghost story featuring an American god; a historical murderer revived in a frightening new iteration; innovative Lovecraftian turns; shadowy fairy tales and weird myths; strange children, the unexpected, the supernatural, the surreal, and the all-too real… tales of the dark. Such stories have always fascinated us, and modern authors carry on the disquieting traditions of the past while inventing imaginative new ways to unsettle us. Chosen from a wide variety of venues, these stories are as eclectic and varied as shadows. This volume of 2015’s best dark fantasy and horror offers more than 500 pages of tales from some of today’s finest writers of the fantastique — sure to delight as well as disturb.

This year’s volume contains 30 short stories by Kelley Armstrong, Dale Bailey, Gemma File, Neil Gaiman, John Langan, Ken Liu, Seanan McGuire, Kelly Robson, Sofia Samatar, John Shirley, Angela Slatter, Catherynne M. Valente, Damien Angelica Walters, Kai Ashante Wilson, and many others.

Here’s the complete table of contents.

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I pretty much rode out the zombie horror wave without too much trauma. Zombies don’t scare me. Ditto for the paranormal romance boom a decade ago. Vampire, werewolves, and ghouls never really scared me much, either.

You know what does scare me? Spiders. Big, hairy, creepy spiders. Gahhh, I get the creeps just typing that. And now comes the debut horror novel by Ezekiel Boone, the terrifying tale of the emergence of an ancient species, dormant for over a thousand years, on the march once more. Andrew Pyper (The Damned and The Demonologist) calls it “old school global plague horror of the freakiest sort. A deft and nasty thriller,” and that’s good enough for me. The Hatching will be available in hardcover next week.

Deep in the jungle of Peru, where so much remains unknown, a black, skittering mass devours an American tourist whole. Thousands of miles away, an FBI agent investigates a fatal plane crash in Minneapolis and makes a gruesome discovery. Unusual seismic patterns register in a Kanpur, India earthquake lab, confounding the scientists there. During the same week, the Chinese government “accidentally” drops a nuclear bomb in an isolated region of its own country. As these incidents begin to sweep the globe, a mysterious package from South America arrives at a Washington, D.C. laboratory. Something wants out.

The world is on the brink of an apocalyptic disaster. An ancient species, long dormant, is now very much awake.

The Hatching will be published by Emily Bestler Books on July 5, 2016. It is $26 in hardcover, and $9.99 for the digital edition.

Robert Kroese is the author of Mercury Falls, Starship Grifters, and Disenchanted. His latest novel is a science fiction noir that reads like it takes place in the same L.A. as Blade Runner (except it’s a lot funnier). It follows two very different private investigators as they track an extremely valuable genetically engineered sheep through a dystopian future L.A. Worth checking out.

Los Angeles of 2039 is a baffling and bifurcated place. After the Collapse of 2028, a vast section of LA, the Disincorporated Zone, was disowned by the civil authorities, and became essentially a third world country within the borders of the city. Navigating the boundaries between DZ and LA proper is a tricky task, and there’s no one better suited than eccentric private investigator Erasmus Keane. When a valuable genetically altered sheep mysteriously goes missing from Esper Corporation’s labs, Keane is the one they call.

But while the erratic Keane and his more grounded partner, Blake Fowler, are on the trail of the lost sheep, they land an even bigger case. Beautiful television star Priya Mistry suspects that someone is trying to kill her — and she wants Keane to find out who. When Priya vanishes and then reappears with no memory of having hired them, Keane and Fowler realize something very strange is going on. As they unravel the threads of the mystery, it soon becomes clear that the two cases are connected — and both point to a sinister conspiracy involving the most powerful people in the city. Saving Priya and the sheep will take all of Keane’s wits and Fowler’s skills, but in the end, they may discover that some secrets are better left hidden.

The Big Sheep will be published by Thomas Dunne Books on June 28, 2016. It is 308 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover was designed by David Curtis. Click the images above for bigger versions.