New SF, Fantasy, and Horror books seen : February 2005 Week 4

Collection of quotations, selected by V. Vale and Mike Ryan, from Ballard's fiction and nonfiction. Chapters group content by theme -- The Future; Media; Topography; Sex; Reflections; etc. -- from sources including uncollected articles and interviews, online chats, etc.
• The publisher's site has this description and some samples.

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Anthology of 24 previously-published essays on science fiction. Authors include Gary K. Wolfe, Barry N. Malzberg, Ursula K. Le Guin ("Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown"), Samuel R. Delany, Alexei and Cory Panshin, and Michael Swanwick ("A User's Guide to the Postmoderns"), with recent essays by Judith Berman ("Science Fiction without the Future"), David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer ("Space Opera Redefined"), Paul Kincaid ("On the Origins of Genre"), and James Patrick Kelly ("Slipstream").
• The publisher's site has this description along with the complete table of contents and a PDF file of Gunn's introduction.

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YA SF novel about alien Holekhors who arrive in 17th century England, during war between King Charles I and Parliament.
• Amazon has the Booklist review by Chris Sherman: "The riveting story has enough twists and turns, battles and bloodshed to intrigue even hardcore sf fans, but readers will also get a painless lesson in English history. Give this to teens who have read Harry Turtledove's Guns of the South..."
• The author's website has this page about the book, with quotes from reviews, and a first chapter excerpt.
• The cover image here, scanned from a review copy, is different from images shown on Amazon and elsewhere.

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Speculative nonfiction subtitled "A journey through creation, higher dimensions, and the future of the cosmos". Includes Notes, a Glossary, Recommended Reading, and an Index. Numerous SF authors and works are cited in the text-- Asimov, Bear, Dick, Adams, Wells, The Twilight Zone, The Matrix.
• Doubleday's site has this description, including back cover blurbs, and an excerpt.
• The author's site includes tour dates and a signing schedule.
• Amazon has reviews from PW and Booklist.

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Short novel consisting of a series of letters "sent beyond the sea from a city of insects", the first American book by a Finnish writer, with etchings and 'xylographies' by Inari Krohn.
• The publisher's site has this description.
• Amazon has Publishers Weekly's starred review, from its Nov. 15th issue, which calls the book a "brief, lyrical epistolary meditation on life, love and death".
• This book was one of Jeff VanderMeer's six favorite books of 2004: "Metastasized as a mini-series for the SF Channel, Tainaron would no doubt become B-movie material, but Krohn is a writer of the first rank - comparable to Kafka, or a more generous Lem. The novel contains scenes of startling beauty and strangeness that change how the reader sees the world. Krohn effortlessly melds the literal with the metaphorical, so that the narrator's exploration of the city through its inhabitants encompasses both the speculation of science fiction and the resonant symbolism of the surreal."

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Military SF novel with fantasy elements, about a future war between the United Free States and the tyrannical New Destiny. Sequel to There Will Be Dragons and Emerald Sea.
• Baen's site has this description with links to several chapters.
• Amazon has reader reviews.

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Collection of 13 stories, first published from 1957 to 1960; tenth in the ongoing series of books collecting all the short fiction by Theodore Sturgeon. This volume includes the title story, "The Man Who Lost the Sea", the first pure SF story to be included in the annual Best American Short Stories anthologies, as well as "A Touch of Strange", "Need", and "Tandy's Story".
• This volume has a foreword by Jonatham Lethem, and background story notes by Paul Williams.
• The publisher's site has this description, and an author spotlight on Sturgeon.

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How could I forget the spring when we walked in the University's botanical gardens; for there is such a park in Tainaron, too, large and carefully tended. If you saw it you would be astonished, for it contains many plants that no one at home knows; even a species that flowers underground.

Does the future still have a future?

When I was a child, I had a personal conflict over my beliefs. My parents were raised in the Buddhist tradition. But I attended Sunday school every week, where I loved hearing the biblical stories about whales, arks, pillars of salt, ribs, and apples. I was fascinated by these Old Testament parables, which were my favorite part of Sunday school. It seemed to me that the parables about great floods, burning bushes, and parting waters were so much more exciting than Buddhist chanting and meditation. In fact, these ancient tales of heroism and tragedy vividly illustrated deep moral and ethical lessons which have stayed with me all my life.

The humpback whale cruised slowly northward through the blue waters of the eastern Atlantis Ocean, listening to the sounds of the sea around him. Sound carries far under water, depending upon its frequency. The humpback did not use sonar, but used the sounds created by other sea creatures large and small, to create a three dimensional map of its surroundings that stretched, with decreasing accuracy, for a bubble hundreds of miles around.