Alisa Krasnostein has sent me another new novel, and this one looks very interesting. Trucksong is set in post-apocalyptic Australia, and might be described as like Mad Max were is not for the fact that the bad guys are not human, they are giant cyborg trucks. The book also comes with a free alternate version written in a dialect invented for the novel (shades of Feersum Endjinn, though of course Banks didn’t invent that dialect) and background music composed and performed by the author. This sounds totally the sort of thing that small presses are there to bring to market. Nice job, Alisa.
Wizard’s Tower
New From Muse It Up
I have added three more books from Muse It Up Publishing to the bookstore. Once again they are very different.
Wucaii by Pembroke Sinclair appears to be an urban fantasy romance set on another planet with a heroine who is half-dragon, which certainly stretches the boundaries of that genre. Lovely cover too.
Quest of the Hart by Mary Waibel is a YA fantasy romance about a spoiled princess who has to take up adventuring the rescue the prince she wants to marry.
And finally Seventh Grade Alien Hero by K.L. Pickett is a middle school book about a young boy who dreams of meeting an alien, and who finds out that reality can be scarier than dreams.
More from Muse It Up
As promised, I have several more books from Muse It Up Publishing to tell you about. They are a fascinating mix of titles. We have a comedy fantasy, a horror novel, and two books in an urban fantasy series. Not quite something for everyone, but hopefully many of you will see something of interest.
Welcome, Muse It Up Publishing
We have another new publisher joining the bookstore this week: Muse it Up Publishing from Canada. I have five books from them already in the shop, and you can see all of them here. However, I’d like to start by highlighting just one of them, because it is by a friend of mine. The book is Priestess of the Moon by Milena Benini.
Milena is Croatian, and I have had the honor of staying at her apartment in Zagreb. She is one of the smartest feminist critics that I know, and between them she and her husband, Marko FanÄović, are every bit as scary as John Clute. My knowledge of the field is woeful in comparison.
Bear in mind too that they got this knowledge, in part, by driving to Austria every so often and coming back with a car load of books, because you couldn’t buy that stuff in what was then Yugoslavia.
I haven’t read much of Milena’s fiction, but I certainly plan to read this one, and I hope some of you will too. Diversity, right?
Adventure Rocketship Price Drop
It being that time of year when everyone is vying for the attention of those valuable holiday season shoppers, prices inevitably tumble. That’s the same here as anywhere else. And I am particularly pleased to be able to offer a substantial (£2) reduction on the price of issue #1 of Adventure Rocketship!. It is a wonderful collection of both fiction and non-fiction celebrating the intersection of science fiction and music. I shouldn’t need to do more than show you what is in it.
- Non-Fiction
- Time to Come Back: Delia Derbyshire, Electronic Music Pioneer – David Butler
- New Worlds Fair: Michael Moorcock, Musician – Jonathan Wright
- Mick Farren: Still Raging Against the Machine – Sam Jordison
- Clockwork Angels: Rush and Kevin J Anderson – Rob Williams
- Bill Nelson: Jets at Dawn – David Quantick
- But What Does George Clinton’s Mothership Mean? – Minister Faust
- Roots And Antennae, Tongues And Flight: Boney M Aboard The Black Star Liner – Mark Sinker
- Music for a Concrete Island: JG Ballard and the Prefabrication of Post-Punk – Jason Heller
- Ladyhawke: Reclaiming a Soundtrack from its Historical Moment – Anne C Perry
- Martin Millar: Urban Pioneer – Jon Courtenay Grimwood
- The Orb: Behind the Ultraworld – Phil Meadley
- King Rat Revisited: Talking Trash With China Mi̩ville РJonathan Wright
- Digital Distribution in an Analogue World: MP3 Markets in Nouakchott, Mauritania – Christopher Kirkley
- How Long ’Til Black Future Month? The Toxins of Speculative Fiction, and the Antidote that is Janelle Monáe – NK Jemisin
- Phonogram: Sublimated Emotion – Jared Shurin
- Possible Futures: 20 Mind-Expanding Ways to Start Your SF Album Collection
- Fiction
- Starmen – Liz Williams
- Between the Notes – Lavie Tidhar
- Blues for Ahab – Nir Yaniv
- Musicians – Martin Millar
- Flight Path Estate – Tim Maughan
- One Door Closes and then Another Door Closes – Stanley Donwood
New From Aqueduct
I have a lot of new material in the store this week. For starters here are two new books from Aqueduct.
