James Nicoll Reviews

The avant-garde of science fiction have landed in this space-age sequel to the World Fantasy Award-winner, The New Voices of Fantasy. Here are the rising stars of the last five years of science fiction, including newcomers as well as already lauded authors: Rebecca Roanhorse, Amal El-Mohtar, Alice Sola Kim, Sam J. Miller, E. Lily Yu, Rich Larson, Vina Jie-Min Prasad, Sarah Pinsker, Darcie Little Badger, S. Qiouyi Lu, Kelly Robson, and more. Their extraordinary stories have been hand-selected by cutting-edge author Hannu Rajaniemi ( The Quantum Thief ) and genre expert Jacob Weisman ( Invaders ).

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August

21 books read. 10.5 by women (50%), 10.5 by men (50%)

Works by POC: 8 (38%)

Year to Date

165 books read. 90.25 by women (55%). 71.25 by men (43%). 2 by non-binary authors (1%) and 1.5 by an author whose gender is unknown (1%).

Works by POC: 66.25 (40%).

And to compare to last year:

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July

20 books read. 10 by women (50%), 8.5 by men (43%), 1 by a non-binary author (5%) and 0.5 by an author whose gender is unknown 3%) 

Works by POC: 7.5 (38%)

Year to Date

144 books read. 79.75 by women (55%). 60.75 by men (42%). 2 by non-binary authors (1%) and 1.5 by an author whose gender is unknown (1%).

Works by POC: 58.25 (40%).

This compares somewhat dismally with where I was at this time last year.

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Magic has a price — if you’re willing to pay. The lush world building of * Children of Blood and Bone *meets the sweeping scale of * Strange the Dreamer *in this captivating epic YA fantasy debut. Born into a family of powerful witchdoctors, Arrah yearns for magic of her own. But each year she fails to call forth her ancestral powers, while her ambitious mother watches with growing disapproval. There’s only one thing Arrah hasn’t tried, a deadly last resort: trading years of her own life for scraps of magic. Until the Kingdom’s children begin to disappear, and Arrah is desperate to find the culprit. She uncovers something worse. The long-imprisoned Demon King is stirring. And if he rises, his hunger for souls will bring the world to its knees… unless Arrah pays the price for the magic to stop him.

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Sue Burke’s sweeping SF Semiosis epic continues in Interference as the colonists and a team from Earth confront a new and more implacable intelligence. Over two hundred years after the first colonists landed on Pax, a new set of explorers arrives from Earth on what they claim is a temporary scientific mission. But the Earthlings misunderstand the nature of the Pax settlement and its real leader. Even as Stevland attempts to protect his human tools, a more insidious enemy than the Earthlings makes itself known. Stevland is not the apex species on Pax. Semiosis duology
Semiosis
Interference **

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Egypt, 1912. In an alternate Cairo infused with the otherworldly, the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities investigate disturbances between the mortal and the (possibly) divine. What starts off as an odd suicide case for Special Investigator Fatma el-Sha’arawi leads her through the city’s underbelly as she encounters rampaging ghouls, saucy assassins, clockwork angels, and plot that could unravel time itself, in P. Djèlí Clark’s Tor.Com Original, A Dead Djinn in Cairo.

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Helping to redo the theatre flies system from eight am to four pm is having an impact on my productivity¹. As in I don’t have any. Back to the old pace on Saturday.

1: And my forearm.

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Volume one of REDISCOVERY represents a historic first: fourteen selections of the best science fiction of the Silver Age, written by the unsung women authors of yesteryear and introduced by today’s rising stars. Join us and rediscover these lost treasures.

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(Not every piece I do for tor fits their needs. Here’s an example.)

Per Theodore Sturgeon, ninety percent of everything is crud (that is, everything published). Most of this crud is of the unmemorable variety, it occupies the brain for a few moments before being forgotten. Some is educationally bad; you might not like the story, but at least understanding why it did not work is illuminating. A very very small fraction is so egregiously wretched that it inspires mockery and disparagement decades after publication, even if out of print. One memorable example: Randall Garrett’s 1958 short story ​“The The Queen Bee.” 

Many of you are mercifully unaware of this story. Let me fix that for you: 

some stories are not just worse than you imagine, they are worse than you can imagine 

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University of Waterloo Associate Professor Sarah Tolmie, author of SF works The Little Animals, The Stone Boatmen, Two Travellers, and NoFood, as well as the poetry collection Trio, and chapbook Sonnet in a Blue Dress and Other Poems, is my designated representative.

Tolmie’s ​“Ursula Le Guin in the Underworld” won a 2019 Rhysling Award, and has been nominated for an Aurora. The Art of Dying was shortlisted for the 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize.

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