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Brimstone Angels by Erin M. Evans is not your typical fantasy novel. There's jealousy, unbidden powers, forbidden lust — and not a magic Macguffin in sight. More »
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Portland-based Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett are a husband-and-wife team of multimedia artists who have produced a variety of work from comics (the science fiction romance Heartbreakers and the superhero Chronos, among others) to the website and book about Boilerplate, a robot. Their new book, Frank Reade: Adventures in the Age of Invention, is their best work yet. More »
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The Sept. 11 attacks and the Iraq war have reverberated through science fiction and fantasy for over a decade, giving us plenty of stories of terrorism, wars of occupation and clashes of cultures. But Matt Ruff's The Mirage, which comes out next week, might just be the ideal prism with which to refract your memories of that brutal decade and see them anew. Plus it's an addictive, fascinating read, which keeps you guessing. More »
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In 1953, a tiny publishing house called Ballantine released The Space Merchants, a novel-length adaptation of "Gravy Planet," a Frederik Pohl short story that had taken the SF world by storm. That story was about the future of the advertising industry, written by a guy who had been an ad man for several years. Dark and snarkily political, The Space Merchants expanded on the original story (it was co-authored by C.M. Kornbluth), becoming a novel that Pohl says nobody wanted to publish. But it influenced at least two generations of SF writers, and offers a satire so sharp that it still draws blood even today. More »
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Howard Andrew Jones' Plague of Shadows is a solid entry in the "what happens to adventurers in their twilight years?" sub-genre of fantasy. The elf Elyana used to wander the world with her doughty companions, slaying evil wizards and malicious dragons. As the years passed, some friends died, others got old, and some treaded less heroic paths. When an old friend becomes afflicted with a magical disease, Elyana has to seek the one item that can save him. It's your standard "fetch the magic MacGuffin" plot, but the twists and turns along the way make this an adventure with unexpected heart and quite a few thrills. More »
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You think The Road was bleak? You found Zone One kind of dark and relentless? Bah. The latest literary apocalypse, Ben Marcus' The Flame Alphabet, is weirder, more disturbing and harder to deal with than any of your other literary calamities. More »
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Charles de Lint's latest novel, Eyes Like Leaves, is a rollicking epic quest fantasy in which a motley assortment of heroes and ordinary folk strive to save the Summerlord from the Icelord and keep the world from falling into Everwinter. But the most memorable part of it, almost certainly, is the care with which de Lint portrays the sources of magic — and the identity crises of shapeshifters. More »
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William Gibson is one of our finest science fiction authors, because he knows that people are the strangest products science has ever produced. And his new essay collection, Distrust That Particular Flavor, gives us insight into how he came to understand that so well, when many other SF authors struggle to see it. More »
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These days, fantasy novels seem to be all about realism. Or at least, semi-realism. Magic is pushed to the fringes, and only happens in rare cases. The focus is on gritty, relatable characters in a vaguely noir-ish world. Whether in epic fantasy or urban fantasy, there's been a bit more restraint lately in terms of throwing around other-worldly elements. More »
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Post-apocalyptic stories are chock full of wish-fulfillment. Rugged individualism holds sway. Every survivor is as special as Harry Potter, just by virtue of being alive. We get to rebuild this whole mess, without all that postmodern clutter. And so on. More »
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From Moroccan gangland to the London party scene, a man named Taggert is on a mission to save his lost love's daughter from a supervillain club promoter. Luckily, Taggert has some tricks up his sleeve, like the ability to control bodies (including his own) on a molecular level. But that may not help him when he's going up against illusionists, mind readers, animal controllers, and other strangely gifted individuals. With Ayize Jama-Everett's novel The Liminal People (Small Beer Press), you'll be sucked into a fast-paced story about superpowered people struggling for control of the underground cultures they inhabit. It's the story that failed TV series Heroes should have been. More »
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Maureen McHugh's latest short story collection, After the Apocalypse (Small Beer Press), is a dark look at what the next century might hold for ordinary people. Known for intense, character-driven work in novels like China Mountain Zhang and Nekropolis, McHugh makes even the most extraordinary circumstances feel as real as blood. These nine stories take place in a world that has been ravaged by prion diseases and economic collapse, even as it enters a new age of artificial intelligence and green biotech. You won't be able to forget the people you meet there. More »