The XY Conspiracy by Lori Selke sounds to be a lot of fun, perhaps suggesting that Y chromosomes are not natural to this planet. UFOs may be involved.
Sylvia Kelso’s Spring in Geneva also sounds like great fun. Lois McMaster Bujold’s comment of, “haven’t seen that much earnest gallantry since Reepicheep” is one of the best blurbs I have ever seen.
Both books are fairly short and are in the Conversation Pieces series, so they are quite cheap.
Tansy On Sale
I’ve kept one new Fablecroft book back for a separate post. That’s because it also comes with a special offer. The new book is Ink Black Magic by Tansy Rayner Roberts, which is the first new book in Tansy Rayner Roberts’ Mocklore series in over 10 years. Fablecroft has re-issued the original two books — Splashdance Silver and Liquid Gold — and to tempt you into the series they have Splashdance Silver on sale at just 62p until the end of the year. That’s a book that won the inaugural George Turner Prize. It is, as they say, a bargain.
New From Fablecroft
I have a whole bunch of new titles from Fablecroft available. Here are three of them.
Focus 2012 is a reprint anthology of Australian SF&F, including Kaaron Warren’s multi-award-nominated “Sky”.
Path of Night is a new novel by Dirk Flinthart.
And also we have Gilfeather, part two of the re-issue of Glenda Larke’s wonderful debut series, the Glory Isles trilogy.
Welcome Cloudburst Books
We have another new publisher in the Wizard’s Tower store. Cloudburst Books is based in Australia and their first release, The Blood of Whisperers, is the first part of a fantasy trilogy.
A New Book, and a New Imprint
Wizard’s Tower published a new book today. Or rather the book was published by a brand new imprint: Grimoire. You see, I am now an academic publisher.
How did this come about? Well, an academic journal called the Journal of Children’s Literature Studies had the plug pulled on it by its publisher. At the time there were five whole issues left unpublished. As you may be aware, academics don’t often get paid for their writing when it is published, but they get benefit in other ways because they are able to list their publications on their resumes, which helps their career. The people who had essays in the five unpublished issues were somewhat upset. So Farah Mendlesohn and Edward James asked me if I could rush an ebook edition into print. That is exactly what I have done.
So you can now buy The Final Chapters, which contains the five final issues of the JCLS. Obviously these are academic essays, but I find this sort of thing interesting and hopefully some of you will too. Plus I have hopefully helped the careers of a bunch of young academics.
This was something of an urgent job, because for complicated academic reasons we needed to get the papers published by the end of October. I should apologize to all of those people anxiously waiting for the next Lyda Morehouse novel, Messiah Node (especially Lyda). That is half done, and now that The Final Chapters is on sale I can get back to it.
Special thanks are due to Andy Bigwood for providing a lovely cover in a very short space of time.
I’m very much hoping that I will be able to do some more academic publishing in the future.
More On Bookstores: Numbers Matter
Via Glenda Larke on Twitter I found this sad tale from author Mindy Klasky. Basically it is reporting on the same sad cycle of negative feedback that I wrote about last week. Barnes & Noble would not stock Mindy’s first book in a series in all but the biggest stores, then got into a dispute with her publisher, and when book two came out they refused to stock it at all because sales of book one had been so poor.
Mindy is, of course, asking people to go out any buy her book, ordering it if necessary. That’s pretty much what I said we had to do to get Waterstones to take notice. I see that I’ve come in for some criticism on that score for letting people in publishers and bookstores off the hook, and putting all of the onus on consumers. I can see the point, and certainly with a small press or independent bookstore you can ask people to do better, though of course they have businesses to run. With the big publishers and chain stores it is more difficult. Policy tends to get mired in bureaucracy, and anyone who is seen to be “difficult” (that is challenging the prevailing orthodoxy) risks ruining their career, or even losing their job. So making change on your own can be hard.
