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New Releases: 3/21/17

Here’s what went on sale today!

The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi

Poster Placeholder of - 39 Our universe is ruled by physics. Faster-than-light travel is impossible—until the discovery of the Flow, an extradimensional field available at certain points in space-time, which can take us to other planets around other stars.

Riding the Flow, humanity spreads to innumerable other worlds. Earth is forgotten. A new empire arises, the Interdependency, based on the doctrine that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It’s a hedge against interstellar war—and, for the empire’s rulers, a system of control.

The Flow is eternal—but it’s not static. Just as a river changes course, the Flow changes as well. In rare cases, entire worlds have been cut off from the rest of humanity. When it’s discovered that the entire Flow is moving, possibly separating all human worlds from one another forever, three individuals—a scientist, a starship captain, and the emperox of the Interdependency—must race against time to discover what, if anything, can be salvaged from an interstellar empire on the brink of collapse.

Follow Me Down by Sherri Smith

Place holder  of - 84 Mia Haas has built her life far from the North Dakota town where she grew up, but when she receives word that her twin brother is missing, she is forced to return home. Back to the people she left behind, the person she used to be, and the secrets she thought she’d buried.

Once hailed as the golden boy of their town, and now a popular high school teacher, Lucas Haas disappears the same day the body of one of his students is pulled from the river. Trying to wrap her head around the rumors of Lucas’s affair with the teen, and unable to reconcile the media’s portrayal of Lucas as a murderer with her own memories of him, Mia is desperate to find another suspect.

All the while, she wonders: If he’s innocent, why did he run?

Northern Stars by Glenn Grant & David G. Hartwell

Image Place holder  of - 6 From the earliest days of modern science fiction, Canada has given readers some of the most important authors in the field–and many of the finest stories. World Fantasy Award-winning editor David G. Hartwell has teamed up with Canadian writer and critic Glenn Grant to compile Northern Stars, an anthology of stories by the writers who have built Canada’s rich science fiction tradition. Now in paperback for the first time, Northern Stars is the definitive overview of science fiction’s northern frontier, a valuable addition to any fan’s library.

Spymaster by Margaret Weis & Robert Krammes

Image Placeholder of - 57 Captain Kate Fitzmaurice was born to sail. She has made a life of her own as a privateer and smuggler. Hired by the notorious Henry Wallace, spymaster for the queen of Freya, to find a young man who claims to be the true heir to the Freyan, she begins to believe that her ship has finally come in.

But no fair wind lasts forever. Soon Kate’s checkered past will catch up to her. It will take more than just quick wits and her considerable luck if she hopes to bring herself—and her crew—through intact.

NEW IN PAPERBACK

The Brotherhood of the Wheel by R. S. Belcher

Placeholder of  -19 In 1119 A.D., a group of nine crusaders became known as the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon–a militant monastic order charged with protecting pilgrims and caravans traveling on the roads to and from the Holy Land. In time, the Knights Templar would grow in power and, ultimately, be laid low. But a small offshoot of the Templars endure and have returned to the order’s original mission: to defend the roads of the world and guard those who travel on them.

Theirs is a secret line of knights: truckers, bikers, taxi hacks, state troopers, bus drivers, RV gypsies–any of the folks who live and work on the asphalt arteries of America. They call themselves the Brotherhood of the Wheel.

Nightstruck by Jenna Black

The night is the enemy, and the city of Philadelphia is its deadliest weapon.

Becket is an ordinary teenage girl, wrestling with the upheaval of her parents’ divorce. A studious high school senior, her biggest problems to date have been choosing which colleges to apply to, living up to her parents’ ambitious expectations for her, and fighting her secret crush on her best friend’s boyfriend. But that all changes on the night she tries to save an innocent life and everything goes horribly wrong.

