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Books Received, Dec 16 — 22

23 Dec, 2017

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A retrospective anthology of tales is highlighted by autobiographical accounts of the experiences that have shaped his fantasy and science fiction work.
The gruff and mysterious warrior known as Vargus has meant many things to many people over the course of his long life. But when he hears of a village suffering strange attacks in the dead of night, he must take up the role of the Gath — the people’s protector — once again, before any more children go missing.Exclusive to ebook and audiobook, Of Gods and Men is an original epic fantasy novella by Stephen Aryan focusing on a fan-favourite character from the Age of Dread trilogy. Story takes place before the events of Battlemage.
In a desperate bid to escape the bounty on his head, assassin Girton Club-Foot has returned to Maniyadoc, but the kingdom he knew no longer exists.
Three kings battle for supremacy in a land ravaged by war-and one of them is his old friend Rufra. With threats inside and outside the war encampment, Girton races to find the traitor behind an assassination plot. But his magic can no longer be contained and Girton may not be able to save even himself.
It’s assassin versus assassin for the life of a king.

Readers met the irrepressible Karen Memory in Elizabeth Bear’s 2015 novel Karen Memory, and fell in love with her steampunk Victorian Pacific Northwest city, and her down-to-earth story-telling voice.
Now Karen is back with Stone Mad, a new story about spiritualists, magicians, con-men, and an angry lost tommy-knocker — a magical creature who generally lives in the deep gold mines of Alaska, but has been kidnapped and brought to Rapid City.
Karen and Priya are out for a night on the town, celebrating the purchase of their own little ranch and Karen’s retirement from the Hotel Ma Cherie, when they meet the Arcadia Sisters, spiritualists who unexpectedly stir up the tommy-knocker in the basement. The ensuing show could bring down the house, if Karen didn’t rush in to rescue everyone she can.


Manhattan has many secrets. Some are older than the city itself.
Summer in New York: a golden hour on the city streets, but a dark time for Selene. She’s lost her home and the man she loves.
A cult hungry for ancient power has kidnapped her father and targeted her friends. To save them, Selene must face the past she’s been running from — a past that stretches back millennia, to when the faithful called her Huntress. Moon Goddess. Artemis.
With the pantheon at her side, Selene must journey back to the seat of her immortal power: from the streets of Rome and the temples of Athens — to the heights of Mount Olympus itself.
Leo Carew’s debut novel The Wolf, the first book in the Under the Northern Sky series, is a masterpiece in epic historical fantasy — a new voice to rival David Gemmell or George RR Martin. Violence and death have come to the land under the Northern Sky. The Anakim dwell in the desolate forests and mountains beyond the black river, the land under the Northern Sky. Their ancient ways are forged in Unthank silver and carved in the grey stone of their heartland, their lives measured out in the turning of centuries, not years. By contrast, the Sutherners live in the moment, their vitality much more immediate and ephemeral than their Anakim neighbours. Fragile is the peace that has existed between these very different races — and that peace is shattered when the Suthern armies flood the lands to the north. These two races revive their age-old hatred and fear of each other. Within the maelstrom of war, two leaders will rise to lead their people to victory. Only one will succeed. The Wolf is a thrilling, savagely visceral, politically nuanced and unexpectedly wry exploration of power and identity — and how far one will go to defend them.

When Ray Lilly was 13 years old, a handgun accident landed his best friend, Jon Burrows, in a wheelchair and turned Ray into a runaway and petty criminal. Fifteen years later, Ray returns home after a stint in prison; he’s determined to go straight, but he knows he can’t do that without making peace with his old friend. What Ray doesn’t expect is to discover that Jon has just received a mysterious cure – not only is he out of his wheelchair, he seems stronger and faster than… well, pretty much anyone. Worse, his cure has drawn the attention of all sorts of powerful people: the media are camped out on his block, the police are investigating him for insurance fraud, and weird shadowy figures have begun to draw closer, figures who clearly do not mean to do Jon any good. Can Ray atone for the biggest mistake of his life by protecting his oldest friend? And what terrible price will the world have to pay if he succeeds?
Tara’s quirky PI business is attracting some even quirkier customers. She’s not sure how Madame Vine’s Escort Agency got her number. And then there’s the eccentric motorcycle racing team owner, Bolo Ignatius. Both these clients want to Tara to investigate suspicious circumstances that turn up dead bodies. That can only mean one thing in this town: John Viaspa. Tara goes in for round two with the local crime boss, while balancing the tight rope of her deliciously complicated love life.Tara Sharp’s life can only be describe as furious fun.

