30 September 2004

SF novel, one of four 'Foundation' books Asimov published in the '80s and '90s, follow-ups to his famous Foundation Trilogy first published as books in the early 1950s. The four are Foundation's Edge (1982, Hugo and Locus awards winner for best novel), Foundation and Earth (1986), Prelude to Foundation (1988), and Forward the Foundation (1993), all reissued this month with new covers.
(Tue 21 Sep 2004) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense

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Novelette about voodoo, love, music, and death, extracted from autobiography Treat It Gentle (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1960) by the famous jazz musician, about Bechet's grandfather. Presented as a chapbook by publisher Jacob Weisman in celebration of Tachyon Publications' ninth anniversary.
• For more about the author, see The Sidney Bechet Society, Ltd..
• Not yet listed on, but presumably available from, the publisher's site; also available from Borderlands Books.
(Thu 2 Sep 2004) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense

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Hard SF novel in Benford's "Galactic Center" sequence, following Great Sky River, concerning competition between biological and mechanical civilizations. This edition includes the 1999 novelette "A Hunger for the Infinite" first published in Robert Silverberg's anthology Far Horizons.
• The publisher's site has this description and an excerpt.
• Placed 4th in the 1990 Locus Poll for best SF novel.
(Wed 15 Sep 2004) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense

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Collection 10 stories, one a collaboration with Michael Swanwick. Stories include Dozois' back-to-back Nebula winning short stories "The Peacemaker" (1983) and "Morning Child" (1984), as well as six stories from the early 1970s, three of them Hugo and Nebula nominees: "A Special Kind of Morning", "A Kingdom by the Sea", and "Chains of the Sea".
• The introduction by Dozois recalls the places where he wrote each story.
• The Asimov's message board has this thread about the book, with an earlier, longer table of contents.
• Parent publisher Simon & Schuster's website has this description, which also mentions a story not in the final book.
(Mon 13 Sep 2004) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense

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SF novel about a minority of people who possess a genetic fluke that makes them immortal, a benefit transferrable through blood transfusion, and the rich and powerful who hunt them for their blood. The book was the basis of a short-lived TV series, The Immortal, which in turn was novelized by the author as The Immortal.
• The original novel was a a fix-up of four previously published novelettes. This edition is revised and updated with additional material, including "Elixir" from the May 2004 Analog. There's also a new introduction by Greg Bear, and a preface by the author.
• The publisher's site has this description, and an excerpt.
(Tue 14 Sep 2004) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense

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Fantasy novel (or SF novel in satiric fantasy guise) about a combat veteran who answers a personals ad and gets a job with the empress of twenty universes. This is a new hardcover edition, with an afterword by Samuel R. Delany copyright 1979 (presumably his introduction to the 1979 Gregg Press edition).
• It was 1964 Hugo Award nominee -- the winner that year was Simak's Way Station, listed below.
(Tue 21 Sep 2004) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense

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Short novel first published as a serial in Astounding Science Fiction magazine, February and March 1950, and apparently never before published in book form in the US (though the publisher's site mentions foreign editions under the title Return to Tomorrow). [Update 1 October: correspondent Andrew J. Breitenbach reports the existence of a 1954 Ace edition, under the title Return to Tomorrow -- Ace # S-66, 157pp, $0.25 -- so the present edition is a reprint, not a first book edition.] It's about a young man kidnapped from Earth to become an officer aboard a relativistic starship.
• It was nominated for a 2001 Retro Hugo Award as best novella (of 1950), losing to Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold the Moon".
• The book has its own website, www.tothestars.com, with a description, an excerpt, and samples of music written for the book by Chick Corea.
• The Amazon page reproduces Publishers Weekly's starred review, from its 8/30 issue, which ends "Readers used to today's bloated SF tomes will appreciate Hubbard's ability to pack an epic into relatively few pages — this is indeed golden SF from the Golden Age."
(Thu 2 Sep 2004) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense

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SF novel, a coming-of-age post-holocaust autobiography of a runaway slave boy who becomes a man.
• The book's setting was shared by later Pangborn works including The Judgment of Eve (1966) and The Company of Glory (1975), which are among forthcoming titles from publisher Old Earth Books.
• The novel was a 1965 Hugo Award nominee for best novel. Pangborn won the 2003 Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award.
(Fri 3 Sep 2004) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense

