Stories: All-New Tales

Review by Roz Kaveney at Financial Times

Anthologies are almost as hard to review as they are to edit. This is especially true when, as here, the emphasis of the editors is on something intangible rather than on some very obvious organising principle. We can judge collections of stories about cute cats or left-handed socket wrenches on the grounds of how they fulfil their brief and open out a simple set of categories into something more varied. An anthology such as this – where the emphasis is on story and narrative drive – is always going to produce essentially subjective reactions.

It’s clear from Neil Gaiman’s introduction that he and Al Sarrantonio, when they invited a number of authors to contribute to this book, made their sole requirement that the stories be involving and attention-keeping. Gaiman argues that “and then what happened?” is something which writers should keep perpetually in mind. Several of these stories are tightly plotted or, which is not the same thing, packed with incident, enough for a piece two or three times their length. Jeffrey Deaver’s “The Therapist” almost convinces us of its main narrator’s pseudo-scientific theory of rationalised demonic possession, then shifts our involvement to the prosecutor who has to go after him when he acts on his theories, and then back to the narrator’s further understanding of the implications of his own ideas.

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Danann Frost Falls from Grace “taster edition”

via Joanne Valiukas’ website

The first 19 chapters of Danann Frost Falls from Grace are available as a free sample “taster edition” PDF document.

Danann Frost is thousands of years old, yet young for her kind. She is a creature of the Light, an Angel…one of the Seraphim; a race of beings that live beyond our world. She has been cast out of paradise and Fallen from Grace, all for the love of a Dark One…a vampire. The only problem is…Seth did not want her and told her to go and not come back. Danann has made a life for herself amongst the vampires of this world and they protect her fragile nature. She and the vampire Asher live on the fringes of the human world; love and loyalty cannot separate them but trouble and vengeance are on their way.

After two hundred years of enduring the crippling punishments of her Fall, Seth walks back into her life but he is bitter and angry and out for revenge. Thank God he is after someone else…or is he?

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The Birth of Science Fiction

by Greg at Daily Grail

This article is an excerpt from Chapter 3 of the 676-page opus on the history of science fiction, The World Beyond the Hill , reproduced with kind permission of the authors Alexei and Cory Panshin and publisher Phoenix Pick.

For the first two hundred years of the modern era — from the accession to the leadership of Western society by the philosophy of rational materialism in the late Seventeenth Century to the appearance of techno-warfare in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 — there was no such thing as science fiction literature. The World Beyond the HillThrough all this time, writers had no conscious awareness of working in a connected and cumulative SF tradition. Such a thing as science fiction was unthinkable, unimaginable. It didn’t exist.

How very different the situation is today! In the late Twentieth Century, nobody at all would think to doubt that there is such a thing as science fiction. Paperback racks are filled with books labeled “SF.” There is a great visible science fiction industry: writers, editors, critics, magazines, books, films, fans, clubs, conventions, awards, and much much more.

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Terror Eternal: The enduring popularity of H.P. Lovecraft

By Stefan Dziemianowicz at Publisher’s Weekly

For nearly a century, a formidable presence has cast its shadow over horror publishing. As protean as it is pervasive, it has insinuated itself into virtually all aspects of the genre’s publishing platform: trade publishing, specialty press, comics and graphic novels, role-playing game scenarios, movie novelizations, audiobooks, Web zines, and now e-books. It’s the spirit—or, if you will, the shade—of H.P. Lovecraft, and every decade it looms larger and darker.