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Time travel opens up all sorts of weird possibilities — especially when you visit your own past. There are paradoxes. There is endless weirdness. The past is a foreign country, so let's invade it and dump our toxic waste there. And so on. More »
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What kind of world are we leaving to our grandchildren? Can we even imagine a world after climate change? Some of the world's greatest authors, including David Mitchell and Kim Stanley Robinson, grapple with climate change and our future in a new story collection. Here's a review by Pauline Masurel from Green Prophet. More »
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The first thing to notice about Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories, out now from Candlewick Press, is that it's edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant. If you're unfamiliar with those names, or know them only as authors, take a look at their Small Beer Press, which consistently publishes some of the finest speculative fiction around. Their names on the cover guarantee we are in for genre-bending work and high-quality writing. Sure enough, this anthology plays with the notion of steampunk, stretches it beyond the limits of what that word typically means, and uses it as a springboard for assembling a terrific assortment of great reads. The main title of this book may be the eye-catcher, what with the exclamation point attached and all, but it's the subtitle that clues you in to what you can expect: Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories. More »
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You think you know all about Ridley Scott's Alien? There are still plenty of dark corners in the backstory of the movie that helped birth (so to speak) the genre of space horror. A new book, Alien Vault, is chock full of amazing art and totally weird Alien facts. More »
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Science fiction scholar Mike Ashley provides a textual accompaniment to the British Library's exhibition Out of This World Science Fiction: but not as you know it with his large full-color coffee table book that traces various themes within science fiction history. More »
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Neal Stephenson's new novel Reamde seems like it could never work: it's an epic-length thriller packed with infodumps about obscure ideas and 200-page gun fights. But the book is fantastic. Stephenson stages a crazy narrative collision between Chinese virus-writing gamers, a millionaire videogame entrepreneur, Russian mafia, rural American anti-government "wack jobs," and a murderous Welsh terrorist. With those kinds of characters in play, and a lot of dry humor, Stephenson absolutely hits it out of the park. More »
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The Cold Commands, out in October in the States, is the sequel to Richard Morgan's hard-boiled, fantasy-scifi tale of swords and evil elf aliens, The Steel Remains. If you enjoyed the first novel, or just like unconventional, violent, and occasionally satirical dark fantasy, this novel should be on your must-read list. More »
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What do mirror neurons have to do with Abu Ghraib, the science of religion, and how happiness flourishes? More »
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Ken MacLeod's latest near-future thriller The Restoration Game takes us deep inside a CIA plot to overthrow the government of Krassnia, an imaginary former Soviet republic — using an MMO designed to stir up nationalist sentiment among Krassnia's youth. Out this month in the U.S. from PYR Books, the novel traces a set of strange connections uniting a small Scottish videogame startup, two ethnographers who met in Soviet-era Krassnia, benevolent human smugglers, and a multinational conspiracy straight out of The X-Files. If you are fascinated by the political history of the Soviet Union and its aftermath, The Restoration Game will light your brain on fire. But you don't need to be a history buff; this is a novel for anybody who likes a damn good spy story with wisps of the singularity lurking at its edges. More »
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People sometimes tend to sum up Lev Grossman's fantasy debut, The Magicians, as a kind of anhedonic version of Harry Potter crossed with Narnia. But it's actually a lot deeper than that — The Magicians explored what happens when our fantasies come true, and what it means to put yourself, your screwy demented self, in the middle of those pristine fantasies. And it turns out that even when you get handed the fantasy on a platter, you still need an insane amount of hard work and bloody-mindedness to hold onto it and make it work. More »
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In the 2040s, energy resources and the economy in America have collapsed. The poor live in "stacks," vertical trailer parks outside cities where old mobile homes are piled on top of each other. A few lucky kids get to attend school online, in a virtual world called the OASIS that has replaced the Web with an ultra-fast, immersive 3D space. OASIS money is the most stable currency available. Most people are stuck in schools that are like prisons, and unemployment that is worse. More »
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It's become sort of a cliché to talk about superpowers as being like disabilities. Half the superhero stories of the past half-decade have played with that idea. But in Machine Man, Max Barry takes that idea to the next level - by playing with the line between prosthetics and cybernetics. More »