At the heart of the Dark Zone, a duel for the universe rages.
In an ancient Jorian temple, Jaqi faces John Starfire, the new ruler of the Empire. He has set all the worlds aflame in his quest to destroy humankind. Jaqi has sworn to stop him. Problem is, Jaqi isn’t much of a fighter.
Meanwhile, the sun-eating cosmic spiders, the Shir, have moved out of the Dark Zone and are consuming the galaxy. Araskar knows that he must hold them back, but to do that, he has to give himself over to the Resistance, under the command of John Starfire’s wife. And she wants him dead more than she wants the stars to live.
If Jaqi and Araskar can fight their way out, they can use a secret at the heart of the Dark Zone to free the galaxy, and end John Starfire’s new tyranny. They lose, and every star in the sky will go dark.

The Ben-Elim, a race of warrior angels, once vanquished a mighty demon horde. Now they rule the Banished lands. But their dominion is brutally enforced and their ancient enemy may not be as crushed as they thought.
In the snowbound north, Drem, a trapper, finds mutilated corpses in the forests — a sign of demonic black magic.
In the south, Riv, a young, tempestuous soldier, discovers a deadly rift within the Ben-Elim themselves.
Two individuals with two world-changing secrets. But where will they lead? And what role will Drem and Riv play in the Banished Land’s fate? Difficult choices need to be made.
In the shadows, dark forces are gathering, waiting for their time to rise…
It is the year 7000 by Noble reckoning, and the vampire rulers of the world have grown complacent. When the shape-shifting Outer Space Beings invade, the Noble warrior Greylancer must pit his skills and magic against the technology of the OSBs, quash an anti-Noble rebellion, outwit the Ultimate Mind, and, when he is critically injured, turn to mere humans for help. The Three Thousand Year War of Vampire Hunter D begins here!
Also includes the bonus short story An Irreplaceable Existence”!
A murderer doing time in Hell. A girl who just wants to win her high school band contest…no matter what it takes. Sumo wrestlers with a supernatural secret. A future Tokyo where vampires are menial laborers nursing long-held grudges against humanity. And even a very conscientious, if unstable, Universal Transverse Mercator projection. These crime and mystery stories from and about Japan explore myth, technology, the sharpness of a sleuth’s mind, and the darkness in the hearts of criminals. Read these stories and learn that hanzai means crime!
Karsman has a dozen different people living in his head, each the master of a different set of skills and hoping to gain mastery of Karsman’s body. He survives on a backwater planet dominated by the Muljaddy, a mostly ambivalent religious autocracy, where devotion and prayer can be traded in for subsistence wages and enough food to survive. Surrounded by artifacts of a long dead civilization, the population survives off its salvage, with Karsman eking out an uneventful life as the unofficial mayor of his small town.
But that life is soon interrupted, when a group of commandos arrive, coming from the wastelands as only off-worlders could. They’ve come to kill a woman, or so they say. At first the commandos merely threaten as they search. Unable to find what they’re looking for, they begin to ratchet up their measures, separating the men from the women, instigating violent encounters, and eventually staging a coup against the Muljaddy and his Temple.
Faced with the task of protecting his quiet town and a woman he might love from the commandos who could want to kill her, Karsman must balance between maintaining his personality and harnessing the personas whose skills he desperately needs.

Ten thousand city-state habitats orbit the planet Yellowstone, forming a near-perfect democratic human paradise.
But even utopia needs a police force. For the citizens of the Glitter Band that organization is Panoply, and the prefects are its operatives.
Prefect Tom Dreyfus has a new emergency on his hands. Across the habitats and their hundred million citizens, people are dying suddenly and randomly, victims of a bizarre and unprecedented malfunction of their neural implants. And these melters” leave no clues behind as to the cause of their deaths…
As panic rises in the populace, a charismatic figure is sowing insurrection, convincing a small but growing number of habitats to break away from the Glitter Band and form their own independent colonies.


In 2267, Earth has just begun to recover from worldwide ecological disasters. Minh is part of the generation that first moved back up to the surface of the Earth from the underground hells, to reclaim humanity’s ancestral habitat. She’s spent her entire life restoring river ecosystems, but lately the kind of long-term restoration projects Minh works on have been stalled due to the invention of time travel. When she gets the opportunity take a team to 2000 BC to survey the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, she jumps at the chance to uncover the secrets of the shadowy think tank that controls time travel technology.


Imperial forces have captured the Phezzan Dominion and draw ever closer to the Free Planets Alliance capital of Heinessen. Yang hurriedly abandons Iserlohn Fortress and heads for the capital to protect countless civilians. Taking out Reinhard is the alliance’s only path to victory. Despite the empire’s superior numbers, Yang continues to outwit its most resourceful generals via tactical wizardry. Reinhard, on the other hand, seeing through Yang’s devices, opts for all-out war. And so, the invincible” and undefeated” once again clash swords. Who will emerge victorious?