Once the private worship of a small but dedicated congregation of devotees, Lovecraft has hit the big time in the first decade of the new millennium…Lovecraft’s fiction is now enjoying the same broad dissemination through trade publishing houses and their classics imprints that was once reserved, as American horror fiction goes, for Lovecraft’s main inspiration, Edgar Allan Poe.In some ways, though, Lovecraft’s reach is more encompassing than Poe’s. The Cthulhu Mythos, a myth cycle distilled from his fiction that is to the Lovecraft universe what Middle-earth is to Tolkien’s fiction, has been a fertile and fecund subgenre of horror fiction since before Lovecraft’s death in 1937, and hundreds of writers over the decades have contributed tales written in Lovecraft’s style, infused with its philosophy of cosmic pessimism, or full of references to the entities, books of occult lore, and unhallowed smalltowns that are its signifiers—among them Straub, Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Poppy Z. Brite, Neil Gaiman, Caitlín Kiernan, and Brian Lumley. Last year, Dark Horse brought out Lovecraft Unbound, an anthology of original stories, edited by Ellen Datlow, penned by leading writers of fantasy and science fiction, all of which evoke the spirit, if not the specifics, of Lovecraft’s writings, and capture what Datlow refers to as “the deep dread and fear of the unknown” that distinguishes Lovecraft’s tales of horror for her.

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2010 Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards announced

Patrick Nielsen Hayden at Tor

The Mythopoeic Society has announced the winners of the 2010 Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards. Congratulations to the winners, and particular congratulations to our own Jo Walton!

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature: Jo Walton, Lifelode (NESFA Press)

Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies: Dimitra Fimi, Tolkien, Race, and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)

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Kraken’s China Mieville on “Five Underrated Literary Cephalopods”

by Jeff VanderMeer at Omnivoracious

[A]ny novel that involves odd squid cults, natural history museums, and talking tattoos sounds like great summer reading to me, and Entertainment Weekly just gave [Kraken] an A-.

It was Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Philippe Diolé who named cephalopods ‘the soft intelligence’, in the subtitle to their 1973 book Octopus and Squid. At first, the adjective seems vaguely simpering, as if these ambassadors of alterity are in fact safe, unthreatening, cuddly. But immediately comes a strangeness. If they are a, no, the soft intelligence, what are we? Hard intelligence? Soft unintelligence? Why are they soft intelligence singular? Is each but an iteration of some tentacular totality? What strange sentience. An opaque collective.

2) This monster with a strange gaze. Louise Michel, Bonne Louise, the red she-wolf, anarchist hero of the Paris Commune, condemned to exile in New Caledonia after its tragic failure, collected stories of and from the local Kanak people and their home (whose uprising, in her unflinching dedication to emancipation, she, unlike even many of the ex-communards, supported). ‘The Cyclone’ is a stunning meditation on the sea-storm and its aftermath. In prose as limpid as the rock-pools she searches, Michel itemises creatures thrown up by the upheaval, among them ‘a half-dead octopus opens its human eye’. ‘May he too return to the waters,’ she urges, her sympathy unconstrained by species-chauvinism, ‘this monster with a strange gaze.’ A monster, a strange gaze, of an eye that is and yet cannot be human.

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Because Valentine’s Day was this weekend, our Cover Cluster this month is flowers! Enjoy!

The Year of The Flood by Margaret Atwood: The times and species have been changing at a rapid rate, and the social compact is wearing as thin as environmental stability. Adam One, the kindly leader of the God’s Gardeners–a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, as well as the preservation of all plant and animal life–has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have survived: Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, a God’s Gardener barricaded inside a luxurious spa where many of the treatments are edible. Have others survived? Ren’s bioartist friend Amanda? Zeb, her eco-fighter stepfather? Her onetime lover, Jimmy? Or the murderous Painballers, survivors of the mutual-elimination Painball prison? Not to mention the shadowy, corrupt policing force of the ruling powers…

Meridian by Amber Kizer: Meridian’s parents try to give her a normal childhood in spite of the strange attraction she holds for the dead and dying animals that appear in her bed nearly every morning. On her 16th birthday, a horrific traffic accident occurs right in front of her, causing her terrible pain even though she is uninjured. Her parents realize that the time has come to tell Meridian what she truly is: a Fenestra. Within hours she is on a bus heading to Revelation, CO, and her Auntie. She learns that a Fenestra is a being capable of opening windows into the afterlife for the dying. With the help of Great-aunt Merry, also a Fenestra, and Tens, her Protector, Meridian comes gradually, though reluctantly, to understand her powers and her place in the eternal struggle between the forces of light and darkness for the souls of humankind.

