Review Copies: Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds

The final review of the galley pages is now complete, and Slow Bullets will soon see print. The official publication date is June 9, but Tachyon Publications titles are typically available a bit early.

If you are a book reviewer and are registered with NetGalley, you may now request an electronic review copy of Slow Bullets. If you are a book reviewer but you are not registered with NetGalley, registration is free; you simply provide them with a personal profile as to who you are as a book reviewer.

If you are not registered with NetGalley and don't wish to do so, but you would like a review copy of Slow Bullets, you can email me at: marty[dot]halpern[at]gmail[dot]com -- provide me with your contact information along with a link to your book review blog (or, if your reviews appear at different sites, a couple links to said reviews), and let me know which format you prefer: PDF, MOBI, or EPUB. If you require a print edition of the Slow Bullets ARC, that can be arranged, but you'll need to inform me why a print edition is needed as there is an additional cost to the publisher for this.

For more information on Slow Bullets, you can read my "Editing in Process" blog post on February 9, 2015.

Editing in Process...Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction

Cover art by Lius Lasahido

This was my last editing project for calendar year 2014:

Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction, forthcoming in May 2015 from Tachyon Publications -- and the year 2014 couldn't have ended on a better high note.

Back in early 2010 I was hearing (virtually speaking, that is) a lot of buzz about a new hard-SF writer from Finland, Hannu Rajaniemi, and his first novel entitled The Quantum Thief, to be published in the UK by Gollancz that September.

Then, Charles Stross, in a blog post dated May 14, 2010, recommended Hannu Rajaniemi and The Quantum Thief for the Hugo Awards ballot:

He's Finnish, lives in Scotland, has a PhD in string theory, and — well, if you dropped Greg Egan's hard physics chops into a rebooted Finnish version of Al Reynolds with the writing talent of a Ted Chiang you'd begin to get a rough approximation of the scale of his talent. If that's a somewhat recondite metaphor, then alas, recondite is what you're getting: this is deep SF, and if there's any criticism I can level it's that readers may find "The Quantum Thief" hard to interpret without a prior background in the field. However, it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up when I read it, and I think Hannu's going to revolutionize hard SF when he hits his stride. Hard to admit, but I think he's better at this stuff than I am. And "The Quantum Thief" is the best first SF novel I've read in many years.

And then, I read Rajaniemi's short story "Elegy for a Young Elk" in the Spring 2010 issue of Subterranean Press Magazine.

And by that time I was, like, Wow! -- Who is this writer?

Now, skip forward four years...(It's been four years already?)...to October 2014, during which time I had the opportunity to work on this collection of short stories by Hannu Rajaniemi[1].

The stories in Collected Fiction are more like "Elegy for a Young Elk" than the novel Quantum Thief. To rephrase Charles Stross, readers won't need a prior background in string/quantum theory to enjoy these stories. But you do need to be open-minded about possibilities --

From the story "Shibuya no Love":

They were eating takoyaki by the statue of Hachiko the dog when Norie told her to buy a quantum lovegety.

Riina's Japanese was not very good in spite of two years of Oriental Studies and three months in Tokyo, and the translation software on her phone did not immediately recognize the term, so she just stared at the small caramel-skinned girl blankly for a few seconds, mouth full of fried dough and octopus. "A what?" she managed finally, wiping crumbs from her lips.

...

"You don't have them in Finland? How do you meet boys there? Oh, I forgot, you have the sauna!....

"It's the most kawaii thing! I keep mine on all the time. Look!" Norie held up her wrist. Her phone was embedded in a Cartier platinum bracelet with a jewel-studded Hello Kitty engraving that her boyfriend Shinichi had given her for her birthday. Riina had admired it several times, but had not paid attention to the little teardrop-shaped plastic thing dangling from it until now. It was hardly bigger than the tip of her index finger, and its pink surface had the characteristic teflon sheen of a nanovat-grown product. There was a silvery heart-shaped logo on one side.

And from another favorite story of mine, "Invisible Planets":

Travelling through Cygnus 61, as it prepares to cross the gulf between the galaxies, the darkship commands its sub-minds to describe the worlds it has visited.

...

During the millennia of its journey, the darkship's mind has expanded, until it has become something that has to be explored and mapped. The treasures it contains can only be described in metaphors, brittle and misleading and distant, like mirages. And so, more and more, amongst all the agents in its sprawling society of mind, the darkship finds itself listening to the voice of a tiny sub-mind, so insignificant that she is barely more than a wanderer lost in a desert, coming from reaches of the ship's mind so distant that she might as well be a traveller from another country that has stumbled upon an ancient and exotic kingdom on the other side of the world, and now finds herself serving a quizzical, omnipotent emperor.

What follows, then, in "Invisible Planets" are a half-dozen of what I might call little vignettes, in which the sub-mind describes the planets and people the darkship has visited; for example: "The rulers of the Planet Oya love the dead." -- and then we get to learn about Oya and the dead.

Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction contains approximately 80,000 words and includes 19 stories, sort of, plus a couple mini introductions (all to be explained shortly). Here's the table of contents:

Deus Ex Homine

The Server and the Dragon

Tyche and the Ants

The Haunting of Apollo A7LB

His Master's Voice

Elegy for a Young Elk

The Jugaad Cathedral

Fisher of Men

Invisible Planets

Topsight

Ghost Dogs

The Viper Blanket

The Oldest Game

Shibuya no Love

Paris, in Love

Satan's Typist

Skywalker of Earth

Snow White Is Dead

Unused Tomorrows and Other Stories

The final two "stories" in the list each has its own mini-introduction. We learn that "Snow White Is Dead" is actually one result of a neurofiction experiment, sort of like a Choose Your Own Adventure, but in reverse: the story chooses you, based on brain activity. The last story, "Unused Tomorrows and Other Stories," is a collection of 140-character Twitter stories that Hannu Rajaniemi wrote while Twitterer-in-Residence at New Media Scotland in August 2008.

