Paul Kincaid’s From the Other Side, February 2016: The Kitchies, Mieville's This Census Taker, Pinborough's 13 Minutes, and more

Posted on 2016-03-08 at 14:25 by montsamu

[Editor’s Note: From the Other Side is Paul Kincaid’s monthly column on books and news from the other side of the Atlantic.]

From the Other Side, February 2016 By Paul Kincaid

I’m beginning to worry about the Kitschies. Last year, as I reported, the award seemed to go for a secret ceremony: most people didn’t even know about it until the day itself. This year, they have at least announced the date and venue of the award at the same time that they announced the shortlists, but they have allowed just two weeks between the shortlist and the presentation. Why the rush? I’m not sure that really allows the judges time to revisit the books and consider their verdict, particularly as the same jury has to decide between the five books shortlisted for the Red Tentacle and the five books shortlisted for the Golden Tentacle; but as others have pointed out, it certainly doesn’t allow anybody else much time to acquire and read the books, which stymies the sort of general discussion of the lists that is usually the lifeblood of awards.

And one of the things that usually marks out the Kitschies is the quality of the shortlists, idiosyncratic, bringing to our attention books that often don’t get noticed by the sf field. But this year the shortlist for the Red Tentacle novel award is: The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood, Europe at Midnight by Dave Hutchinson, The Reflection by Hugo Wilcken, The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin, The Thing Itself by Adam Roberts. It’s a solid shortlist, but it doesn’t reach into unfamiliar territory the way we have come to expect of the Kitschies. With the exception of the Wilcken, these are hardly books that have escaped the notice of the sf field. The Jemisin was shortlisted for a Nebula on the same day that the Kitschies shortlist was announced, and the Hutchinson (which I persist in regarding as one of the very best novels of 2015) has already been shortlisted for the BSFA Award.

Posted in From the Other Side | Tagged paul kincaid

2016 Manly Wade Wellman Award cover gallery

Posted on 2016-03-07 at 7:53 by montsamu

As I'm gearing up to podcast descriptions of all of these books for Carolina Book Beat in the morning, and as nominations have been open a while, here's a cover gallery of this year's Manly Wade Wellman Award  final eligibility list of 115 titles, alpha by author:

A-D

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged manly wade wellman award

The Exploding Spaceship Reviews The Devil You Know by K.J. Parker

Posted on 2016-03-01 at 20:21 by angelablackwell

Review of The Devil You Know by K.J. Parker (Tor.com, March 1, 2016)

One of the devil’s minions has to deal with a request from the writer and philosopher Saloninus to sell his soul. Saloninus never made much money as a writer, but he invented a new type of blue paint which made him a fortune.

The writer’s request seems to be an ordinary one and the devil’s minion and the writer get along quite well with the minion being very helpful in locating nice clothes and food. This is a good thing since the minion will be sticking around to keep an eye on his investment. Soon the requests don’t have a purpose that the minion can ascertain. He is forced to ask about several things. It becomes clear that Saloninus has thought this deal out quite a few steps ahead.

The minion is enjoying himself, though, and so doesn’t mind the situation at first. He has great respect for the customer as a philosopher and some of the his works were the basis for several of the minion’s basic tenets of living. He keeps doing what he is asked and doesn’t wonder too much about what Saloninus is doing.

Posted in The Exploding Spaceship

The Exploding Spaceship Good SF Reads: The Prison in Antares, Silenced, and Mothership

Posted on 2016-02-28 at 22:46 by angelablackwell

Review of The Prison in Antares: Dead Enders Book Two by Mike Resnick (Pyr, Dec 1, 2015)

Nathan Pretorius hasn’t even healed completely from the previous mission before he and his team are sent off on a new one. The stakes are high for the Democracy because many die every time the Coalition uses their Q-bomb. A Democracy team came up with a defense but Coalition forces killed all but one of them and then kidnapped the survivor!

So Nathan is tasked with getting this man back into Democracy hands at all costs. They play a massive game of double-cross and find the cup (room) containing the pebble (man).

This volume has them taking several spaceships, using some strange local transport, searching a planet wide computer net for maps so they can find their way around a mining and prison planet, doing an extraction of the kidnapped scientist more than once, and of course fighting both on the ground and in space.