New Moon by Stephenie Meyer: Recovered from the vampire attack that hospitalized her in the conclusion of Twilight, Bella celebrates her birthday with her boyfriend Edward and his family, a unique clan of vampires that has sworn off human blood. But the celebration abruptly ends when the teen accidentally cuts her arm on broken glass. The sight and smell of her blood trickling away forces the Cullen family to retreat lest they be tempted to make a meal of her. After all is mended, Edward, realizing the danger that he and his family create for Bella, sees no option for her safety but to leave. Mourning his departure, she slips into a downward spiral of depression that penetrates and lingers over her every step. It’s not until Bella befriends Jacob, a sophomore from her school with a penchant for motorcycles, that both the pace and her disposition begin to take off. Their adventures are wild, dare-devilish, and teeter on the brink of romance, but memories of Edward pervade Bella’s emotions, and soon their fun quickly morphs into danger, especially when she uncovers the true identities of Jacob and his pack of friends.

Spells by Aprilynne Pike: Six months have passed since Laurel saved the gateway to the faerie realm of Avalon. Now she must spend her summer there, honing her skills as a Fall faerie. But her human family and friends are still in mortal danger–and the gateway to Avalon is more compromised than ever.  When it comes time to protect those she loves, will she depend on David, her human boyfriend, for help? Or will she turn to Tamani, the electrifying faerie with whom her connection is undeniable?

Sleepless by Cyn Balog: Eron DeMarchelle isn’t supposed to feel this connection. He is a Sandman, a supernatural being whose purpose is to seduce his human charges to sleep. Though he can communicate with his charges in their dreams, he isn’t encouraged to do so. After all, becoming too involved in one human’s life could prevent him from helping others get their needed rest. But he can’t deny that he feels something for Julia, a lonely girl with fiery red hair and sad dreams. Just weeks ago, her boyfriend died in a car accident, and Eron can tell that she feels more alone than ever. Eron was human once too, many years ago, and he remembers how it felt to lose the one he loved. In the past, Eron has broken rules to protect Julia, but now, when she seems to need him more than ever, he can’t reach her. Eron’s time as a Sandman is coming to a close, and his replacement doesn’t seem to care about his charges. Worse, Julia is facing dangers she doesn’t recognize, and Eron, as he transitions back to being human, may be the only one who can save her. . . .

Evermore by Alyson Noel: Seventeen-year-old Ever survived the car crash that killed her parents, younger sister, and their dog. Now she lives with an aunt in Southern California, plagued not only by survivor guilt but also by a new ability to hear the thoughts of all around her. She tries to tune out all these distractions by keeping her hoodie up and her iPod cranked loud, until Damen, the cute new boy at school, convinces her to come out of her shell. Damen, however, is frighteningly clever—and has the strange ability to produce tulips from nowhere and disappear himself at critical moments.

The Everafter by Amy Huntley: Seventeen-year-old Madison Stanton is dead. When she awakes in a vast expanse of nothingness, she realizes that she doesn’t remember her past life, much less how she died. As she explores her surroundings, she finds glowing items scattered about her, such as a bracelet, a pair of socks, keys, and a sweatshirt. When she imagines putting the shirt on her nonexistent body, she’s brought back to a moment in her former life. From this experience she learns that every object around her is something that she lost while she was alive, and that using it will bring her spirit back to the moment in which it went missing. Armed with this knowledge, she attempts to discover how she died. With some help from the spirits of her boyfriend Gabe and her ex-friend Tammy, Madison learns the shattering truth of her demise.

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr: Wicked Lovely takes place in modern-day Huntsdale, a small city south of Pittsburgh whose name evokes the Wild Hunt of mythology. High school junior Aislinn and her grandmother have followed strict rules all their lives to hide their ability to see faeries because faeries don’t like it when mortals can see them, and faeries can be very cruel. Only the strongest faeries can withstand iron, however, so Aislinn prefers the city with its steel girders and bridges. She takes refuge with Seth, her would-be lover, who lives in a set of old train carriages. But now Aislinn is being stalked by two of the faeries who are able to take on human form and are not deterred by steel. What do they want from her?

all summaries from amazon.com

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