* Anderson, Kevin J., & A. E. van Vogt : Slan Hunter
(Tor 978-0-7653-1675-2, $24.95, 270pp, hardcover, July 2007, jacket art Bruce Jensen)

SF novel, posthumous sequel to van Vogt's 1946 classic Slan (originally serialized 1940 in Astounding), about a superior race of telepathic mutants who are persecuted by the human majority. Anderson completed the partial draft and outline of the sequel left by van Vogt at the time of his death in 2000. The sequel concerns slan hero Jommy Cross dealing with an invasion of Earth by a group of slans from Mars. The book has a forward by van Vogt's widow Lydia.
• Tor's website has this description, blurbs from Harlan Ellison and Lydia van Vogt, and an excerpt.
• Sci Fi Weekly has this review by Paul Di Filippo, giving it a B, and concluding "Ultimately, I'd have to say that this volume honors its predecessor in a fairly commendable manner -- but it's not, and possibly never could be, the Slan II from some imaginary 1943 that we all dream of."
• Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review: "Though Anderson can't plug all the holes in Grand Master van Vogt's logic, the fast pacing, melodramatic situations and snappy (if dated) dialogue all match the original seamlessly."

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* Baker, Kage : The Sons of Heaven
(Tor 978-0-7653-1746-X, $25.95, 431pp, hardcover, July 2007, jacket art Paul Youll)

SF novel, the concluding volume in Baker's long-running series about The Company, a future organization that sends immortals and cyborgs back in time to collect human artifacts.
• Tor's website has this description -- "This web of a story is filled with great climaxes, wonderful surprises, and gripping characters many readers have grown to love or hate. It's a triumph of SF!" -- and an excerpt.
• Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review: "The intertwining stories all come together in an explosive denouement that heralds the end of the Company, but the beginning of something strange and new."
• Nick Gevers reviews the book in the June issue of Locus Magazine, concluding: "With her likeable penchant for romance and farce, along with her sense of tragedy and the cruelty of history, Kage Baker has erected an extraordinary monument to the power of SF as an humane, complex, reflective and ever surprising variety of literature. As the apex of the pyramid, Sons is a fine book indeed."

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* Bilsborough, David : The Wanderer's Tale
(Tor 978-0-7653-1867-1, $24.95, 443pp, hardcover, July 2007, jacket art Fred Gambino)

Fantasy novel, the author's first novel and first of a projected trilogy, about evil forces in the land of Lindormyn, defeated 500 years before, attempting a comeback.
• Tor's site has a description -- "Bilsborough, a brilliant young author, has created a passionately imagined vision of Lyndormyn, a world teeming with peoples, history, cultures; a world rich with fabulous landscapes and hidden terrors; a world with compelling characters -- human and other -- some deadly, others merely remarkable" -- and an excerpt.
• Amazon has the unimpressed Publishers Weekly review: "Unpronounceable names and sesquipedalian prose abound. Hopefully, the promised sequel will venture into less predictable epic fantasy territory."
• SFScope has this interview with the author by Ian Randal Strock, describing the process of submitting the book to publishers, and mentioning "I loathe the internet beyond all loathing and everything it stands for. Seriously. I sometimes feel I'm the only sane person left in the world, everyone else having become bedazzled by that mindless, flashing, bleeping box of electric trickery, wizardly lies, pseudo-values, and misinformation that is as laughable inaccurate as its readers are gullible. ..."

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* Bull, Emma : Territory
(Tor 978-0-312-85735-6, $24.95, 318pp, hardcover, July 2007, jacket art John Jude Palencar)

Historical fantasy novel, a dark-magical secret history retelling of the Western legend about Wyatt Earp and his brothers in Tombstone, Arizona, in 1881.
• Tor's website has this description -- "You think you know the story. You don't." -- and an excerpt.
• Sci Fi Weekly has this review by Jeff VanderMeer, who gives the book an A+: "A rich blend of fantasy, ambiguity, sheer pleasure-inducing entertainment and retold American myth, Emma Bull's Territory is quite simply a classic in the making."
• Amazon has the starred Publishers Weekly review, which says that Bull "takes huge chances and achieves something distinctively wonderful with this subtle reworking of a western legend. ... The magic is less flashy than in many fantasy novels, but it's vivid and deeply felt. Readers will think about the story long after it ends, savoring the writing and imagining what the characters might do next."
• Faren Miller reviews the book in the July issue of Locus Magazine: "As Territory evokes the substance and spirit of old Arizona beneath what was slowly becoming a tamer West, it transforms the tropes of the Western to a degree that goes beyond the category of 'genre hybrid' to achieve a power very much its own."