Posted in The Exploding Spaceship

The Exploding Spaceship Reviews The Absconded Ambassador by Michael R. Underwood

Posted on 2016-02-23 at 18:47 by angelablackwell

Review of The Absconded Ambassador by Michael R. Underwood (Tor.com, February 23, 2016)

This is the second episode of Genrenauts, the multiple-world-hopping adventures of Leah. This time she and her crewmates are off to sort out a breach in a science fiction setting. They go to Ahura-3, in the space opera region. Ahura-3 is a hub for ships and commerce from dozens of species with thousands of languages and variances both cultural and biological; this is not exactly a good operation location for a newbie like Leah. She has to remain with and take instructions from another agent.

Leah thoroughly enjoys her first time in freefall, and soon finds herself on a massive space station. Her first thoughts are that it’s an airport terminal mixed with a Star Wars-style cantina, which probably would describe any space station inhabited by multiple species. She gets to use a cool wearable tablet but she is not as happy about the culture requiring her to wear heavy makeup.

The crew of their ship, the Free Trader Grendel, is known about the station because they have been there three times in the last two years. Everyone splits up to put their ears to the ground in different places to try and identify the breach. Nothing seems amiss when they dock, but as soon as Leah steps into the range of a view-screen she gets a hint, because the big local story relates to all the traffic changes due to the signing of an alliance later in the week. Soon she and Shirin are schmoozing a local contact, with Leah trying to follow her lead so she keeps out of trouble in this fantastic new place.

Leah’s good instincts help them to solve the problem and the team splits up to handle two locations at once. This gives the reader a chance to learn some background on other team members, knowledge which Leah doesn’t have. They all have a great deal of history and experience so every adventure reveals more hints of their pasts. What Leah will make of it when she learns everyone’s story will make for interesting reading.

Having Roman and King traveling off together gives a definite good cop/bad cop feel to their adventures as well as showing how well they work together from experience. Shirin and Roman definitely have different working styles, and neither does the other’s way very easily, so having them lead separate activities gives the reader a chance to learn more about what the team does as a whole. Both activities lead to explorations of facets of the culture and races of the setting, and so are really interesting to science fiction readers. The larger and more interesting the universe inhabited by the characters in a space adventure is, the more interested readers will be in returning to it. Your Humble Reviewers love this large, complex, multi-cultural, multi-species setting and so hope that Leah visits it frequently!

Buy: IndieBound ($12.99) or Kobo ($2.99)

Posted in The Exploding Spaceship

The Exploding Spaceship Reviews Recent Good Fantasy Reads: Vendetta, Blood Hunt, and Son of the Black Sword

Posted on 2016-02-22 at 21:13 by angelablackwell

Review of Vendetta: A Deadly Curiosities Novel by Gail Z Martin (Solaris, Dec 29, 2015)

It’s the further adventures of Sorren, Cassidy and Teag from the Trifles and Folly Antique Shop which take us into some secrets of Sorren’s past as they try to determine who is destroying places and people connected to Sorren. When you are a centuries old vampire, the number of enemies you have can be quite large, but few will go to the lengths of bombing your businesses and trying to kill your loved ones and employees.

From the powers needed for the attacks and the type of help being employed, Sorren thinks he knows who it is, but there is one problem: the person responsible is supposed to be dead. Sorren spends part of this book running around the world dealing with multiple attacks on his shops and houses. This leaves Cassidy and Teag without his help at some crucial points. Their local friends help them to survive the attacks, but it becomes clear that Charleston is getting the brunt of the new attacks so Sorren stays there. This turns out to be what the bad guys wanted because Sorren’s house is attacked when he is home.

In fact, nobody makes it through this story unscathed. Poor Sorren has to deal with the grief from the loss of employees and loved ones as well as the physical attack on his person. We get some views of Sorren’s love life for the first time in this volume. Teag and Anthony’s relationship moves to a new level as Anthony gets a more complete picture of what Teag and Cassidy actually do. He decides his love for Teag is strong enough for him to deal with the strange and scary events, so Your Humble Reviewers see wedding bells coming in a future story.

Posted in The Exploding Spaceship

Friday Quick Updates: book deals, new books and audiobooks, and new and upcoming events including a 5-author YA panel on Monday!

Posted on 2016-02-20 at 4:55 by montsamu

Friday, February 19, 2016: Well, it’s been a couple of weeks since the newsletter went out, yet somehow I don’t have a huge pile of corrections and missed items to pass along. I do have some “new new” things, and I’ll start with a pair of fantastic pieces of news:

• NC State graduate and Baen Books editorial assistant Christopher Ruochhio Tweeted his Publisher's Marketplace announcement of a "very nice" 4-book deal, his first, with Betsy Wollheim of DAW Books, for a new science fiction series to begin with The Murdered Sun: The Sollan Mosaic, Book One, pitched as "Patrick Rothfuss in space, in which humankind's war with an alien race will create either the greatest mass murderer the universe has ever known, or its greatest savior." Look for it (under a new title) in 2017!
• Raleigh author Peter Wood announced the sale of his Boone-based SF story "Academic Cirlces" to Asimov's. Congrats, Pete!