Just as importantly, however, it is a matter for consumers. When I say that “you” need to go out and buy books, I don’t mean You, Ms. Social Justice Warrior. I know You are doing your part. What I mean is y’all, the great book-reading public out there. Because a few concerned people doing the right thing isn’t going to make a difference. Big companies are run by accountants, and they normally only pay attention to numbers.
I see numbers too. When I make a post about diversity issues in publishing it doesn’t get a lot of hits. If it is about white women, rather than brown people or queer people, it will get more hits. Posts about books by white men do even better. But none of those come close to the popularity of amusing rants pointing out someone else’s failings.
Which I think probably says something rather sad about us as a species.
So diversity, yes, it is good. How about buying some books? These books:
Overlooked on the Aqueduct
The latest episode of the Coode Street Podcast sees our daring heroes, Gary and Jonathan, boldly going in search of the most overlooked books of 2013. Their starting point is at Aqueduct Press, and I’m delighted to report that I have the two books they mentioned in the bookstore. The podcast spent a lot of time talking about how really good books from small presses go out of print very quickly, but the great thing about ebooks is that they need never go out of print. Anyway, if you want to try two of the books that Gary and Jonathan think you should have been reading this year, they are: Big Mama Stories by Eleanor Arnason and Space Is Just a Starry Night by Tanith Lee.
New Publisher – Harken Media
I have another new publisher in the bookstore today: Harken Media. Currently there are only two books, both by Robert Harken, which may lead you to jump to conclusions. Well I haven’t read the books yet, but I have to say that I’ve been impressed with what I have been sent. Robert is clearly approaching this in a very professional way, that a few other publishers might learn from. He’s also been smart enough to provide a short story, “Snow Falling” that you can try out cheaply before deciding whether to splash out on his novel, Life on Nubis. Why not give him a try? It’s proper science fiction, something we don’t see enough of these days.
The Mothership Has Landed
Listen up, Citizens of the Universe, it is time for y’all to get down and boogie on some Afrofuturism.
Aw, who am I kidding? None of you kids even know who George Clinton is, do you? Never mind, we here got the P-Funk, and more importantly we have an amazing anthology of science fiction stories, not one of which is written by a white man (and the only white woman in it comes from South Africa). This is Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond, edited by Bill Campbell & Edward Austin Hall. Many of you will have backed the Kickstarter campaign, but for those who didn’t, here’s your chance to buy. The ebook editions will be available from those big, commercial sites eventually, but by special arrangement with the publishers we have them available now.
Here’s the full ToC:
- “I Left My Heart in Skaftafell†by Victor LaValle
- “Too Many Yesterdays, Not Enough Tomorrows†by N.K. Jemisin
- “Skin Dragons Talk†by Ernest Hogan
- “The Last of Its Kind†by Kawika Guillermo
- “Bludgeon†by Thaddeus Howze
- “The Farming of Gods†by Ibi Zoboi
- “The Hungry Earth†by Carmen Maria Machado
- “The Half-Wall†by Rabih Alameddine
- “Unathi Battles the Black Hairballs†by Lauren Beukes
- “Amma†by Charles R. Saunders
- “The Homecoming†by Chinelo Onwualu
- “The Voyeur†by Ran Walker
- “Life-pod†by Vandana Singh
- “Four Eyes†by Tobias Buckell
- “The Death Collector†by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
- “Bio-Anger†by Kiini Ibura Salaam
- “The Runner of n-Vamana†by Indrapramit Das
- “In the Belly of the Crocodile†by Minister Faust
- “Live and Let Live†by Linda D. Addison
- “The Pavilion of Frozen Women†by S.P. Somtow
- “Waking the God of the Mountain†by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
- “Culling the Herd†by C. Renee Stephens
- “Dances with Ghosts†by Joseph Bruchac
- “Un Aperitivo Col Diavolo†by Darius James
- “Othello Pop†by Andaiye Reeves
- “A Brief History of Nonduality Studies†by Sofia Samatar
- “Protected Entity†by Daniel José Older
- “The Parrot’s Tale†by Anil Menon
- “Northern Lights†by Eden Robinson
- “One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sunlight†by Tade Thompson
- “The Aphotic Ghost†by Carlos Hernandez
- “The Pillar†by Farnoosh Moshiri
- “Angels + Cannibals Unite†by Greg Tate
- “A Fine Specimen†by Lisa Allen-Agostini
- “Between Islands†by Jaymee Goh
- “Fées des Dents†by George S. Walker
- “The Taken†by Tenea D. Johnson
- “The Buzzing†by Katherena Vermette
- “Monstro†by Junot DÃaz
- “Good Boy†by Nisi Shawl
And let no one tell me that this stuff simply doesn’t exist.