Even after the world and humanity itself have been rendered nearly unrecognizable by genetic engineering, a day in the office can feel…Sisyphean.
The company stands atop a tiny deck supported by huge iron columns a hundred meters high. The boss there is its president — a large creature of unstable, shifting form once called human.” The world of his dedicated worker contains only the deck and the sea of mud surrounding it, and and the worker’s daily routine is anything but peaceful. A mosaic novel of extreme science and high weirdness, Sisyphean will change the way you see existence itself.
A strange journey into the far future of genetic engineering, and working life. After centuries of tinkering, many human bodies only have a casual similarity to what we now know, but both work and school continue apace. Will the enigmatic sad sack known only as the worker” survive the day? Will the young student Hanishibe get his questions about the biological future of humanity answered, or will he have to transfer to the department of theology? Will Umari and her master ever comprehend the secrets of nanodust?

IMAGINE A GAME WITH NO BOUNDARIES — WAITING IN A PARKING LOT, SITTING AT YOUR COMPUTER, WALKING DOWN THE STREET. YOU COULD BE CALLED AT ANY MOMENT — AND YOU’D BETTER BE READY. THIS IS NOT A GAME.
THIS IS A NOVEL OF GREED, BETRAYAL, AND SOCIAL NETWORKING.

Veronica Mars meets the World of Warcraft in this mystery romp with a hilarious heroine.Working for a games development company is my dream job. So, when a slightly sketchy lawyer offered me the opportunity, I had to take it! Who cares that the company has some quirks? No job is perfect. Some questionable, but probably totally normal issues:A mysterious whistle-blower is posting the industry’s dirty laundry on Reddit.An unidentified corpse is in the staff room.The game under development is for filthy casuals, and unwisely involves matching talking peppermints.My job, technically speaking, is Industry Spy.“It’s all just a typical day at the office. Right?

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Books Received, Dec 9 — 15

16 Dec, 2017

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Set in a future Great Britain scarred by fracking and ecological collapse, The Race opens in the coastal town of Sapphire, dominated by the illegal sport of smartdog racing: greyhounds genetically modified with human DNA. For Jenna, the latest Cup meet bears a significance far beyond the simple hunger for victory. Christy’s life is dominated by fear of her brother, a man she knows capable of monstrous acts and suspects of hiding even darker ones. Desperate to learn the truth she contacts Alex, a stranger she knows only by name. Together they must face their demons, wherever that may lead. Raised at the Croft, a secret government programme focusing on smartdogs, Maree has to undertake a journey through shipping lanes haunted by the enigmatic and dangerous Atlantic whale. What she discovers en route will change her world forever. 
The story of four damaged people whose lives are inextricably linked, The Race is a novel of tender nuances, brutality, insight and great ambition, a narrative that lays bare the fears and joys of being human, and, ultimately, offers hope to us all.


A collection of stories and essays that imagine the near future of human activity in space, informed by the economic and social history of exploration, plus current technical and scientific research.

Unfortunately, I think the anthology above falls short of the minimum fraction of pieces by woman writers for a review. I require at least 40% and it’s 30%.

I suppose if this is going to be recorded somewhere for posterity, I should set the record straight. The ghostwriter will probably cut it all, but hey, it’s the principle of the thing.
Dr. Cadence Mbella is the world’s most celebrated scholar of the atargati: sentient, intelligent deep-water beings who are most definitely not mermaids. When Cadence decides to release a captive atargati from scientific experimentation and interrogation, she knows her career and her life is forfeit. But she still yearns for the atargati – there is still so much to know about their physiology, their society, their culture. And Cadence would do anything to more fully understand the atargati… no matter what the cost.
A vampiric Snow White whose pious stepmother is her only salvation…. 
A supernatural Cinderella who strikes at midnight, leaving behind a prince mad with desire…. 
A sleeping beauty never meant to be woken… 
In her World Fantasy Award-nominated short story collection, Red as Blood, Tanith Lee deconstructed familiar fairy tales, recapturing their original darkness and horror in haunting new interpretations. Behind gilded words and poised princesses, she exposed a sinister world of violence, madness, and dangerous enchantments. With Redder than Blood, Lee resumes the tradition of twisting tales. Among its nineteen tales, this volume explores unnerving variations of Beauty and the Beast, The Frog Prince, Snow White, and other classics, including three never-before-published stories. A recognized master fantasist, Tanith Lee has won multiple awards for her craft, including the British Fantasy Award, the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, and the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in Horror.
The sentient warship Trouble Dog was built for violence, yet following a brutal war, she is disgusted by her role in a genocide. Stripped of her weaponry and seeking to atone, she joins the House of Reclamation, an organisation dedicated to rescuing ships in distress. When a civilian ship goes missing in a disputed system, Trouble Dog and her new crew of loners, captained by Sal Konstanz, are sent on a rescue mission. Meanwhile, light years away, intelligence officer Ashton Childe is tasked with locating the poet, Ona Sudak, who was aboard the missing spaceship. What Childe doesn’t know is that Sudak is not the person she appears to be. A straightforward rescue turns into something far more dangerous, as Trouble Dog, Konstanz and Childe find themselves at the centre of a conflict that could engulf the entire galaxy. If she is to save her crew, Trouble Dog is going to have to remember how to fight…


