Weekly Bestsellers, 19 April 2021
Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library still reigns, ranking in the top 10 on all four print lists compiled here, and #1 this morning on Amazon UK.
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Author: LocEditor
Blinks: Jeff VanderMeer; Amal El-Mohtar reviews; Kim Stanley Robinson on cities
» NY Times: Jeff VanderMeer By the Book: How Jeff VanderMeer Prevents Writer’s Block
» NY Times: Amal El-Mohtar reviews Karin Tidbeck, E. Lily Yu, Charlie Jane Anders
» Bloomberg Green: Kim Stanley Robinson on Cities as a Climate Survival Mechanism, subtitled, A future with far more cities, and cities that are asked to do far more. ...Read More
Read moreBlinks: About books by Jeff VanderMeer and Kazuo Ishiguro
» San Francisco Chronicle: Gabino Iglesias Review: With ‘Hummingbird Salamander,’ sci-fi great Jeff VanderMeer changes direction
» SF Gate: Dan Gentile: Everyone’s reading the buzzy novel ‘Klara and the Sun.’ Here’s why.
» Onion AV Club: Alex McLevy: Jeff VanderMeer’s latest work of bleak eco-fiction is an apocalyptic page-turner ...Read More
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Weekly Bestsellers, 12 April 2021
A new YA novel by Leigh Bardugo, Rules of Wolves (Imprint), second in the King of Scars Duology, debuts on three lists.
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Blinks: Reviews at WaPo by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Lavie Tidhar; Reviews at Guardian by Lisa Tuttle
» Washington Post: Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Lavie Tidhar: Let’s talk about the best — and newest — science fiction and fantasy story collections
» Guardian: Lisa Tuttle covers The best recent science fiction and fantasy – reviews roundup, with titles by VanderMeer, Aristide, Suzuki, and Slatter ...Read More
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Weekly Bestsellers, 5 April 2021
The most enduring title on these lists in recent months is Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library, now in its 25th week and still ranking #2 or #3 on three print lists here.
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Blinks: Two by Ted Chiang
» New York Times: Ezra Klein: The Author Behind ‘Arrival’ Doesn’t Fear AI. ‘Look at How We Treat Animals.’, subtitled, “The award-winning author and Ezra Klein discuss A.I. suffering, free will, Superman’s failures and more.
» The New Yorker: Ted Chiang: Why Computers Won’t Make Themselves Smarter, subtitled, “We fear and yearn for ‘the singularity.’ But it will probably never come.” ...Read More
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Weekly Bestsellers, 29 March 2021
Patricia Briggs’ Wild Sign (Ace), sixth in the Alpha and Omega series, debuts strongly on three print lists.
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A limited one-volume edition of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (HarperCollins) with the author’s own illustrations, due in October, ranks on Amazon Canada’s list this morning.
Paul Di Filippo Reviews The Complete Ivy Frost by Donald Wandrei
The Complete Ivy Frost, Donald Wandrei (Haffner Press 978-1893887619, 720pp, $49.99, hardcover) December 2020
Haffner Press has been gifting the world of bibliophiles and literature-lovers with enormously attractive and highly readable books since 1998, when they published Jack Williamson’s The Queen of the Legion. (For a complete record of their offerings, visit their ISFDB page.) Any publication from Haffner exemplifies craftsmanship, graphic design ingenuity, and attention to textual ...Read More
Read moreBlinks: Indian sf/f novels; Slate on DeLillo, Lethem, and Forster; Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy
» Washington Post: Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Lavie Tidhar: Let’s talk about wonderful Indian science-fiction and fantasy novels
» Slate: COVID-19 Isn’t the Apocalypse We Expected—or the One Some Wanted, subtitled “Recent novels from Don DeLillo and Jonathan Lethem fantasized about turning off screens forever,” beginning with a look back at E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops”
» NYT: Kermit Pattison reviews associational book THE ZOOLOGIST’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY: What Animals ...Read More
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Weekly Bestsellers, 22 March 2021
Near-future thriller 2034: A Novel of the Next World War by Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis (Penguin) debuts strongly on three print lists, while Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun remains strong in its second week, and Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library remains strong in its fifth month.