I told you...you have to be open to the possibilities....

---------------

Footnote:

[1] Typically I link an author's name to the author's website or blog, but I found neither for Hannu Rajaniemi. And if I missed said link(s), my sincere apologies. I did find the author on Twitter (@hannu; last tweet was February 13), Facebook (last post was December 30, 2014, at which time he changed his profile pic), and LinkedIn. If I've missed a link, feel free to post a comment below.

Book Received: The Very Best of Kate Elliott

In my blog post on June 12, 2014, in which I wrote about working on this Kate Elliott collection for Tachyon Publications, I opened the post with the following paragraph:

Cover Art by Julie Dillion

The beauty of any "best of" collection is that it allows the reader to experience the full expanse of the author's writing and story telling. And, if the collection is indeed worth its (literal) weight, then the book will hopefully have some small treasure, a story unfamiliar to the reader, even if the reader is one of the author's biggest fans....and it holds true on my most recent project, The Very Best of Kate Elliott....

Of the twelve stories in this collection, six were published in various anthologies from DAW Books, and another story, "On the Dying Winds of the Old Year and the Birthing Winds of the New," is original to this volume; I suspect even Ms. Elliott's faithful fans haven't had the opportunity to read all of these stories.

Here is the contents list (in order of appearance) for The Very Best of Kate Elliott:

Riding the Shore of the River of Death

Leaf and Branch and Grass and Vine

The Queen's Garden

On the Dying Winds of the Old Year and
   the Birthing Winds of the New

The Gates of Joriun

The Memory of Peace

With God to Guard Her

My Voice Is in My Sword

Sunseeker

A Simple Act of Kindness

To Be a Man

Making the World Live Again

And here is the starred Publishers Weekly review of The Very Best of Kate Elliott:

Elliott's delightful first collection contains pieces set in the worlds of her major fantasy series—the Spiritwalker Trilogy, the Crossroads Trilogy, the Crown of Stars series, and the Jaran novels....No familiarity with any of the novels is required to understand the stories set in those worlds, but the existing settings lend depth, complexity, and intrigue to what might otherwise be simple tales. "Riding the Shore of the River of Death," a bildungsroman about a young female horse-nomad who wants to be a warrior, benefit greatly from the depth of setting, as does the slapstick comedy "To Be a Man," about a shape-shifting saber-toothed cat with an eye for the ladies. But the standalones especially shine, and the political intrigue and subtle humor that Elliott brings to the fascinating culture and government system of "The Queen's Garden" make it perhaps the finest work in the book. This collection serves beautifully both as an introduction to Elliott and as a treat for fans who want more of her marvels."

—Publishers Weekly, December 1, 2014

In addition to these twelve stories, the collection also includes four essays as well as an introduction written specifically for this collection. The Very Best of Kate Elliott was officially published on February 10.

[Addendum 18 February 2015] Interview on SFSignal.com: "Kate Elliott Discusses The Very Best of Kate Elliott and More."

Editing in Process...Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds

I'm using the "Editing in Process" tag so that this blog post tracks with my other posts in this category --

However, this project was actually completed last year. As I mentioned recently, I'm about three months or so behind on my blog posts[1]. But I digress....

Tachyon Publications has been publishing critically acclaimed novellas for a number of years, and I've had the opportunity to work on quite a few of them, including James Morrow's The Madonna and the Starship, Daryl Gregory's We Are All Completely Fine, and most recently Nancy Kress's Yesterday's Kin.

So when I contacted Alastair Reynolds last year about submitting a novella for Tachyon Publications, he responded with -- much to my delight: "I am working on a novella right now which does not yet have a home." It doesn't get any better than that because I obviously had the perfect home for that novella. That novella is entitled Slow Bullets and will be published in June.

For the past fifteen years, I have been a fan and advocate of Al Reynolds's short fiction. I first approached Al about a short story collection in April 2001, when I was acquiring and editing for Golden Gryphon Press. That short story collection didn't happen for many years (and when it did happen, I edited the collection for Night Shade Books[2]), but what I did receive from Al in 2002 was novella Turquoise Days set in the Revelation Space universe. TD was the first in a series of signed and numbered limited edition chapbooks from Golden Gryphon Press[3]. You can read the details on how the novella and short story collection came about in my blog post of July 16, 2009, entitled "12 Stories Do Not a Collection Make."

But back to Slow Bullets: The first draft of the manuscript that Al sent me clocked in at around 40,125 words. To meet novella requirements, the story had to have a maximum word count of 40,000 words, so I asked Al to review the manuscript and cut a minimum of 250-300 words, to ensure the story was safely below the 40K word cap. Having worked with Al previously, I knew that he would accomplish this self-editing with the skill of a surgeon -- make that a brain surgeon. When I read the second draft of Slow Bullets, the story flowed so flawlessly that I couldn't tell where words had been cut or changed; I would have had to use the "compare two versions of a document" option in MS Word to determine the specific edits. I also suggested a couple tweaks to the content itself for clarity.

The revised draft was delivered to Tachyon Publications on August 13, 2014: the word count was 39,775 words.

After Tachyon formatted the final ms. to their own specifications, my next task was a full line edit and copy edit. I communicated directly with Al on any questions or issues that I encountered, and after I completed my markups (using MS Word change tracking), I emailed the file to the author for his review. Once both of us were in agreement with all the changes (and I don't recall there being that many anyhow), I mailed the final manuscript to Tachyon on September 8. Al and I still need to proof the layout pages, and these should be arriving by the end of this week. Slow Bullets is still on target for a June publication.

