Lovers of SFF can only deplore the late year’s outbreak of divisiveness and animosity, with the hostile parties displaying a willingness to destroy the genre in order to deny it to the other. Calls for unity go unheard while the partisans make plans to continue the hostilities in the upcoming year. The only bright spot is that ordinary readers appear to have largely ignored the entire thing.
While I’m deploring,
Aphelion • Webzine of SF and fantasy; nonpaying; since 2001 • Format: Online • Frequency: Monthly • http://www.aphelion-webzine.com/
December/January 2016— Issue 202 • This issue has a long fiction by Cat Struss, short stories by Jason Arsenault, George Schaade, Jonathan Snyder, Michael J. Edwards, and Sergio Palumbo. • There’s also flash fiction, poetry, and an editorial.
(Wed 30 Dec 2015)
Beneath Ceaseless Skies • Literary adventure fantasy, since 2008;
I started writing Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard late in 1989. I’d been writing short stories for a while, but hadn’t sold any. I’d recently completed my doctorate in cognitive psychology and was teaching at a small, liberal arts college in Sarasota, Florida, and to this day, more than twenty-five years later, I really can’t say what made me decide to write a novel. But I did.
And it was horrible. ...Read More
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* Chude-Sokei, Louis : The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics (Wesleyan University Press 978-0-8195-7576-0, $85, 280pp, hardcover, December 2015) • Nominal Publication Date: Tue 29 Dec 2015 • Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 978-0-8195-7578-4
Nonfiction study of the histories of race and technology, covering topics including Victorian SF, cybertheory, and artificial intelligence. • Wesleyan’s site has this description with a preview function. • There’s also a
Title Debut / #wks on any list NYT 01.03 WP 12.27 LAT 12.27 USAT 12.20 PW 12.28 Amz (12.28) UK: Amz UK (12.28) Canada: Amz.ca (12.28) Items on list -x- number of lists surveyed 30×4 10×2 15×2 150 15×3 100 100 100 Hardcovers Kaufman/Kristoff, Illuminae 11.02.15 / 9 ...Read More Read more
» LA Times: Elizabeth Hand reviews Leena Krohn
» LA Review of Books: Toward a New Fantastic: Stop Calling It Science Fiction by Joshua Adam Anderson ...Read More
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Beth Cato was born Beth Davis on January 13, 1980 in Hanford CA. She graduated from high school early and began college at 16. At age 20 she married Navy sailor Jason Cato, and they traveled around the country, spending time in South Carolina and Washington state. After her husband left the Navy, they settled in Arizona.
Cato began publishing short fiction, poetry, and non-fiction starting around 2009. Her first
Archivist Wasp, Nicole Kornher-Stace (Small Beer/Big Mouth House, 978-1618730978, 256 pp, tp, $14.00) May 2015.Nicole Kornher-Stace’s new novel Archivist Wasp is an utterly beguiling and intense book on bravery for teens. Set in a post-technological world that harkens back to the Middle Ages, the story is steeped in myth and fear with levels of brutality that put The Hunger Games to shame. It is also utterly unique and further
Writer George Clayton Johnson, 86, died December 25, 2015. Johnson is best known in the genre for co-writing Logan’s Run (1967) with William F. Nolan, and for his work as a screenwriter. He wrote several episodes of The Twilight Zone as well as the debut episode of Star Trek, “The Man Trap” (1966).
Johnson was born July 10, 1929 in Cheyenne WY. He served the Army before enrolling at ...Read More
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The Thing Itself, by Adam Roberts (Orion/Gollancz 978-0575127722, £16.99, 368pp, trade paperback) December 2015
The clever formal construction of Adam Roberts’s new book (God bless his craftsmanly productivity, which keeps us fans reliably supplied with a fresh annual fix, year after revolutionary year) is just part of the novel’s enigmatic allure. The first thirty pages are a complete narrative arc, a short story, more or less, that could have
One thing about fantastical fiction that I like is it’s a universal condition — you find examples from all over the world of writers expressing themselves through the fantastical because sometimes there’s no other way to get across a unique idea or perspective. Everywhere, too, this impulse or way of thinking about the world is different — sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes in vastly different ways. So in addition to ...Read More
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An Apprentice to Elves, Sarah Monette & Elizabeth Bear (Tor 978-0-7653-2471-9, $26.99, 336pp, hc) October 2015.
