High Bloods, John Farris (Tor)

It's the near future, and LA is overrun with werewolves. An International Lycan Control force is set up to keep tabs on the "high bloods," those that can keep their werewolfish nature under control. But then something goes terribly wrong, and the book becomes a hard boiled crime novel. With werewolves.

Wireless, Charles Stross (Ace)

Notorious future-forward sci-fi author Charles Stross has collected the strands of some of his short fiction into this compilation. Stories feature everything from relocating the cold war in deep space to a Lovecraftian take on the Iran-Contra scandal. The collection showcases Stross's short works that have never found their way into any of his longer pieces.

Songs of the Dying Earth, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois (Subterranean)

Dozois and Martin have gathered a crop of modern sci fi writers to write their own stories exploring Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" universe. The "Dying Earth" series is a cornerstone of its very own sub-genre of dystopian sci fi, and these stories give some other writers a chance to lend their voice to this seminal canon.

Metatropolis,edited by John Scalzi (Subterranean)

Five sci fi writers collaborated on their own urban future, and then each took a turn writing stories set in their collectively imagined universe. The result is a portrait of a possible future of cities. From the io9 review:

These feel like cities where anything can happen, from getting your skull cracked to discovering your life purpose. And most important of all, when I was done reading about this future dys/utopia, I wanted to spend a lot more time there.

The Osiris Ritual, George Mann (Snowbooks)

George Mann's well-received "The Affinity Bridge" created a steam-punk Victorian London landscape for his intrepid mystery solvers. Now his steam-punk Sherlock Holmes is back to solve another mystery, interacting with some distinct characters along the way. This one is for fans of clockwork robots, airships, and good old fashion mysteries.

Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? Neil Gaiman (DC)

This hardcover volume collects a few of Gaiman's Batman pieces, focusing on his canon-spanning final story, "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" This story stretches from one end of the Bat's career to the other, offering a new angle on the Batman mythos.

Purple and Black, K.J. Parker (Subterranean)

"Purple and Black" is an epistolary novel, or one told only in letters. In this case, the letters are between a reluctant intellectual emperor and his best friend on the front lines of combat. The result is an exploration of the duty of leadership, of war, and of friendship. It's also printed in two colors, purple for the official empire business between the two friends, and black for the less formal, more personal letters.

The Stars Blue Yonder, Sandra McDonald (Tor)

A military commander dies, but then comes back to life on a mission to save all of humanity. This mission takes him all over space and time, where he meets his yet-non-existent grandchildren and his descendants from thousands of years in the future. He also manages to thoroughly confuse his grieving wife with resurrection and stories of far-flung time travel. The two work together to save everything they've ever known.

Bar None, Tim Lebbon (Night Shade)

After the world ends, a group of tenacious survivors hole up in a giant home in Wales, but supplies start to get thin, and they learn from a supernatural stranger of a haven a few days away. It's the Bar None, and it's maybe the last bar on Earth. The survivors then decide to do probably what anyone would do in their situation: against all odds, braving corpse-strewn countryside, they try to track down a cold beer. From the io9 review:

In the end this is a deeply sentimental and intimate look at memory, loss, and those perfect days barbecuing and tossing a few back with good friends. And flesh-eating monsters.

The Kingdom Beyond the Waves, Stephen Hunt (Tor)

Amelia Harsh, a sort of steam-punk female Indiana Jones, and a cast of adventurers sets out in an ancient U-boat to discover the sunken "perfect society" of Camlantis. Also on board are a band of female mercenaries, escapees from an underwater prison, and an insane guide. Sounds good to me.

Blood Red Sphere, Lawrence Barker (Swimming Kangaroo)

A recovering "cactus juice" addict passes his days scavenging ancient artifacts from the surface of mars and selling them. Then one such object, the "blood red sphere," attracts attention from pretty much everyone on Mars and the rest of the solar system. It's like the "Maltese Falcon" on Mars, which is something I can definitely get behind.

The House of Lost Souls, F.G. Cottam (Thomas Dunne)

After a psychic trauma visits itself on four students (causing one to commit suicide), a journalist investigates a home haunted by madness and strange occult happenings. The novel touches on many different eras of the house's history, eventually leading to a confrontation between our protagonist and an ancient evil.

Oh, and there will be some spoilers here. But I won't reveal who Luke's daddy is or anything.