Back in June of last year, before the manuscript was finalized, I asked Al for a couple rough paragraphs describing the story's main character and plot, this is what the author sent me:

Scur is a soldier in a vast war between two human political groupings, [a war] that has encompassed hundreds of worlds and solar systems. Finally, a ceasefire is brokered ― and Scur begins to think about her life after the war, the world and the family she has left behind. But it is not be. On the brink of peace, Scur is captured by a sadistic war criminal and left for dead in the ruins of a bunker. Scur makes a desperate effort to save her life ― and wakes up, disorientated, aboard what appears to be a prisoner transport vessel.

But something has gone terribly wrong with the ship. The passengers ― combatants of both sides of the war, as well as civilians ― are waking up too soon. The ship is damaged, the crew powerless ― and half the occupants are about to try to kill the other half. For these are not just ordinary prisoners of war, being repatriated ― these are the worse of the worse ― and Scur is among them. But in truth, her problems have only just begun.

Scur finds herself at the crux of a struggle not just for her own survival, but to preserve civilization itself.

Now you are probably wondering what is the significance of the title -- just what is a "slow bullet"? A "slow bullet" is a bullet-like projectile that is injected into the body of every soldier, Central Worlds or Peripheral Systems (the two opposing sides in the war). The bullet contains a transponder and full history of the individual, including photographs. Here's a brief description:

Orvin smiled tightly. "Do you remember when they put the bullet into you?"

"I'm a soldier. Who doesn't remember?" [Scur speaking]

He gave a little nod of sympathy. "Yes, we used them on our side as well, or a virtually identical technology....Normally there's not much pain. The medics military use a topical anaesthetic to numb the entry area, and the slow bullet puts out another type of drug as it travels through your insides. It goes very slowly, too—or at least it's meant to. Hence the name, of course. And it avoids damaging any vital organs or circulatory structures as it progresses to its destination, deep enough inside your chest that it can’t be removed without complicated surgery."

Slow Bullets from Tachyon Publications will be published in June 2014. You may preorder the book at this time on Amazon.com and hopefully from all other booksellers everywhere.

Further reading:

Alastair Reynolds on the Genesis of his story "Slow Bullets"

---------------

Notes and Footnotes:

In a recent blog post I used hyper-linked footnotes, i.e. you click on a footnote in the body of the blog post and you jump to the actual footnote at the end of the post. Sounds cool... Unfortunately, using hyper-linked footnotes in Blogger is a complete nightmare: When blogger saves the post, it adds data to all of the footnotes' hyperlinks. Initially, that data is a number link associated with the draft file, and a different number link when the blog post is actually published. So, just before the post is published, this added draft data must be removed otherwise the links won't work. And if you edit the published blog post for any reason, you have to remember to again remove this added data from all the footnote links before updating the post (otherwise the published number link will be there twice). I hope this all makes sense. Consequently I won't be using hyper-linked footnotes going forward -- unless someone knows of an easier, more user-friendly solution....

[1] Lots of reasons for my behindness: family and the holidays (Did I mention my first grandchild's birthday was in October?), new tech toys, a few hard-deadline projects (blog posts hopefully to follow), and even a bit of the "I don't feel like writing a blog post today" syndrome (which none of you have ever experienced, right?). But that's not to say I haven't been working, just not blogging.

[2] Zima Blue and Other Stories (Night Shade Books, 2006) has long been out of print, but the book can be purchased through Amazon sellers and other used booksellers, in either the NSB or Gollanz UK editions.

[3] The Turquoise Days chapbook is also out of print; however, Ace Books published TD alongside another Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space novella in a single volume: Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days, which can again be purchased through Amazon sellers and other used booksellers.

Editing in Process...The Very Best of W. P. Kinsella

Cover art by Thomas Canty

If you read this blog fairly regularly, you'll recall my post earlier in the month when I wrote about purchasing the Xcanex Professional Book and Document Scanner by piQx imaging. In that post I mentioned a huge scanning project I had begun working on at the time, which is why I was in a bit of a kerfuffle over scanners -- and the fact that my go-to scanner for nearly 10 years no longer worked with OmniPage Pro and Windows 7.

That scanning project is short story collection The Very Best of W. P. Kinsella, forthcoming in 2015 from Tachyon Publications.

And the project is indeed huge: approximately 138,000 words of fiction, all of which has to be scanned, then cleaned up and formatted, and finally copy edited.

If you've seen the movie Field of Dreams (1989), starring Kevin Costner, then you've experienced a wee taste of W. P. Kinsella, who wrote the novel Shoeless Joe (1982), upon which the movie is based. And Kinsella's novel is an expansion of his 1979 short story, "Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa" -- which is included in this Very Best of collection. In the story, a corn farmer in Iowa hears a voice:

Two years ago at dusk on a spring evening, when the sky was a robin's-egg blue and the wind as soft as a day-old chick, as I was sitting on the verandah of my farm home in eastern Iowa, a voice very clearly said to me, "If you build it, he will come."

The voice was that of a ballpark announcer. As he spoke, I instantly envisioned the finished product I knew I was being asked to conceive. I could see the dark, squarish speakers, like ancient sailors' hats, attached to aluminum-painted light standards that glowed down into a baseball field, my present position being directly behind home plate.

The "he" in "he will come" is Joseph Jefferson Jackson, the "Shoeless Joe Jackson" in the title, one of the greatest baseball outfielders of all time -- who had passed away in 1951, years (and years) before our Iowa corn farmer heard that voice. But if our farmer builds that ballfield, he will come. [Note: Shoeless Joe had been mired in the Black Sox Scandal after the Chicago White Sox lost to the Cincinnati Reds in the 1919 World Series; Joe and seven other teammates were banned for life from baseball the following year.]

