New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy

View on AmazonIt's clear to most scientists that human activity fuels climate change. What's less clear is global warming's long-term impact on geography, ecosystems and human society. If global warming continues at its current pace, what will life be like 50 years from now? A hundred? Five hundred? The further in the future we go, the more we must rely on science fiction writers to help us fill in the details. In her debut novel Memory of Water, Emmi Itäranta takes us to a future where the defining consequence of global warming is water scarcity. But more than a portrait of an environmental apocalypse, Memory of Water is about secrets and their consequences: an authoritarian government's secrets about the past, a family's secrets about a hidden source of water. The book is also about language. Ms. Itäranta, who was born and raised in Finland and now lives in England, wrote Memory of Water simultaneously in Finnish and English. As she explains in her interview with Rob Wolf, this forced her to engage in a heightened deliberation about her choice of each word–a slow and exacting process but one that produced diamond-sharp prose. "It forced me to throw away anything that was unnecessary. It forced me to look at each word and each sentence very closely on an almost microscopic level," she says. Ms. Itäranta also talks about her interest in the Japanese tea ceremony and how it provided the kernel around which the book grew, her advice for writers tackling their first novel, her books reception among Finnish-speaking versus the English-speaking audiences, and her aspiration to create a new kind of heroine. You can learn more about Ms. Itäranta here and more about Rob Wolf here.

Greg van EekhoutView on AmazonSouthern California can seem magical, thanks to sunny skies, warm weather, orange groves and movie stars. In Greg van Eekhout's California Bones (Tor Books, 2014) the magic is real. The Kingdom of Southern California is ruled by osteomancers who draw power and wealth from potions derived from the bones of magical creatures. In his conversation with Rob Wolf, the new host of New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy, Eekhout discusses, among other things, his interest in myths and magic, the impact of his Dutch-Indonesian heritage on his writing, protagonist Daniel Blackland's complex relationship with his father, and Eekhout's use of outlines to plot his books. This is Rob Wolf's debut interview as host of New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Read about Rob here or a at Rob's website. Write him at rob.wolf@yahoo.com. Get news and updates by following @RobWolfBooks on Twitter and Instagram.

Chuck AdlerView on Amazon[Re-posted with permission from Wild About Math] I've admitted before that Physics and I have never gotten along. But, science fiction is something I enjoy. So, when Princeton University Press sent me a copy of Physics Professor Chuck Adler's new book Wizards, Aliens, and Starships: Physics and Math in Fantasy and Science Fiction I was intrigued enough that I wanted to interview the author. This interview rambled, but in a good way. Chuck is a great guest, he's passionate about physics and math as well as fantasy and science fiction. We flowed through a number of subjects and had a grand time.

Hugh C. HoweyView on AmazonHugh C. Howey, author of the award-winning Molly Fyde Saga, is best known for his self-published and bestselling series Wool. This post apocalyptic tale of human survival within the infamous silos has taken the world by storm. The Wool Omnibus Edition (Simon and Schuster, 2012) won the Kindle Book Review's 2012 Indie Book of the Year award, in addition to making the bestseller lists in both The New York Times and USA Today. In the two years since releasing a series he originally believed "no one would care about," it's been picked up by Simon and Schuster for Canadian and US distribution, and film rights sold to 20th Century Fox.  If you have yet to experience WOOL, it's a recommended must read! In this interview with Michael Zummo, Hugh shares his approach to writing, his endeavors in self-publishing, the origins of the Wool series, along with what's coming up.

View on AmazonPatrick James is the Dornsife Dean's Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California. A self-described intellectual "fox," James works on a wide variety of subjects in the study of world politics. But one of his latest books, co-authored with Abigail E. Ruane, breaks even his eclectic mold. The International Relations of Middle-Earth: Learning from the Lord of the Rings (University of Michigan Press, 2012), sheds light on both international-relations theory and Tolkein's epic fantasy by bringing the two subjects together. Fans, students, and scholars alike will find much of interest — and much to argue about.

R.S. BelcherView on AmazonR.S. Belcher's first book, Six-Gun Tarot (Tor, 2013), has receive widespread praise in the online reviewing community. It tells the fantasy-western-horror story of a Nevada town, called Golgotha, that is home to an unusual assortment of men and women, spirits and angels, and Lovecraftian waiting to unleash havoc upon the world. Throughout the book, Belcher retains a light touch, but also manages to explore the nature of coexistence among different ethnicities, faiths, and ways of life. On top of this, he juggles the points of view of a wide variety of characters. You should give it a try.

Ramez NaamView on AmazonRamez Naam is a computer scientist who lives in the pacific northwest. His debut novel, Nexus (Angry Robot, 2012), has received an impressive level of positive buzz, including an endorsement from one of our past interview subjects, Alistair Reynolds. Although this is his first work of fiction, Naam is no stranger to writing. His previous book, More than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement, received the 2005 HG Wells Award for Contributions to Transhumanism. As he discusses in the podcast, he has two books due out in 2013, including Crux, a sequel to Nexus, as well as a non-fiction work about technological adaptation and climate change, entitled The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet. I hope you enjoy the interview, which ranges across all of these subjects.

