Paradox,
“And didn’t the Bird’s Nest stadium look like a Jim Burns painting brought to life? For anyone who saw the whole of the opening ceremony, the future is here, and it is so sfnal. And with 2008 wu shu performers demonstrating their own kind of harmony.”
John Meaney Kicks Butt Read More »
On his website Critical Mass, author and former Science Fiction Chronicle reviewer Don D’Ammassa reviews Alexis Glynn Latner’s debut novel, Hurricane Moon,
“I’ve been reading short stories by Latner for about ten years now, almost all of them in Analog, and have found her to be a reliable source of interesting and accessible stories of hard science fiction. At long last we have a chance to read her at novel length, and it was worth the wait, although I hope we don’t have to wait as long for her next. It’s an old fashioned space adventure, but with more contemporary sensibilities and healthy doses of intelligent and not too abstruse science… Extremely well written, tightly plotted, full of that old fashioned sense of wonder about the universe. I hope to see much more from this author in the future.”
Meanwhile, I’ve found a host of Pyr reviews that I mostly missed in his 2006 archive. Don says that the reviews “were written for Science Fiction Chronicle, but most were never used.” So let’s look at some of them here!
Fast Forward 1,
“Lou Anders has put together a collection of twenty original stories, designed to be the first in an ongoing series along the lines of Terry Carr’s Universe series or Damon Knight’s Orbit collections, although the emphasis appears to be on hard SF. There are stories by some of the best known writers in that sub-genre – Stephen Baxter, Larry Niven, Ken Macleod – as well as representatives of the more literary end of the spectrum – Gene Wolfe, Paul Di Filippo, Pamela Sargent. Non-theme anthologies are almost always more readable than specialized ones and this is no exception, very high quality throughout and enough variation to reward almost any reader’s taste.”
Sagramanda (A Novel of Near-Future India)
Near future India is the setting for this surprisingly low key novel, surprising because there are a lot of violent things happening in it. The central plot is the theft by a scientist of a revolutionary new, but undescribed, discovery which he is trying to sell to a competitor… Nicely understated, and a depressing and unfortunately not entirely inaccurate portrayal of the future of much of the urban world, and not just India.”
Starship: Pirate
“Resnick combines space opera, a touch of military, more than a touch of humor, and his usual talent for creating larger than life characters in this new series. Consistently good fun from beginning to end.”
Mappa Mundi
“This one might well have been packaged as a contemporary thriller rather than SF, and it’s a good one regardless of your mind set while you’re reading it.”
Infoquake
“A debut novel and the first in a trilogy, set in a future when multi-national corporations have become virtual governments… Lots of interesting speculation and a plausible and interesting plot. I found the prose a bit awkward from time to time but not so much that it significantly interfered with my enjoyment of the story.”
Paragaea: A Planetary Romance
“The cover blurbs compare this to Edgar Rice Burroughs and Leigh Brackett, and with some justification…. a bit difficult to take seriously at times, but if you just let go and enjoy the ride, Roberson conducts a pretty rousing tour of his universe.”
New Dreams for Old
“I am so used to thinking of Mike Resnick as primarily a novelist that it came as a surprise to read through the table of contents of this new collection and discover how many of them I remembered. And how many of them have appeared on Hugo and Nebula ballots. Although a few have been previously collected, most appear in book form for the first time… Some are funny, some are dead serious. All are nifty. This is a big, representative, and above all very satisfying selection of his short fiction.”
Resolution: Book III of the Nulapeiron Sequence
“The final volume of the Nulapeiron trilogy concludes this sequence set in a future so remote and different that it is sometimes difficult to identify with the characters and situations. Technology and mental powers have advanced to the point where they are indistinguishable from magic….You’ll have to suspend your disbelief pretty radically for this one, but if you can get yourself into the story, you’ll have a wild and exciting ride ahead of you.”
The Destiny Mask
“Pyr Books has been reprinting quite a few British and Australian novels which had not previously appeared in the US, including this, the second in a series. The setting is an interstellar empire and the plot is one familiar to readers even outside the genre, the rivalry between two twins, separated as babies and ignorant of each other’s existence, who become pivotal players in a battle between rebels and a repressive interplanetary dictatorship. I liked this one considerably better than its predecessor, The Affinity Trap. The characters are more realistic and the plot tighter and more involving.”
