Doctor Who: The Whoniverse
Release Date: Early Dec
Even though we haven’t had any Doctor Who episodes for a while, there have still been new novels and other related material coming into the store. The novels are fun and the other stuff tends to be retrospectives and theme books that gather together bits of lore and still photos from the shows. They’re all cool in their own way, but not really noteworthy. This however is something different. The Whoniverse is a massive hardcover history of the Doctor Who universe, from the moment it first came into being to it’s inevitable end. Drawing on the entire canon of Doctor Who it tracks significant events chronologically and in the process a offers a complete time-line for the series. As you would expect the book is lavishly illustrated, but not with the usual photos and sketches. Instead, the book is filled with full page paintings of a style that will remind fans of Galifrey Falls (No More). It’s not something I expected from a Doctor Who tie-in, but I have to admit that they’re stunning. Because it’s as much an art collection as a history text, it’s got a pretty hefty price tag but if you’re a fan or collector then I suspect the this will be the most beautiful Doctor Who book you’re likely to find.
The Thing Itself by Adam Roberts
Release Date: Mid Dec
There are authors you like, yet dread talking about, and Adam Roberts is one of them. It’s not that I don’t like his work, quite the opposite. It’s just that his books are so unusual and strangely written that attempts to describe them rarely ever do them justice. There is the story, and what’s under the story. Always nuances, always subtext. You read them slowly and carefully. I can give you the premise, but the rest you’ll have to dig out yourself. Two men alone on a remote Antarctic research station pass the time by intensely disliking each other. They argue about a love-letter that one of them has received and the philosophical merits of Kant. When a storm cuts them off from the rest of the world, the emptiness of the land around them leads them to debate the emptiness of the universe and the Fermi Paradox. Like Waiting for Godot set at the end of John Carpenter’s The Thing they sit and talk and argue. But unlike those examples, these two men are most definitely not alone. There is something out there in the cold white void and they’re about to find out what.
Bait by Chuck Palahniuk
Release Date: Early Dec
This is here more because of my love of the peculiar, rather than any sort of genre connection. I like Chuck’s work, this is his new book and so it’s here. Bait is a collection of the kind of short stories we’ve come to expect from Chuck, but with an unexpected twist. It’s also a colouring book. In addition to the eight new stories there are nearly 50 colourable images from a variety of well known comic artists. I’ve no idea what the pictures are like, but the stories take the reader from the wreck of the Titanic to viral hate campaigns and from a goldfish that witnesses a murder to a girl whose birthday present may doom humanity. Some folk have taken to calling adult colouring books ‘mindfulness books’ to try and remove the stigma from an activity associated with children. Chuck, it appears has taken that at face value and created something very mindful indeed. You may not like where it takes you, but you’ll definitely be paying attention.
Romeo and/ Or Juliet by Ryan North
Release Date: Early Dec
This one is for folks looking for something fun, clever and a little bit silly. There’s been quite a lot of the classical parodies and mash-ups over the last few years, even a couple in the choose-your-own-adventure style, but I don’t think any of them quite prepared me for this. The thing that has apparently been missing in these kind of choose your path novels is truly bizarre options. And this Romeo and/or Juliet definitely has. You can start as one or the other, switch, switch back, pursue unrequited love, or not. Romeo and Juliet can opt for cross-fit instead of suicide or just do the ‘pox on both houses’ themselves and take over Verona with their army of robots. That’s unless Juliet wants to give up on the whole thing and go and visit her chum Ophelia in Denmark who is having boyfriend troubles of her own. Having played through a few times I can honestly say that the story could go almost anywhere, and that I’ve barely scratched the surface. Full of puns, one liners and glib observations, this is one of the most fun and most peculiar things I’ve read in ages.
China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F McHugh
Release Date: Mid Dec
This in another of Gollancz’s SF Masterworks editions, and one I am particularly glad to see. First published in 1992, it was short listed for the Hugo and Nebula Awards and the winner of that year’s Tiptree Award. The book is set in the 22nd century where Chinese Marxism has won out over capitalism and become the world’s dominant culture and system. While it could be called a cyberpunk novel, I’d be reluctant to do so since that brings with it a certain kind of expectation that is different from what the book actually delivers. I’m happier just thinking of it as science fiction. We journey through this future through Zhang, a young computer programmer who struggles to reconcile his own values with that of his totalitarian society, while still navigating it in safety. This is made more difficult because as a gay man his very sexuality is a crime. Over the course of a series of unconnected vignettes we explore Zhang and his world, not through a linear story but through a series of observations and discussions. It’s a hard book to describe, since McHugh wrote it in such and unconventional style, but if you like your science fiction clever and a little bit different then this is one I think you’d enjoy.
The Penguin Book of the Undead by Scott G Bruce
Release Date: Early Dec
This is another of the somewhat grim reference books I seem to keep stumbling over lately. It’s a collection of essays and stories about ghosts and other not-dead-when-they-probably-should-be things. Not unusual really, there are lots of collections of those sorts of stories. But not like this one. In here you will find stories from the ancient world as well as the thoughts of a Roman scholar on the story of a haunting he’s heard. Also stories and reports from the Dark Ages through to the reformation. This is a fascinating exploration of the beliefs of earlier times and the evolution of the ghost story. It’s also full of quite interesting trivia; for example, the word ‘undead’ actually dates back to the tenth century, where its Old English ancestor undeadlic was used by a Christian preacher named Aelfric of Eynsham to describe the immortal nature of God. Saint Patrick is also said to have been able to speak with the dead by virtue of his piety, though in the story included here he uses the gift to check whether a grave with a cross above it truly holds the body of a Christian. I’ll leave readers of the book to find out the results of his interrogation, but I found it quite amusing.