NEW FROM TOR.COM

Chalk by Paul Cornell

Andrew Waggoner has always hung around with his fellow losers at school, desperately hoping each day that the school bullies — led by Drake — will pass him by in search of other prey. But one day they force him into the woods, and the bullying escalates into something more; something unforgivable; something unthinkable.

Broken, both physically and emotionally, something dies in Waggoner, and something else is born in its place.

In the hills of the West Country a chalk horse stands vigil over a site of ancient power, and there Waggoner finds in himself a reflection of rage and vengeance, a power and persona to topple those who would bring him low.

NEW IN MANGA

A Centaur’s Life Vol. 11 Story & Art by Kei Murayama

Lord Marksman and Vanadis Vol. 3 Story by Tsukasa Kawaguchi; Art by Nobuhiko Yanai

Merman In My Tub Vol. 6 Story and art by Itokichi

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New Releases: 1/24/17

Here’s what went on sale today!

Death’s Mistress by Terry Goodkind

Death's Mistress by Terry GoodkindOnetime lieutenant of the evil Emperor Jagang, known as “Death’s Mistress” and the “Slave Queen”, the deadly Nicci captured Richard Rahl in order to convince him that the Imperial Order stood for the greater good. But it was Richard who converted Nicci instead, and for years thereafter she served Richard and Kahlan as one of their closest friends–and one of their most lethal defenders.

The Skill of Our Hands by Steven Brust & Skyler White

The Skill of Our Hands by Steven Brust & Skyler WhiteThe Incrementalists are a secret society of two hundred people—an unbroken lineage reaching back forty thousand years. They cheat death, share lives and memories, and communicate with one another across nations and time. They have an epic history, an almost magical memory, and a very modest mission: to make the world better, a little bit at a time.

NOW IN PAPERBACK

Age of Wonders by David G. Hartwell

Age of Wonders by David HartwellAge of Wonders: Exploring the World of Science Fiction gives an insider’s view of the strange and wonderful world of science fiction, by one of the most respected editors in the field, David G. Hartwell (1941-2016). Like those other American art forms, jazz, comics, and rock ‘n’ roll, science fiction is the product of a rich and fascinating subculture. Age of Wonders is a fascinating tour of the origins, history, and culture of the science fiction world, written with insight and genuine affection for this wonder-filled literature, and addressed to newcomers and longtime SF readers alike.

Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer

Too Like the Lightning by Ada PalmerMycroft Canner is a convict. For his crimes he is required, as is the custom of the 25th century, to wander the world being as useful as he can to all he meets. Carlyle Foster is a sensayer–a spiritual counselor in a world that has outlawed the public practice of religion, but which also knows that the inner lives of humans cannot be wished away.

 

NEW FROM TOR.COM

Passing Strange by Ellen Klages

Passing Strange by Ellen KlagesSan Francisco in 1940 is a haven for the unconventional. Tourists flock to the cities within the city: the Magic City of the World’s Fair on an island created of artifice and illusion; the forbidden city of Chinatown, a separate, alien world of exotic food and nightclubs that offer “authentic” experiences, straight from the pages of the pulps; and the twilight world of forbidden love, where outcasts from conventional society can meet.

NEW IN MANGA

The Girl From the Other Side: Siúil, a Rún Vol. 1 Story & Art by Nagabe

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New Releases: 11/1/16

Here’s what went on sale today!

Christmas Magic by David G. Hartwell

Christmas Magic by David G. HartwellWonders abound at Christmas, and never more so than in this delightful collection of holiday stories by some of today’s most gifted writers of fantasy and science-fiction. In this volume, Harlan Ellison, Alan Dean Foster, Kit Reed, Howard Waldrop, Donald Westlake, and many other science fiction and fantasy stars present their unique visions of Christmas.

Illicit by Cathy Clamp

Illicit by Cathy ClampIn Cathy Clamp’s Illicit, when a border dispute between two bear clans destabilizes shapeshifter relations throughout Europe and threatens to reveal their existence to humans, the Sazi High Council orders both sides to the negotiation table. The peace talks take place in Luna Lake, the American community where all shifter species–wolf, cat, bird, bear, and more–live in harmony.