Emperor’s daughter Mercedes is the first woman ever admitted to the High Ground, the elite training academy of the Solar League’s Star Command, and she must graduate if she is to have any hope of taking the throne. Her classmate Tracy has more modest goals — to rise to the rank of captain, and win fame and honor. But a civil war is coming and the political machinations of those who yearn for power threaten the young cadets. In a time of intrigue and alien invasion, they will be tested as they never thought possible.

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Patreon blinks

13 Dec, 2017

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We’ve heard you loud and clear. We’re not going to rollout the changes to our payments system that we announced last week. We still have to fix the problems that those changes addressed, but we’re going to fix them in a different way, and we’re going to work with you to come up with the specifics, as we should have done the first time around. Many of you lost patrons, and you lost income. No apology will make up for that, but nevertheless, I’m sorry. It is our core belief that you should own the relationships with your fans. These are your businesses, and they are your fans.

More here.

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Books Received, December 2 — 8

9 Dec, 2017

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Lieutenant Cora Harper joined the Systems Alliance to develop and enhance her powerful biotic talents. She was assigned to the asari commando unit Talein’s Daughters, where she honed her abilities to become a skilled and deadly huntress.
Returning to Earth, Cora finds herself a stranger among other humans, and joins the Andromeda Initiative as Alec Ryder’s second-in-command. The mission will send 100,000 colonists on a one-way, 600-year-long journey into the unknown. When essential — and dangerous — tech is stolen, Cora is assigned to recover it before it can be used against the Initiative, and end the mission before it can begin.
Adda and Iridian are newly-minted engineers, but in a solar system wracked by economic collapse after an interplanetary war, an engineering degree isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. Desperate for gainful employment, they hijack a colony ship, planning to join a pirate crew at Barbary Station, an abandoned shipbreaking station in deep space.
But when they arrive at Barbary Station, nothing is as they expected. The pirates aren’t living in luxury — they’re hiding in a makeshift base welded onto the station’s exterior hull. The artificial intelligence controlling the station’s security system has gone mad, trying to kill all station residents. And it shoots down any ship that tries to leave, so there’s no way out.
Adda and Iridian have one chance to earn a place on the pirate crew: destroy the artificial intelligence. The last engineer who went up against the security system suffered explosive decapitation, and the pirates are taking bets on how the newcomers will die. But Adda and Iridian plan to beat the odds.
There’s a glorious future in piracy…if they can survive long enough.

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Twenty Core Works of Religious Speculative Fiction Every True SF Fan Should Have on Their Shelves

7 Dec, 2017

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As with the previous core lists, here are twenty religious Speculative Fiction Works chosen entirely on the basis of merit and significance to the field1. No implication is intended that these are the only twenty works you should consider2.

(sorry about the lack of links. running behind. will try to come back and add them)

  • The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

  • HWJN by Ibraheem Abbas & Yasser Bahjatt 

  • A Fine and Private Place by Peter Beagle

  • Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold

  • Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler

  • This Star Shall Abide by Sylvia Louise Engdahl

  • The Sea Priestess by Dion Fortune

  • The Dazzle of Day by Molly Gloss

  • St Ailbe’s Hall” by Naomi Kritzer

  • High Deryni by Katherine Kurtz

  • A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L’Engle

  • The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren

  • A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller

  • Pennterra by Judith Moffett

  • He, She and It by Marge Piercy 

  • Godmother Night by Rachel Pollack

  • Small Gods by Terry Pratchett

  • The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

  • Still Forms on Foxfield by Joan Slonczewski

  • Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson

Persons unfamiliar with one or two of the works, congratulations! You’re one of today’s Ten Thousand!

1: There are two filtering rules: 

  • Only one work per author per list

  • Any given work by a particular author can appear on only one list. A given author may, however, have works on various lists but each instance of their work will be unique. 

2: NO IMPLICATION IS INTENDED THAT THESE ARE THE ONLY TWENTY workS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER.