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Jim Butcher's latest entry in the Dresden Files series, Ghost Story, feels like the gutsiest of his popular paranormal detective novels so far. Like its immediate predecessor, Changes, Ghost Story showcases Butcher's willingness to enact huge, sweeping changes to the status quo that he's established. More »
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Grant Morrison is one of the most important creators in superhero comics over the past two decades or so, thanks to Doom Patrol, The Invisibles, JLA, New X-Men, All-Star Superman and so on. So Morrison writing a book about superheroes is a splendid prospect. More »
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In Ransom Riggs' novel Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, a somewhat sullen American teenager goes looking for his grandfather's past. Expecting to find elderly friends of the family, he instead uncovers an extremely unusual legacy. More »
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For lifetimes, Daniel has chased Sophia, his one true love. That's the achingly romantic premise of My Name is Memory. But if you spend centuries striving for a normal life with one person, doesn't that sap the mystery and intrigue from reincarnation? More »
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It's probably not the best intro to the series, but Mercedes Lackey's latest Elemental Masters novel is a fun and surprisingly fluffy addition. More »
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Charles Stross' new novel, Rule 34, is a near future tale that is nominally a detective story set in the same world as his hit book Halting State. But in fact it's not so much a mystery as it is a sneakily Utopian vision of a world recovering from complete financial collapse — and giving birth to an unexpected form of life in the process. More »
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Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy revitalized the Star Wars universe, and created a new Star Wars mythos for a new generation. So a new Zahn Star Wars book is cause for celebration. More »
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This Tuesday, the years of anticipation will be over, and the fifth book in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series will finally be here. So does A Dance with Dragons live up to the near-insurmountable hype? More »
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Cool robots unlike any you've seen before battle humans in a near-future world where computerized cars and military drones are out to smash all homo sapiens. Until some robotics geeks and an army of Osage natives learn to fight back. More »
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In Michael Swanwick's latest novel, Dancing with Bears, a couple of charming con men set out for post-apocalyptic Moscow, only to blunder into a revolutionary mess. More »
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In The Hidden Goddess, the sequel to M.K. Hobson's Nebula-nominated Native Star, our protagonists are safe in New York and ready to begin their lives together. Unfortunately, the troubles that plagued them before — magic-hating Russians, death-goo, blood sorcerers — come roaring right back. More »
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For years, Rebekkah has bounced from city to city. But when her grandmother Maylene passes away, she's drawn back to tiny Claysville and finds she's inherited more than just the family home. She's responsible for seeing that the dead stay dead. More »
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Miss Sarah Stanton doesn't want to be a society belle. She wants to be a member of the Society of Paragons — a hero and an adventurer. But the organization isn't quite as squeaky clean as she believes. More »
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Bordertown disappeared thirteen years ago and some people have since stopped believing it was ever there at all. They make up stories and act as if The World and the Elflands have never touched. They pretend that the gritty bohemia of Bordertown, or B-Town, never existed, was only ever rumors and gossip. There were never motorcycles powered by spellboxes and engines both, drag queen run coffee shopss, Trueblood (elf is an insult) gangs in red leather, halfie children finding their way, and dancing ferrets all sharing a cramped unpredictable town and just trying to live. This haven for runaways from the World, a haven that would just as soon devour them whole as provide them shelter, has been shoved into legend. More »
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As True Blood fans eagerly await the show's fourth season, readers of the Sookie Stackhouse book series on which the show is based have a new installment to devour. Dead Reckoning is the eleventh Southern Vampire Mystery, and it continues to build on the surprisingly complex universe author Charlaine Harris has laid out. What began as a fairly simple vampire-human romance has become a sprawling supernatural epic - and that can lead to problems. Suffering from too-much-plotitis, the latest Sookie Stackhouse book spreads itself thin between vampire politics, faerie drama, and yes, planning a baby shower. More »
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The world is full of retellings of the Brothers Grimm lately, but Lisa Goldstein's new novel The Uncertain Places makes the world of fairy tales feel like a living place, with a long history that intersects with our own world. More »
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