Yearly Archives: 2009

Books I'm looking forward to...

Books I’m looking forward to…Part 2. February 2009

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I’m as surprised as you are that I’m following through, and actually writing a second instalment of ‘Books I’m looking forward to…’.  I think it might be that I’m getting to it because I should be doing other things – that’s how these things tend to work.  Anyhow, February looks like a great month with some books I’m really eager to see.

Lamentation by Ken ScholesLet’s start with a book that I’ve actually read, but which is only being published now.  Last year Patrick Nielsen Hayden at Tor sent me an earlier reader’s copy of a debut fantasy novel they were publishing by some guy I’d never heard of, Ken Scholes.  Now, truthfully, I’m starved for time, so it’s easy for me to skip novels these days, and very easy to skip first volumes in series. Still, Patrick had sent it, and I had some spare time, so I started reading the opening chapter of Lamentation and was nearly put off by one or two standard fantasy tropes.  There were fantasy names and such, and I thought for a moment that this was going to be another generic cookiecutter story, butI kept reading and I’m delighted I did.  The story of the devastation of Windwir, a great city of learning, and the consequences that flow from it were captivating. I found myself entranced by the tale of the young man who lost his father in the devastation, the old man called back from retirement to deal with it, and so much more.  There were flashes of science fiction in the background too – metal men and so on – but mostly there was a tale strapped to a story engine that just didn’t quit.   Lamentation isn’t, to be fair, the greatest novel ever written, nor is it perfect. However, it is really good, and is an excellent first novel.  I was sufficiently hooked that I harassed Ken into letting me read the second book in the series, Canticle, which I actually think is a much better book than Lamentation (a good sign for the series), and can’t wait to see Antiphon when he’s done with it.  I guess I should add, as a caveat, that as a result of Patrick sending me Lamentation, I ended up meeting Ken and becoming pals, so I am recommending a book by friend.  Still, I stand by the recommendation. Even though I’ve read Lamentation, I loved it enough that I’m going to buy a copy just so I have one.

I don’t spend a lot of time making lists anymore, but if I did Ian McDonald would probably sit in my list of Top 10 Favourite Short Story Writers of the last 25 years, and I believe that he is one of the best short story writers working in SF today.  I remember being knocked out by an early story of his, “Unfinished Portrait of the King of Pain by Vincent Van Gogh”, which was reprinted in first collection back in the late ’80s, and loving his debut novel, Desolation Road.  I read everything he published after that, and was disappointed when his books stopped appearing in the US.  All that changed when his spectacular novel River of Gods came out a few years back from Simon & Schuster, and then was reprinted in the US by Pyr.  A major work by McDonald, it seemed to change his fortunes and he’s followed it up with the almost-as-good Brasyl.  At the same time he published a lot of short fiction, including a handful of stories set in the same near future India as River of Gods.  Those stories have now been collected in a pendant volume, Cyberabad Days, which will be published in trade paperback with a stunning Stephan Martiniere cover by Pyr (and later for Gollancz).  The collection features a long original novella, as well as all of the other ‘Cyberabad’ stories.  I’m not exaggerating when I say this is the collection I’ve been most looking forward to in 2009.  I love these stories, am stupidly proud to have originally published one of them, and will be ordering a copy the moment it hits Amazon.  You need this book.  Really.

I’ve not seen a table of contents yet for Gwyneth Jones’ forthcoming collection, Grazing the Long Acre, but I’m really excited about this book too.  I know, I know – this instalment of ‘Books I’m looking forward to’ is all hyperbole. Well, they’re recommendations!  Anyhow, I loved Gwyneth’s ‘Bold as Love’ quintet of novels and was lucky enough to have her write several stories for books I was editing.  Somewhere in there I began seeking out stories of hers, reading novels I’d missed, and I fell in love with her work.  It’s smart, unflinching, demanding and intellectually honest.  I think she’s one of the finest SF writers working today, and one of the most unappreciated.  I hope this new PS Publishing collection will help change that a little. If these are her best stories of the past five years, then they’re some of the best SF stories of the past five years, period.  I can’t wait to see it.

There are also a couple small books I’m looking forward to.  In February Tachyon are publishing a long novella/short novel by James Morrow, Shambling Towards Hiroshima.  I love, love, love Morrow’s work.  So a post WW2 tale with Godzilla is irresistible.  Tachyon sent me an ARC of this one, and I’m going to read it next. I’m also going to order a copy.  I want the actual book, and it’s important to support publishers like Tachyon when you can.  Buy it!  I’m also eager to see Tim Powers’ “A Time To Cast Away Stones“.  It’s coming out in a stupidly expensive edition from Charnel House to celebrate their 20th Anniversary. It’s Powers, which is enough.  Essential!