Felix GilmanView on AmazonI first learned about Felix Gilman's work from the influential academic blog Crooked Timber. I proceeded to read Thunderer, Gears of the City, and Half-Made World and found myself impressed by Gilman's distinctive settings, themes, and voice. It should surprise no one, in my view, that Thunderer received a nomination for the 2009 Locus Award for Best First Novel and that it also garnered Gilman a nomination for the John W. Campbell Best New Writer Award in both 2009 and 2010. Thus, when I agreed to host New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy I immediately contacted him about a podcast on The Rise of Ransom City (Tor, 2012). As a political scientist who works on state formation and international change I found The Rise of Ransom City as masterful account of the coming of modernity–as refracted through a fantastic setting. As Lev AC Rosen writes of it: "The Rise of Ransom City continues Felix Gilman's brilliant deconstruction of the mythology of the American West, putting it back together with magic and mechanics, and creating something so imaginative it seems to punch you in the chest. Narrator Professor Harry Ransom is a compelling voice; a teller of tall tales and showman, but whereas the snake-oil salesmen of the American West sold piss and ink, Ransom has a genuine miracle to sell. He is both liar and totally honest in ways that are sly and funny and sometimes tragic. This is a fantastic story of a war and a life told with incredible humanity and pizzazz, by a narrator who, like the world he inhabits, is bold and colorful and a wholly new sort of magic." Interested listeners might also read Johann Thorsson's interview with Gilman. A warning: the audio quality of this podcast is on the poor side. I hope that listeners will stick with it nonetheless, as Gilman has fascinating things to say about the themes and ideas at work in The Half-Made World and The Rise of Ransom City.

Michael GordinView on AmazonWhen I agreed to host New Books and Science Fiction and Fantasy there were a number of authors I hoped to interview, including Michael Gordin. This might come as a surprise to listeners, because Michael is neither a science-fiction nor a fantasy author. He is, rather, a prominent historian of science at Princeton University. But his work intersects with the subject-matter of this podcast in a number of ways. Five Days in August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War asked us to consider what might have been had Tokyo refused to surrender and the US had continued to drop atomic bombs on Japan. Mike will soon start co-teaching a class on invented languages which includes a unit on Klingon. And the main subject of this interview, The Pseudoscience Wars:  Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe (University of Chicago Press, 2012), touches on both the history of science fiction, key themes within the genre, and where much of its source material comes from. Indeed, while this channel will continue to focus on new books within the SF and Fantasy genres, it will also interview scholars and practitioners whose expertise illuminates and enhances our understanding of those genres. I hope this interview does so for its listeners. For those of you interested in a different take on The Pseudoscience Wars, you should check out Michael's forthcoming interview on the New Books in Science, Technology, and Society channel.

Alastair ReynoldsView on AmazonBlue Remembered Earth (Gollantz, 2012) takes place roughly 150 years in the future. Climate change, as well as the political and economic rise of Africa, have transformed the planet. Humanity is colonizing the solar system. Geoffrey Akinya, grandson of a visionary businesswoman, cares most about his scientific work with elephants. His sister, Sunday, pursues the life of an artist in an anarchic commune on the moon. But their grandmother's death sets in motion an interplanetary treasure hunt with the potential to change humanity's future. Alastair Reynolds' latest book has received much critical praise; there's a sense among some science-fiction writers and fans that Blue Remembered Earth marks an important development in the genre itself. Whatever readers may think of it, Reynolds is a gregarious and fascinating interview subject, and I'm very pleased that he agreed to record this podcast. Alastair Reynolds was born in 1966 in Wales. He holds a PhD in Astronomy and worked at the European Space Agency. His novel Chasm City won the 2002 BSFA, and nearly every one of his novels has been shortlisted for a major award. Reynolds is probably best known for his Revelation Space series. He is currently working on a sequel to Blue Remembered Earth and a Dr. Who novel.

Madeline AshbyView on AmazonAmy Peterson is a five-year old self-replicating android who lives with her synthetic mother and human "father." Her struggles might be that of any super-intelligent youngster whose body and mind mark her as different than her schoolmates, but then her grandmother, Portia, appears at her kindergarten graduation and attacks her mother. Amy's intervention leads to a startling result: she eats her grandmother and, in doing so, stores a self-aware fragment of Portia within a memory partition. She soon learns that Portia has a peculiar trait–she lacks the failsafe the prevents Vns from harming human beings. Now Amy must flee for her life while discovering the truth about herself and her inheritance. vN: The First Machine Dynasty (Angry Robot Books, 2012) is Madeline Ashby's debut novel. Ashby is a strategic foresight consultant based in Toronto. She holds a masters degree in anime and manga writes on related subjects at io9, BoingBoing, and Tor.com. Her background and skill transform what might have been a straightforward work of Speculative Fiction into a provocative rumination on objectification, commodification, and the politics of difference. Peter Watts, author of Blindsight, describes Vn as picking up "where Blade Runner left off" and writes that "vN might just be the most piercing interrogation of humanoid AI since Asimov kicked it all of with the Three Laws." I agree, and am considering assigning vN in my "Politics and Speculative Fiction" course.