• Though it's been available directly from the Baen website for some time, the Detroit Christmas radioplay is now out at Audible, featuring a huge list of local voice actors (Lex Wilson, Gray Rinehart, on and on).
• Lisa Shearin's 8th Raine Benares novel, Wedding Bells, Magic Spells, is out from NLA Digital.

Speaking of pre-orders, Henry Vogel is giving Amazon’s Kindle Scout program another try, with a new novel called The Counterfeit Captain. “My tag line is: Lost among the lost, can she save them all? My book description is: Losing consciousness as her starfighter bleeds air, Captain Nancy Martin expects a lonely death. Instead, she awakens in a cavernous, empty docking bay. When she is mistaken for the vast ship’s mythical Captain, Nancy finds herself allied with ship native Sko against the enemy who attacked her starfighter. Soon, Nancy is on the run from her enemy, unaware of the far greater menace who controls the ship. Can the counterfeit captain unravel the ship’s mystery before her opponents destroy her?”

Before I get to the full upcoming events listings, I have two new events to pass along. First up, just across the weekend from today on Monday, February 22 is Magic and Mayhem: 5 Young Adult Authors at the Cameron Village Regional Library in Raleigh. “Join Young Adult authors Leigh Statham (THE PERILOUS JOUNREY OF THE NOT-SO-INNOCUOUS GIRL), Jennifer Jenkins (NAMELESS), Julie Reece (THE ARTISANS), Vicki L. Weavil (CROWN OF ICE), and Jen McConnel (DAUGHTER OF CHAOS) for a night of Magic and Mayhem! There will be a Q&A panel followed by a book signing.”

Further ahead, another new event to pass along with great excitement: bestselling Ready Player One author Ernest Cline is coming to Flyleaf Book on Tuesday, April 19, on his tour for the paperback release of his second novel, Armada. This is going to be a packed bookstore and likely a fairly festive crowd, and I’m sure some of us will be hanging around for some post-signing line shenanigans in the area.

OK! Random stuff time!

• This week's Baen Books Free Radio Hour podcast features the usual host, Wake Forest author and Baen Books editor Tony Daniel, with four local guests: editorial assistants (and former interns) Christopher Ruochhio and Christopher Cifani, current intern Rachel Mintel, and! Wake Forest neuroscientist Dr. Tedd Roberts discusses his Baen.com nonfiction article “Are We Just Wired Differently”. Pretty nifty episode this time, guys. (Meanwhile, also mentioned is that the e-ARC for Pittsboro author David Drake's next RCN novel Death's Bright Day is now available as well.)
• Pittsboro author Ursula Vernon went on an epic Twitter rant about The Potato Apocalypse that, well, you have to read to believe
• VG247.com has the latest among the fantastic pre-release reviews for Durham author Richard Dansky's latest game development projects, Tom Clancy's The Division, which is currently in open beta until Monday, Feb 22
• Musician Tom DeLonge Tweeted an excerpt from his foreword to his and Charlotte author A.J. Hartley's forthcoming Sekret Machines
• Durham author Nathan Kotecki announced both that he's been accepted into NC State's MFA program for the coming fall and that he's going to be teaching a summer writing camp for 10-15 year olds at Duke School from June 13-17

Lastly, here are those upcoming events listings:

UPCOMING EVENTS, FEBRUARY 2016

NEW-NEW: 22 (Monday) 7 pm — Magic and Mayhem: 5 Young Adult Authors at the Cameron Village Regional Library in Raleigh. “Join Young Adult authors Leigh Statham (THE PERILOUS JOUNREY OF THE NOT-SO-INNOCUOUS GIRL), Jennifer Jenkins (NAMELESS), Julie Reece (THE ARTISANS), Vicki L. Weavil (CROWN OF ICE), and Jen McConnel (DAUGHTER OF CHAOS) for a night of Magic and Mayhem! There will be a Q&A panel followed by a book signing.”

23 — NC author book release day for Invader Moon by Rob Shelsky (Permuted Press).

