“The Art of Space Travel” by Nina Allan is a science fiction novelette. In 2047, a first manned mission to Mars ended in tragedy. Thirty years later, a second expedition is preparing to launch. As housekeeper of the hotel where two of the astronauts will give their final press statements, Emily finds the mission intruding upon her thoughts more and more. Emily’s mother, Moolie, has a message to give her, but Moolie’s memories are fading. As the astronauts’ visit draws closer, the unearthing of a more personal history is about to alter Emily’s world forever.
“Something Happened Here, But We’re Not Quite Sure What It Was” by Paul McAuley is a complex sf story about politics and xenophobia when human colonists on an Earth-like planet are faced with the possibility of reaching out to alien cultures, especially when a big organization that has previously done harm is in charge of the operation.
In the hollowed-out skull of the sixteenth President of the United States, a miserable time traveler builds a modest studio apartment and isolates himself from his own time, his own space, his own species, and his own past. But when gruesome reminders of his life prior to intracranial habitation begin appearing in his freshly constructed apartment, the time traveler is forced to either contend with his memories or, failing that, to run further away from them.
Anglet Sutonga is more realistic than most teenagers, but still dreams of rising above the impoverished streets of Bar-Selehm. When an opportunity comes along, will she take it? And what does she risk in order not to throw away her shot? A novelette set before the events of A.J. Hartley’s STEEPLEJACK.
You might think that speculative fiction in translation is hard to come by in the U.S., and on the surface, that seems true. But if you dig a little deeper (Google, Edelweiss, etc.), you’ll find a number of fantastic-sounding books to keep your SFF-heavy TBR pile stacked way too high. But don’t worry about doing all that work—I’ve done it for you!
Allow me, then, to present an annotated list of the speculative fiction in translation out between now and December. You’ve got your Caribbean zombies, your Iraqi Frankensteins, your literary polar bears, and much more. Enjoy, and tell us what books you’re looking forward to!
Star Trek Beyond
Written by Simon Pegg & Doug Jung
Directed by Justin Lin Release date: July 22, 2016
Stardate: 2263.2
Please note that this is a SPOILER FILLED REVIEW! Seriously, lotsa spoilers here and in the comments. If you do not wish to be spoiled, there’s a spoiler-free review elsewhere on the site, and you can read that and also comment there without worry about being spoiled. Here, though, we’re talkin’ ’bout the whole thing…
You know what they say is most important in realty: Location, location, location. In fiction, it’s often true as well; an interesting setting can make or break a sci-fi or fantasy novel, either drawing the reader in or making them gnash their teeth in frustration. When I find a book with a vivid enough setting, it’s as though I’ve found a portal to another world.
In some works, the city is a character in and of itself, full of its own charm and nuance and personality. Here are five books with cities that completely drew me in, and had me hungering to know more.
While artificial intelligence has been attempting to pass the Turing Test for decades, in recent years it has also been churning out poetry that’s pretty convincing in its humanity so far as verse goes. Or, if you want to get technical, humans are writing algorithms that can imitate the kind of poetry we usually stand in awe of, and curating them for a new online literary magazine. The aply named CuratedAI collects and posts poems and prose as part of a larger project involving neural networking.
“The Zodiac Crimes” / “The Joker’s Hard Times” / “The Penguin Declines” Written by Stephen Kandel and Stanford Sherman
Directed by Oscar Rudolph Season 2, Episodes 37, 38, and 39 Production code 9733
Original air dates: January 11, 12, and 18, 1967
The Bat-signal: O’Hara is showing off the rare art map to Gordon—it’s a map of rare art, not a rare map of art, just to be clear—that shows where all the rare art is in Gotham City. His insistence that it’ll improve their ability to fight crime is interrupted by the Joker, who is on the windowsill for some reason. Keeping Gordon and O’Hara at bay with his magic wand—which emits an electrical charge—he steals the map, which he announces is the first of his Zodiac crimes, and to look for eleven more.