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Books Received, Nov 25 — Dec 1

2 Dec, 2017

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This sophisticated, scary anthology collects the best horror fiction published between 1984 and 2005, one of horror’s most innovative eras. These exceptionally diverse stories, hand-picked by horror-expert editor Ellen Datlow, are tales of the subtly psychological, the unpredictably mischievous, and the disturbingly visceral.
Here are classics, such as horror master Stephen King’s Chattery Teeth,” the tautly drawn account of a traveling salesman who unwisely picks up yet another hitchhiker; Peter Straub’s eerie The Juniper Tree,” describing a man whose nostalgia for the movies of his childhood leads to his stolen innocence; and George R. R. Martin’s sinister The Pear-Shaped Man,” in which a young woman encounters a neighbor who likes her a bit too much.
Whether you grew up on Clive Barker’s Books of Blood; Joyce Carol Oates’s Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”; Neil Gaiman’s Sandman; or are newly discovering Stephen King’s son, breakout author Joe Hill; there is something here for everyone who enjoys being more than just a little bit scared.


Welcome to the many worlds of #1 New York Timesbestselling author Kelley Armstrong (Otherworld, Cainsville). As her SyFychannel series, Bitten, enters its second season, Armstrong continues to breathe new life into city-dwelling vampires, werewolves, and zombies. Now travel even further with her, to a post-apocalyptic fortress, a superstitious village, a supernatural brothel, and even feudal Japan.
In Led Astray, you’ll discover the stories of new characters from within and outside Armstrong’s popular novels. Here you will find two original tales from Cainsville, plus journeys to and beyond the worlds of Darkest Powers, Age of Legends, Otherworld, and more.
Bold and humorous, passionate and heart-stopping, here is Kelley Armstrong at her versatile best.
From the acclaimed author of The Last Unicorncomes a new, exquisitely-told fable for the modern age.
Claudio Bianchi has lived alone for many years on a hillside in Southern Italy’s scenic Calabria. Set in his ways and suspicious of outsiders, Claudio has always resisted change, preferring farming and writing poetry. But one chilly morning, as though from a dream, an impossible visitor appears at the farm. When Claudio comes to her aid, an act of kindness throws his world into chaos. Suddenly he must stave off inquisitive onlookers, invasive media, and even more sinister influences.
Lyrical, gripping, and wise, In Calabria confirms Peter S. Beagle’s continuing legacy as one of fantasy’s most legendary authors.


What would you do if a tornado wanted you to be its Valentine? Or if a haunted spacesuit banged on your door? When is the ideal time to turn into a tiger? Would you post a supernatural portal on Craigslist?
In these nineteen stories, the enfants terribles of fantasy have arrived. The New Voices of Fantasycaptures some of the fastest-rising talents of the last five years, including Sofia Samatar, Maria Dahvana Headley, Max Gladstone, Alyssa Wong, Usman T. Malik, Brooke Bolander, E. Lily Yu, Ben Loory, Ursula Vernon, and more. Their tales were hand-picked by the legendary Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn) and genre expert Jacob Weisman (The Treasury of the Fantastic).
So go ahead and join the Communist revolution of the honeybees. The new kids got your back.
One of the Web’s most celebrated high-tech culture mavens returns with this second collection of essays and polemics. Discussing complex topics in an accessible manner, Cory Doctorow’s visions of a future where artists have full freedom of expression is tempered with his understanding that creators need to benefit from their own creations. From extolling the Etsy makerverse to excoriating Apple for dumbing down technology while creating an information monopoly, each unique piece is brief, witty, and at the cutting edge of tech. Now a stay-at-home dad as well as an international activist, Doctorow writes as eloquently about creating real-time Internet theater with his daughter as he does while lambasting the corporations that want to profit from inherent intellectual freedoms.


Kickass heroines and riveting storytelling are the calling cards of groundbreaking fantasy author Kate Elliott (Crown of Stars, Crossroads, Court of Fives). Here her bold adventuresses, complex quests, noble sacrifices, and hard-won victories shine in classic, compact legends. In The Memory of Peace,” a girl’s powerful emotions rouse the magic of a city devastated by war. Meeting in The Queen’s Garden,” two princesses unite to protect their kingdom from the blind ambition of their corrupted father. While Riding the Shore of the River of Death” a chieftain’s daughter finds an unlikely ally on her path to self-determination.


Nalo Hopkinson (Brown Girl in the Ring, The Salt Roads, Sister Mine) is an internationally-beloved storyteller. Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as having an imagination that most of us would kill for,” her Afro-Caribbean, Canadian, and American influences shine in truly unique stories that are filled with striking imagery, unlikely beauty, and delightful strangeness.
In this long-awaited collection, Hopkinson continues to expand the boundaries of culture and imagination. Whether she is retelling The Tempestas a new Caribbean myth, filling a shopping mall with unfulfilled ghosts, or herding chickens that occasionally breathe fire, Hopkinson continues to create bold fiction that transcends boundaries and borders.