25 (Thursday) 7 pm — The Regulator hosts A Community Conversation on Climate Change with Jedediah Purdy and “After Nature”. (Non-fiction.)

27 — NC author book release day for Zapheads: Blood and Frost by Scott Nicholson and Joshua Simcox (Haunted Computer Books)

26-28 (Friday to Sunday) — MystiCon 2016 in Roanoke, Virginia, with guest of honor George R.R. Martin.

NEW: 27 (Saturday) 2 pm — The Orange County Public Library presents Thrifty Lit: An Homage to Library Book Sales, an Author Panel with authors James Maxey, Samantha Bryant, and Katy Munger.

Posted in Friday Quick Updates

The Exploding Spaceship reviews The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle

Posted on 2016-02-16 at 17:40 by angelablackwell

Review of The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle (Tor.com, February 16, 2016)

This novella is a Cthulhu Mythos story set in 1920s New York. The New York depicted is from the viewpoint of a young black man named Charles Thomas Tester. Tommy Tester is a hustler or conman because he saw his father work at an honest trade for a Negro’s wage and get ripped off repeatedly by the white bosses. Tommy learned to play the guitar like his father, but his singing voice is not nearly as nice as his father’s.

Tommy gets drawn into the situation because he delivers a package to Flushing and realizes that away from Harlem his bad playing and singing might not be so bad. He soon decides to go to Flatbush with a guitar he bought with the money earned from the delivery errand. This leads to further work at a party for a wealthy man.

The wealthy man practices the arcane arts and Tommy is soon drawn into his sphere of friends and business associates. He encounters a private detective named Malone who is also a practitioner of the arcane. Malone tries to warn him that his involvement with the wealthy Robert Suydam will have consequences but Tommy fails to heed the warning. Suydam is the target of an investigation by Malone and the NYPD so when Tommy joins him, it draws Tommy and his family into the investigation. In 1920s New York, no Harlem family wants to be the subject of an investigation by the white policemen because someone from Harlem always ends up dead, injured or in jail.

The fallout from the raid on Tommy’s home sends Tommy back to Suydam’s place and he gets drawn into a larger arcane working to bring the king sleeping at the bottom of the ocean awake. As all readers of Lovecraft know, it is NEVER a good idea for humans to wake him. Humans greedy for arcane power keep trying, but it only leads to disaster. This time is not any different.

Posted in The Exploding Spaceship

February Newsletter: Lawrence M. Schoen, Nevermore Film Festival, Playthrough Gaming Convention, Manly Wade Wellman Award nominations, new books, news, and more

Posted on 2016-02-05 at 20:56 by montsamu

Vol 6 No 2. Friday, February 5, 2016: North Carolina, Lawrence M. Schoen is in you! After reading Wednesday night at Charlotte's Park Road Books, Schoen returned to the Triangle for readings last night (Flyleaf Books) and tonight Quail Ridge Books) from his moving and imaginative new science fiction novel Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard. As usual that's the tip of the iceberg as to what's going on this month, and there's plenty, plenty of news and new books to pass along as well. First, though, the immediately upcoming February event highlights:

Posted in newsletter

Paul Kincaid's From the Other Side, January 2016: Frances Hardinge, Tricia Sullivan, Michael Cobley, Gavin Smith, and Stephen Palmer

Posted on 2016-02-02 at 15:26 by montsamu

[Editor’s Note: From the Other Side is Paul Kincaid’s monthly column on books and news from the other side of the Atlantic.]

From the Other Side, January 2016 By Paul Kincaid

Well that was a surprise. Not a surprise that Frances Hardinge won the Costa Book of the Year; everyone agrees that The Lie Tree was a very worthy winner. But a surprise because, well, this is the Costa Book Awards, one of our most respected literary prizes, if one of the more eccentric. Let me explain: there are five awards presented each year. Five separate juries decide on the Best Novel, Best First Novel, Best Children’s Book, Best Poetry Book and Best Biography. Each of those winners receives £5,000, which isn’t bad. But then a new jury chooses between those five winners to pick the Costa Book of the Year, for which the winner receives £25,000. Now the Book of the Year doesn’t usually go to the Children’s Book, in fact that has only happened once before (Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass); so that was a surprise. And the Book of the Year doesn’t usually go to anything that isn’t straightforwardly realist in tone (again, Pullman is the only exception, because of course the fantastic is acceptable when it’s aimed at children); so that was also a surprise.

Posted in From the Other Side | Tagged frances hardinge, michael cobley, paul kincaid, tricia sullivan