All three books of the Iskryne trilogy by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear can make the reader feel the mixed emotions (frustration, challenge, exhaustion, delight) of a foster child being tutored in strange crafts a long way from home: someone like Alfgyfa, whose story dominates final volume An Apprentice to Elves. The
In the previous column I looked at the first print digests of 2016, now it’s time for the last month’s ezines of 2015. This December is dominated by the Lightspeed consortium, with another Destroys issue in addition to the regular publications.
» Chicago Tribune: Gary K. Wolfe reviews China Miéville and anthologies from Jonathan Strahan and Greg Bear
» Washington Post: Best science-fiction and fantasy books, December edition: Nancy Hightower reviews China Miéville, Lawrence M. Schoen, Johanna Sinisalo
» Jeff VanderMeer’s Epic List of Favorite Books Read in 2015
» NPR: No Warp Drives, No Transporters: Science Fiction Authors Get Real, about books by Andy Weir, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Neal ...Read More
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* Files, Gemma : Experimental Film (ChiZine Publications 978-1771483490, $16.99, 352pp, trade paperback, December 2015) • Nominal Publication Date: Thu 17 Dec 2015 • Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9781771483506
Fantasy ghost story about a woman with an autistic son who makes a discovery about an early 20th-century Canadian filmmaker. • ChiZine’s site has this description with blurbs by Laird Barron and Jeff VanderMeer.
• Purchase this book
Tor.com has announced that, effective January 7, 2016, they will no longer accept unsolicited short fiction submissions:
We’ve found some of our favorite, most innovative, and most surprising stories through slush. However, in recent years we’ve found that more and more of our stories have been coming to us from different sources. As more of our stories are being brought in by consulting editors, fewer slots on our schedule can ...Read More
Read moreTitle Debut / #wks on any list NYT 12.27 WP 12.20 LAT 12.20 USAT 12.13 PW 12.21 Amz (12.21) UK: Amz UK (12.21) Canada: Amz.ca (12.21) Items on list -x- number of lists surveyed 30×4 10×2 15×2 150 15×3 100 100 100 Hardcovers Kaufman/Kristoff, Illuminae 11.02.15 / ...Read More Read more
by Gary Westfahl
An introductory disclaimer: although I have repeatedly watched, vividly remember, and still cherish the first three Star Wars films – which I still insist upon calling by their original titles, Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Return of the Jedi (1983) – I could never force myself to watch any of the three “prequel” films in their entirety, and I have no familiarity with
Analog Science Fiction and Fact • Science fiction and nonfiction; published since 1930 (originally Astounding); edited, since April 2013, by Trevor Quachri • Format: Print • Frequency: Near-monthly (10 issues/year) • http://www.analogsf.com/
January/February 2016— Vol. 136 No. 1&2, $7.99, 192pp, cover art by Maurizio Manzieri • This double issue has a novella by Wil McCarthy, novelettes by Caroline M. Yoachim & Tina Connolly, Grey Rollins, Dave Creek, and David
Made to Kill, by Adam Christopher (Tor 978-0-7653-7918-4, $24.99, 240pp, hardcover) November 2015
Adam Christopher’s first novel, Empire State, appeared only in 2011. In the short interval since, he fleshed out that dieselpunk duology with The Age Atomic; completed another series consisting of The Burning Dark and The Machine Awakes; produced two singletons, Seven Wonders and Hang Wire; and now has launched “The LA Trilogy”
Bara, Dave : Impulse (DAW 978-0756410667, $7.99, 384pp, mass market paperback, December 2015) • Nominal Publication Date: Tue 1 Dec 2015 • Lightship Chronicles #1 (First edition: DAW, February 2015)
Military SF novel, first in a series and the author’s first novel, about an officer in the Unified Space Navy given a new assignment following an attack on a Lightship. • Penguin’s site has this description. • The second volume,
Author Peter Dickinson, 88, died December 16, 2015 in Winchester, Hampshire on his birthday.