There are a few other baseball stories in this collection, but you don't need to know anything about baseball to enjoy these tales: baseball merely serves as a backdrop to these stories, which are about life and the human condition, often with a bit of the "fantastic" thrown in. My favorite story in the collection is "K Mart" -- but don't let the title fool you: it's the story of lost childhood love, nostalgia, and survival, all amidst the backdrop of a neighborhood dirt-lot baseball game, a game that seemed endless (to the children playing it), but only lasted throughout the summer months.

W. P. Kinsella is also well-known for his "First Nation" stories about the indigenous Cree on the Hobbema Reserve near Edmonton, Canada. These stories reflect the Cree's destitute and disadvantaged culture, yet add an element of humor by exploring the convoluted situations (and shenanigans) they get into trying to survive in a world dominated by white people. But even with the element of humor, there is a sadness to all of these stories. What is especially delightful about these stories is that Kinsella's characters -- Silas (the narrator), Frank Fencepost, Mad Etta, Bedelia Coyote, Sadie One-wound, and Rufus Firstrider, to name just a few -- appear in all the stories. By the time you finish reading this collection, you'll certainly consider them acquaintances, if not friends. In "Beef," Bedelia Coyote determines that a treaty the Cree signed with the Canadian government in the 1800s is still valid, and she files the necessary paperwork so that the reserve receives financial compensation. But Frank Fencepost has a better scheme in mind: he hijacks the paperwork and requests the government honor the compensation put forth in the original treaty: cattle -- figuring he can make more from the cattle than the money the government was offering. The title of the story, "Beef," says it all.

Book Received... Daryl Gregory

Back in February, I wrote about working on Daryl Gregory's "sharp-edged" novella We Are All Completely Fine -- and even included a very brief excerpt from the story in order to make my point.

As I said, that was earlier (you can read that blog post here) -- and this is now: We Are All Completely Fine is available ahead of schedule direct from the publisher, Tachyon Publications, or your preferred retail bookseller.

In fact, I can think of no other active independent publisher that is consistently on schedule -- actually, ahead of schedule -- for every single book that they publish. That's Tachyon Publications. (And, Gawd bless them, they pay on time, too -- every single time! And have done so, since 2002, when I worked on that very first book for them. Writers, keep that in mind when you are considering your next novella, novel, or collection submission, and are looking for a quality publisher.)

If you are not familiar with Daryl Gregory's work, then We Are All Completely Fine is a good place to start; if you are a fan of his work, then I don't need to say anything further: you've most likely had this book on order since you first learned about it. In fact, I believe we'll be seeing this novella on many awards lists beginning in early 2015. Yes, he's that good.

Book Received...The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume 2

The second project I worked on this year was The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume Two, edited by Gordon Van Gelder -- and the first project for this year for Tachyon Publications.

Reading this volume of The Very Best of F&SF is like peering into a time capsule of the history (well, at least as far back as the '50s) of fantasy and science fiction short stories, from "The Third Level" by Jack Finney, published in 1952, to the most recent story, "The Paper Menagerie" by Ken Liu, published in 2011.

My blog post of January 24 lists the full table of contents, along with some personal thoughts on the stories themselves.

And if this "very best of" Volume Two intrigues you, then please check out the previous volume, The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, which I worked on in early 2009. I didn't post the table of contents at that time, but the stories range from "Of Time and Third Avenue" by Alfred Bester (1951) to "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang (2007). This first volume also includes the original Hugo Award-winning novella "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes, who passed away on June 15.

Editing in Process...The Very Best of Kate Elliott

Cover Art by Julie Dillion

The beauty of any "best of" collection is that it allows the reader to experience the full expanse of the author's writing and story telling. And, if the collection is indeed worth its (literal) weight, then the book will hopefully have some small treasure, a story unfamiliar to the reader, even if the reader is one of the author's biggest fans. That was true of The Very Best of Tad Williams (see my November 13, 2013 blog post); and it holds true on my most recent project, The Very Best of Kate Elliott, both from Tachyon Publications.

My commitment for the Kate Elliott project was to have the entire 113,000-word collection reviewed and copy edited by "early June." At issue, though, was that two-thirds of the overall word count -- approximately 75,000 words -- needed to be scanned in, and then the scanned files cleaned up (formatting problems, scanning errors, etc.). I completed all the scanning, and emailed the completed files to Tachyon on May 15. I then used the following week to prepare for BayCon 2014, held on the Memorial Day weekend, which I blogged about at length here. After recovering from the con, I then proceeded to work on the Kate Elliott manuscript files, all of which were completed -- on schedule -- the first week of June. (A bit of work had to be done during the intervening weekend as well to ensure that I completed the project by "early June.")

Given the sources of their original publication, the majority of these Kate Elliott (the pseudonym of Alis A. Rasmussen) stories were new to me. Six of the twelve stories, for example, were originally published in anthologies from DAW Books, only one of which, the DAW 30th Anniversary Science Fiction Anthology, edited by Elizabeth R. Wollheim and Sheila E. Gilbert (2003), was known to me. Of the other six stories, one previously appeared online only on KateElliott.com, and another -- "On the Dying Winds of the Old Year and the Birthing Winds of the New" -- is original to this collection.