The Liberty Gun
“I had a mixed reaction to the first two novels in the Structure series, but the third is a much more satisfying space adventure that mixes time travel, aliens, military SF, and general intrigue. …the situation is considerably more complicated than any of the characters realize. It takes a while to get into the story, but once you’re there, you won’t want out.”
Genetopia
“Pyr has reprinted several British SF novels that have not previously been available in the US, including this one from 1999. Brooke should have been discovered earlier because he has definite talent… Many of the things Flint encounters are fascinating ideas, but after a while it becomes just a parade of wonders and readers may find themselves impatient to get to the destination.”
Note: Genetopia is an original novel, first published by Pyr. Don is apparently confusing it with a previously published short story of the same name. Meanwhile, with this profusion of Pyr reviews, Don has put my own personal archive of our books’ reviews over the 500 mark. And while I’m sure I have missed some somewhere, I’m happy to report that out of some 503 reviews I’ve tracked since we launched – appearing everywhere from tiny websites I’d never previously heard of to huge venues like the Washington Post and Entertainment Weekly – I’ve only logged 27 negative ones! Which is nice.
A Mass of D’Ammassa Read More »
I’m very pleased to announce that B&N.com has just picked three titles for inclusion in their Editor’s Choice Top Ten SF&F Novels of 2006 list, prompting our publicity department to issue the following press release:
January 3, 200
“The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread Story of the Year”
Several Year-End “Bests”Cap 2006 for SF&F Imprint
Including Barnes & Noble’s SF&F Book of the Year!
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The Barnes & Noble Science Fiction/Fantasy Book of the Year, Editor’s Choice, is Infoquake by David Louis Edelman—a debut that ingeniously mixes business with pleasure, or as B&N puts it, “equal parts corporate thriller, technophilic cautionary tale and breathtakingly visionary science fiction adventure.”
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The other two Pyr books included in this best of the year list are The Crooked Letter by Sean Williams at number four (“prepare to be blown away,” they write) and Resolution, the conclusion to John Meaney’s three-book Nulapeiron Sequence, at number six.
The
Publishing blog Bookgasm posted a Best 5 Sci-Fi Books of 2006 list in which three of the best five books were from Pyr. River of Gods
According to the science fiction and fantasy reviewer for Bookgasm,
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“The biggest story of the year…is Pyr’s rise to prominence as a high-quality sci-fi imprint. Pyr has managed to round up a stable of authors and titles that represents the cutting edge of sci-fi and backs it up with promotion and marketing that pretty much outdoes the other imprints out there. Bravo, Pyr. Here’s hoping for an even greater 2007.”
The imprint will certainly do its best to make 2007 even greater than 2006:
In February, Pyr will launch a new hard science fiction anthology series, Fast Forward 1,
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In May, it’s “Bladerunner in the tropics” with Brasyl
Pyr has already begun developing a reputation for publishing “smart” science fiction. But in September 2007, Pyr gets fantastic with its first straight-up commercial epic fantasy novel: The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie. This book will lead Pyr’s Fall-Winter 07-08 season and be launched at Book Expo
In other 2006 year-end awards, the blog Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist called Pyr “a breath of fresh air in both the fantasy and science fiction genres” and gave the imprint the creatively named and gratefully accepted “Best Thing Since Sliced Bread Award.”
The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread Read More »
The October/November 2006 double issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction has an On Books column from Norman Spinrad entitled “The Big Kahuna.” This time out, Spinrad reviews our books – John Meaney’s Resolution and Ian McDonald’s River of Gods, along with Del Rey author Peter F. Hamilton’s Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained.
Thematically, the piece is something of a follow-up to his earlier “Aussies, Brits and Yanks,” which appeared in the April/May 2006 Double Issue of Asimov’s and which was exclusively devoted to five Pyr titles – all reviewed quite favorably. In fact, Spinrad quotes extensively from that review in this one.
This time out, Spinrad is less than 100% about John Meaney, though it is worth noting that his criticisms of the work are more to do with what he sees as the marketing and economic realities of SF publishing today, which- as dictated by the major chains refusal to stock hardcover works with a price point over $25 – in his opinion force publishers to break works which should have been single mammoth tomes into a duology or trilogy format.
