New and Notable Books
Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt (Harmony 5/02) The unfinished title novel is collected here along with a wealth of articles, essays, interviews, and correspondence, most displaying Adams’s trademark humor. A must for his many fans.
Poul Anderson, Going for Infinity (Tor 6/02) In this impressive collection, Anderson shares memories of six decades of SF to go with the 18 stories - including three that won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.
Mike Ashley, ed., The Mammoth Book of Science Fiction (Carroll & Graf 6/02) Ashley presents his choice of 22 of ‘‘the most intriguing and challenging’’ SF stories, most from the 1950s and the 1990s, showing the differences and the similarities, with two new stories by Stephen Baxter and Eric Brown.
Richard Calder, Frenzetta (Four Walls Eight Windows 6/02) A reanimated corpse and his love Frenzetta, a half-rat, half-human chimera, seek the legendary sanctuary of the moon in this off-beat, far-future alternate-world SF novel full of sex and violence and other fun things.
Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, eds., The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest (Viking 5/02) This YA/adult crossover volume features 15 stories and three poems about the Green Man and other nature spirits by a standout crew of authors including Patricia A. McKillip, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Gregory Maguire, and Neil Gaiman.
Greg Egan, Schild’s Ladder (Eos 5/02) Egan explores post-human possibilities in this far-future hard SF novel of a new kind of space-time that’s gobbling up our own, and researchers torn between destroying it or finding a way to co-exist with it.
Jeffrey Ford, The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant and Other Stories (Golden Gryphon 6/02) Collection of 16 strange and often surprising stories by an award-winning author noted for his literary, sometimes surreal, style.
Jeffrey Ford, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque (Morrow 6/02) A painter is hired to do a portrait without ever looking at his subject in this artful and macabre historical thriller set in 1890s New York City.
Kathleen Ann Goonan, Light Music (Eos 5/02) The fourth and final volume of Goonan’s acclaimed nanotech series expands on her ideas of music, mathematics, quantum physics, the power of stories and much more.
Hiromi Goto, The Kappa Child (Red Deer Press 5/02) The winner of the 2001 James Tiptree, Jr. Award, this Canadian cross-cultural contemporary fantasy novel makes its official appearance in the US.
David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer, eds., Year’s Best SF 7 (Eos 6/02) The latest in this series of annual SF anthologies presents 19 stories from 2001, selected by noted editor Hartwell.
David Herter, Evening’s Empire (Tor 6/02) In this evocative contemporary fantasy, a composer working on an operatic version of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea moves to a small coastal Oregon town with a fantastic secret.
Judith Merril & Emily Pohl-Weary, Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril (Between the Lines 3/02) The autobiography of one of SF’s most influential figures, pieced together by her granddaughter, Emily Pohl-Weary, from unfinished memoirs, interviews, and correspondence.
Lyda Morehouse, Fallen Host (Roc 5/02) Satan desperately seeks the antichrist in this engagingly offbeat futuristic fantasy of organized religion, artificial intelligences, rock bands, and angels, sequel to Archangel Protocol.
John Pelan, ed., The Darker Side: Generations of Horror (Roc 5/02) This anthology gathers 27 new stories by some of the hottest names in horror today, including Caitlín R. Kiernan, Peter Crowther, Poppy Z. Brite, and Richard Laymon.
Kim Stanley Robinson, ed., Nebula Awards Showcase 2002 (Roc 4/02) The 36th volume in this annual anthology series presents the 2000 Nebula Award-winning stories and an excerpt from Greg Bear’s winning novel, Darwin’s Radio, plus two nominated stories and nine commentaries on the state of the world and SF by writers including Damon Knight, Gene Wolfe, and John Clute.
Rudy Rucker, Spaceland (Tor 6/02) Mathematician Rucker gives Flatland a major upgrade in this tale of a Silicon Valley would-be hotshot who meets a woman from a four-dimensional world who has a business proposition in mind.
Robert Silverberg & Karen Haber, Fantasy: The Best of 2001 (ibooks 6/02) This best-of-the-year anthology weighs in with 11 stories by authors including Ursula K. Le Guin, Lucius Shepard, and Ted Chiang.
Evangeline Walton, The Mabinogion Tetralogy (Overlook Press 3/02) The four novels of Walton’s classic retelling of Welsh myth are gathered for the first time in a single volume.
Jack Williamson, Spider Island: The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson, Volume Four (Haffner Press 6/02) This ambitious series collecting the shorter works of Williamson continues with 12 stories and seven non-fiction pieces from the late 1930s, with an afterword by the author commenting on the works and the times in which they were written.
Elizabeth R. Wollheim & Sheila E. Gilbert, eds., 30th Anniversary DAW: Fantasy and 30th Anniversary DAW: Science Fiction (DAW 5/02) The folks at DAW celebrate 30 years of publishing with these two anthologies featuring original stories by some of DAW’s most popular authors. SF authors include Ian Watson, Brian Aldiss, and C.J. Cherryh; among the fantasy authors are Mercedes Lackey, Tanith Lee, and Andre Norton.