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Paul Di Filippo Reviews Purgatory Mount by Adam Roberts
Purgatory Mount, Adam Roberts (Gollancz 978-1473230941, 336pp, L16.99, hardcover) February 2021
Last year marked the generally under-recognized 20th anniversary of Adam Roberts’s first novel, Salt, and the launching of his career. His prodigious and impressive output in the past two decades has earned him a reputation as one of the field’s most delightfully surprising, adept, and formalistically variant authors. His novums are always startling and innovative and cutting-edge, ...Read More
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Paul Di Filippo Reviews Robot Artists & Black Swans: The Italian Fantascienza Stories by Bruce Sterling
Robot Artists & Black Swans: The Italian Fantascienza Stories, Bruce Sterling (Tachyon 978-1616963293, 256pp, $25.95, hardcover) April 2021
Certain superficial things change over time, while other essential phenomena remain fixed and permanent. Cyberpunk was born a bit over 35 years ago, and the world is a much different place now than it was in 1985. So it’s foolish to imagine that cyberpunk writing would persist unchanged, adhering to the ...Read More
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Weekly Bestsellers: 15 March 2021
Three strong debuts this week, beginning with Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (Knopf), ranking #1 at LA Times and #3 at NY Times; Stephen King’s trade paperback original Later (Hard Case Crime), ranking #1 on two lists and #3 on two others; and Cassandra Clare’s Chain of Iron (McElderry), second in the Last Hours series, ranking #1 and #2 on two YA lists.
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Blinks: Octavia E. Butler; Chen Qiufan; Elizabeth Hand; Lisa Tuttle’s Guardian reviews
» The New Yorker: Julian Lucas on How Octavia E. Butler Reimagines Sex and Survival, subtitled, The parasites, hybrids, and vampires of her science fiction make the price of persisting viscerally real.
» Wired: Sci-Fi Writer or Prophet? The Hyperreal Life of Chen Qiufan, subtitled, As China’s science fiction authors are elevated to the status of oracles, Qiufan’s career—and his genre’s place in society—have gone through the looking glass.
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Weekly Bestsellers, 8 March 2021
Karen Marie Moning’s Kingdom of Shadow and Light (Delacorte), 11th in her Fever series, debuts on three lists.
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Meanwhile, Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower returns to three trade paperback lists.
Blinks: Jonathan Lethem in The New Yorker, with a tribute to Robert A. Heinlein; NPR’s Fran Wilde reviews S.B. Divya; Wired’s Jason Kehe on R.A. Lafferty
» The New Yorker: Jonathan Lethem’s story The Crooked House, with an interview with Jonathan Lethem on Robert Heinlein and Other Influences
» Another review of Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, by NPR’s Annalisa Quinn
» Also at NPR, Fran Wilde reviews S.B. Divya: ‘Machinehood’ Upgrades Asimov’s 3 Laws Of Robotics
» Wired’s Jason Kehe asks, Who Is R. A. Lafferty? And Is He the Best Sci-Fi Writer Ever?, ...Read More
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Weekly Bestsellers, 1 March 2021
Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Silver Flames debuts spectacularly on print lists this week, ranking #1 on three of the four, though it’s dropped precipitously on the Amazon charts.
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Meanwhile, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (Knopf), released tomorrow, is selling today on the Amazon charts, and editions of Colin Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad are selling at Amazon, in anticipation of the Amazon TV series debuting in May.
Paul Di Filippo Reviews The Memory Theater by Karin Tidbeck
The Memory Theater, Karin Tidbeck (Pantheon 978-1524748333, 240pp, $25.95, hardcover) February 2021
When I reviewed Karin Tidbeck’s story collection Jagannath at The Barnes & Noble Review, I said that it distilled and hybridized “almost every writer in the VanderMeers’ massive anthology The Weird. A century’s worth of potent surrealism and estrangement surge through her veins and onto the page.” With the publication of her new novel, I’ll have ...Read More
Read moreBlinks: Kazuo Ishiguro; reviews of his new novel; new laws or robotics; Shippey reviews Weber & Kenney
» NYT Magazine: Kazuo Ishiguro Sees What the Future Is Doing to Us, by Giles Harvey
» Reviews of Ishiguro’s new novel Klara and the Sun at NYT, by Radhika Jones; Slate, by Laura Miller; Guardian, by Anne Enright; and Wall Street Journal, by Sam Sacks
» Boston Globe: Frank Pasquale suggests Now that science fiction is reality, it’s time for new laws of robotics
» Wall Street Journal: Tom ...Read More
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Paul Di Filippo Reviews The Society of Time by John Brunner
The Society of Time, John Brunner (edited by Mike Ashley) (The British Library 978-0712353823, 288pp, hardcover) November 2020
Was John Brunner’s life a tragedy? In some undeniable senses, yes. Possessed of enormous talents, but also an array of character faults, he became his own worst enemy and his later-era career suffered immensely—in large part due to one poor decision to stake too much effort and hopes on a mainstream ...Read More
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Weekly Bestsellers, 22 February 2021
Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Silver Flames (Bloomsbury), fifth in “A Court of Thorns and Roses,” ranks on all three Amazon lists this morning, and its anticipation has pulled a couple of the earlier books back onto the USA Today list. Meanwhile, a new Laurell K. Hamilton “Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter” novel, Rafael (Berkley), debuts strongly on two lists.
