Today, we wanted to draw your attention to two bits of Aliette de Bodard-related media. First, Aliette was recently a guest on Jonathan Strahan’s Coode Street Podcast 10 Minutes With series. You can listen to that episode below…
Secondly, the Super Relaxed Fantasy Club has shared a video of Aliette reading from her latest book, the Dominion of the Fallen novella OF DRAGONS, FEASTS AND MURDER! Check it out…
The book is due to be published by JABberwocky on July 7th, 2020.
The Dominion of the Fallen novels are published by Gollancz in the UK, Roc Books (#1-2) and JABberwocky (#3) in North America, and in a growing number of translated editions. They are also available as audiobooks.
A little while ago, Jonathan Strahan interviewed Lavie Tidhar for Coode Street’s “Ten Minutes With…” series of podcast episodes. You can listen to the interview on the podcast’s website, but we’ve also embedded the interview below…
Lavie’s latest novel, the acclaimed BY FORCE ALONE, is out now in the UK (Head of Zeus) and due to be published in North America in August 2020 (Tor Books). In case you’ve missed the coverage, here’s the synopsis…
Britannia, AD 535.
The Romans have gone. While their libraries smoulder, roads decay and cities crumble, men with swords pick over civilisation’s carcass, slaughtering and being slaughtered in turn.
This is the story of just such a man. Like the others, he had a sword. He slew until slain. Unlike the others, we remember him. We remember King Arthur.
This is the story of a land neither green nor pleasant. An eldritch isle of deep forest and dark fell haunted by swaithes, boggarts and tod-lowries, Robin-Goodfellows and Jenny Greenteeths, and predators of rarer appetite yet.
This is the story of a legend forged from a pack of self-serving, turd-gilding, weasel-worded lies told to justify foul deeds and ill-gotten gains.
This is the story – viscerally entertaining, ominously subversive and poetically profane – of a Dark Age myth that shaped a nation.
Here’s just a small selection of the aforementioned acclaim for BY FORCE ALONE…
‘Drawing on everything from wushu movies to The Wire by way of Tarkovsky and Tarantino, BY FORCE ALONE is wild, surprising and entertaining, and a hugely immersive read.’ — M.R. Carey
‘A twisted Arthur retelling mixing the historical and the magical with a very modern eye. Brutal and vicious, funny, Peaky Blinders of the Round Table.’ — Adrian Tchaikovsky
‘Profane, hilarious, brutal… kills as both sheer entertainment and canny political statement. To my fellow writers: the Arthurian Revision category is now closed. Take your ball and go home.’ — Daryl Gregory
‘Uther is a chancer and a shagger… [Arthur] is ruthless in pursuit of power… His Lancelot… is a ninja warrior, his Guinevere a killer — the writer is clearly having fun… Tidhar never lands direct political punches… but the very tone and shape of the book are a reminder that we need to treat national myths with caution… this is a novel that demands your attention and proves that sometimes when a writer has the audacity to revisit stories that others would avoid for fear of over-familiarity, they can steal the power of the oldest tales.’ — SFX (4.5*/5)
‘A violent, funny, absurd epic – Tidhar remains an utterly original voice in contemporary fiction.’ — Daniel Polansky
‘Tidhar saturates this epic adventure with profanity, dark humor, sword-sharp twists, and unexpected moments of pathos. Readers who hold King Arthur dear to their hearts will be gratified by Tidhar’s attention to detail amidst the innovation. This dark, imaginative take on a classic is sure to impress.’ — Publishers Weekly
‘Lavie Tidhar has built a career out of not playing it safe. Over the last decade he has written bold, provocative novels… with a flair for metafiction and inspired by the pulps (both hard-boiled and genre)… given the political nature of his work, it’s not entirely surprising that he would shift his focus to the question of nationalism and Brexit… with his latest novel, BY FORCE ALONE, Tidhar takes a mythology the English hold dear, the legend of King Arthur, and goes to town with it… For all its foul language and radical deconstruction, of which I’ve provided only a taste (you should see what Tidhar does with the Holy Grail), BY FORCE ALONE isn’t a desecration of the Arthurian romances. Instead, he pays homage to the writers and poets – Robert Wace, Chretien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and Thomas Mallory (just to name a few) – who took their turn in adapting and refining Monmouth’s text… BY FORCE ALONE is a jolt of pure entertainment, a brilliant, revisionist blend of magic, crime syndicates and Kung-fu knights.’ — Locus
‘The novel is a bloody, bravura performance, which Tidhar pulls off with graphic imagery and modern vernacular… a salutary antidote to the more romantic glossings of recent modern fantasy.’ — Guardian
Tomorrow, Solaris is due to publish the new anthology MADE TO ORDER. In it, you’ll find Ian R. MacLeod‘s excellent story “Sin Eater”, which Lightspeed Magazine picked as a stand-out, ‘a fun and intellectually engaging read’. Edited by Jonathan Strahan, here’s the anthology’s synopsis…
A cutting-edge anthology, published on the 100th anniversary of the word “Robot”, exploring the impact it has had on the world, the possibilities and place of robots in society going forwards.
100 years after Karel Capek coined the word, “robots” are an everyday idea, and the inspiration for countless stories in books, film, TV and games.
They are often among the least privileged, most unfairly used of us, and the more robots are like humans, the more interesting they become. This collection of stories is where robots stand in for us, where both we and they are disadvantaged, and where hope and optimism shines through.