Vurt author and Arthur C. Clarke Award winner Jeff Noon has signed a two-book deal with Angry Robot Books. The first book is A Man of Shadows, a science fiction mystery in which a private eye stalks a serial killer in a city whose zones are split between eternal day and endless night; it will be published in the US and UK by Angry Robot in August 2017.
Innumerable Voices is a monthly column profiling short fiction writers and exploring speculative fiction themes in their many permutations. The column will discuss stellar genre work from both fresh and established writers who don’t have short fiction collections or novel-length works, but who actively contribute to anthologies and magazines.Links to magazines and anthologies for each story are available as footnotes. Chances are I’ll discuss the stories at length and mild spoilers will be revealed.
If there’s one thing to unite all sister genres of the speculative—each vast and unknowable in the entirety of its domain—it’s the human body. Flesh and blood, bone and muscle. The simplest of ingredients, containing all the power to decipher the world and an undying preoccupation with storytellers. In growing up and growing old, we learn that our bodies are mutable things, if only by the smallest of degrees. We fear the day we fail to recognize our bodies; exert careful control over appearance and performance; dread the possibility our bodies might betray us, as they often do in small or large ways. For all we’ve achieved, bodies remain the final frontier.
JY Yang recognizes the potential in the human body as a vessel for storytelling and with a background in genetics, biochemistry, and molecular biology, sets forth to seek her own truths.
Our friends at FSG Originals are publishing Warren Ellis’s new novel Normal in four weekly digital installments. The third installment was released this past Tuesday and is available wherever e-books are sold. Each week, Tor.com will host a discussion between Warren and a new writer about that week’s episode. This week, it’s Geoff Manaugh, author of BLDGBLOG and A Burglar’s Guide to the City.
Normal, of course, is not a normal novel. Warren Ellis, already widely known for cracking open genres, characters, and storylines to find other, more aggressive, and stranger things within, has set his eyes on something rather calmer. Or so it seems.
Strangers, forced to adapt to one another in a confined setting, a research complex built to function more like a convalescent home, rapidly realize that fate has taken them somewhere much harder to fathom than the world they’ve left behind. It is a small circle of voices—a string quartet of often bleak, and certainly very raw, personalities, leading each other both into and out of disharmony.
Normal drops us off at an elusive psychological research institute, tucked away in an experimental forest near the Oregon coast, where the insects—and the buildings themselves—are not what they seem. Limiting my focus to part three of the novel, I asked Warren about setting, human agency, and the book’s satirical take on cities of the near-future.
We want to send you a galley copy of Dayton Ward’s 24: Trial by Fire, available August 23rd from Tor Books!
Before London… Before CTU… Before the clock started ticking…
1994: Tateos Gadjoyan, an Armenian arms merchant, has been a target of the Central Intelligence Agency for years. Efforts to thwart his selling of American military weapons to terrorists and other enemies of the United States have been unsuccessful. Now, after months of careful planning, two undercover agents have infiltrated Gadjoyan’s inner circle. Soon, they will have sufficient evidence to seize the arms dealer and remove a clear and present danger to the United States.
On the small Japanese island of Okinawa, Gadjoyan’s representatives are concluding a deal with Miroji Jimura. Jimura’s hatred of Americans is absolute, and he’s only too happy to profit from sales of their own weapons to be used against them. When a rival of Jimura’s sabotages the arms deal, one of the CIA’s undercover assets is killed, threatening the case against Gadjoyan and revealing a far greater menace to American security. The only thing standing against this new, immediate danger is a single, junior CIA agent named Jack Bauer.
Comment in the post to enter!
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 and D.C., and Canada (excluding Quebec). To enter, comment on this post beginning at 11:30 AM Eastern Time (ET) on July 29th. Sweepstakes ends at 12:00 PM ET on August 2nd. Void outside the United States and Canada and where prohibited by law. Please see full details and official rules here. Sponsor: Tor.com, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010.