Regardless of the source of these stories, they are all as varied, and finely crafted, as the anthologies in which they originally appeared. My favorite story would have to be "A Simple Act of Kindness," which originally appeared in The Shimmering Door, edited by Katharine Kerr (HarperPrism, 1996). The story of Daniella, a young girl who, in some ways, feels safer out in a storm at night -- even a night and a storm such as this -- searching for lost sheep, than at home with her family (not the least of which is "her cousin Robert, who had been pestering her for months now, ever since her first bleeding came on her"). To set the scene:

Clouds massed, black and brooding, over the hills and the great length of forest that bordered the village of Sant Laon. They sat, almost as if they were waiting, and the wind died down and tendrils of mist and spatterings of rain were all that came of them through the day. At evening mass, at a twilight brought early by the lowering clouds, Deacon Joceran spoke solemnly of storms called up by unnatural means, and she warned all the villagers to bar their doors and shutters that night and to hang an iron knife or pot above the door and a sprig of rosemary above the window.

Unknown creatures, dark shapes, darker than the night, pass Daniella as she searches for the lost ewe. The thing the creatures seek takes refuge with its horse in the church, and Daniella follows it inside.

...by the light of seven candles lit round the altar and protected by glass jars, Daniella saw it was no Thing at all but a young woman, dark-haired and dark eyed, her skin dusky colored like bread baked too long in the oven.... The horse was a fine beast, big-boned but not enormous, with an intelligent head—a nobleman's mount. Tied on beside the saddlebags were a tasselled bowcase of leather embossed with griffins and a quiver full of arrows. A small shield painted black hung from the saddle. The woman wore a sword at her belt.

Since this is a spoiler-free post, I'll only say that Daniella's selfless act that night brings her to the attention of these dark creatures, and you'll need to read the story (if you haven't done so previously) to learn the ripple effect this has on Daniella, her family, and the village of Sant Laon. It's certainly not a "happily ever after" story, at least for Daniella.

Here are the twelve stories:

The Gates of Joriun

Leaf and Branch and Grass and Vine

The Queen's Garden

On the Dying Winds of the Old Year and the Birthing Winds of the New

The Memory of Peace

With God to Guard Her

Riding the Shore of the River of Death

My Voice Is in My Sword

Sunseeker

A Simple Act of Kindness

To Be a Man

Making the World Live Again

In addition to these stories, the author has also included four essays, all in print for the first time: two originally appeared on KateElliott.com, a third appeared on SF Signal, and the fourth essay on Tor.com. Here are the four essays:

The Omniscient Breasts: The Male Gaze through Female Eyes

The Narrative of Women in Fear and Pain

And Pharaoh's Heart Hardened

The Status Quo Does Not Need World Building

These essays are an added bonus, and provide the reader with some insight into Kate Elliott the person as well as a foundation for much of her story-telling.

Lastly, I hope you are as knocked out by Julie Dillon's cover art as I am. In a one-pager entitled "About the Cover Art" in the book, Kate Elliott states that Dillon's art illustrates a passage from Cold Steel (Book 3 in the author's Spiritwalker Trilogy).

[Update, about two hours later]
I realized that I neglected to mention the introduction that Ms. Elliott wrote specifically for this collection. Subtitled "The Landscape That Surrounds Us," this new intro clocks in at nearly 3100 words and ten manuscript pages -- and sets the tone for the entire volume. The author writes at length about her childhood, growing up in rural Oregon, and how the life she led influenced her writing.

Book Received...James Morrow

Last fall I had the pleasure of working on yet another James Morrow novella from Tachyon Publications: The Madonna and the Starship. You can read about my work on this book in my blog post dated November 24, 2013.

But all you really need to know about James Morrow -- and all of his stories -- are these six words I used to describe him in that blog post: James Morrow is an absolute master of the sardonic.

But don't take my word for it, read this novella for yourself. The Madonna and the Starship is now available from you favorite store, physical or virtual -- and I have the proof, since my contributor's copy arrived this week.

Here's an excerpt from the Publishers Weekly starred review:

Jonathan Swift meets Buck Rogers in this hilarious send-up of the golden ages of television and pulp sci-fi.... [L]obster-like extraterrestrials get wind of "Sitting Shivah for Jesus," an upcoming episode of a Sunday-morning religious program written by Kurt's love interest, Connie Osborne. The crustacean "logical positivists" propose to use their death ray to annihilate the show's two million devout, "irrational" viewers. Can Kurt and Connie refashion her script into a satirical, sacrilegious screed, forestalling mass slaughter? This delightful romp from Morrow provides the breathless answer in short order; no need to wait for next week to tune in and find out.

Book Received...The Very Best of Tad Williams

Short story collection The Very Best of Tad Williams has recently been published by Tachyon Publications and should now be available in bookstores, real and virtual, at this time.

This post is to acknowledge receipt of my comp copy of the book, as I copy edited the 135,000-word manuscript last fall. In fact, should you so desire, you can read my "Editing in Process" blog post from November 13, 2013 -- assuming you haven't done so already.

Here's a brief excerpt from the Publishers Weekly starred review:

This marvelous short fiction retrospective testifies to the breadth of Williams's creativity...."A Stark and Wormy Knight," a linguistic tour de force, shows without one misplaced word just how clever dragons can be. Williams's sensitivity to atmosphere and trademark attention to telling detail shine through most of the selections in this varied collection of little gems.

Book Received: Lovecraft's Monsters

Back in July 2013 I published a blog post entitled "Do You Fear Lovecraft's Monsters?" -- referring to the anthology Lovecraft's Monsters, edited by Ellen Datlow, which I had just finished copy editing at the time of the blog post.

The anthology has now been officially released by Tachyon Publications, and should be available from booksellers, real and virtual, everywhere.

And this post is just to acknowledge receipt of my comp copy, courtesy of Tachyon Pubs.

Editing in Process...Nancy Kress

Cover art by Thomas Canty

About two years ago, I worked on a Nancy Kress novella for Tachyon Publications. That novella, After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall -- which I blogged about here -- won the Nebula Award last year, as well as the Locus Award, and was also a finalist for both the Hugo Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.

