Asher, Neal :
Africa Zero
(Prime Books 0-8095-5664-2, $12.95, 169pp, trade paperback, November 2006, cover art Ian Field-Richards)
Collection of two novellas from early in Asher's career, the title story from 1994.
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Asher's website has this page for the book, and an excerpt.
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The Agony Column's Rick Kleffel reviewed the original edition back in 2002: "If the idea of the Terminator roaming across Africa, protecting genetically engineered monsters from humans sounds appealing to you, then you'll enjoy 'Africa Zero'."
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Butler, Octavia E. :
Parable of the Sower
(Warner 0-446-67550-4, $13.99, 345pp, trade paperback, January 2007)
(First edition: Four Walls Eight Windows, December 1993)
Reissue of Butler's 1993 novel about a dystopian 21st-century California of walled enclaves. This edition has a new cover to match the paperback edition of Butler's final novel, Fledgling, and of several other Butler reprints.
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This novel was a Nebula Award finalist, and placed second in the year's Locus Poll for Best SF Novel.
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Amazon has its own review -- "This is a great book--simple and elegant, with enough message to make you think, but not so much that you feel preached to." -- and its 'search inside' feature includes an excerpt.
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The publisher's site has a reading guide an an excerpt.
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Butler, Octavia E. :
Seed to Harvest
(Warner 0-446-69890-3, $18.99, 765pp, trade paperback, January 2007)
Omnibus edition of four novels in the "Patternmaster" series: Wild Seed (1980), Mind of My Mind (1977), Clay's Ark (1984), and Patternmaster (1976), here arranged in order of internal chronology, about two 17th century immortals who give rise to a new race.
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Warner's site has a brief description.
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Wikipedia's Patternist series entry notes that Butler grew to dislike another book in the series, Survivor (1978), and declined to let it back into print.
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Heinlein, Robert A. :
Farnham's Freehold
(Baen 1-416-52093-7, $15, 294pp, trade paperback, November 2006, cover art Stephen Hickman)
SF novel about a man who survives nuclear war in a shelter under his house, to emerge in an alternate world in which he and his family are enslaved by ruling blacks.
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Baen's website has this description and links to several chapters.
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Wikipedia has this entry for the book.
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The Heinlein Society site has this concordance entry for the book.
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This Robert A. Heinlein quotes page includes a knock-knock joke from the book.
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The book's 1960's-era racial depictions make it a disturbing read for some modern readers -- Amazon's page has representative reader reviews.
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David Pringle's Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction summarized it as "Reactionary, racist, sexist -- but readable."
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Leiber, Fritz :
Swords and Deviltry
(DH Press 1-595820-79-5, $12.95, 208pp, trade paperback, November 2006, cover design and illustration Heidi Fainza)
Fantasy collection of three novellas, chronologically first in the author's renowned "Fafhrd and Grey Mouser" stories set in the city of Lankhmar.
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Contents include "Ill Met in Lankhmar", winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards as best novella of 1970, plus novella "The Snow Women", nominated for both awards the same year but withdrawn by the author to avoid self-competition.
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The publisher's site is generating database errors as this page is being compiled, but Google's cache gives this link as that for this first book in Leiber's series, and this link for their reprint of the second book, not yet seen, Swords Against Death.
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This Leiber Home Page has links to the Lankhmar series, and to a page of cover images from previous editions of the book.
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Simmons, Dan :
Hyperion Cantos
(SFBC 978-0-7394-7667-3, $15.99, 929pp, hardcover, November 2006, jacket art Ron Walotsky)
(First edition: SFBC, May 1990)
Reissue of the SF Book Club's 1990 omnibus of two novels, Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, about far future humanity on the brink of galactic war.
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Hyperion (1989) won the Hugo and Locus awards; The Fall of Hyperion (1990) won the Locus and British SF Association awards.
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This omnibus edition is available exclusively from the Science Fiction Book Club, whose site has this description.