Peter Malcolm de Brissac Dickinson was born December 16, 1927 in Livingstone, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). He is best known for his numerous works for children and young adults, and is one of only seven authors to win two Carnegie Medals (he was the first); no one has three. His debut YA The Weathermonger (1968) began ...Read More
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Europe at Midnight, Dave Hutchinson (Rebellion 978-1781083987, $7.99, 384pp, pb) November 2015.
Dave Hutchinson’s Europe in Autumn was one of the real delights of 2014, a perfectly pitched riff on the spy thriller that married the shifting realities of Christopher Priest to a blackly comic vision of the absurdities and contradictions of European nationalism.
Now, 18 months later, we have Europe at Midnight, a novel set in the
Authors Karen Coombs and Sallie Wolf are the 2015 recipients of the Jane Yolen Mid-List Author Award. The $3,000 annual grant, created and funded by Jane Yolen, honors mid-list authors “and aims to help raise awareness about their current works-in-progress.”
For more information, including how to apply for the grant, see the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) official website. ...Read More
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Author David Rain, 54, who wrote SF as Tom Arden, died December 15, 2015 of cancer.
Arden is best known for the five-book Orokon epic fantasy series, beginning with The Harlequin’s Dance (1997). He also wrote standalone novels Shadow Black (2002) and The Translation of Bastian Test (2005), as well as Doctor Who novella Nightdreamers (2002), and numerous stories, reviews, and critical articles. As David Rains he published The ...Read More
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* Allen, Mike, & Anita Allen, eds. : Mythic Delirium, Vol. 2 (Mythic Delirium 978-0-9889124-5-8, $14.95, trade paperback, December 2015, cover art Galen Dara) • Nominal Publication Date: Mon 7 Dec 2015
Anthology of stories and poems reprinted from the second year of online ‘zine Mythic Delirium. • Authors include Jane Yolen, Rose Lemberg, Margo Lanagan, Sonya Taaffe, Geoffrey A. Landis, and C.S. MacCath. • Amazon’s “Look Inside” function provides
Title Debut / #wks on any list NYT 12.20 WP 12.13 LAT 12.13 USAT 12.06 PW 12.14 Amz (12.14) UK: Amz UK (12.14) Canada: Amz.ca (12.14) Items on list -x- number of lists surveyed 30×4 10×2 15×2 150 15×3 100 100 100 Hardcovers Atwood, The Heart Goes Last ...Read More Read more
Chuck David Wendig was born April 22, 1976 and grew up in New Hope PA. He attended Queens University in Charlotte NC, where he studied English and religion, graduating in 1998, and ‘‘worked various bizarre day jobs, as many writers do’’ before becoming a full-time freelancer.
He published a story in 1997 as C.D. Wendig, and another in 2000 as C. David Wendig, but the bulk of his fiction publications
Gypsy Plus…, by Carter Scholz (PM Press 978-1-62963-118-9, $13, 160pp, trade paperback) November 2015
To examine the forty-year-long bibliography of Carter Scholz at ISFDB is to dream of alternate timelines. First, a continuum where, perhaps, circumstances—interior and exterior to the author—allowed Scholz to produce a far greater amount of fiction than the modestly substantial amount on display. But also we can imagine a timeline where this exact same CV
Trying to close out the old year, and on comes the new one with January issues of the digests, beginning with a double from Analog.
Featuring a novella from Wil McCarthy. If the zine can find more like this one, we could look forward to a good year.
“Wyatt Earp 2.0” by Wil McCarthyJoe R. Lansdale is the 2015 recipient of the Raymond Chandler lifetime achievement award, “Italy’s top lifetime achievement honor” for noir and thriller writers. He will be honored at the Courmayeur Noir in Festival in Italy, to be held December 8-13, 2015. Prior winners include J.G. Ballard, P.D. James, and Donald Westlake. ...Read More
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