Including stories by: Brooke Bolander · John Chu · Daryl Gregory · Peter F. Hamilton · Saad Z. Hossain · Rich Larson · Ken Liu · Ian R. Macleod · Annalee Newitz · Tochi Onyebuchi · Suzanne Palmer · Sarah Pinsker · Vina Jie-Min Prasad · Alastair Reynolds · Sofia Samatar · Peter Watts
Ian is the author of a number of acclaimed, award-winning novels and short stories. Nine of his books have been released as eBooks via JABberwocky’s eBook Program.
Let’s start with Aliette de Bodard, who has stories featuring in three different publications (pictured at the top). First, Aliette has a story in MISSION CRITICAL, an anthology edited by Jonathan Strahan, due to be published by Solaris. Here’s the collection’s synopsis…
HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM…
Life is fragile. The difference between success and failure can come down to nothing – the thread of a screw, the flick of a switch – and when it goes wrong, you fix it. Or someone dies.
Mission Critical takes us from our world, across the Solar System, and out into deep space to tell the stories of people who had to do the impossible.
And do it fast.
In addition to this, Aliette has stories in the latest issue of Clarkesworld (“Two Sisters in Exile”, also available online), and also the first anthology from New Accelerator (“A Dance of Dust and Life”).
THE BEST SCIENCE FICTION OF THE YEAR: VOL. 4 has stories from Aliette, Ian McDonald, and Lavie Tidhar. Published by Night Shade Books, here’s the relevant content…
“Ten Landscapes of Nili Fossae” by Ian McDonald (2001: An Odyssey in Words, edited by Ian Whates and Tom Hunter)
“The Buried Giant” by Lavie Tidhar (Robots vs. Fairies, edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe)
“Among the Water Buffaloes, a Tiger’s Steps” by Aliette de Bodard (Mechanical Animals, edited by Selena Chambers and Jason Heller)
Ian McDonald is the author of, most recently, the Luna series — NEW MOON, WOLF MOON, and MOON RISING — published by Gollancz (UK) and Tor Books (US). He is also the author of the novellas TIME WAS and the forthcoming THE MENACE FROM FARSIDE (Tor.com).
Lavie Tidhar is the author of a number of award-winning and critically-acclaimed novels and novellas, including UNHOLY LAND (Tachyon), CENTRAL STATION (Tachyon), A MAN LIES DREAMING (Hodder/Melville House), THE VIOLENT CENTURY (Hodder/Tachyon), OSAMA, and his first novel for young readers, CANDY (Scholastic).
Aliette is also the author of the Dominion of the Fallen series, published by Gollancz in the UK and Roc Books in North America (1-2): THE HOUSE OF SHATTERED WINGS, THE HOUSE OF BINDING THORNS, and the upcoming THE HOUSE OF SUNDERING FLAMES. She is also the author of IN THE VANISHERS’ PALACE (JABberwocky), THE TEA MASTER AND THE DETECTIVE (Subterranean Press/JABberwocky), and OF WARS, AND MEMORIES, AND STARLIGHT (Subterranean Press).
TIME WAS, Ian McDonald‘s first novella with Tor.com, is out tomorrow as part of the publisher’s latest Editorial Spotlight Collection! The collection features five novellas edited by Jonathan Strahan. Here’s the synopsis for TIME WAS…
A love story stitched across time and war, shaped by the power of books, and ultimately destroyed by it.
In the heart of World War II, Tom and Ben became lovers. Brought together by a secret project designed to hide British targets from German radar, the two founded a love that could not be revealed. When the project went wrong, Tom and Ben vanished into nothingness, presumed dead. Their bodies were never found.
Now the two are lost in time, hunting each other across decades, leaving clues in books of poetry and trying to make their desperate timelines overlap.
Keep your eyes pealed for information about Ian’s upcoming novella with Tor.com… In the meantime, here are just a few of the reviews TIME WAS has received…
‘[E]ntrances readers with this multigenerational novella of two time-crossed lovers who can only meet for brief moments separated by several years… beautiful writing… Fans of science fiction who enjoy a dash of history and legend will savor this tender story.’ — Publishers Weekly
‘… one of the most purely beautiful pieces of writing McDonald has given us in years.’ — Gary K. Wolfe (Locus)
‘With echoes of H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine and replete with the inimitable scent of used bookstores, TIME WAS weaves an exquisite spell of love, war and quantum physics that is timeless in its appeal. A scientific romance in the most evocative sense of the word.’ — Nina Allan
‘[A] character-based story about the impact of a pair of time travelers on those who discover their existence… A story from the point of view of poets and book lovers would fall flat if the novel’s language weren’t a match for the inner monologues you’d expect from people whose interior lives are so full of words. McDonald succeeds in doing several seemingly incompatible things at once, and doing them well. TIME WAS is a time travel story that’s also, and primarily, a love story. Science fiction is typically plot-driven, occasionally to the exclusion of other elements, but this one luxuriates in characters and language. It’s a work that looks to the past, but speaks to the future of science fiction.’ — B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog
‘This slender, poignant queer romance incorporates time travel and hints of hard science into a story as devastatingly sad—which isn’t to say bleak—as anything you’ll read this year.’ — B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog (Best SFF Books of the Year So Far, 2018, Honourable Mention)
Edited by Jonathan Strahan, THE BEST SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY OF THE YEAR, Vol.8, due to be published by Solaris Books in May 2014.
Here’s the anthology’s synopsis…
From the inner realms of humanity to the far reaches of space, these are the science fiction and fantasy tales that are shaping the genre and the way we think about the future. Multi-award winning editor Jonathan Strahan continues to shine a light on the very best writing, featuring both established authors and exciting new talents.
Within you will find twenty-eight incredible tales, showing the ever growing depth and diversity that science fiction and fantasy continues to enjoy. These are the brightest stars in our firmament, lighting the way to a future filled with astonishing stories about the way we are, and the way we could be.
