The Vanished Birds, Simon Jimenez ((Del Rey 978-0-593-12898-5, $27, 400pp, hardcover) January 2020
Simon Jimenez’s touching, bold, surprising, gorgeous debut novel—a certain manner of postmodern space opera, despite the fantasy-resonant title—is not only the best debut novel I’ve read in ages, but simply one of the best SF novels in recent memory. I am reminded of the excitement I felt when encountering A.A. Attanasio’s Radix (1981). If The Vanished ...Read More
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New titles this week are by Mike Chen, Rod Duncan, Sara Hanover, Charlaine Harris, S.A. Hunt, Simon Jimenez, Joanna Kavenna, Parker Peevyhouse, Ransom Riggs, and Rebecca Roanhorse. ...Read More
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» NY Times: For William Gibson, Seeing the Future Is Easy. But the Past?
» Guardian: Eric Brown reviews Danny Tobey, Stephen Palmer, Kel Kade, Gareth Hanrahan, AJ Smith ...Read More
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New titles this week are by Sean Adams, Lois McMaster Bujold, Andrew Caldecott, C.J. Cherryh, Patrick Chiles, Genevieve Cogman, Tessa Gratton, Gareth Hanrahan, Marc-Uwe Kling, Seanan McGuire, Daniel José Older, John Ringo, Kacey Ezell & Christopher L. Smith, Sarena Ulibarri, and Django Wexler. ...Read More
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» NY Times: Amal El-Mohtar’s Otherworldly column reviews Kacen Callender, Nino Cipri, Naomi Kritzer
» SF Chronicle: Gabino Iglesias reviews Jeff VanderMeer’s Dead Astronauts
» Slate: All of the Sci-Fi Stories We Published This Year ...Read More
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New titles this week are by Ilona Andrews, Deborah Teramis Christian, Joe R. Lansdale, and Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas. ...Read More
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I have been obliged to extensively revise the original draft of this review, because after rereading what I had said about the previous two Star Wars films – J.J. Abrams’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015 – review here) and Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017 – review here) – I found that on several occasions, I was saying the same thing I had said about one of ...Read More
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Anyone, Charles Soule (Harper Perennial 978-0-06-289063-4, $21.99, 432pp, hardcover) December 2019
Alas for me, I have not yet had a chance to read Charles Soule’s well-regarded debut novel from 2018, The Oracle Year. But I have certainly enjoyed his clever, inventive, and exciting comics scripting, on such titles as Swamp Thing, Red Lanterns and She-Hulk. So I came to his sophomore book, Anyone, expecting a treat, and ...Read More
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Shadows in the Stone, Jack Dann (IFWG Publishing 978-1-925956-36-8, $18.99, 362pp, trade paperback) November 2019
The Christian “heresy” of Gnosticism offers a fascinating mythos, a disturbing philosophy, and a ready-made set of fantasy props and beings that could be adapted for fictional narratives. Put very simply, Gnosticism holds that all of material creation, rather than standing as the shining example of a benign creator’s will, is a diseased prison ...Read More
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» The New Yorker: How William Gibson Keeps His Science Fiction Real
» The Nation: The Rest Is Up to Us: Ted Chiang’s science fiction helps us look past the power of technology
» New York Times Magazine: How Chinese Sci-Fi Conquered America, about Ken Liu
» Wall Street Journal: Tom Shippey picks his Best Science-Fiction of 2019 by David Walton, Daniel Suarez, Cory Doctorow, Erin Craig, Michael Swanwick
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The Best of Uncanny, Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas, eds. (Subterranean 978-1596069183, $40, 680pp, hardcover) December 2019
In this challenging, ever-mutable internet era, when publishers are continually searching for ways to find an audience and stay alive, a magazine can take many forms. Some remain old-school print-only. Some are exclusively web-based. Others are hybrids on a regular basis. But one other interesting business model for zines that ...Read More
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The New Voices of Science Fiction, Hannu Rajaniemi & Jacob Weisman, eds. (Tachyon 978-1-61696-291-3, 432pp, $17.95) November 2019
In the deep past of our genre, how did one become a notable new writer? The first step back then was always the same as it is now: publish some good, standout stories as your apprentice and journeyman work. But subsequent public recognition in the days when print magazines dominated the ...Read More
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World Engines: Destroyer, Stephen Baxter (UK: Gollancz 978-1473223172, £20, 576pp, hardcover) September 2019
As nearly as I can suss out, Stephen Baxter currently has no publisher in the USA. His last three books in his classic Xeelee series—Xeelee Endurance (2015), Xeelee Vengeance (2017) and Xeelee Redemption (2018)—appeared from Gollancz in the UK, but not here. And this newest one has no American edition either.
Now, thanks to the ...Read More
Read more» Slate: Isaac Butler, The Disappearance of John M. Ford, with news that Tor is bringing his work back into print
» Guardian: Eric Brown reviews Annalee Newitz, Mike Carey, Claire North, Alison Littlewood, Kim Lakin-Smith
» Recent dining with Scott Edelman: Paul Kirchner, Michael J. Walsh, and Locus Online reviewer Paul Di Filippo ...Read More
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