Metatropolis is unusual for a number of reasons. It's available as an audiobook now - narrated by Battlestar Galactica's Michael Hogan, Kandyse McClure, and Alessandro Juliani - but it's coming out as a print anthology this summer. It's a shared-world anthology, but it's not based on a world created by one particular author, with a bunch of other writers trying to stay faithful to the Master's vision. Instead, it's a near(ish) future setting that editor John Scalzi and the contributors worked out amongst themselves.

And it's strangely optimistic, once you get past the premise that the United States has all but collapsed and old ways of living are being wiped out. Most of the stories in the book offer something between a trickle and a flood of hope. The biggest theme in the book is that once our current unsustainable way of living finally unsustains, something better may rise up as a result out of the chaos. But on the other hand, the chaos will be plentiful.

And most of that optimism is centered on cities, or city-like strutures. Most "fall of civilization" storylines show cities turning into unliveable nightmares of violence and bad hair. It's only in little rural communes and enclaves that you can survive the collapse of everything. But Metatropolis turns this cliche on its head, with some future cities that seem quite nice, surrounded by suburbs and countryside that are referred to as "The Wilds."

In particular, the Cascadiopolis of Jay Lake's story "In The Forests Of The Night" and the New St. Louis of Scalzi's "Utere Nihil Non Extra Quiritationem Suis" are places you could imagine wanting to hang out. Cascadiopolis is an anarchist commune built near what's left of Portland, Lake's hometown, where everybody works to create green technologies. And New St. Louis is more hierarchical, but also extremely eco-friendly, with vertical farms and genetically engineered pigs who create ultra-rich fertilizer and whose urine that can be used to stabilize plastic. Both places are all about sustainability and "zero footprint," even as they keep out the outside world with paranoid levels of security. Towards the end of the book, we learn that these megacities have a loose confederation, including non-U.S. cities like Shanghai, that allows people to travel among them.

In Tobias Buckell's awesome story "StochastiCity," we visit a version of Detroit that's more like what you'd expect in a futuristic dystopia, complete with private security guards from a company called Edgewater, who crack skulls of anyone who gets in the way. But even there, super-organized eco-anarchists have a scheme to hoodwink Edgewater and take possession of one huge building, turning it into a vertical farm and building a mini-eco-paradise in the middle of the urban hell.

That's another major theme of the book's five long stories: people creating unconventional social networks. In Buckell's story, it's "turking," in which people subcontract a task out to dozens, or hundreds, of individuals, none of whom know the whole story. In Karl Schroder's story, "To Hie From Far Cilenia," this turns into an alternate reality game, Oversatch, where fictional countries like Cilenia and Sanotica are not just overlaid on the real world, but they supercede it. (To join the game, you need to wear special glasses which let you see a display of the alternate reality.) And instead of "turking," people actually "ride" other people by looking through their eyes and telling them what to do or say. And in Lake's story, we see how trust networks are still vulnerable at the level of human interaction, because someone who's good at social engineering or especially charismatic will always be able to find a way in to a supposedly closed system.

As I mentioned, the optimism in the stories is tempered with a lot of chaos, and we get to see a lot of the downsides of this shiny future. If you happen to be in the wrong city, or outside the cities altogether, life can be pretty horrendous. Besides the somewhat thuggish security contractor Edgewater, we also see how organized crime has stepped in to take some of the roles that government has let drop. All the same, I'm not sure how realistic a picture of our urban future the book is supposed to be - at times, there seemed to be a bit of wishful thinking mixed in. And here and there, there are huge chunks of preachiness about environmentalism, recycling, cars, sustainability, and other green topics.

But the way you know these urban settings have succeeded in their worldbuilding task is, they provide a backdrop for some cracking city adventures. Scalzi and Buckell, in particular, keep you guessing about where their stories are going and provide fun yarns where you root for their underdog protagonists. These feel like cities where anything can happen, from getting your skull cracked to discovering your life purpose. And most important of all, when I was done reading about this future dys/utopia, I wanted to spend a lot more time there. [Amazon]

The collection also includes contributions from Elizabeth Bear, Tobias Buckell, and Karl Schroeder (which is like my scifi dream team). Here's the premise of the book, according to Scalzi:

Welcome to a world where big cities are dying, dead - or transformed into technological megastructures. Where once-thriving suburbs are now treacherous Wilds. Where those who live for technology battle those who would die rather than embrace it. It is a world of zero-footprint cities, virtual nations, and armed camps of eco-survivalists. Welcome to the dawn of uncivilization.

The whole book comes out Tuesday, so start warming up your audio devices using solar or bicycle power. You can download Lake's complete story here, and get samples of other stories here. I'm always excited to see another Scalzi joint.

Your Weekend Goodie: Free Metatropolis Story [via Whatever]