Weekly Bestsellers, 27 January 2020
Titles by Ilona Andrews, Charlaine Harris, and Ransom Riggs debut this week, Andrews’ novella Sweep with Me (NYLA) ranking #3 on the USA Today list.
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Author: LocEditor
Paul Di Filippo Reviews Novellas by David Sandner & Jacob Weisman, Robert Levy, and James Patrick Kelly
Mingus Fingers, David Sandner & Jacob Weisman (Fairwood 978-1933846873, $8, 68pp, trade paperback) November 2019
The boom in novellas shows no signs of petering out, as their bite-sized yet sufficiently mouth-filling substantiality continues to appeal to readers who want more than a short story but less than a novel. Here we have a go at three recent fine examples of the form.
If I had a time machine, one ...Read More
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New Books : 21 January 2020
Augmented and alternate realities are available in THE SEEP by Chana Porter, WOLVES by Simon Ing, and William Gibson’s much-anticipated AGENCY.
New titles this week are by S.K. Dunstall, William Gibson, Terry Goodkind, Charlie N. Holmberg, Simon Ings, Sarah Kozloff, Tochi Onyebuchi, Chana Porter, Alexander Weinstein, and F.C. Yee. ...Read More
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Weekly Bestsellers, 20 January 2020
C.J. Cherryh’s Resurgence (DAW), the 20th title in her long-running Foreigner series, makes it onto this week’s USA Today list. This is the first Cherryh title to appear on any list compiled on these pages since they began in 2003.
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Paul Di Filippo Reviews The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez
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 Books : 14 January 2020
BIRDS! Check out the cover of Rebecca Roanhorse’s latest, plus new titles THE CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS by Ransom Riggs and THE VANISHED BIRDS by Simon Jimenez.
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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Weekly Bestsellers, 13 January 2020
Little changes this week, but notable is that the trade paperback of Richard Powers’ The Overstory has been on lists 40 weeks in a row since the novel won the Pulitzer Prize in April 2019.
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Periodicals, early January 2020
New issues of Abyss & Apex, Aphelion, Clarkesworld, The Dark, Galaxy’s Edge, GigaNotoSaurus, Kaleidotrope, Lightspeed, Nightmare, and Uncanny
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Blinks: William Gibson; Guardian reviews
» 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 Books : 7 January 2020
Explore solarpunk winters, an algorithmically perfect country, and rival NASA and Soviet missions to the Kuiper Belt in these new books!
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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Weekly Bestsellers, 6 January 2020
Most genre titles slip on lists this week, though several titles by Andrzej Sapkowski, especially The Last Wish (Orbit), still dominate several lists.
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Blinks: NYT reviews; SFC reviews VanderMeer; Slate’s 2019 SF stories
» 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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Periodicals, late December 2019
New issues of Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Strange Horizons, plus December posts at Daily Science Fiction and Tor.com
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New Books : 31 December 2019
This list of new titles includes short stories from Ilona Andrews and THE BEST OF UNCANNY, a weaponized dominatrix clone, and jumping through parallel worlds with H.G. Wells.
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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Weekly Bestsellers, 30 December 2019
Seven different individual titles and sets of fantasy novels by Andrzej Sapkowski rank on Amazon lists today, with The Witcher Boxed Set: Blood of Elves, The Time of Contempt, Baptism of Fire (Orbit) ranking #1 this morning at Amazon.ca.
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Weekly Bestsellers, 23 December 2019
Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Virtue and Vengeance still ranks #1 on the New York Times Young Adult Hardcover list.
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Once More, Occasionally with Feeling: Gary Westfahl Reviews Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
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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Paul Di Filippo Reviews Anyone by Charles Soule
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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Print Periodicals, December 2019
New issues of Analog Science Fiction and Fact (celebrating its 90th anniversary!), Asimov’s Science Fiction, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
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Paul Di Filippo Reviews Shadows in the Stone by Jack Dann
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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New Books : 17 December 2019
Tarot-based noblemen on a modern-day Atlantis, intrigue in an underwater city off the coast of Florida, and Weird Is Other People!
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Weekly Bestsellers, 16 December 2019
Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Virtue and Vengeance (Henry Holt), second in her Legacy of Orisha series, debuts strongly, ranking #1 on the New York Times Young Adult Hardcover list.
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Blinks: William Gibson, Ted Chiang, Ken Liu, Best of 2019, reviews, dinner
» 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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Paul Di Filippo Reviews The Best of Uncanny, Edited by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
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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Weekly Bestsellers, 9 December 2019
Nora Roberts’ The Rise of Magicks (St. Martin’s), third in her Chronicles of the One, and Brandon Sanderson’s Starsight (Delacorte), second in his YA Skyward series, both debut strongly.
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New Books : 3 December 2019
Find a West African-inspired magical world, Tales of Alternative Beatles, and DEAD ASTRONAUTS on this long list of new books!
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Weekly Bestsellers, 2 December 2019
Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea reaches #1 on the Los Angeles Times hardcover fiction list.
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New Books : 26 November 2019
New titles this week, some released earlier in the month, are by Gwyneth Jones (on Joanna Russ), Mercedes Lackey, James Lovegrove, Robert Markley (on Kim Stanley Robinson), Marissa Meyer, Natasha Ngan, Malka Older, Brandon Sanderson, Jamie Sawyer, Maggie Stiefvater, and Kurt Vonnegut & Suzanne McConnell.
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Weekly Bestsellers, 25 November 2019
The new novel by Daniel H. Wilson, apparently correctly titled Michael Crichton: The Andromeda Evolution (Harper), debuts on three lists, as high as #10 on the Publishers Weekly fiction hardcover list.
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Paul Di Filippo Reviews The New Voices of Science Fiction, Edited by Hannu Rajaniemi & Jacob Weisman
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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New Books : 19 November 2019
New titles this week are by Andrew Bannister, Holly Black, Richard Chizmar, Paul Cornell, John Fleskes, Duncan M. Hamilton, Howard Andrew Jones, Naomi Kritzer, Nick Mamatas, Hannu Rajaniemi & Jacob Weisman, and Yoshiki Tanaka.
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