Spinrad says, “This presents the writer with a literary problem, it produces a paradox that is inherently impossible to resolve fully. To wit, do you presume that the only readership for books two and three are people who have already read book one–and worse, that the only readership for book three is those who have read the first two volumes? Or do you attempt to make each book a novel that anyone can pick up and read cold?”
Whichever way the author chooses to address these questions leads to compromise in Spinrad’s estimation, though he acknowledges that Meaney “does as good and clever a job of bringing the reader who missed the first two up to date without turning off the reader who hasn’t as perhaps can be done.” Along the way he praises Meaney for certain courageous narrative choices and even gives him points for making good on a promise that Frank Herbert never lived to fulfill in his own Dune series. (So, I’m pretty happy with his overall assessment.)
Now, I cannot speak as to what editorial pressures might or might not have shaped the Nulapeiron Sequence as the work was already available from its UK publisher (Bantam/Transworld) before I came on the scene. It was then, and remains today, one of my favorite works of hard science fiction from the last decade. Nor have I read Peter F. Hamilton’s duology, which Spinrad sees as suffering from the same problem. Though I must say Spinrad’s assessment of Pandora’s Star does pique my interest and turn me off for the very reason’s he states. (I may end up adding it to the enormous reading pile eventually, however, being tipped over the edge by learning here that Hamilton uses the speculative device of interstellar railway lines connecting commuters across the stars via wormhole traversing trains – an idea which fascinated me when I first encountered it back in 1992 in Ben Aaronovitch’s brilliant Transit, one of the best of the Doctor Who books from the Virgin line and a media tie-in work that managed that rare feat of being genuine speculative fiction. Come to think of it, Peter did look a bit like Colin Baker at Interaction last year. But I digress…)
Norman Spinrad does raise an interesting point, whether correctly or incorrectly applied in this case. I know that I would have much preferred Gene Wolfe’s recent Wizard Knight as the single book which Locus insists on calling it. And I did pick up the SFBC’s edition of Sean Williams’s and Shane Dix’s Geodesica, precisely because I wanted to read that work in its one intended volume. That and the collector that I am always prefer hardcovers to paperbacks. But it’s hard to fault publishers when they are up against the realities of what the chains will or will not bear – I think we’re all agreed that it’s certainly better to publish a Gene Wolfe work in two volumes than not at all – and I couldn’t truthfully promise you’d never, ever see such a contrived duology from Pyr. (None so far but never say never.) Nor is this phenomenon necessarily new – wasn’t The Lord of the Rings originally conceived as one tome? Still, I’m curious about Spinrad’s proposed alternative, as with his novel Russian Spring, which his French publisher elected to publish “as two volumes without hiding that this was one continuous novel and published them simultaneously. You could buy volume one and read it before you decided whether you wanted to go on, and if you did, you could buy the second volume immediately, or you could buy both at one time, or, in the case of Russian Spring, the two volumes in a fancy boxed set.” Would such a solution work over here? I don’t know, but it bears thinking about, and I’d love to hear some further discussion on the subject.
Meanwhile, I can’t say I’m anything but absolutely thrilled with Spinrad’s opinion that Ian 
McDonald’s River of Gods is “a literary masterpiece.” Spinrad writes that “I can’t think of a better science fiction novel I’ve read in years…. This novel is a masterpiece of science fiction by any meaningful standard and even some that are not.” Spinrad is certainly not the first to offer this sort of opinion, with the Washington Post proclaiming that River is “a major achievement from a writer who is becoming one of the best sf novelists of our time” and F&SF hailing the work as one of those once in a blue moon masterpieces like Neuromancer, Altered Carbon, or Perdido Street Station. Certainly, River of Gods is the book that has best plugged into the immediate zeitgeist (Charles Stross’s Accelerando sequence being the previous holder of that honor, though I would place their greatest impact as when his tales appeared in their original Asimov’s run as individual stories.) But it will be interesting to see if a) like Charlie’s Accelerando narrative, River of Gods gives rise/calls attention to any similar global/nonWestern centric works in its wake, in the way that Charlie kick started the recent wave of Vingean Singularity fiction to the forefront, and b) if decades hence McDonald’s masterpiece will indeed be remembered on a par with such classics as Dune, Stranger in a Strange Land, or Neuromancer. Time will shortly answer that first question but we’ll have to wait a bit longer before we are sure of the latter.
Masterpieces & the Problematic Trilogy Read More »