Cyberpunk is dead. The revolution has been co-opted by half-assed heroes, overclocked CGI, and tricked-out shades. Once radical, cyberpunk is now nothing more than a brand.
Time to stop flipping the channel.
These sixteen extreme stories reveal a government ninja routed by a bicycle repairman, the inventor of digitized paper hijacked by his college crush, a dead boy trapped in a warped storybook paradise, and the queen of England attacked with the deadliest of forbidden technology: a working modem. You’ll meet Manfred Macx, renegade meme-broker, Red Sonja, virtual reality sex-goddess, and Felix, humble sys-admin and post-apocalyptic hero.
Editors James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel (Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology) have united cyberpunk visionaries William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Pat Cadigan with the new post-cyberpunk vanguard, including Cory Doctorow, Charles Stross, and Jonathan Lethem. Including a canon-establishing introduction and excerpts from a hotly contested online debate, Rewired is the first anthology to define and capture the crackling excitement of the post-cyberpunks.
From the grittiness of Mirrorshades to the Singularity and beyond, it’s time to revive the revolution.


A rebellious child identifies with Maleficent instead of Sleeping Beauty. Best friends Anna and Corry share one last morning on Earth. A solitary woman inherits a penny arcade haunted by a beautiful stranger. A prep-school student requires more than luck when playing dice with a faerie. Ladies who lunch – dividing one last bite of dessert – delve into new dimensions of quantum politeness. At summer camp, a young girl discovers the heartbreak of forbidden love. Whether on a habitat on Mars or in a boardinghouse in London, discover Ellen Klages’ wicked, wondrous adventures full of cheeky wit, empathy, and courage.” 

A new novel celebrating the second season of the Sundance TV Hap and Leonard series starring Michael K. Williams (The Wire), James Purefoy (The Following), and Christina Hendricks (Mad Men).
Hap Collins is becoming a man — just not the man he’s expected to be. His East Texan childhood has been chock full of ignorant rednecks, bullies, and bigots. As a more enlightened sort, Hap went and figured out that being right is a lot less fun that kicking ass.
But singlehandedly punishing the jerks of the world is a tough row to hoe. Luckily, Hap’s about to meet his unlikely partner-in-crime-solving.
Leonard Pine is many things Hap is not: black, gay, and surprisingly conservative. Frankly, the two young men seem ill-matched at best. But when Hap sees Leonard demolishing an angry mob with both his fists and words, it’s immediately clear that they have a lot in common.
Hap and Leonard: Blood and Lemonadebrings together the origins of Joe R. Lansdale’s popular Texan crime-fighting duo. These new, familiar, and definitive adventures show once and for all how two pissed-off young men became one heck of a bad-ass team.
A SundanceTV miniseries starring Michael K. Williams (The Wire), James Purefoy (Rome), and Christina Hendricks (Mad Men).
Hap and Leonard don’t fit the profile. Hap Collins looks like a good ol boy, but his liberal politics don’t match. After a number of failed careers, Hap has discovered that what he’s best at: kicking ass. Vietnam veteran Leonard Pine is even more complicated: black, conservative, gay … and an occasional arsonist.
Join in on Hap and Leonard’s gritty Texan crime-fighting adventures, including four pieces of bonus material only found in this edition. The Dixie Mafia and small-time crooks alike had best be extremely nervous.
Pass through fairy tales into the magic of invisible worlds in these opulent stories by a beloved fantasy icon and author of the classic Riddlemaster trilogy. Patricia McKillip has inspired generations of dedicated readers with enchanting tales that are as romantic as they are unexpected. Her lush, mesmerizing narratives are as deliciously bittersweet as the finest chocolate and as intoxicating as the finest wine.
The bewitching wonders offered here include princesses dancing with dead suitors, a knight in love with an official of exotic lineage, and fortune’s fool stealing into the present instead of the future. You’ll discover a ravishing undine and her mortal bridegroom who is more infatuated with politics than pleasure, a time-traveling angel forbidden to intervene in Cotton Mather’s religious ravings, a wizard seduced in his youth by the Faerie Queen returning with a treasure that is rightfully hers, and an overachieving teenage mage tricked into discovering her true name very close to home.
When Shai is caught replacing the Moon Scepter with her nearly flawless forgery, she must bargain for her life. An assassin has left the Emperor Ashravan without consciousness, a circumstance concealed only by the death of his wife. If the emperor does not emerge after his hundred-day mourning period, the rule of the Heritage Faction will be forfeit and the empire will fall into chaos.
Shai is given an impossible task: to create — to Forge — a new soul for the emperor in less than one hundred days. But her soul-Forgery is considered an abomination by her captors. She is confined to a tiny, dirty chamber, guarded by a man who hates her, spied upon by politicians, and trapped behind a door sealed in her own blood. Shai’s only possible ally is the emperor’s most loyal counselor, Gaotona, who struggles to understand her true talent.
Time is running out for Shai. Forging, while deducing the motivations of her captors, she needs a perfect plan to escape…


