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Brooke, Keith :
The Accord
(UK: Solaris 978-1-84416-710-4, £7.99, 442pp, mass market paperback, March 2009, cover by Darius Hinks)
Science fiction novel set in a virtual utopia where souls live after death.
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It's an expansion of a novelette published in The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction (2007), and two other stories published in Postscripts and Peter Crowther's anthology We Think, Therefore We Are (just published).
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Brooke's website has this page about the book, with quotes from reviews.
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Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review in its January 19th issue: "The emotion-driven love triangle neatly complements the tech- and philosophy-heavy nature of the Accord, making this rumination on posthumous, posthuman love a rare treat."
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Cherryh, C. J. :
Regenesis
(DAW 978-0-7564-0530-4, $25.95, 585pp, hardcover, January 2009)
SF novel, a direct sequel to Cherryh's Hugo Award-winning Cyteen (1989), about genetic clone Ariane Emory and her search for the murderer of her progenitor.
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Jo Walton, a devotee of Cyteen, has this Tor.com post about the new book.
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Amazon's 'look inside' feature includes an excerpt.
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Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review in its November 17th issue: "Complex and rich, with beautifully rounded characters, this novel can stand alone, but will delight fans of Cyteen with extra layers of meaning that resonate between old and new."
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Crowther, Peter, ed. :
We Think, Therefore We Are
(DAW 978-0-7564-0533-5, $7.99, 311pp, mass market paperback, January 2009)
Anthology of 15 original stories about artificial intelligence.
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Authors include Stephen Baxter, Brian Stableford, Adam Roberts, Robert Reed, Paul Di Filippo, Patrick O'Leary, Keith Brooke, and Ian Watson.
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Paul McAuley provides an introduction.
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Amazon's 'search inside' feature includes an excerpt.
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Gilman, Felix :
Gears of the City
(Bantam Spectra 978-0-553-80677-9, $24, 452pp, hardcover, January 2009, jacket art Stephen Youll)
Fantasy novel, sequel to author's first novel Thunderer (2008), set in the vast city of Ararat.
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Bantam's website has this description with an excerpt.
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Gilman's website has this description with excerpts from reviews.
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Greenwood, Ed :
Arch Wizard: Falconfar, Book Two
(UK: Solaris 978-1-84416-651-0, £17.99, 379pp, hardcover, February 2009, cover illustration Jon Sullivan)
Fantasy novel, second in the Falconfar Saga following Dark Lord, about a man fighting corruption in a world of his own making.
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Solaris' site has this description.
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Huston, Charlie :
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death
(Ballantine 978-0-345-50111-0, $25, 319pp, hardcover, January 2009)
Noir thriller about a down-on-his-luck former schoolteacher working as a crime scene cleaner.
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Ballantine's site has this description and an excerpt.
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Amazon's page has a "Best of the Month, January 2009" review by Daphne Durham, plus a guest review by Stephen King, who says that Huston has "written several very good books ... but this is the first authentically great one, a runaway freight that feels like a combination of William Burroughs and James Ellroy."
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And Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review: "Noir master Huston (The Shotgun Rule) should win himself a whole new audience with this bizarre and utterly grotesque stand-alone, told mostly through dialogue that highlights the author's uncanny ear for the spoken word..."
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Lumley, Brian :
Necroscope: The Lost Years: Harry and the Pirates
(UK: Solaris 978-1-84416-706-7, £11.99, 315pp, trade paperback, March 2009, cover art Bob Eggleton)
Collection of six short stories and novellas, three of them original to this book, about title character Harry Keogh.
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Lumley provides an introduction with background on the series and a list of the 15 previous titles.
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Mann, George, ed. :
The Solaris Book Of New Science Fiction Volume Three
(UK: Solaris 978-1-84416-709-8, £7.99, 406pp, mass market paperback, March 2009, cover art Hardy Fowler)
Anthology of 15 original stories.
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Authors include Jack Skillingstead, Alastair Reynolds, Scott Edelman, Adam Roberts, Daniel Abraham, and Ken MacLeod.
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Marusek, David :
Mind Over Ship
(Tor 978-0-7653-1749-0, $24.95, 317pp, hardcover, January 2009, jacket art Chris Moore)
SF novel, sequel to author's first novel Counting Heads (2007). In 2135 Ellen Starke, daughter of financier Eleanor Starke from the first novel, struggles to control her financial empire, as an ambitious space colonization program is derailed by rival power brokers.
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Tor's site has this description.
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Amazon has Publishers Weekly's starred review, from its November 3rd issue: "With ambitious narrative scope and small moments of perfect prose, this tale of 22nd-century politics repays the close reading necessary to follow its many interweaving plots."
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Morrow, James :
Shambling Towards Hiroshima
(Tachyon Publications 978-1-892391-84-1, $14.95, 170pp, trade paperback, February 2009)
Alternate-history SF novel about the Knickerbocker Project, a Navy program to end World War II with a Godzilla-esque biological weapon, and a B-movie star hired to portray the beast in a convincing simulation of such an attack.
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Tachyon's website has this complete description, along with blurbs for the author's previous books.
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Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review in its January 25th issue, calling it a "witty and touching paean to the glory days of horror movies" and concluding "The sheer insanity of the premise only makes the eventual payoff even more powerful..."
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Reece, Gregory L. :
Weird Science and Bizarre Beliefs: Mysterious Creatures, Lost Worlds and Amazing Inventions
(I.B. Tauris 978-1-84511-756-6, $18.95, 238pp, trade paperback, December 2008)
Nonfiction book about belief in such things as the Yeti, Shangri-La, the Loch Ness monster, and the Easter Island monoliths.
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The author's introduction clarifies that the book is not a skeptical one; "It is a book about the diversity of human thought and about the plurality of beliefs that flourish whenever people are allowed to think freely."
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The publisher's site has this page for the author's books but no detail about this title.
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Amazon's page has the complete back cover description.
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Shirley, John :
Black Glass
(Elder Signs Press 978-1-934501-07-8, $15.95, 310pp, trade paperback, November 2008)
SF novel, subtitled "The Lost Cyberpunk Novel" -- Shirley explains in an introduction that it was originally a project conceived by himself and William Gibson that got derailed, and was belatedly finished by Shirley himself.
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It's about a cyber-cop who takes a fall for his virtual reality addict younger brother, and battles a conscious program called the Multisemblant.
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The publisher's site has this page about the book with the complete back cover description. The book is also available as a signed trade paperback, and a signed and numbered limited edition hardcover.
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Shirley's site has this page with excerpts from reviews at The Agony Column and Alternate Worlds.
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