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SF novel about Martian observers hidden in human society, interested in particular in a 12-year-old boy who might become humanity's best hope, or its worst tyrant.
• Available from publisher Old Earth Books.
• Winner of the 1955 International Fantasy Award.
(Fri 3 Sep 2004) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense

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SF novel (a fix-up of previously published short stories), about a far future where robots and intelligent dogs have inherited the Earth, as men have abandoned cities and journeyed outward to the stars, or inward into their own minds.
• This is a Clifford D. Simak Centennial Edition, available from Old Earth Books, whose site has this description. This edition includes the final City story "Epilog", first published in 1973, and Simak's introduction from the 1976 Ace edition.
• Winner of the 1953 International Fantasy Award.
(Fri 3 Sep 2004) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense

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SF novel about a Civil War veteran whose Wisconsin farm is actually a 'way station' for a galactic federation's transit network.
• Winner of the Hugo Award in 1964 as best novel of 1963; and generally considered Simak's best novel.
• This is a Clifford D. Simak Centennial Edition, available from Old Earth Books, whose site has this description.
(Fri 3 Sep 2004) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense

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SF novel in which various artificial languages are used in an attempt to dominate the society on the planet Pao. It's one of Vance's best-regarded early novels.
• This follows the revised text of the Vance Integral Edition.
• The publisher's site has this description.
• Amazon has several detailed reader reviews.
(Fri 27 Aug 2004) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense

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Collection of 18 stories spanning Varley's career. There are 5 previously uncollected stories, including "Just Another Perfect Day" (from Twilight Zone, 1989), "The Bellman" (from Asimov's, 2003), and "Good Intentions" (from Playboy, 1992), but most of the book consists of Varley's classic early stories from the mid-1970s to the early '80s, when he was the hottest young writer in SF, bringing new ideas to classic SF settings and situations. Stories include "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank", "The Phantom of Kansas", "Beatnik Bayou", "Air Raid", Hugo, Nebula, and Locus winner "The Persistence of Vision", Hugo winner "The Pusher", and Hugo, Nebula, and Locus winner "Press Enter []".
• The author provides an introduction, introductions to each story, and an afterword.
• Varley's website has this page listing the complete table of contents.
(Tue 7 Sep 2004) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense

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Collection of 36 stories, including numerous stories not collected in earlier collections, from "House of Ancestors" (1968) and the four stories from Roger Elwood's Continuum anthologies (1974-75), to Nebula nominee "A Cabin on the Coast" (1984), "The Detective of Dreams" (1980), "The Map" (1984), "Silhouette" (1975), World Fantasy Award nominee "In the House of Gingerbread" (1987), and Hugo nominee "The Woman the Unicorn Loved" (1981).
• Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review of the original hardcover edition.
(Thu 2 Sep 2004) • Purchase this book from Amazon | BookSense

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These are the stories that the dogs tell when the fires burn high and the wind is from the north. Then each family circle gathers at the hearthstone and the pups sit silently and listen and when the story's done they ask many questions:

"What is Man?" they'll ask.

Or perhaps: "What is a city?"

Or: "What is a war?"

Alan Corday stopped, momentarily blinded by the flash of a Mars-bound liner getting free from Earth. For an instant the skeletal racks had flashed red against the ink of sky and the one used now pulsated as it cooled. Corday did not like to be blinded here in this place, even for a moment. He wiped a tired hand against his blouse, carefully reassuring himself that his papers and wallet were still in place.

The old house had been hit by something sometime during the war and mashed nearly flat. The front was caved in as though crushed by a giant fist: wood pulped and splintered, beams protruding at odd angles like broken fingers, the second floor collapsed onto the remnants of the first. The rubble of a chimney covered everything with a red mortar blanket. On the right, a gaping hole cross-sectioned the ruins, laying bare all the strata of fused stone and plaster and charred wood — everything curling back on itself like the lips of a gangrenous wound. Weeds had swarmed up the low hillside from the road and swept over the house, wrapping the ruins in wildflowers and grapevines, softening the edges of destruction with green.

This is the story of how I went to the Nearside and found old Lester and maybe grew up a little. And about time, too, as Carnival would say.