Original introduction by Warren Ellis, author ofTransmetropolitan and Gun Machine
Who are these bold rebels pillaging their European neighbors in the name of revolution? The Futurists! Utopian pirate warriors of the diminutive Regency of Carnaro, scourge of the Adriatic Sea. Mortal enemies of communists, capitalists, and even fascists (to whom they are notentirely unsympathetic).
The ambitious Soldier-Citizens of Carnaro are led by a brilliant and passionate coterie of the perhaps insane. Lorenzo Secondari, World War I veteran, engineering genius, and leader of Croatian raiders. Frau Piffer, Syndicalist manufacturer of torpedos at a factory run by and for women. The Ace of Hearts, a dashing Milanese aristocrat, spymaster, and tactical savant. And the Prophet, a seductive warrior-poet who leads via free love and military ruthlessness.
Fresh off of a worldwide demonstration of their might, can the Futurists engage the aid of sinister American traitors and establish global domination?

The master of short science-fiction follows up his acclaimed collection The Dog Said Bow-Wow with feline grace, precision, and total impertinence. Michael Swanwick takes us on a whirlwind journey across the globe and across time and space, where magic and science exist in possibilities that are not of this world. These tales are intimate in their telling, galactic in their scope, and delightfully sesquipedalian in their verbiage.

Join the caravan through Swanwick’s worlds and into the playground of his mind. Discover a calculus problem that rocks the ages and robots who both nurture and kill. Meet a magical horse who protects the innocent, a confused but semi-repentant troll, a savvy teenager who takes on the Devil, and time travelers from the Mesozoic who party till the end of time…

Gentle Readers, after the outraged letters following our first volume, I would be remiss not to warn you. The handsome tome of classic and original fiction, nonfiction, and illustrations is perhaps even more shocking than its predecessor. And yet, I see that your curiosity is piqued, so.…
Enter the Scintillating Clockpunk Gear-o-Torium: Herein dwell the breathless adventures that you secretly seek. Gaze upon the rebellious Mecha-Ostrich, the seductive Steam Dancer, the intrepid Mssrs. Balfour and Meriwether, and the hithertofore undefeated Cast-Iron Kid.
Experience the Delights of the Chrononaut Odditorium: An esteemed panel of self-appointed experts, under pain of ridicule, will reveal Top Secret Historical Enticements. Be dazzled by the first English translation of the quintessential Steampunk story Flying Fish Prometheus” by Vilhelm Bergsøe.
Oooh and Ahhh at the Subculture Contraptor Lounge: Authoress of the Parasol Protectorate Gail Carriger gaily holds forth on the fashionable subjects of fashion, fiction, and more. The Steampunk Workshop founder Jake von Slatt’s Steampunk Manifesto” shares his musings amusing and profound on the future of Steam.
Look Upon Our Brass-Plated Wonders: From the rough streets of modern-day Manchester, world-famous adventurer John Coulthart provides the near-tactile visual experience of this elaborative tome. He is joined by the likes of the artistes Secret Agent Ramona Szczerba (a.k.a. Winona Cookie) and Lovereaftian maestro Eric Orchard.
Meet the Masterminds: Editors Extraordinaire Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, the well-known literary vagabonds and mesmerists, do fully guarantee your satisfaction. However, the publisher does regret that the VanderMeers have become mysteriously unavailable to respond to any grievances.
It’s Steampunk — and it’s reloaded.
Playfully mashing up the romantic elegance of the Victorian era with whimsically modernized technology, the wildly popular steampunk genre is here to stay. Now…long live the revolution!
Steampunk Revolution features a renegade collective of writers and artists, including steampunk legends and hot, new talents rebooting the steam-driven past and powering it into the future. Lev Grossman’s Sir Ranulph Wykeham-Rackham, GBE, a.k.a. Roboticus the All-Knowing” is the Six-Million-Dollar Steampunk Man, possessing appendages and workings recycled from metal parts, yet also fully human, resilient, and determined. Bruce Sterling’s White Fungus” introduces steampunk’s younger cousin, salvage-punk, speculating on how cities will be built in the future using preexisting materials. Cat Valente’s Mother Is a Machine” explores the merging of man and machine and a whole new form of parenting. In Jeff VanderMeer’s anti-steampunk story Fixing Hanover,” a creator must turn his back on his creation because it is so utterly destructive. And Cherie Priest presents The Clockroach,” a new and very unsettling mode of transportation.
Going far beyond corsets and goggles, Steampunk Revolution is not just your granddad’s zeppelin — it’s an even wilder ride.