And so, that’s the second instalment of ‘Books I’m looking forward to…!’.  Hope you pick some of them up, and I’ll try to report on the books I do mention here as I get them and read them.

Science fiction

Hugos for sale?

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Those wacky, fun guys at SciFiWire have worked out what it would cost to buy a Hugo nomination and/or win. Apparently the Best Editor, Short Form nomination last year would have cost $1,750 and the win $14,000.  The article and the calculations are light-hearted.   SciFiWire aren’t proposing a course of action, and they’re not planning on throwing money around (or suggesting that anyone else does). It did make me think though:  if someone walked up to me and offered me $1,750 for last year’s Hugo nomination, I wouldn’t sell it.  It was a special thing, being up for the Hugo.  Very special. And some things shouldn’t be for sale.

Science fiction

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year @ the Shade

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In these uncertain times, it seems like it’s worth mentioning that The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year is in robust good health.  I’ve delivered the 2008 book to Night Shade, we’re almost done with copyedits, I’ve seen a draft cover and the book should be in-store some time in March.  We’ve also had discussions about the long-term future of the series. I’m hard at work on Volume 4 at the moment and fully expect to be continuing the series for many years to come.

Science fiction

Some good year’s best news…

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Ellen Datlow has just announced that she will edit a year’s best horror anthology series for Night Shade Books. Night Shade have picked up the first two volumes in the series, to be published in 2009 and 2010 respectively.  I’m delighted by this and happy to welcome Ellen to the Night Shade clan.  Ellen’s a good friend and a brilliant editor, so it’s wonderful news that she’ll still be editing a year’s best horror series.

Science fiction

Hymns to the silence

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I want to romanticise this, but I can’t quite.  I was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland not long after Christmas in the winter of 1964.  It would have been cold, I guess: I don’t know (and I can’t quite bring myself to use some wikipedia resource to check). Between my birth and our leaving Belfast there were no doubt many family occasions, but in truth I don’t remember them.

Four years later my family boarded a ship in Southampton and sailed on the Fairstar for Perth in Western Australia.  I don’t remember that either, though some details filter through, coloured by family photographs and family stories – there’s a photo somewhere of us all standing on the dock at Southampton, Stephen and I holding arms full of games that I feel like I remember, but mustn’t because I can see myself in the picture.

We arrived at an unprepossessing cargo shed in Fremantle in July of 1968. It was, I remember being told, a day of drenching rains.  I don’t remember that either.  We were taken to a flat in Bentley, a Perth suburb, where we lived for some months before moving up to a semi-rural property my parents rented in Glen Forest.  My first memories really start there.  Hot summer days, making play dough with flour and salt, playing in the orchard down near the dam, running around the chicken sheds on the next-door neighbour’s property, watching bushfires surround the property, driving with my mother on an unsealed gravel road up a long hill to drop my brother at school, endless days spent swimming at the local pool, nearly falling out of the car when the door swung open on a turn going down the hill (and having my mother calmly reach back, swing the door closed, and continue on), fishing for tiny crayfish in a creek that ran past the beer garden at the local pub where my parents were quietly drinking, going into a small local grocer and buying chewing gum cigars.  All memories, or almost memories.

And somewhere in there, the image of grey laminated television set with rounded edges at the corners, a cream trim and rickety legs transmitting images of men landing on the moon.  We only lived in Glen Forest for a year or so, before my parents moved to our ancestral home in Mt Lawley.  Truthfully, the dates rather blur.  It was early 1969, I think. My sister was born in August of that year, and that was partly why we moved.  We were closer to schools and my father’s work, so Mt Lawley made sense.  I remember my aunt took my brother out to keep us busy while my parents did the moving.  I remember sleeping in bunk beds that first night, and then going to the small shop across the road to buy something or other.  When I came out and crossed the road there was a boy – he would have been five, I guess – sitting there eating an icy pole.  He had short blond hair and wore glasses.  He introduced himself as Marcus Duckydouble.  I didn’t know that was the name of the icy pole he was eating, and accepted it (though I did get a very strange look from his mother when I met her and greeted her as Mrs. Duckydouble).  We were best friends for the next eight years.  Life is like that.

To bring this ramble to a close – though, in truth I could ramble all day because it’s oddly soothing to draw the old memories out and look at them one more time – the thing I can’t quite romanticise is this.  I left the shores of Northern Ireland in the summer of 1968.  Forty one years later I find the music that I am enjoying the most is Van Morrison’s romanticised songs of Belfast that are gathered on many, many of his albums.  His voice soothes, and the images in the songs seem like ones I know.