So when I was called upon to copy edit the new, forthcoming novella, Yesterday's Kin, I knew that I would be working on another potential award-winning story. The author is, after all, Nancy Kress!

The difficulty I'm having in sharing details of this story is due to the fact that nearly anything I say about Yesterday's Kin will be a spoiler. It's that kind of story: right up in your face from the very first section. And trust me, that's a good thing.

So what I'm going to do is share with you first the advertising copy that Tachyon Publications is using for this novella. That's not to say there aren't spoilers here, but at least it's what the publisher and author are willing to release about the story line:

Aliens have landed in New York.

A deadly cloud of spores has already infected and killed the inhabitants of two worlds. Now that plague is heading for Earth, and threatens humans and aliens alike. Can either species be trusted to find the cure?

Geneticist Marianne Jenner is immersed in the desperate race to save humanity, yet her family is tearing itself apart. Siblings Elizabeth and Ryan are strident isolationists who agree only that an alien conspiracy is in play. Marianne's youngest, Noah, is a loner addicted to a drug that constantly changes his identity. But between the four Jenners, the course of human history will be forever altered.

Earth's most elite scientists have ten months to prevent human extinction—and not everyone is willing to wait.

The story is told from two alternating points-of-view, that of geneticist Marianne Jenner, and her youngest son Noah. Marianne is living in the lab, night and day, working with a team of scientists to try to find a cure for, or at least a vaccine against, the deadly spores. Noah, on the other hand, is less -- and more -- than what he initially appears to be. While Marianne seeks a cure, Noah seeks out the aliens. And what of these aliens? Many believe the "Denebs" have arrived on Earth merely to use humans as guinea pigs; Marianne and her fellow scientists trust the aliens, but there is a limit to that trust because the Denebs are not very forthcoming with their own research on the spores.

Here's a very brief excerpt from the story:

A spore cloud doesn't look like anything at all.

A darker patch in dark space, or the slightest of veils barely dimming starlight shining behind it. Earth's astronomers could not accurately say how large it was, or how deep. They relied on Deneb measurements, except for the one fact that mattered most, which human satellites in deep space and human ingenuity at a hundred observatories was able to verify: The cloud was coming. The path of its closest edge would intersect Earth's path through space at the time the Denebs had said: early September.

Marianne knew that almost immediately following the UN announcement, madness and stupidity raged across the planet. Shelters were dug or sold or built, none of which would be effective. If air could get in, so could spores. In Kentucky, some company began equipping deep caves with air circulation, food for a year, and high-priced sleeping berths: reverting to Paleolithic caveman. She paid no more attention to this entrepreneurial survivalism than to the televised protests, destructive mobs, peaceful marches, or lurid artist depictions of the cloud and its presumed effects. She had a job to do.

Yesterday's Kin will be published by Tachyon Publications in September; the book is available now for preorder.

Editing in Process...Daryl Gregory

Tachyon Publications has been making a name for itself over the past few years with the publication of award-nominated -- and award-winning -- novellas. Most recently, Nancy Kress's After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall (which I blogged about here) -- winner of the 2013 Nebula Award and a finalist for the Hugo Award; and Brandon Sanderson's The Emperor's Soul (which I blogged about here) -- winner of the 2013 Hugo Award. And forthcoming in June, The Madonna and the Starship by James Morrow, the master of the sardonic (here).

And, I suspect, my latest project for Tachyon Pubs -- novella We Are All Completely Fine by Daryl Gregory -- will be no exception, and we'll be seeing this sharp-edged story on many awards lists beginning in early 2015.

Gregory's troubling tale centers around a therapy group, all of whom have experienced EXTREME -- in bold and in caps extreme! -- trauma. Five "patients": three men and two women, plus their therapist, Dr. Jan Sayer (who is far more than she seems).

There's Harrison, the former Boy Hero of Dunnsmouth, the Monster Detective, who has survived the Scrimshander, and the Abysmal, and many another freak show, most of whom are barely even hinted at. Wheelchair-bound Stan -- no arms, no legs -- who barely survived the Weaver family (aka the Arkansas Cannibals, aka the Spiderfolk) and lives to constantly tell everyone about it. And Martin, who wouldn't be caught dead without his "frames": virtual-reality glasses, because they enable him to see the Dwellers (or so he believes), and if he can't see the Dwellers, well, he will, in fact, be caught dead. Barbara is the middle-aged, pantsuit-attired, married one -- and mother of two boys; the calm one, the rational one, the one whose body holds the secret of the Scrimshander's message. And last is the striking young blonde Greta, the quiet one, who Harrison believes just might be the craziest one of them all. Her body was a document, a calling card, as it were, to a Hidden One, from the other side.

We were a team of professional insomniacs. Once you know there are monsters under the bed, closing your eyes becomes a foolhardy act. So, we paced. We stared into the dark. We listened for the creak of the opening door.

...

Harrison had been right; this was no hero's journey they were on. [Joseph] Campbell didn't understand the other stories in the world. The group knew the truth:

A monster crosses over into the everyday world. The mortals struggle and show great courage, but it's no use. The monster kills first the guilty, then the innocent, until finally only one remains. The Last Boy, the Last Girl. There is a final battle. The Last One suffers great wounds, but in the final moment vanquishes the monster. Only later does he or she recognize that this is the monster's final trick; the scars run deep, and the awareness of the truth grows like an infection. The Last One knows that the monster isn't dead, only sent to the other side. There it waits until it can slip into the mundane world again. Perhaps next time it will be a knife-wielding madman, or a fanged beast, or nameless tentacled thing. It is the monster with a thousand faces. The details matter only to the next victims.

