Jack Dann, The Rebel: An Imagined Life of James Dean
(HarperCollins/Morrow Aug 2004)
Dann revisits the 1960s with a twist in this gripping alternate history of a world in which James Dean didn’t die in 1955. Out from Flamingo Australia in May, this is now available for US readers.
Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, eds., The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm
(Viking Aug 2004)
Legendary editors Datlow & Windling return with this new anthology for young and old, a follow-up to World Fantasy Award-winner The Green Man, with 17 original stories by authors including Emma Bull, Delia Sherman, Patricia A. McKillip, and Jeffrey Ford, plus poems by Charles de Lint, Neil Gaiman, and Nan Fry.
Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link & Gavin Grant, eds., The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Seventeenth Annual Collection
(St. Martin's Griffin Aug 2004)
The longstanding leader in "year’s best" anthologies for fantasy and horror returns with a new editorial team-up, adding fantasy editors Link & Grant, The quality seems unaffected.
Jonathan R. Eller & William F. Touponce, Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction
(Kent State University Press Aug 2004)
A detailed, critical examination of Bradbury’s work, including chronological bibliographic lists of books, stories, and unpublished fiction.
Minister Faust, The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad
(Ballantine Del Rey Aug 2004)
Canadian radio personality/activist/comic/poet/teacher Malcolm Azania, who works as Minister Faust, mixes pop culture and the magical in this wildly inventive first novel of two underemployed African-Canadian buddies, a mysterious woman, and the search for a lost artifact.
James Alan Gardner, Radiant
(Eos Aug 2004)
The redoubtable Admiral Festina Ramos meets a female Explorer in many ways her opposite in this offbeat and intriguing SF adventure involving the idiosyncratic advanced intelligence called the Balrog and a planet with a deadly secret.
Alexander C. Irvine, One King, One Soldier
(Ballantine Del Rey Aug 2004)
Baseball, poetry, and myths ancient and modern combine in this unusual Arthurian fantasy, an updated version of the grail quest in which a wounded soldier in 1950s San Francisco learns he might be the Fisher King.
Greg Keyes, The Charnel Prince
(Ballantine Del Rey Aug 2004)
A princess seeks to claim the throne and save the world as the Briar King’s powers threaten to destroy mankind, but answers aren’t as clear cut as they initially seem in this second book of "The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone", an epic fantasy with an edge. "Keyes has created a world of ambiguous morality, strange magics, and remarkably complex characters." [Tim Pratt]
Nancy Kress, Crucible
(Tor Aug 2004)
Kress’s interest in biotechnology and its ethical implications fuel this powerful sequel to Crossfire. Humans caught in a war between two alien races ally with the more peaceful Vines, who hope to stop their enemies with an anti-aggressiveness virus.
Ian McDonald, River of Gods
(Simon & Schuster UK Jun 2004)
Ten characters from widely varied backgrounds deal with problems big and small in this ambitious SF novel set in the chaos and splendor of India in 2047, the centennial of its independence. "A triumphant panorama of mid-21st-century India…hugely adventurous and entertaining, sumptuously inventive and full of heart." [Nick Gevers]
China Miéville, Iron Council
(Ballantine Del Rey Jul 2004)
The third novel in a loose series starting in Perdido Street Station and The Scar. "A superb fantasy of social injustice, the capstone to the finest speculative utopian epic since Kim Stanley Robinson’s ‘Mars’ trilogy." [Nick Gevers]
Charles Stross, Iron Sunrise
(Ace Jul 2004)
Far-future space opera and high-grade thriller mix in this ebullient sequel to Singularity Sky. Rachel Mansour investigates the mysterious, deliberate destruction of a star of an inhabited system, a nova that sets off a deadly wave of energy - and a fleet of planet killers seeking vengeance against an innocent world.
Kim Wilkins, The Autumn Castle
(Gollancz Jun 2004)
An eerie, dark fantasy of friendship, art, pain, and magic, the first book of the "Europa Suite". A woman living in constant pain is drawn towards faeryland, while her childhood faery friend, the queen, is fascinated by the forbidden pleasures of the mortal world - unaware she is stalked by an artist seeking faery bones for his work.