This August, look for Not So Much, Said the Cat from Tachyon Publications. This new collection from Michael Swanwick takes a feline turn—prowling the pages with grace, precision, and utter impertinence. The master of short science fiction takes us on whirlwind journeys across planets, time, and space, where magic and science co-exist in endless possibilities. Swanwick’s spectacular offerings are intimate in their telling, galactic in their scope, and delightfully-sesquipedalian in their verbiage.
You’ll find time travelers from the Mesozoic partying ’til the end of time, and a calculus problem that rocks the ages. A supernatural horse-guardian journeys with a confused but semi-repentant troll. A savvy teenage girl wagers against the Devil, and is promptly set upon by the most unsuitable of suitors. And of course, you’ll meet Beelzebub the cat, whose subtle influence may not be entirely benign…
We’re pleased to encore “The Dala Horse,” a Tor.com Original story originally published in June 2011, now reprinted in the Not So Much, Said the Cat. Long after the wars, there are things abroad in the world—things more than human. And they have scores to settle with one another…
The Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne is over, for the moment, but the world Brian Staveley created in the course of said series is the kind of gift that keeps on giving. You don’t have to take my word for it, folks—just see Skullsworn: a standalone prequel starring Pyrre, the priestess who played such a pivotal role in The Providence of Fire, as she returns to the city of her birth to earn her stripes as an assassin under the auspices of Ananshael.
Staveley himself revealed the unutterably lovely North American cover here on Tor.com a couple of months ago, but for its publication in the UK, designer Matthew Garrett was tasked with creating a look that would link back to the British editions of the aforementioned trilogy—all of which featured swords and borders—at the same time as suggesting Skullsworn was something new, something that could potentially be read by any and all interested parties as opposed to only those who’ve completed The Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne.
And Fizban is off doing Fizban things (SPOILER: GOD-STUFF). And Raistlin is off doing Raistlin things (SPOILER: They’re probably really cool things.) And Laurana’s in a fridge. And Goldmoon and Riverwind are pretty much forgotten. Oh, and Silvara and Gilthanas are off fighting a war in the background.
I used to have a real problem with fantasy. Not as an idea—I love The Lord of the Rings movies and Alan Garner books get me through adolescence—but as an investment of time. I felt, for a long time, that there was no fantasy I could read that wasn’t 15,000 pages long, did not have a cast of hundreds, and that required at least one degree in medieval history to really get.
I am absolutely delighted to discover just how wrong I was.
Are you currently a melting, overheated mess, blinded by the glaring light of the outdoors, shaking your fist at the hellish Daystar before scurrying back into shade and/or air conditioning? If so, it’s entirely possible that this R2 unit could be of some assistance, because this is a blue milk ice cream R2-D2.
Nerdist shared the recipe, which uses regular, Earth-based cow’s milk so you don’t even have to worry about wrangling a Bantha. While they used an Artoo mold, we’re thinking a frozen Han Solo might be more appropriate… or, if you prefer the full ice cream cone experience, you can always make mini Death Star-shaped scoops.
Despite Tyler Hoechlin claiming at SDCC last week that he hadn’t yet tried on the Superman suit, The CW has very quickly turned around a poster of its new TV Superman standing with his cousin Kara Danvers (Melissa Benoist), a.k.a. Supergirl. And it’s… well, there are a lot of lens flares going every which way.
You know when your friends are playing Pokémon GO and you’re not, but you enjoy watching their triumphs? And you have opinions about what they catch? (Is this just me and my wife maybe?) Wonder Woman and Batman are all too familiar with this problem.
The biggest lie of all, though, is on every cover of Uncanny—right at the bottom.
Editors-in-Chief Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas have nothing to do with creation of each issue. They’re not even real people, just actors who go to conventions and podcast a little.
It’s time to reveal the truth. The truth that has been hiding in plain sight the whole time.