We Are All Completely Fine will be published in August, and is now available for preorder.

And don't be afraid to look under the bed...or open the closet door....

[If you've made it this far, a brief note: My apologies for the lack of content on this blog during the past month. A workout mishap ended up placing me at the sharp end of a surgeon's blade. I'm now in week two of recovery, and hope to be at full speed just in time to complete my taxes before the April 15 deadline.]

Editing in Process...The Very Best of F&SF, Volume Two

After completing my copy edit of the Kameron Hurley novelette, I resumed work on my current project for Tachyon Publications -- volume two of anthology The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by Gordon Van Gelder.

Back in 2009, in celebration of sixty years of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Tachyon Publications released the anthology The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, which contained 23 stories from some of the best names in the genre: Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Stephen King, Karen Joy Fowler, Ted Chiang, and Roger Zelazny, to name just a few. I copy edited this initial F&SF anthology in March 2009 -- and now, nearly four years later, I had the opportunity to work on volume two.

Here's the Volume Two table of contents:

Introduction by Michael Dirda
"The Third Level" by Jack Finney (1952)
"The Cosmic Charge Account" by C. M. Kornbluth (1956)
"The Country of the Kind" by Damon Knight (1956)
"The Anything Box" by Zenna Henderson (1956)
"The Prize of Peril" by Robert Sheckley (1958)
"'—All You Zombies—'" by Robert A. Heinlein (1959)
"A Kind of Artistry" by Brian Aldiss (1962)
"Green Magic" by Jack Vance (1963)
"Narrow Valley" by R. A. Lafferty (1966)
"Sundance" by Robert Silverberg (1969)
"The Attack of the Giant Baby" by Kit Reed (1976)
"The Hundredth Dove" by Jane Yolen (1977)
"Jeffty Is Five" by Harlan Ellison® (1977)
"Salvador" by Lucius Shepard (1984)
"The Aliens Who Knew, I mean, Everything"
      by George Alec Effinger (1984)
"Rat" by James P. Kelly (1986)
"The Friendship Light" by Gene Wolfe (1989)
"The Bone Woman" by Charles de Lint (1993)
"The Lincoln Train" by Maureen F. McHugh (1995)
"Maneki Neko" by Bruce Sterling (1998)
"Winemaster" by Robert Reed (1999)
"Suicide Coast" by M. John Harrison (1999)
"Have Not Have" by Geoff Ryman (2001)
"The People of Sand and Slag" by Paolo Bacigalupi (2004)
"Echo" by Elizabeth Hand (2005)
"The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates"
      by Stephen King (2008)
"The Paper Menagerie" by Ken Liu (2011)

Each of these 26 stories is a classic in its own right.

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, then you know I have a penchant for the humorous, sardonic story -- and R. A. Lafferty's "Narrow Valley" fits this requirement perfectly.

In 1893 the remaining 821 Pawnee Indians were given land allotments of exactly 160 acres; they were to live on the land and pay taxes, "the same as the White-Eyes did." But Clarence Big-Saddle had other ideas, and performed a Pawnee chant over his land: he had no plans to ever pay any taxes.

"Clarence Big-Saddle lived on his land for many years, and he paid no taxes. Intruders were unable to come down to his place. The land was sold for taxes three times, but nobody ever came down to claim it. Finally, it was carried as open land on the books. Homesteaders filed on it several times, but none of them fulfilled the qualification of living on the land."

Then one day, many decades later, the Rampart family arrived in town and filed paperwork on this one tract of land that still remained open. After filing the paperwork at the courthouse, they climbed back into their camper and headed to the property, all 160 acres of it.

The easiest route to the property was through the short pasture belonging to cattle and wheat farmer Charley Dublin. So the Ramparts stopped at Dublin's house, and he escorted them to their property:

"Well, Rampart, this is the fence and the end of my land. Yours is just beyond."

"Is that ditch on my land?" Rampart asked.

"That ditch is your land."

And that's just the beginning of this 5,300-word treasure.

The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume Two will be published in July, but why wait: preorder your copy now.

Book Received...Peter Watts

Arriving on my doorstep (actually, the mail carrier rang the doorbell, as he always does when there is a package to be delivered) is the most recent release from Tachyon Publications: the short story collection from Canadian SF writer Peter Watts.

I worked on Beyond the Rift back in June, and you can read more about that in my blog post entitled "Wattsworld," published on June 25, 2013.

The collection includes 13 of the author's most notable stories, including the Hugo Award-winning novelette "The Island." In "This Fall's Must-Read Science Fiction and Fantasy Books," Annalee Newitz for io9 writes:

A new book from crazy genius Watts is always cause for celebration — and this collection of short stories brings together some of his greatest work, including his mind-altering retelling of The Thing called "The Things." Known for his pitch-black views on human nature, and a breathtaking ability to explore the weird side of evolution and animal behavior, Watts is one of those writers who gets into your brain and remains lodged there like an angry, sentient tumor.

And author Paul Di Filippo, in his book review column for Barnes & Noble, had this to say about Beyond the Rift:

Canadian author Peter Watts is a biologist by training and a visionary by inclination. His novels are hard-edged yet coolly psychedelic extrapolations of our gene-modded future. Possessing the stern moral acuity of James Tiptree, he also exhibits the intellectual zest of Arthur C. Clarke. His afterword to his new story collection, Beyond the Rift, is one of the best essays in recent memory about the nature of the kind of science fiction that mates these qualities. Watts is expert at inhabiting the mind of the Other, whether it's a Cambellian shape-shifting alien in "The Things," a future soldier high on techno Rapture in "A Word for Heathens," or a deep-sea dweller with mysterious origins in "Home." His killer opening sentences ("First Contact was supposed to solve everything"; "Wescott was glad when it finally stopped breathing") are rabbit holes to strange futures.