Featuring two tales of Mord, the bear immortalized in VanderMeer’s bestseller, Borne

Compared by critics to Borges, Nabokov, and Kafka, contemporary fantasist Jeff VanderMeer (The Southern Reach Trilogy) continues to amaze with this surreal, innovative, and absurdist gathering of award-winning short fiction. Exotic beasts and improbable travelers roam restlessly through these darkly diverting and finely honed tales.
In The Situation,” a beleaguered office worker creates a child-swallowing manta-ray to be used for educational purposes (once described as Dilbert meets Gormenghast). In Three Days in a Border Town,” a sharpshooter seeks the truth about her husband in an elusive floating city beyond a far-future horizon; Errata” follows an oddly familiar writer who has marshaled a penguin, a shaman, and two pearl-handled pistols with which to plot the end of the world. Also included are two stories original to this collection, including The Quickening,” in which a lonely child is torn between familial obligation and loyalty to a maligned talking rabbit.
Chimerical and hypnotic, VanderMeer leads readers into a new literature of the imagination.
Skillfully combining complex science with finely executed prose, these edgy, award-winning tales explore the always-shifting border between the known and the alien.
The beauty and peril of technology and the passion and penalties of conviction merge in stories that are by turns dark, satiric, bold, and introspective. A seemingly humanized monster from John Carpenter’s The Thing reveals the true villains in an Antarctic showdown. An artificial intelligence shields a biologically-enhanced prodigy from her overwhelmed parents. A deep-sea diver discovers that her true nature lies not within the confines of her mission but in the depths of her psyche. A court psychologist analyzes a psychotic graduate student who has learned to reprogram reality itself. A father tries to hold his broken family together in the wake of an ongoing assault by sentient rainstorms.
Gorgeously saturnine and exceptionally powerful, these collected fictions are both intensely thought-provoking and impossible to forget.
The invasion of the future has begun.
Literary legends including Steven Millhauser, Junot Diáz, Amiri Baraka, and Katharine Dunn have attacked the borders of the every day. Like time traveling mad-scientists, they have concocted outrageous creations from the future. They have seized upon tales of technology gone wrong and mandated that pulp fiction must finally grow up.
In these wildly-speculative stories you will discover the company that controls the world from an alley in Greenwich Village. You’ll find nanotechnology that returns memories to the residents of a nursing home. You’ll rally an avian-like alien to become a mascot for a Major League Baseball team.
The Invaders are here. But did science fiction colonize them first?
Within these pages you will find such delightful and curious things as a strange storytelling vampire, two woefully-overmatched angels, a dragon in cahoots with a knight and a witch, an ineptly duplicitous fish, the loyal robot butler of Werner Von Secondstage Booster, and the Greatest Wizard of All (disputed).
From his epic fantasy series, including Memory Sorrow and Thorn — which George R. R. Martin cited as an inspiration for Game of Thrones—to the classic novel Tailchaser’s Song, Tad Williams has mastered every genre he has set his pen to. Here are the stories that showcase the exhilarating breadth of Williams’ imagination, hearkening back to such classic fantasists as J. R. R. Tolkien, Ray Bradbury, Peter S. Beagle, and beyond. Whether you are a devoted reader of his longer works, already a devotee of his short fiction, or even new to his writing entirely, The Very Best of Tad Williamsis the perfect place to discover one of the most talented and versatile authors writing at any length today.

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November 2017 in Review

30 Nov, 2017

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November

21 books read. 10 by women (48%), 11 by men (52%)

Works by POC: 5 (24%)

Whoops. I did a last minute swap of reviews to address one issue and overlooked the effect on the ratio of books by women to books by men. I suppose I could just chalk this down to human error and move on. 

Year to Date

233 works reviewed. 126.5 by women (54%). 101.5 by men (44%). 4 by non-binary authors (2%). 1 by N/A (0.0%)

Works by POC: 69.5 (30%)

And now, the meaningless table.

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Books Received, November 18 — 24

25 Nov, 2017

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War is coming to Hob Ravani’s world. The company that holds it in monopoly, TransRift Inc, has at last found what they’re looking for – the source of the power that enables their Weathermen to rip holes in space and time, allowing the interstellar travel all of human society now takes for granted. And they will mine every last grain of it from Tanegawa’s World no matter the cost.

Since Hob Ravani used her witchy powers to pull a massive train job and destroy TransRift Inc’s control on this part of the planet, the Ghost Wolves aren’t just outlaws, they’re the resistance. Mag’s miner collective grows restless as TransRift pushes them ever harder to strip the world of its strange, blue mineral. Now Shige Rollins has returned with a new charge – Mr Yellow, the most advanced model of Weatherman, infused with the recovered mineral samples and made into something stranger, stronger, and deadlier than before. And Mr Yellow is very, very hungry.

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