Invisible Planets by Ken Liu

Invisible Planets by Ken LiuAward-winning translator and author Ken Liu presents a collection of short speculative fiction from China. Some stories have won awards (including Hao Jingfang’s Hugo-winning novella, Folding Beijing); some have been included in various ‘Year’s Best’ anthologies; some have been well reviewed by critics and readers; and some are simply Ken’s personal favorites.

Say No More by Hank Phillippi Ryan

Say No More by Hank Phillippi RyanWhen Boston reporter Jane Ryland reports a hit and run, she soon learns she saw more than a car crash—she witnessed the collapse of an alibi. Working on an expose of sexual assaults on college campuses for the station’s new documentary unit, Jane’s just convinced a date rape victim to reveal her heartbreaking experience on camera. However, a disturbing anonymous message—SAY NO MORE—has Jane really and truly scared.

Seriously Shifted by Tina Connolly

Seriously Shifted by Tina ConnollyTeenage witch Cam isn’t crazy about the idea of learning magic. She’d rather be no witch than a bad one. But when a trio of her mother’s wicked witch friends decide to wreak havoc in her high school, Cam has no choice but to try to stop them.

Now Cam’s learning invisibility spells, dodging exploding cars, and pondering the ethics of love potions. All while trying to keep her grades up and go on a first date with her crush. If the witches don’t get him first, that is.

Wrath of Betty by Steven Erikson

Wrath of Betty by Steven EriksonThe continuing adventures of the starship A.S.F. Willful Child. Its ongoing mission: to seek out strange new worlds on which to plant the Terran flag, to subjugate and if necessary obliterate new life-forms, to boldly blow the…

And so we join the not-terribly-bright but exceedingly cock-sure Captain Hadrian Sawback and his motley crew on board the Starship Willful Child.

NEW FROM TOR.COM: 

The Burning Light by Bradley P. Beaulieu and Rob Ziegler

The Burning Light by Bradley P. Beaulieu and Rob ZieglerDisgraced government operative Colonel Chu is exiled to the flooded relic of New York City. Something called the Light has hit the streets like an epidemic, leavings its users strung out and disconnected from the mind-network humanity relies on. Chu has lost everything she cares about to the Light. She’ll end the threat or die trying.

The Lost Child of Lychford by Paul Cornell

The Lost Child of Lychford by Paul CornellIt’s December in the English village of Lychford – the first Christmas since an evil conglomerate tried to force open the borders between our world and… another.

Which means it’s Lizzie’s first Christmas as Reverend of St. Martin’s. Which means more stress, more expectation, more scrutiny by the congregation. Which means… well, business as usual, really.

NOW IN PAPERBACK:

Collision by William S. Cohen

The Good Old Boys and The Smiling Country by Elmer Kelton

Killers by Howie Carr

Pillar to the Sky by William R. Forstchen

Seriously Wicked by Tina Connolly

The Severed Streets by Paul Cornell

Warheart by Terry Goodkind

NEW IN MANGA

Hour of the Zombie Vol. 3 by Tsukasa Saimura

My Girlfriend is a T-Rex Vol. 1 Story and art by Sanzo

Short Story Collection Sweepstakes

Short Story Holiday Collection

We’re offering the chance for one lucky reader to win this collection of amazing anthologies.

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NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A purchase does not improve your chances of winning. Sweepstakes open to legal residents of 50 United States, D.C., and Canada (excluding Quebec), who are 18 as of the date of entry. To enter, leave a comment here beginning at 11:00 AM Eastern Time (ET) December 8, 2014. Sweepstakes ends at 12:00 PM ET December 12, 2014. Void outside the United States and Canada and where prohibited by law. Please see full details and official rules here. Sponsor: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010. Sponsor: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010.