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+ Cornell, Paul : British Summertime
(MonkeyBrain Books 1932265236, $15.95, 300pp, trade paperback, July 2007, cover illustration John Picacio) First US edition (UK: Gollancz, June 2002)

Fantasy novel about five people who come together on a search that involves the end of the world and journey back to the days of the New Testament.
• The publisher's site has this order page with a longer description.
• Cornell has written one previous non-associational novel, Something More (2002), as well as a dozen or so Doctor Who novels and numerous other TV-associated nonfiction works. See Wikipedia for details.
• The author's blog is Paul Cornell's House of Awkwardness.
• SF Site posted this review by Victoria Strauss in 2002: "[O]verall this is an impressively rich and detailed work -- one of the most interesting, and also one of the most idiosyncratic, I've read this year."

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* Dolley, Chris : Shift
(Baen 978-1416521402, $24, 322pp, hardcover, July 2007, cover art Alan Pollack)

SF novel about an astronaut who returns from interdimensional space to discover a doppelganger has appeared with the personality of a serial killer.
• Baen's Webscription site has this description with links to sample chapters.
• Amazon has a description, and a revealing post from the author, about writing the first draft of this book in 1994 and not selling it until much later; "I'm often asked by aspiring authors what I think about self-publishing. Shift is an example I give. If I'd had the money in 1994 I could have self-published Shift. And, in the process, I would have wasted a great idea. Rushing into publication before you're ready is a great mistake. Writing is an apprenticeship and most 'first' novels are, in fact, the author's fourth. You just didn't get to see their first three."

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+ Gentle, Mary : Ilario: The Lion's Eye
(Eos 0-06-082183-3, $14.95, 303pp, trade paperback, July 2007) First US edition (UK: Orion/Gollancz, November 2006)

Alternate history fantasy novel set in Carthage, concerning a hermaphrodite named Ilario who is taken into slavery. It's a predecessor her her 2000 novel Ash: A Secret History.
• The HarperCollins site has this description with a text excerpt.
• The next book, Ilario: The Stone Golem, will appear from Eos in September.
• Amazon has the starred Publishers Weekly review, from its June 4th issue: "Gentle (A Secret History and other titles in her Book of Ash series) delivers a delicious twist ending involving Ilario's impending marriage that will leave readers eager for the next installment."
• Nick Gevers reviewed the book in the February '07 issue of Locus Magazine, concluding "here is (probably) literature's most extended examination ever of hermaphroditism from the inside, in all its complications, confusions, and epiphanies. The extraordinary gender sensitivity and flexibility Ilario embodies, novel shades of sexuality at every turn, and new angles on plain old heterosexuality in the bargain -- factor all that in, and Ilario is the foremost SF/fantasy novel of gender in quite a while."

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* Jacob, Charlee, & Marge Simon : Vectors: A Week in the Death of a Planet
(Dark Regions Press 978-1-888993-53-0, $9.95, 89pp, trade paperback, July 2007, cover art Marge Simon)

Collection of 50+ poems about the week it takes for humanity to destroy its planet. Some pieces are collaborative; most are by one coauthor or the other.
• The publisher's site has the back cover blurb (click on cover image) from Jacob: "There will always be those who think the idea too far-fetched, that humanity could never destroy itself so utterly, especially in only one week. Yet these poems by Marge Simon and myself were never about science's purest ground zero but about all our planet's brethren, reduced to hearts and numbers."
• Not available from Amazon; order from the publisher's site.

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* Latner, Alexis Glynn : Hurricane Moon
(Pyr 978-1-59102-545-0, $15, 399pp, trade paperback, July 2007, cover illustration Brian W. Dow)

Hard SF novel, the author's first novel, about the problems that beset the crew of an interstellar colonization ship, whose arrival at a spectacular double-planet -- one an oceanic moon covered with hurricanes -- is threatened by biomedical problems resulting from crews' stasis sleep.
• Pyr's website has this description and sample chapters.
• The author's webpage has notes on the book and quotes from reviews.
• Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review: "Love flourishes amid technical puzzles and planetary mysteries in Latner's strong debut, which offers a healthy dose of the sciences -- astronomy, physics, geology, biology -- along with an intriguing cast of characters."