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Smith, Cordwainer :
We the Underpeople
(Baen 1-416-52095-3, $15, 13+463pp, trade paperback, November 2006, cover art Bob Eggleton)
Omnibus of stories and a novel in the author's far future "Instrumentality of Mankind" history, ruled by the Lords of the Instrumentality and populated by human-animal hybrid Underpeople.
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The pseudonymous author, Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, was a political scientist and military advisor in Asia whose real identity was not known when these stories were first published. The Cordwainer Smith Award, for writers whose work "displays unusual originality, embodies the spirit of Cordwainer Smith's fiction, and deserves renewed attention or 'Rediscovery'", has been named in his honor.
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This volume, edited by Hank Davis, includes the novel Norstrilia (published originally as two early '60s paperbacks, The Planet Buyer and The Underpeople, and in complete form in 1975), stories "The Dead Lady of Clown Town", "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell", "Under Old Earth", "Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons", and "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard", and a 2002 introduction by Robert Silverberg.
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Baen's website has this description with links to excerpts.
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Wikipedia has this entry for Cordwainer Smith.
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Sterling, Bruce :
Schismatrix Plus
(SFBC 978-0-7394-7657-4, $10.99, 10+395pp, hardcover, October 2006, jacket art Jim Burns)
(First edition: Ace, December 1996)
Omnibus of Sterling's 1985 cyberpunk novel Schismatrix and several stories set in the same circumsolar future: "Swarm," "Spider Rose," "Cicada Queen," "Sunken Gardens," and "Twenty Evocations."
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Novel Schismatrix was a finalist for the Nebula and British SF Association awards; stories "Spider Rose" and "Swarm" were Hugo award finalists; "Swarm", "Cicada Queen", and "Sunken Gardens" Nebula award finalists.
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This edition is available exclusively from the Science Fiction Book Club, whose site has this description.
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Süskind, Patrick :
Perfume
(Vintage International 0307277763, $13.95, 255pp, trade paperback, November 2006)
(First edition: Knopf, September 1986)
Movie tie-in edition of the novel, subtitled "The Story of a Murderer", that won the 1987 World Fantasy Award as best novel, about an 18th century Parisian man with an uncanny sense of smell.
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The publisher's site has this page about the book, and an excerpt.
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The film version has been reviewed for Locus Online by Gary Westfahl.
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Vinge, Vernor :
The Witling
(Tor 0-765-30886-X, $12.95, 220pp, trade paperback, December 2006, cover art Tom Kidd)
SF novel, the author's second novel, about two human anthropologists trapped on a planet of teleporting aliens whose least-talented members are called 'witlings'.
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Wikipedia has this stub entry about the book.
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Wells, Martha :
The Element of Fire
(Martha Wells 978-0-6151-3571-7, $18.3, 314pp, trade paperback, November 2006)
(First edition: Tor, July 1993)
Fantasy novel, the author's first novel here revised and republished by the author herself, about a magical threat to a peaceful kingdom.
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This edition is available from Lulu.com as a download or a trade paperback.
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The novel was a finalist for both the Compton Crook and Crawford/IAFA awards for best first fantasy novel.
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The author's website has this page about the book, with links to the complete text.
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Williams, Walter Jon :
Hardwired
(Night Shade Books 1-597800-62-7, $14.95, 257pp, trade paperback, November 2006, cover art David Martin)
(First edition: Tor, June 1986)
Cyberpunk SF novel, first published in 1986 and influenced both by Roger Zelazny's 1969 Damnation Alley and William Gibson's 1984 Neuromancer, about an ex-fighter pilot 'hardwired' to his machines who tries to win independence from the corporate Orbitals who control postwar America.
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The author's website, which calls this novel his "most popular novel", has this page for the book with excerpts.
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The publisher's site has this description and order page.
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Amazon has reader reviews and the Publishers Weekly review of the original edition.
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