Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick, David Wong (St. Martin’s 978-1-250-19579-1, $27.99, 368pp, hc) October 2020.
David Wong enjoys an eye-catching title. His 2007 debut went with the striking John Dies at the End, followed by the equally intriguing and impressive This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It (2012) and What the Hell Did I Just Read (2017). The title to Wong’s latest ...Read More
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Knox, Complete Season 1: Episodes 1–11, K. Arsenault Rivera, Brooke Bolander, Gabino Iglesias & Sunny Moraine; Pilar Uribe, narrator (Serial Box, digital download, $9.99, 6 hr., unabridged) May 2020.
Morgan Knox came back from her service as an army nurse in the Great War with disturbing memories of a frightening magic ritual and morbid visions that haunt her sight and once got her locked up in a mental ...Read More
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The Wall: Being the First Book of the Chronicles of Sumer, Gautam Bhatia (HarperCollins India 978-93-5357-835-0, INR399, 386pp, tp) August 2020.
The tale of a society long trapped in enforced stasis but finally destabilized by curious and rebellious youth is one of SF’s core narratives; think of Clarke’s The City and the Stars, Heinlein’s “Universe”, or even Collins’s The Hunger Games. The Wall, Gautam Bhatia’s first ...Read More
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The First Sister, Linden A. Lewis (Skybound 978-1-98212-699-5, $26.00, 352pp, hc) August 2020.
I genuinely wanted to like and to root for Linden A. Lewis’s debut, and the inaugural book in a trilogy, The First Sister. As I read, though, the book dissolved more and more of my goodwill, until, by the conclusion, I had very few positive things left to say. Lewis presents a new science fiction ...Read More
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Last Smile in Sunder City, Luke Arnold; narrated by the author (Hachette Audio 978-1-54915049-4, $25.98, digital download, 8 hr., unabridged) February 2020.
There has always been a lively debate, in this column and among the audiobook listening community at large, as to whether a book should be narrated by the author or by a professional narrator. Authors have an intimacy with their material that’s difficult to duplicate, while professional ...Read More
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Root Magic, Eden Royce (Walden Pond, 978-0-062-89957-6, $16.99, 352pp, hc) January 2021.
Root Magic is an entrancing story of family love, legacy, and strength; of finding oneself; and preserving a connection to the past. Intended for ages eight through 12, the book can be thoroughly enjoyed by adults.
Vividly set on one of South Carolina’s marshy Sea Islands, the story begins on September 2, 1963, with the funeral of ...Read More
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The Silence of the Wilting Skin, Tlotlo Tsamaase (Pink Narcissus Press 978-1-939056-17-7, $12.00, 97pp, tp) May 2020.
The opening line of Motswana author Tlotlo Tsamaase’s searing novella hits readers hard and fast: “My Girlfriend was born on the train a week after her mother died,” she writes. From there the short chapters fly by as the unnamed narrator documents the train’s monthly arrival in her bisected city, carrying the ...Read More
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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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The Echo Wife, Sarah Gailey (Tor 978-1-250-17466-6, $24.99, 256pp, hc) February 2021.
Clones don’t seem quite as popular these days as they were back in the 1970s and ’80s, when we were treated on a fairly regular basis to stories about celebrity clones, spare-parts clones, hazardous-duty clones, doppelganger clones, identity-crisis clones, cheap-labor clones, ominous replacement clones, survivalist clones, posthuman clones, tabula-rasa clones, and, inevitably, murder-mystery clones. Sarah Gailey touches ...Read More
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Winter’s Orbit, Everina Maxwell (Tor 978-1-250-75883-5, $24.99, 432pp, hc) February 2021.
Everina Maxwell’s Winter’s Orbit is a debut novel with an interesting history. A version of this novel was first published online, where I encountered (and enjoyed) it as “The Course of Honour” on Archive Of Our Own (in the Original Works category). Winter’s Orbit as published by Tor Books is different in some respects from “The Course of ...Read More
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Eartheater, Dolores Reyes (HarperVia 978-0062987730, $24.99, 224pp, hc) November 2020.
Eartheater (translated by Julia Sanches) is a strong debut from Dolores Reyes, the second Argentine author I’m reviewing this month. The novel is set in an impoverished barrio in present-day Argentina, told from the perspective of a young woman (she’s never named) burdened with visions of the lost and murdered. On the day her mother is laid to rest, ...Read More
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Creative Surgery, Clelia Farris (Rosarium Publishing) September 2020.