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Frank Herbert, His Fiction, and Me

The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert by Frank HerbertBy David G. Hartwell

For five years in the 1970s I was Frank Herbert’s editor, and we maintained contact for the rest of his life. I liked him a lot.

By the time I got a job as science fiction editor at Berkeley Books (then a division of G.P. Putnams, and along with Coward-McCann, sharing the same offices), I had been reading Frank’s work for more than twenty years, having admired it since high school. One of my early favorite SF novels is The Dragon in the Sea, a prescient story about international oil theft from undersea wells in an oil-starved future. But I read all his books and many of his stories, and liked them all. Destination: Void, an early artificial intelligence novel, in another favorite. Then, of course, came Dune, his monumental classic.

To be in science fiction in those days was to be in the same social circles as everyone else in the field (well, I never met the pseudonymous Cordwainer Smith, but I knew someone who had, and I did get to visit Alice Sheldon—James Tiptree, Jr.), to go to the same parties as Arthur C. Clarke and Judith Merril and Isaac Asimov and Anne McCaffrey and, well, just about everyone. The field was just not that big and SF people were often isolated and yearned for the company of other SF people, and traveled hundreds or thousands of miles to hang out for a weekend at one of the few conventions held each year, fans and pros alike. So by the time I got a job that included being his editor, Frank and I had mutual friends, and I already knew his agent. The contract I inherited was for the third Dune book, Children of Dune, and that was the first one I worked on with him. I went to his house in Port Townsend, Washington a couple of times, and we got to know one another better.

Frank was in those days kind of a big blond-bearded Santa Claus figure who had immense enthusiasms, often about new technologies, but always about ideas, and about stories. He was clever and inventive. I could tell stories about publishing Children of Dune, and more about publishing his book on using home computers, and how no one really believed that they would sell well. But some of my favorite moments were visiting Seattle in the 1970s and 1980s when Frank was in town and having dinner at sunset on the water, sometimes also with my friend Vonda McIntyre, long friendly evenings of gossip and ideas. By that time Frank was a public figure, a bestselling writer, and there was a film adaptation of Dune coming out.

One of the things I always wanted to do, and could not because of the publishing situation in the 1980s and 1990s, was to edit and publish a collection of Frank’s short stories. And it began to become possible; my fine assistant at Berkeley from the Herbert days, John Silbersack, had grown into one of the major literary agents in New York, and now represented the Herbert estate. We could talk.

And so began a nearly five year process of finding a way to do the book, for the record but also for the entertainment of the vast Frank Herbert audience, which was still being cultivated by his son, Brian Herbert, and Kevin J. Anderson in the Dune world continuations. It’s here at last, The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert, and I feel as if another piece of my own life is happily completed too.

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Starred Review: Year’s Best SF 18

Year’s Best SF 18 edited by David G. Hartwell“One of the best collections of the year, without a weak tale in its list, this is highly recommended for fans of the short story and of sf in general.”

David G. Hartwell’s Year’s Best SF 18 got a starred review in Library Journal!

Here’s the full review, from the November 15th issue:

starred-review-gif In “Old Paint,” Megan Lindholm illustrates the bond between people and their “cars,” while Bruce Sterling’s “The Peak of Eternal Light” explores the necessarily formal bonds between genders in a far-future colony inside the planet Mercury. Together with 26 other short (or short short) stories by today’s best sf writers, award-winning editor Hartwell’s latest entry in his popular series presents a feast of fine writing, scintillating thoughts, and intriguing tales, all grounded in scientific possibilities.

One of the best collections of the year, without a weak tale in its list, this is highly recommended for fans of the short story and of sf in general.

Year’s Best SF 18 will be published on December 10th.