Book Received...Kage Baker

I had actually received my contributor's copy of Kage Baker's In the Company of Thieves nearly a month ago, but I was right in the middle of a deadline project, so I set the book aside for later. When I realized I still hadn't posted the book on this blog, I was in the middle of yet another project (actually two deadline projects, back-to-back). I'm not complaining, mind you, especially when the work involves books by Tad Williams, James Morrow, and Barbara Webb. But now those projects are complete --

In the Company of Thieves may be one of the last -- if not the last -- short story collections by Kage Baker, who passed away at the too-young age of 57 on January 31, 2010.

I worked on this collection this past May for publisher Tachyon Publications and, in fact, I wrote up some notes and thoughts and whatnot that I posted to this blog on May 14. So if you want to read a bit more about the collection, other than what is available on the publisher's website, that's the link to click on.

The collection was compiled by Kage's sister, Kathleen Bartholomew, and the one story original to the collection, "Hollywood Ikons," is a collaboration, as it were, between Kage and Kathleen.

Kage and Kathleen and I go way back... You can read my tribute to Kage, "In the Company of Kage Baker," which I posted on January 27, 2010.

Editing in Process...James Morrow

Cover Art & Design by
Elizabeth Story

My working relationship with author James Morrow dates back a good ten-plus years. In 2003 I included a reprint of his story "Auspicious Eggs" in my co-edited anthology Witpunk (with Claude Lalumière). Then in August 2008 I line/copy edited Morrow's novella Shambling Towards Hiroshima, which was published by Tachyon Publications the following year. Shambling received critical praise, winning the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award in 2010, as well as being named a finalist for both the Nebula and Hugo awards. Also in 2010, my original Fermi paradox anthology, Is Anybody Out There? (co-edited with Nick Gevers) was published, for which Morrow wrote "The Vampires of Paradox," one of the more celebrated stories in the book.¹

James Morrow is an absolute master of the sardonic, which was one of the reasons Claude and I selected his story for inclusion in Witpunk. (The other, primary reason, being that he is a master craftsman.) But a reader wouldn't need an anthology like Witpunk to know about the sardonic side of James Morrow: simply look at the individual titles of his stories -- "Auspicious Eggs," "The Vampires of Paradox," and "Shambling Towards Hiroshima." And his new book is no exception. The title? The Madonna and the Starship, forthcoming from Tachyon Pubs in early 2014.

I recall the book launch event for Is Anybody Out There? at ReaderCon in Boston in July, 2010. In addition to James Morrow, authors Yves Meynard and Paul Di Filippo were on hand to read from their stories. My blog post "Readercon Recap," published on July 27, 2010, covers the details, but to quote from that post: "About five or so minutes into his reading, Jim [Morrow] reached under the table and -- surprising us all (myself included) -- brought forth a purplish brainlike thing with long tentacles, which he perched upon his shoulder as a visual representation of the parasitic cacodaemons in his story. Great bouts of laughter ensued."

Fast forward three years.... In late September I received an email from Jill Roberts at Tachyon Pubs informing me that James Morrow had requested that I work on his new novella. And two days later I received an email from the author himself: he would send me "a version of the file with a few new nips and tucks and tweaks" when I was ready....

So, here I am working on The Madonna and the Starship, a story that takes place in the early 1950s, the decade in which commercial television was finally affordable for mainstream America. Television sets first appeared in the Sears Roebuck catalog in 1949, and by 1950 nine percent of U.S. households could boast of owning a television set. By 1951 the television networks broadcast a total of twenty-seven hours of children's shows each week, and promoted the educational aspects of television to parents.² Which brings me to Kurt Jastrow, the protagonist of our story. who is the head writer for the NBC children's program Brock Barton and His Rocket Rangers. In addition to cranking out weekly episodes of Brock Barton, Jastrow was also tasked with writing -- and starring in -- a ten-minute segment at the end of each episode: Uncle Wonder's Attic. Wearing a cardigan sweater and hiding behind a fake grizzled beard and equally fake eyebrows, Uncle Wonder would rummage around in his attic until he found just the right materials to perform some experiment related to the Brock Barton universe. Here's Kurt:

I liked my job. Just as our show enabled kids to fantasize that they were star sailors, so did my scripting duties allow me to imagine that I was a playwright, though I knew perfectly well that nobody was about to confuse a space schooner called the Triton with a streetcar named Desire.

But, Jastrow's day-to-day normalcy was interrupted by the arrival of two lobster-like aliens -- Wulawand and Volavont, from the planet Qualimosa in the Procyon system: a planet of "logical positivists." Unfortunately, this didn't bode well for Kurt Jastrow's love interest, Connie Osborne, who wrote and produced a Sunday morning religious program called Not By Bread Alone. Certain that the program's audience represented "a hive of irrationalist vermin," the Qualimosans planned to piggyback their death-ray onto the broadcast signal of Not By Bread Alone, to every NBC affiliate. Come Sunday morning, at ten minutes past ten o'clock, the Earth would be cleansed of nearly two million irrationalists.

Kurt and Connie now had less that two days to write, cast, and rehearse a replacement episode of Not By Bread Alone, one that was so perfectly rational and utterly absurd as to foil the Qualimosans' plans.

The Madonna and the Starship is available for preorder on Amazon.com.

---------------
Footnotes:

1. This blog also has a dedicated Is Anybody Out There? page, which includes the complete text of six of the anthology's stories.

2. "Television History - A Timeline: 1878-2005," The University of Texas School of Law, Tarlton Law Library, Jamail Center for Legal Research.