Creative Surgery is Italian author Clelia Farris‘s debut collection (with translations by Rachel Cordasco and Jennifer Delare), and it’s a great start. The first story, “A Day to Remember” is an extended meditation on living in a world that feels much smaller when circumscribed by climate change. We follow an artist in a post-flood Italy as she tours ...Read More
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The Best Horror of the Year Volume Twelve, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Night Shade Books 978-1-59780-973-3, $15.99, 480pp, tp) October 2020.
Ellen Datlow’s career as the doyen of “year’s best” editors began with The Year’s Best Fantasy: First Annual Collection in 1988 (with co-editor Terri Windling), and the series was renamed The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror with the third annual collection. After 21 volumes, the series ended, but Datlow ...Read More
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The Best of Walter Jon Williams, Walter Jon Williams (Subterranean 978-1645240020, $45.00, 610pp, hc). Cover by Lee Moyer. February 2020.
Exactly 30 years ago, this column’s lede was “Walter Jon Williams is an interestingly various writer….” The intervening decades have given me no reason to alter that opinion, variations on which I have been repeating just about every time I write about a Williams title. So why should I ...Read More
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The Best of Elizabeth Hand, Elizabeth Hand (Subterranean 978-1-64524-005-1, $45.00, 560pp, hc) February 2021.
I’ve always distrusted the notion of “comfort reading,” especially as it applies to our little corner of the swamp. After all, the very idea of horror fiction involves discomfort, and SF characteristically challenges our sense of the stability of everything from nations to our bodies to the planet itself. I suppose fantasy does leave room ...Read More
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The Big Blind, Lavie Tidhar (PS Publishing 978-1-786365-98-9, £18.00, 164pp, hc) November 2020.
With its long and shady history, poker seems to have a natural affinity for fantasy writers, ranging from Edward Whittemore (Jerusalem Poker) to Tim Powers (Last Call). It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the ever-eclectic Lavie Tidhar turns his attention to it with The Big Blind, which is peppered with ...Read More
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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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Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Clark (Tor.com Publishing 978-1-250-76702-8, $19.99, 192pp, hc) October 2020. Cover by Henry Sene Yee.
P. Djèlí Clark’s Ring Shout is a wildly imaginative, superbly written narrative about friendship, magic, and fighting racism that occupies a strange interstitial space between historical fiction, fantasy, and body horror. It is also a smart reimagining of history that pushes current racial tensions to the forefront and forces readers to ...Read More
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Doors of Sleep, Tim Pratt (Angry Robot 978-0-857-66874-5, $14.99, 272pp, tp) January 2021.
Tim Pratt’s last trilogy from Angry Robot, the Axiom (The Wrong Stars, The Dreaming Stars, and The Forbidden Stars), was precisely the kind of space opera romp guaranteed to delight me. Fast paced, and with a rag-tag crew of heroes and a selection of batshit weird dangers, it drove an appealing course ...Read More
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The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020, Diana Gabaldon & John Joseph Adams, eds. (Mariner 978-1328613103, $16.99, 432pp, tp) November 2020.
It’s always seemed to me that John Joseph Adams’s Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy series, now in its sixth volume, has served a somewhat different if equally important purpose than the more traditional year’s best volumes which have been a staple of SF publishing for more ...Read More
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The Space Between Worlds, Micaiah Johnson (Del Rey 978-0593135051, $28.00, 336pp, hc) August 2020.
Micaiah Johnson’s The Space Between Worlds is built on a solid SFnal idea: a shadowy genius has figured out how to travel between parallel Earths and is raiding them for information and resources. There’s a catch, of course. The only humans who can make the jump between the worlds are those who don’t have a ...Read More
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London Centric, Ian Whates, ed. (NewCon Press) March 2020. Uncanny 11-12/20 On Spec #114 Pulp Literature Summer ’20 The New Yorker 11/9/20
Here’s an intriguing new anthology from England’s NewCon Press, London Centric: Tales of Future London, edited by Ian Whates. The anthology is mostly exactly what it says, a collection of looks at a future London, but one of the very best stories is mostly set in ...Read More
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The Clerk, Guillermo Saccomanno (Open Letter 978-1-948-83025-6, $15.95, 138pp, tp) September 2020.