Anthology Collection Sweepstakes

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About our newsletter: Every issue of Tor’s email newsletter features original writing by, and interviews with, Tor authors and editors about upcoming new titles from all Tor and Forge imprints. In addition, we occasionally send out “special edition” newsletters to highlight particularly exciting new projects, programs, or events. Read a sample here >>

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NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A purchase does not improve your chances of winning. Sweepstakes open to legal residents of 50 United States, D.C., and Canada (excluding Quebec), who are 18 and older as of the date of entry. To enter, complete entry here beginning at 12:00 AM Eastern Time (ET) October 1, 2013. Sweepstakes ends at 11:59 PM ET October 31, 2013. Void outside the United States and Canada and where prohibited by law. Please see full details and official rules here. Sponsor: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010.

Starred Review: Year’s Best SF 18

Poster Placeholder of - 40“Almost uniformly excellent—but then when was an anthology from Hartwell ever less?”

David G. Hartwell’s Year’s Best SF 18 got a starred review in Kirkus Review!

Here’s the full review, from the November 15th issue:

starred-review-gif Award-winning editor/anthologist Hartwell rounds up a sparkling selection of science-fiction stories from 2012.

Standouts: Gregory Benford’s “The Sigma Structure Symphony,” about a future where CETI’s problem is no longer detecting alien signals, but interpreting them; Yoon Ha Lee’s “The Battle of Candle Arc,” a splendid space-warfare yarn; Gwyneth Jones’ “Bricks, Sticks, Straw,” in which virtual personalities become cut off from their human primaries; and Aliette de Bodard’s “Two Sisters in Exile,” covering the wrenching death of an intelligent spaceship. All four cry out to be expanded into novels and perhaps will be. Not far behind are Paul Cornell’s unusual and thoughtful time-travel variant; Linda Nagata’s chilling look at a future where it may be a crime not to die; Sean McMullen’s charming Napoleonic steampunk yarn; and Eleanor Arnason’s clever and subtle “Holmes Sherlock: A Hwarhath Mystery,” wherein an alien who understands human literature investigates a mystery—no prizes for guessing what the inspiration is. Elsewhere, Megan Lindholm looks at the future of smart cars; Robert Reed ponders smart guns, artificial intelligence and war; a young female investigator enters an ultralibertarian future. Also here: AIs as human therapists; a tidally locked planet with alien life; artificial reality; future medicine; humor from Lewis Shiner (a PC’s revenge), Catherine Shaffer (an ex-CIA operative joins a literary society and gets more than she bargained for) and C.S. Freidman (virtual reality); Andy Duncan stomps on the traditional advice not to write about UFOs; Ken Liu extrapolates humanity into the far future; Paul McAuley observes Antarctica as the ice retreats; plus precognition, satire, physics, ecological collapse, the nature of marriage on Mercury (it’s stranger than one might think) and more.

Almost uniformly excellent—but then when was an anthology from Hartwell ever less?

Year’s Best SF 18 will be published on November 19th.

Signature Review: Twenty-First Century Science Fiction

Poster Placeholder of - 3“Twenty-First Century Science Fiction will certainly be recognized as one of the best reprint science fiction anthologies of the year, and it belongs in the library of anyone who is interested in the evolution of the genre.”

David G. Hartwell and Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s Twenty-First Century Science Fiction got a signature review in Publishers Weekly!

Here’s the full review, from the September 9th issue:

starred-review-gif In my more than 40 years working in the science fiction publishing industry, I’ve seen this notion crop up every 10 years or so: “Science fiction has exhausted itself. There are no good new writers coming along anymore. The genre is finished!” Tor editors Hartwell and Nielsen Hayden thoroughly refute such claims with their huge reprint anthology featuring 34 stories published between 2003 and 2011 by writers who “came to prominence since the 20th century changed into the 21st.” Here in the second decade of the 21st century, some of these “new” writers, like Charles Stross, John Scalzi, and Cory Doctorow, have become big names; others, like Elizabeth Bear, Paolo Bacigalupi, Catherynne M. Valente, and Hannu Rajaniemi, have multiple novels and major awards to their credit; and some, like Ken Liu, Yoon Ha Lee, Tobias S. Buckell, and Vandana Singh, are just starting out, but will almost certainly be among the most recognizable names of the next decade. Twentieth-century “Campbellian” SF—the sort published in John W. Campbell’s Astounding/Analog magazine of the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s—was often about space travel, colonizing other worlds, space warfare, contact with aliens, and the far future. By contrast, most of these stories stay closer to the present, and many don’t leave Earth at all. Common topics include posthumans, interrogations of the nature and existence of human consciousness, and the exponentially expanding possibilities of information-processing and virtuality technologies. There are also many robots and artificial intelligences, including human-mimicking dolls, companions, and sexbots. It’s worth noting that many of these authors would have been excluded from Campbell’s largely white, male, middle-class American stable of writers. The face of science fiction has changed as well as its subject matter. It’s hard to pick favorites with so many good stories on offer, but my personal selections would be Bear’s “Tideline,” in which a dying robot in a devastated war-torn future teaches some of the human survivors how to become more human; David Moles’s “Finisterra,” a vivid adventure in which people engage in internecine warfare among huge living dirigibles in a layer of Earthlike atmosphere on a Jupiter-sized planet; and Peter Watts’s “The Island,” in which a work crew building a series of wormhole transport gates across the galaxy encounters a living intelligent creature the size of a sun. I’d like to have seen something by Lavie Tidhar, one of the most exciting new SF writers of the last few years, as well as some work by Aliette de Bodard and Kij Johnson, and while the late Kage Baker certainly deserves to be here, I’m not sure I would have picked “Plotters and Shooters,” one of her minor works, to represent her. However, these are just quibbles. Twenty-First Century Science Fiction will certainly be recognized as one of the best reprint science fiction anthologies of the year, and it belongs in the library of anyone who is interested in the evolution of the genre.

Twenty-First Century Science Fiction will be published on November 5th.

Starred Review: Twenty-First Century Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell and Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Place holder  of - 21“Grab this book. Whether newcomer or old hand, the reader will not be disappointed.”

Twenty-First Century Science Fiction, edited by David G. Hartwell and Patrick Nielsen Hayden, got a starred review in Kirkus Reviews!*

Here’s the full review, from the September 15th issue:

starred-review-gif A bumper crop of 34 stories from authors who first came to prominence in the 21st century, compiled by two of the most highly respected editors in the business.

Thematically, all the entries are science fiction even though some are from writers better known for their fantasy. Some stories won or were nominated for awards, as were many of the authors. Dipping into the pool at random, readers discover Cory Doctorow meditating on the society that results from a handful of hyper-rich owning and running everything; intelligent warships that become infected with Asimovism (John Scalzi); Charles Stross’ amusing but rather gloomy glimpse of an all-too-possible future; Elizabeth Bear’s dying war machine that befriends a semiferal boy; Paul Cornell’s alternate world, where physics itself is different; a drug that brings dramatic psychological changes while some things are eternal (Daryl Gregory); and a robot existential crisis from Rachel Swirsky. Elsewhere, the brilliant Ken Liu offers another wrenching tale of a researcher into artificial intelligence who finds she can no longer distinguish between the artificial and the real; Neal Asher presents an Earth swarming with almost unimaginably advanced aliens; Ian Creasey writes of a not-so-distant future when humans adapt themselves to survive in alien environments; Karl Schroeder’s characters lose themselves in virtual realities; David Levine tries to sell computer software to aliens who have no need of it; Vandana Singh’s mathematician has a revelation; and the remarkable Hannu Rajaniemi again pushes the envelope farther and faster than anyone else. And all these are not necessarily the best on display here, just a sample.

Grab this book. Whether newcomer or old hand, the reader will not be disappointed.

Twenty-First Century Science Fiction will be published on November 5th.

Kirkus Reviews is a subscription-only publication.

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