A Borrowed Man by Gene Wolfe
Release Date: Mid Dec
Gene Wolfe is often referred to as ‘a writer’s writer’ and certainly others in the genre hold him in high regard. His science fiction/ fantasy series The Book of the New Sun is considered a genre classic, and incidentally due to be reprinted in January as part of the SF Masterworks range. A Borrowed Man however is much more recognisably science fiction, though with a crime noir twist and is set in a future where robots and clones are ordinary technology. It begins with the disappearance of a powerful and wealthy man and a safe that should have held papers and cash, but contains only a copy of an obscure crime fiction novel. Unwilling to trust the police Colette, the missing man’s daughter, decides to unravel the mystery another way. Enter E.A Smythe, a clone and a ‘borrowed person’. His personality is an uploaded recording of the crime novel’s long dead writer. ‘checked out’ of the library which owns him by Colette, he is a clue that is expected to explain itself. He is also the key to a family fortune that everyone wants, and to a secret that some will kill for and possibly already have. This is a terrific stand alone book from one of the great science fiction writers.
Occupy Me by Tricia Sullivan
I read this one early this year in the large format edition. Since the small format is due out this month I thought I’d re-run what I had to say about it.
I’m reading this one at the moment, and to be honest I’m not sure what to make of it. It’s got a mixture of science fiction and urban fantasy elements in that there’s an angel and what I think is an alien. There’s also a killer who seems to be able to take over people’s bodies or at least one person’s body since the one he’s walking around in definitely does not belong to him. The Angel is a member of the Resistance. Resisting what? Well, ‘bad’ in general really since they’re dedicated to improving the world by stealth. There’s a briefcase too, a briefcase with some peculiar and dangerous properties. It might be a doorway to Hell, or somewhere else, or possibly everywhere else, I don’t know yet. What I do know is that Pearl, (that’s the Angel) is hunting the killer who, of course has the worrying briefcase. So far, it’s a chase with lots more questions than answers and I’m starting to think I should have left my ideas about reality at the door since they’re doing me no good here. I haven’t the faintest clue as where this book is taking me but wherever it is I’m really enjoying the trip.
Normal by Warren Ellis
Release Date: Mid Dec
Warren Ellis’ off-beat crime novel Gun Machine was probably one of my favourite books of 2013, and while I enjoy the comic and graphic work that is his usual format, I’ve been eagerly awaiting another novel. Normal sounds like another crime novel, with a completely different though equally strange cast of characters. It begins with a particular sort of thinkers. Futurists and environmental modellers, geopolitical strategists, resource analysts and all the other oracles and augers of the twenty-first century. The men and women who are forced to confront and embrace the dark truths about the world, truths that most people have the luxury to unwisely ignore. The toll that this takes on them, mentally and emotionally is such that even the very best cannot do it for long. When they need to step away from the abyss they go to Normal Heads, a quiet high security retreat in the wilds of Oregon. Adam Dearden is one of those who have come to restore himself in the sylvan wilderness, but finds that rather than relaxing he is caught up in an investigation. One of the guests has gone missing from a locked room, leaving behind only a pile of insects. But this is not your usual locked room mystery because this time all of the suspects are brilliant planners and thinkers and most are more than a little deranged.
The Dance of Death by Hans Holbein
Release Date: Early Dec
Somehow a slowly growing range of unusual non-fiction seems to be creeping onto my order lists. It was never really my intention, but I keep finding things that I think folks would find interesting. The book explores a rather grisly collection of woodcuts by Renaissance artist Hans Holbein. There are more than forty woodcuts in the series, each showing the figure of death in various situations and with various sorts of people. The first half of the book is given over to the woodcuts themselves, each on their own page. The second half of the book covers Holbein and his work, as well as others of the period equally interested in the macabre and what their work meant to the audiences they created them for. While it’s true that fear and anxiety about death are almost universal, it’s also true that our attitudes towards it are different to those of five hundred years ago. The surprising and interesting thing is just how different.
Starship Troopers by Robert A Heinlein
Release Date: Mid Dec
I imagine most of you will realise that this one is not exactly new. It is however the latest addition to Gollancz’s SF Masterworks hard covers range, and I think that is noteworthy. I’ve also included it here because it is one of those books that a lot of science fiction fans have heard of, but often not actually read. It’s an interesting and important book in the development of modern science fiction, and as we noticed when it was the discussion book at our store book club, readers can come away from it with very different impressions. A pro-war book? An anti-war book? Does it offer a model for a functional kind of totalitarianism, or an argument against it? Is the final scene a victory or a defeat? These are questions that the reader has to resolve and I think that’s what makes this such an interesting book. This very nice new edition is a cool way to decide for yourself.
Fair Rebel by Steph Swainston
Release Date: Early Dec
This is a sequel to Steph Swainston’s Castle trilogy and returns to the same vaguely steampunk fantasy world. I’ve not had a chance to read a copy yet so I can’t be sure, but it sounds like this is unlikely to work as a stand-alone book and requires the reader to be familiar with the original series. It’s available as an omnibus edition and I’ll get a few in to coincide with the arrival of Fair Rebel. Set fifteen years after the series, it rejoins the characters of the Immortal Circle as the set in motion a plan to take the offensive against the insect horde that one tried to invade their world. Central to this plan is a new weapon, gunpowder. When the barrels of gunpowder go missing, it is up to Jant, winged messenger to the Emperor to investigate. What he uncovers is that the theft is part of a deadly conspiracy and that he and his friends are the targets.