Going back to the country’s independence in 1816, Argentina has been a rich source of genre and genre-adjacent fiction. Most will be aware of Jorge Luis Borges – the father of magical realism – but there’s also Silvina Ocampo, Carlos Gardini, and Angélica Gorodischer, whose 1979 mosaic novel Trafalgar was finally translated into English in 2013 thanks ...Read More
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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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Snow, Glass, Apples, Neil Gaiman & Colleen Doran (Dark Horse 978-1-50670-979-6, $17.99, unpaginated, hc) August 2019. Cover by Colleen Doran.
Tanith Lee’s The Silver Metal Lover, Trina Robbins (It’s Alive 978-1-7325915-2-3, $24.99, 80pp, hc) September 2019. Cover by Trina Robbins.
Nordic Tales: Folktales from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and Denmark, Ulla Thynell (Chronicle Books, 978-1-4521-7447-1, $22.95, 160pp, hc) August 2019. Cover by Ulla Thynell.
Snow, Glass, Apples ...Read More
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The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, Garth Nix (Katherine Tegen Books 978-0-06-268325-0, $19.99, 416pp, hc) September 2020.
In a version of 1983 London that is just a bit not-like the actual 1983 London, Susan Arkshaw is looking for her father. Her mother, whose memories of Susan’s conception are fond but hazy, can provide only the vaguest of clues as to his identity, thus prompting her summertime quest. Susan’s plan to ...Read More
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Reconstruction, Alaya Dawn Johnson (Small Beer 978-1-618731777, $17.00, 278pp, tp) November 2020.
Like a number of writers who have arrived with a splash in the last decade or two, Alaya Dawn Johnson seems to have written nearly as many novels as short stories. That’s not actually the case, of course – her website lists seven novels, and her first collection, Reconstruction, contains ten stories – but it’s probably ...Read More
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Goldilocks, Laura Lam (Orbit 978-0-316-46286-0, $27.00, 244pp, hc) May 2020.
Laura Lam’s Goldilocks opens with five women stealing a small space shuttle, one that will get them to a space station in Earth’s orbit. From there, they’ll hijack the Atalanta, a much larger ship able to travel faster than the speed of light (or so they think), which they’ll pilot to Cavendish, a “Goldilocks” planet that should support human ...Read More
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Pacific Storm, Linda Nagata (Mythic Island Press, 978-1937197339, $14.00, 264 pp, tp) October 2020.
Linda Nagata made her reputation with far-far-future adventures featuring near-magical nanotechnology and post-human characters, but in the last few years she has also developed a strong line of closer-to-home scenarios. This day-after-tomorrow work has veered toward military SF in her Red Trilogy (2013-15) and toward the technothriller in The Last Good Man (2017), both of ...Read More
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Art of Gary Gianni for George R.R. Martin’s Seven Kingdoms, Gary Gianni (Flesk Publications 978-1-64041-022-0, $49.95, 303pp, hc) March 2020. Cover by Gary Gianni.
It’s easy to get lost in the expressive, romantic linework and painting of master artist Gary Gianni’s illustrations for George R.R. Martin’s Seven Kingdoms. Somehow the heroes and heroines of A Song of Ice and Fire look more heroic, the villains more dastardly, and the ...Read More
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Yesterday’s Tomorrows: The Story of Classic British Science Fiction in 100 Books, Mike Ashley (British Library Published 978-0712353717, £15.00, 320pp, trade paperback) October 2020 (US edition titled Yesterday’s Tomorrows: The Story of Science Fiction in 100 Books, May 2021).
The British Library wants to share their wealth. Realizing that many of their 25 million books have undeservedly faded from current memory and attention, the BL has embarked on ...Read More
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Middle-earth Journeys in Myth and Legend, Donato Giancola (Dark Horse 978-1-50671-086-0, $29.99, 199pp, hc) April 2019. Cover by Donato Giancola.
Much-awarded and acclaimed classical realist artist Donato Giancola has such technical mastery that he is able to depict powerful, memorable images in both SF and fantasy throughout his career. From spacesuits to hobbits, he can and has done it all. Here he takes a deep, delicious dive into all ...Read More
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