Introducing The Dark
You can’t keep Sean Wallace down, can you? He handed over Fantasy magazine to John Joseph Adams (who then incorporated it into Lightspeed), but he got back into helping edit Clarkesworld, and now he has a new fiction magazine out. In conjunction with Jack Fisher, he is publishing The Dark. It promises, “fiction that is weird and offbeat; magic realism; the fantastic; dark science fiction…”. And the debut issue has a stellar lineup of Lisa L. Hannett, Nnedi Okorafor, Angela Slatter and Rachel Swirsky.
Now here’s the thing. It will be available online, but not just yet. You, however, can buy issue #1 from your friendly, neighborhood ebook store. Why not give it a try?
New Finnish Fiction from Cheeky Frawg
The fabulous VanderMeers have sent me the latest Cheeky Frawg book: Datura, by Leena Krohn (translated by Anna Volmari and Juha Tupasela). Here’s what the blurb says:
Our narrator works as an editor and writer for a magazine specializing in bringing oddities to light, a job that sends her exploring through a city that becomes by degrees ever less familiar. From a sunrise of automated cars working in silent precision to a possible vampire, she discovers that reality may not be as logical as you think Âand that people are both odder and more ordinary as they might seem. Especially if you’re eating datura seeds. Especially when the legendary Voynich Manuscript is involved. Where will it all end? Pushed by the mysterious owner of the magazine, our narrator may wind up somewhere very strange indeed.
Jeff and Ann go on to describe Krohn as “one of the most respected Finnish writers of her generation” but really she should be one the the most respected writers of her generation in any country. I am so pleased to have one of her books available in English.
And while I am here, don’t forget the fabulous bargain of the Michael Cisco omnibus. To give you a taster, The Divinity Student is being serialized on Weird Fiction Review. Check out what they have online already, and then come back and buy all four books at a knock-down price.
New From Masque
Prime’s ebook imprint, Masque Books, continues to turn out interesting titles. I’ve blogged before about Ascension, which is science fiction with a black lesbian main character. The latest two releases both have interesting authors. Every In Between is by Erzebet YellowBoy, who has native American ancestry, which Crowflight has a Native American main character, and is by an author whose bio (see here) suggests non-binary identification. And of course as ebooks they are nice and cheap. I do try to make this diversity stuff easy for you.
Kristell Ink Revisit
One of the interesting things about retail is that there are seasonal patterns to it. I’m not entirely sure why, given the whole beach reading thing, but sales in the bookstore are always low in August. Now it so happens that one of the things I did in August was add a whole new UK small press to the store, and as I suspect that not many people were paying attention back then I’d like to give them another boost. So, hello again Kristell Ink, and welcome to the store.
Part of the reason for promoting them, of course, is that they published my friend Jo Hall’s book, The Art of Forgetting: Rider, which is reviewed here. I like the book, and I’m delighted to see Jo having taken a few risks with it by introducing QUILTBAG characters. Unfortunately, writers doing this doesn’t help much if no one buys the books. Publishers will just say, “oh, that stuff doesn’t sell”, and stop buying it. So I want lots of you to buy Jo’s book, OK?
New Author: Lochlan Bloom
Every so often I get a request from an author to stock their books. I think the last one was Aliette de Bodard, whom I trust needed no introduction. The latest author to join the store is Lochlan Bloom. He has a stand-alone novelette called Trade available. It is apparently about what happens when social media takes over the sex trade. Who knows, he could be the next big thing. And the story is only 99p, so why not give him a try?
Get Distances
The latest issue of the brilliant SF Crossing the Gulf podcast features “Single Bit Error” by Ken Liu, and “Distances” by Vandana Singh. Karen and Karen rave enthusiastically about how much they enjoyed Singh’s novella, and it so happens that it is available in the bookstore.
So have listen to this:
And then buy the book. (Or maybe the other way around, you’ll enjoy the podcast even more if you do.)