Stolen from Wert (and posted various other places around the web):
Certainly miles beyond the speculated US cover, though I do miss dancing-one-handed-Rand! The UK edition is being published by Orbit Books.
Yearly Archives: 2009
Stolen from SFSignal’s Book Cover Smackdown:
Caribbean born novelist Tobias Buckell established himself as a gifted new voice in science fiction with his stunning first novel Crystal Rain. Now, in his first collection, Buckell demonstrates his strengths in the short form, offering readers a collection of stories that are compelling, smart, wonderfully imagined, and entertaining.
Tides from the New Worlds contains 19 stories that range from multicultural science fiction to magical realism, some in print for the first time.
Table of Contents:
Fish Merchant
Anakoinosis
Aerophilia
In The Heart of Kalikuata
The Shackles of Freedom (with Mike Resnick)
Shoah Sry (with Ilsa Bick)
Her
In Orbite Medievali
Four Eyes
Trinkets
Spurn Babylon
Death’s Dreadlocks
Smooth Talking
Tides
Something In The Rock
A Green Thumb
All Her Children Fought
Necahual
Toy Planes
Though I’m not a huge fan of montage images on covers (especially when they involve giant, floating space-heads), the art itself is fun, the typeface is nice and the colours work. His novels are known to be short, snappy works, so I can only imagine his style translates well to short fiction. Certainly a book I’m eager to get my hands on!
Tides from the New Worlds is available from Wyrm Publishing.
Over at AzureScape, Seth Wilson is putting together a Speculative Fiction Book Club. The rub? This one is centered solely around twitter. The first book is The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.
From AzureScape:
I’ve recently become enamored of Twitter not only as a social watercooler, but as a way to share ideas and meaningful content among like-minded individuals. There’s a growing community of speculative fiction authors, publishers, and bloggers on the micro-blogging site, and I’ve been thinking about ways to collectively engage that community.
To that end, I’m happy to announce the first iteration of the Twitter Speculative Fiction Book Club (#sfbookclub). Our first selection is Joe Haldeman’s seminal classic The Forever War. Here’s how it works.
In the next two weeks, read or re-read Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War. The book should be readily available in brick-and-mortar stores, on Amazon, or in audio format through Audible.
Starting on 15 May, we’ll discuss the book on Twitter for a week, appending the hashtag #sfbookclub to all relevant tweets to make the conversation easy to follow, either through the site TweetChat, Twitter Search, or the search functionality of most Twitter clients.
Feel free to spread the word about #sfbookclub in the next two weeks, but please don’t share any major plot points until the discussion starts.
That’s it! The concept is, I hope, elegant in its simplicity. Since this is the #sfbookclub’s maiden voyage, I’d value any and all input before, during, and after the event to refine the process for future discussions. Post ideas in the comments below, and of course follow me on Twitter.
Considering I helped pick the first novel to be discussed, you’ll certainly see a good bit of discussion coming from my twitter alias. If you’re on twitter (or even if you just need an excuse to sign up), feel free to participate. Hopefully this is a trend that’ll stick (as they so rarely do!)
If you want a sneak peak at what I think of The Forever War, you can check out my review.
Yet another gorgeous cover stolen from the Pyr Blog:
The Defense and Wellness Council is enmeshed in full-scale civil war between Len Borda and the mysterious Magan Kai Lee. Quell has escaped from prison and is stirring up rebellion in the Islands with the aid of a brash young leader named Josiah. Jara and the apprentices of the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp still find themselves fighting off legal attacks from their competitors and from Margaret Surina’s unscrupulous heirs — even though MultiReal has completely vanished.
The quest for the truth will lead to the edges of civilization, from the tumultuous society of the Pacific Islands to the lawless orbital colony of 49th Heaven; and through the deeps of time, from the hidden agenda of the Surina family to the real truth behind the Autonomous Revolt that devastated humanity hundreds of years ago.
Meanwhile, Natch has awakened in a windowless prison with nothing but a haze of memory to clue him in as to how he got there. He’s still receiving strange hallucinatory messages from Margaret Surina and the nature of reality is buckling all around him. When the smoke clears, Natch must make the ultimate decision — whether to save a world that has scorned and discarded him, or to save the only person he has ever loved: himself.
Edelman’s trilogy has been on my radar since the release of the first novel, Infoquake, and I’ve been waiting anxiously for the final volume to be released so I can jump on in. As usual for Edelman’s covers, Geosynchron is graced by another beautiful painting by Stephan Martiniere, who’s quickly becoming one of my favourite SF artists out there.
Nicked from the Pyr blog:
A devilish plot to assassinate the Queen, a Cold War enemy hell-bent on destroying the nation, incredible gadgets, a race against time around the world to stop the ultimate doomsday device…and Elizabethan England’s greatest spy!
Meet Will Swyfte – adventurer, swordsman, rake, swashbuckler, wit, scholar and the greatest of Walsingham’s new band of spies. His exploits against the forces of Philip of Spain have made him a national hero, lauded from Carlisle to Kent. Yet his associates can barely disguise their incredulity – what is the point of a spy whose face and name is known across Europe?
But Swyfte’s public image is a carefully-crafted façade to give the people of England something to believe in, and to allow them to sleep peacefully at night. It deflects attention from his real work – and the true reason why Walsingham’s spy network was established.
A Cold War seethes, and England remains under a state of threat. The forces of Faerie have been preying on humanity for millennia. Responsible for our myths and legends, of gods and fairies, dragons, griffins, devils, imps and every other supernatural menace that has haunted our dreams, this power in the darkness has seen humans as playthings to be tormented, hunted or eradicated.
But now England is fighting back!
Though Chadbourn’s World’s End didn’t click for me, I’m curious about this novel. I first encountered Chadbourn’s work through his short story, Who Slays the Gyant, Wounds the Beast (REVIEW), from The Solaris Book of New Fantasy, which features Swyfte and found it quite enjoyable. I’m curious to see if Chadbourn’s prose might not be better suited to this Elizabethan setting rather than the modern(ish) setting of the Age of Misrule novels.
One of my criticisms of the short story was:
I felt the story lacked context and setup, as though I were supposed to know already why Swyfte was so well known around England, how he was so resourceful and why he wasn’t the least bit surprised by the all magick that occurs over the course of the story.
Hopefully The Silver Skull adds some of that context I was looking for.
- Hugo Award
Winner
- About Aidan Moher
- Bibliography