Black Gate

We Could Be Heroes (Mira, November 30, 2021). Cover design: Elita Sidiropoulou

Okay, I’m a little late with this one (it was published nearly a year ago). But I just found it at Barnes & Noble a few weeks back, and it’s quickly floated up to the top of my TBR pile, so I claim special circumstances.

The superhero novel is enjoying its time in the sun right now. Veronica Roth had a bestseller with her superhero dark fantasy Chosen Ones; so did Marissa Meyer with her Renegades trilogy. But Mike Chen’s humorous novel of two former archrivals — one with the power to wipe minds, and one with super speed and strength — who meet in a memory loss support group and gradually realize they each hold the key to the other’s recovery, and the clues to a deadly mystery, is the one I’m clearing the decks for. Buzzfeed calls it “an incredibly fun and thoughtful take on superhero lore,” and Martin Cahill at Tor.com say it’s “Wonderful.”

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The Best American Science Fiction And Fantasy 2022 (Mariner Books, November 1, 2022)

The busier I get, the more I treasure editors. If there are unsung heroes in this business, they are the tireless editors who read towering stacks of unsolicited subs to sift out those few precious treasures that get you and me excited to go to the bookstore.

I appreciate editors of all kinds these days. The ones who acquire novels; the ones who edit magazines. But I especially cherish those who comb through hundreds of stories in venues large and small to bring us Year’s Best volumes every year. John Joseph Adams has been editing The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy since 2015, each year with a distinguished co-editor, and this year he partnered with Rebecca Roanhorse, author of Trail of Lightning, the 2019 Locus Award winner for Best First Novel, to bring us the eighth volume in the series, this one containing stories by Kelly Link, P. Djèlí Clark, Caroline M. Yoachim, Stephen Graham Jones, Aimee Ogden, Meg Elison, Nalo Hopkinson, Rich Larson, Sam J. Miller, and many others.

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Veronica Roth is the author of the hugely popular Divergent trilogy, adapted as an ill-fortuned 4-part film series that was canceled after three installments (Divergent, Insurgent, and Allegiant, Part One).

That’s the kind of thing that might sour me on the writing biz for good, but Roth has carried on admirably. You can’t blame her for losing her taste for young adult fiction though, and in the last few years she’s turned her skills to adult novels with the dark superhero tale The Chosen One, and her newest, Poster Girl, an SF noir.

She certainly seems to have adopted comfortably to her new niche. Library Journal called Poster Girl “Highly recommended for… lovers of Philip K. Dick’s thought-police science fiction,” high praise indeed. And Kirkus labels it a “wonderfully complex and nuanced book.”

Elisabeth Egan at The New York Times has one of the better long-form reviews, calling it “a fun, read-it-in-a-weekend novel, one that pairs well with Halloween candy, spiked cider and a smattering of neighborhood gossip.” I like the sound of that. Here’s her take.

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The Best of Lucius Shepard, Volumes One and Two (Subterranean Press,
August 2008 and December 2021). Covers by J. K. Potter and Armando Veve

I think the first thing I ever read by Lucius Shepard was his famous novella “R&R,” an ultra-realistic tale of American G.I’s in near-future Guatemala caught up in a senseless war guided by psychics, and fought by young men on a dangerous cocktail of combat drugs. It was unlike anything I’d ever read before, and it took home many of the industry’s top awards, including the Locus and Nebula. Shepard, who died in 2014, published a dozen novels — including Philip K. Dick nominee Life During Wartime (1987), Locus Award winner The Golden (1993) and A Handbook of American Prayer (2004) — but his major work was at short length.

Fourteen years ago William Schafer at Subterranean Press did the world a favor and published The Best of Lucius Shepard, a monumental volume collecting seventeen of his most famous and acclaimed works of short fiction. For most writers that would certainly be adequate, but it was not for Shepard, and at the end of last year Subterranean finally released a massive 848-companion volume containing over a dozen new tales, including Nebula nominee “A Traveler’s Tale,” Hugo Award-winner “Barnacle Bill the Spacer,” the Dragon Griaule tale “Liar’s House,” and three previously uncollected novellas.

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The Justice of Kings (Orbit, August 23, 2022). Cover by Martina Fackova

These days it’s all about blending genres. Dark fantasy police procedurals (Dan Stout’s The Carter Archives). High fantasy romance (Foz Meadow’s A Strange and Stubborn Endurance). Cthulhu mythos and epic fantasy (Jonathan Mayberry’s Kagen the Damned). If you can imagine it, then trust me, it’s out there.

Some genres go together better than others, though. For my money, the ideal pairing is the tightly plotted murder mystery, blended with the sprawling cast of an ambitious political fantasy. Turns out that perfectly describes Richard Swan’s brand new novel The Justice of Kings, released at the end of August by Orbit. Booklist labels it “Rich and interesting,” and Grimdark Magazine flat out calls it “Brilliant.” Here’s an excerpt from the enthusiastic starred review at Kirkus.

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The Actual Star (Harper Voyager reprint edition, August 16, 2022). Cover art by Monica Byrne

The trick to really staying on top of the best SF and fantasy, I’ve found, is to take the time to find a handful of excellent reviewers, and trust what they tell you. I’ve discovered over long years that Rich Horton is one of the most reliable and discerning readers out there, and this is what he posted on Facebook three days ago.

I just finished reading (via listening to) The Actual Star, by Monica Byrne. I don’t think it’s perfect, but I will say it is way more ambitious than any other 2021 SF novel I’ve read, and I strongly think it deserved a Hugo nomination.

By strange coincidence, I’d just picked up a copy of the Harper Voyager paperback reprint of The Actual Star, and had a copy to hand. See how fate works for you when you let it?

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