Meagan SpoonerView on AmazonLark Ainsley lives within a near-hermetically sealed city located in a world scarred and depleted my magical wars. The Architects, who oversee the City, maintain it by harvesting the non-renewable magical energy found in each of the city's inhabitants. But something goes wrong on Lark's "Harvest Day," and she soon finds herself on a quest to find safety outside the City's walls–where the disappearance of magic has rendered the landscape a wasteland full of sadness and danger. Skylark (Carolrhoda Books, 2012) is Meagan Spooner's debut novel, and the first installment of a planned trilogy. Spooner manages to weave a fresh and clever tale out of familiar elements, and her flair for blending darkness and light makes for a very enjoyable read. She also has some very interesting things to say about young-adult fiction, its place in SF and F, and about the transition from unpublished author to holding contracts for multiple books.

View on Amazon"D.B. Jackson" is David B. Coe's pen name for his new historical-fantasy series, The Thieftaker Chronicles. Thieftaker (Tor Books, 2012) centers on Ethan Kaille, a private detective and conjurer, as he investigates a murder in colonial Boston. David, who received a Ph.D. in U.S. history from Stanford University before embarking on a career as a novelist, weaves in plenty of period details and historical personages into an alternate Boston where conjuration is real, albeit suppressed by the authorities. David maintains a page of resources for those interested in his well-researched setting. He also is a co-founder of, and co-writer for, a blog dedicated to assisting aspiring speculative-fiction and fantasy authors with all aspects of the craft. Theiftaker has met with excellent reviews, so I wasn't surprised to find that I enjoyed it a great deal. David proved a terrific interview subject. I contacted him on a whim, and he was very generous to agree despite the channel not even existing at the time. I was saddened to learn, however, that not only was there no actual conjuration in eighteenth-century Boston, but no thieftakers worked there either. Writing under his own name, David has published the LonTobyn Chronicle–a trilogy that received the Crawford Fantasy Award as the best work by a new author in fantasy–as well as the critically acclaimed Winds of the Forelands quintet and Blood of the Southlands trilogy. He has also written the novelization of director Ridley Scott's movie, Robin Hood. David's books have been translated into a dozen languages.

Ken MacLeodView on AmazonI met Ken MacLeod when we participated in a sequence of "Science Fiction and International Orders" panels at the London School of Economics in the winter of 2011. Ken is an important figure in his own right, as well as someone who has contributed a great deal to the Speculative-Ficiton community through, among other things, cultivating the talents of other writers. He's also an incredibly nice guy. All of these traits explain why he was one of the first people I approached about doing an interview for the channel, and the first to agree. As I hope comes through in the interview, I found The Night Sessions (Pyr, 2012) both fun to read and intellectually stimulating. It centers on DI Adam Ferguson as he investigates the murder of a priest in a near-future Edinburgh. Following the "Faith Wars" of the early twenty-first century the world has experienced a "Second Enlightenment" and aggressive secularism enjoys intellectual and political hegemony. But not every soul, whether organic or mechanical, is happy with this state of affairs…. Ken has an Honours and Masters degree in biological subjects and worked for some years in the information-technology industry. Since 1997 he has been a full-time writer, and in 2009 was Writer in Residence at the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum at Edinburgh University. He is the author of thirteen novels, from The Star Fraction (1995) to Intrusion (Orbit, 2012), and many articles and short stories. His novels and stories have received three BSFA awards and three Prometheus Awards, and several have been short-listed for the Clarke and Hugo Awards.

Fredric KromeView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Military History] It is not often that fictional accounts might warrant serious consideration by military historians, but in the case of Frederic Krome's recent book, Fighting the Future War: An Anthology of Science Fiction War Stories, 1914-1945 (Routledge, 2011) some of the most fantastic stories from the realm of pulp science fiction are given a second look. Surprisingly these stories turn out to have far more to tell us about how many in American society during and between the World Wars. Krome's book is a delightful collection of long-lost short stories from the age of the pulps, each presenting a unique view at future military technology and wars. While some border on the fantastic, others have proven to be far more prescient than one might think. The value of Krome's collection is multi-dimensional: Fighting the Future War not only offers a view into how earlier generations processed the experiences of two wars, depression, and the rise of fascism; the book also provides interested readers with a wealth of counter-factuals, fantasies, and imaginary conflicts that each offers insights into the cultural milieu of the first half of the American Century. Researchers, teachers, and casual readers alike are certain to enjoy this impressive work, which itself promises to open up a new line of historical discourse for all who read it.