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Blinks: Lisa Tuttle at Guardian; Bill McKibben cites KSR; Greg Bear’s life story
» Guardian: Lisa Tuttle takes over from Eric Brown: The best recent science fiction and fantasy – review roundup covering titles by Samantha Shannon, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Adam Roberts, Marian Womack, and Tim Pratt
» The New Yorker: Bill McKibben’s The Enormous Risk of Atmospheric Hacking cites Kim Stanley Robinson’s “masterly new novel” “The Ministry for the Future”.
» Seattle Times: Lynnwood’s Greg Bear, stalwart of modern science fiction, starts writing ...Read More
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Paul Di Filippo Reviews The Best of Walter Jon Williams by Walter Jon Williams
The Best of Walter Jon Williams, Walter Jon Williams (Subterranean 978-1-64524-002-0, $45, 616pp, hardcover) February 2021
A writer always feels an instinctive camaraderie with other writers who debuted more or less simultaneously with one’s own beginnings. This does not mean that all writers in a given generation love and admire each other unconditionally, but only that a person recognizes and bonds more readily with other members of their own ...Read More
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Weekly Bestsellers, 15 February 2021
A new YA Star Wars novel, Star Wars The High Republic: Into the Dark by Claudia Gray (Disney Lucasfilm), debuts at #1 on the New York Times Young Adult Hardcover list.
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Weekly Bestsellers, 8 February 2021
Two titles rank on these lists for the first time: Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry of the Future (Orbit), ranking 8th on the L.A. Times fiction hardcover list, and Stephen Graham Jones’ The Only Good Indians (Gallery) in trade paperback, 8th on the LAT fiction paperback list and 16th on the composite USA Today list.
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Weekly Bestsellers, 1 February 2021
V.E. Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue rises again on all four print lists compiled here, ranking as high as #1 on the Publishers Weekly list.
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Paul Di Filippo Reviews The Evidence by Christopher Priest
The Evidence, Christopher Priest (UK: Gollancz 978-1473231375, £20, 320pp, hardcover) October 2020
I think we can all agree that 2020 was a pretty horrible year. Nonetheless, I am not willing to write it off entirely, if only because it gave us new books by both M. John Harrison and Christopher Priest. These two British writers both began their extraordinary careers in 1966. That’s fifty-four years ago, folks! The fact ...Read More
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Weekly Bestsellers, 25 January 2021
Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library is the highest ranking adult novel this week, at #3 on the Los Angeles Times list.
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Paul Di Filippo Reviews Inscape by Louise Carey
Inscape, Louise Carey (UK: Gollancz 978-1473232747, £14.9920, 432pp, trade paperback) January 2021
Some genetically talented, culturally nurturing families produce writers across multiple generations, or multiple sibling iterations in the same clade. Famous literary lineages are almost too numerous to name. John le Carré and Nick Harkaway. Stephen King and progeny. Nathaniel and Julian Hawthorne. The McCaffreys. Peter and Emma Straub. The Powys clan; the LaFarge clan. And on and ...Read More
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Weekly Bestsellers, 18 January 2021
A new Star Wars novel by Charles Soule, Light of the Jedi (Del Rey), debuts on three print lists.
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Paul Di Filippo Reviews Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline
Ready Player Two, Ernest Cline (Ballantine 978-1524761332, $28.99, 384pp, hardcover) November 2020
I am not often bowled over by first novels, but I admit to being very delighted and impressed with Ernest Cline’s bestseller, Ready Player One, when it appeared nearly ten years ago. I was then a judge for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and cast my vote to ensure it got on the shortlist as ...Read More
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