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* Taylor, Richard : The Haunting of Cambria
(Tor 0-765-31705-2, $24.95, 303pp, hardcover, July 2007)

Dark fantasy novel about a man whose wife is killed in a car accident the day they close escrow on a bed-and-breakfast in Cambria, California (a Central Coast town where the author lives). It's the author's first novel.
• Tor's site has this description -- "A novel of love, redemption, and second chances." -- and an excerpt.
• The book has website www.hauntingofcambria.com with an excerpt, background on the author, excerpts from reviews, and a page about his book 3 Screenplays in Search of a Lens: Money-Making Scripts That Weren't Produced.

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* Thomas, Scott : Over the Darkening Fields
(Dark Regions Press 978-1-888993-50-9, $16.95, 190pp, trade paperback, July 2007, cover art Jeffrey Thomas)

Collection of 26 fantasy/horror stories. 11 stories have been previous published, in 'zines such as Pluto's Orchard, Flesh and Blood, and Outer Darkness; the other 15 stories are original.
• The publisher's site has a description; click on the cover image.
• Not available from Amazon; order from the publisher's site.

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* Twelve Hawks, John : The Dark River
(Doubleday 978-0-385-51429-3, $24.95, 368pp, hardcover, July 2007)

Sf thriller, second book of "The Fourth Realm" following The Traveler (2005), about a secret organization that monitors the world via a 'Vast Machine', and the Travelers who oppose it. In this book the Traveler Gabriel (whose brother Michael turned to the dark side in the first book) learns that his father, missing for 20 years, may still be alive.
• The publisher's site has this description and an excerpt.
• The website for the first book, www.traveler-book.com, is still active.
• Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review: "A love story featuring Gabriel's beautiful, deadly but conflicted Harlequin bodyguard, Maya, adds human interest to an often superhuman tale, and Gabriel's out-of-body journey to a horrifyingly fascinating parallel world adds a particularly compelling component to a saga that's part A Wrinkle in Time, part The Matrix and part Kurosawa epic. Given the complicated plot and complex setting, readers are advised to read The Traveler first."

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* Underwood, Laura J. : Song of Silver
(Dark Regions Press 978-1-888993-44-8, $16.95, 139pp, trade paperback, July 2007, cover art Matt Taggart)

Collection of 8 stories, two previously published about Anwyn Baldomyre, a Harper Mage who travels in search of songs.
• It's a follow-up to Magic's Song, published by Wildside Press in 2003.
• The publisher's site has a description; click on the cover image.

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* Wellington, David : 13 Bullets
(Three Rivers 978-0-307-38143-9, $13.95, 323pp, trade paperback, May 2007)

Horror novel about vampires, thought to have been driven extinct in the 1980s, about a state trooper and a federal agent who track down the lone surviving vampire, having only 13 bullets between them. First of a trilogy.
• Parent publisher Random House's site has this description of the book.
• The author has provided the entire text of the novel online at Thirteen Bullets.
• Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review: "Minimally plotted and driven by nonstop action, this gory vampire tale is of a piece with Wellington's zombie novels (Monster Island; Monster Nation). ... A surprisingly anticlimactic finale leaves loose ends that will likely be tied up in subsequent volumes of a projected trilogy."
• Tim Pratt reviewed the book in the May issue of Locus Magazine: "Yes, it's yet another a thriller about vampires, but it's a fine example of its kind, with realistic characters, convincing details, and moments of real dread. And best of all? The vampires are scary, human enough to spark empathy, but monstrous enough to make you draw back in revulsion."

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* Williams, Sheila, ed. : The Asimov's 30th Anniversary Anthology
(Tachyon Publications 978-1-892391-47-6, $14.95, 349pp, trade paperback, July 2007, cover illustration Michael Whelan)

Anthology of 17 stories from the first 30 years of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, from John Varley's "Air Raid" (1977) to Robert Reed's "Eight Episodes" (2006, currently a Hugo Award nominee), with stories in between by Robert Silverberg, Octavia E. Butler (Hugo-winner "Speech Sounds"), Bruce Sterling, Isaac Asimov, Kim Stanley Robinson, Connie Willis, Jonathan Lethem, Mike Resnick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Kelly Link, James Patrick Kelly, Michael Swanwick, Charles Stross, Lucius Shepard, and Stephen Baxter.
• The book has an introduction by the editor, and author profiles at the end of the book.
• The publisher's site has this description, with the complete list of stories.
• Amazon has the starred Publishers Weekly review, from its May 28th issue: "Every piece in this superlative collection is a nugget of pure science fiction gold."

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