Just Arrived, 2/22/11
Posted on February 22, 2011 Posted by John Scalzi 17 Comments
People send me books! I tell you about them. It’s a pretty good deal for me. Here’s some of what’s come by recently:
* The King of the Elves, Philip K. Dick (Subterranean Press): You’ve heard of this guy, right? (The answer is “yes” even if you think you haven’t, by the way.) This collection of his work includes 22 stories and novellas including Dick’s first published story, “Beyond Lies the Wub.” For PKD collectors and those who wonder what the fuss is for this guy. Out now.
* Leviathans of Jupiter, Ben Bova (Tor Books): This sequel to Bova’s Jupiter has our heroes looking for the giant, mysterious creatures in the planet’s oceans — but there are those who are hoping for their failure. Why can’t everyone just get along? Oh, right — because conflict is fun! This is also out now.
* The Cloud Roads, Martha Wells (Night Shade Books): A lonely shape-shifter who can fly finally meets more of his kind, and discovers that joining their community has repercussions he did not expect. Amazon says this is out now, and Wells be along in a couple of weeks to talk about her book here at The Big Idea.
* Revolution World, Katy Stauber (Night Shade Books): It’s a tale of the love between a computer programmer and a genetic engineer, where one thing leads to another and the next thing you know, Texas has declared independence. Well, that was only a matter of time, was it? This is out March 1.
* Thirteen Years Later, Jasper Kent (Pyr): The sequel to Kent’s Twelve, which took place in the Russia of 1812, takes place — anyone? anyone? — thirteen years later. That would be in 1825, for those of you flummoxed by numbers. Hey, I know how it is, they get the best of me to. Also, for those of you who are wondering, yes, it’s a historical novel… with vampires. Who do not sparkle. Russia really does seem congenial territory for vampires. Who do not sparkle. Out now.
* Graveminder, Melissa Marr (William Morrow): YA author Marr tries out the adult market with this gothic tale of families, ghosts and, of course, evil. But if you’re a Marr fan you have a bit to wait — it’s not out until May 17.
* The Boy at the End of the World, Greg van Eekhout (Bloomsbury): This is also a book I got long before its pub date — this is for June — but I think it’s worth noting that when it showed up in my mail, it was one of those books I went “Ooooooh, coooool” about. And, you know. When that happens, you gotta talk about it.
* Above/Below, Stephanie Campisi and Ben Peek (Twelfth Planet Press): Twelfth Planet continues to press the nerd pleasure centers of my brain with their packaging of two tales in a single volume in classic “Ace Double” style. These two stories, about the cities of Loft and Dirt, also interrelate with each other in interesting ways, so there’s that as well. Fun concepts. This is out now.
Oceans on Jupiter? I’m confused. Or is this a throwback to the old-school sci-fi written before we knew that Jupiter was a big storm mass of swirling gas? Or is Europa involved?
That PKD collection sounds nifty though.
I am so very jealous.
But I am grateful for the heads up about the new titles on the way.
You may benefit, but so do your readers. I’ve discovered so many amazing authors thanks to posts like these, and The Big Idea. So on behalf of readers and authors everywhere, thanks. :)
I’m jealous of most of your book acquisitions. But I’ll mention that because I’m such a huge PKD fan, I already own “The Collected Short Stories” (5 volumes, trade paperback edition). And nearly all his novels.
I’m trying to envision the Whatever readers that think they haven’t yet heard of PKD.
There are people here who don’t read much science fiction, you know.
According to Dick’s introduction in the sadly extinct Unearth magazine, Roog was his first publication. At least I think it was–my copies are downstairs where I can’t get them now.
Just Arrrived in my mailbox, Darkest Mercy, by Melissa Marr. Doubtless you read it long ago, but I’m very excited to get started.
“There are people here who don’t read much science fiction, you know.”
You know John, some people just don’t know Dick.
Didn’t know about PKD’s short story “The King Of The Elves” but I find it funny because just the other day i was thinking about Oberon(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon) from the Amber series. Funny in the sense that both Roger Zelazny and Philip K. Dick seem to have a strange knowledge of things out of this world. So thanks for the heads up! Sort of…
Question!
Is Bova’s “Jupiter” the book where people harvest Hydrogen in Jupiters oceans and hunt beings made of pure and a cyborg gets send to check them out, but is angsting because cyborgs don’t count properly as human in their soceity?
I’ve borrowed a book like that when I was nine and absolutly loved it – and am looking for it since then. I don’t remember the title & author, so I never found it.
(There are so many books whose story stuck with me but not name and author, and since most of them were from the sovjet side of the iron curtain, I have a tough time finding them. *sigh*)
Could Carina be referring to ‘A Meeting With Medusa’ (Arthur C Clarke, 1971).
@Simon
This sure sounds like it, the cyborgs name sure rings a bell. I’m going to hunt down a German translation.
Thank you.
You have no idea how much that means to me, my mom brought it to me (among many other books) back when I was repeatly hospitalized for months and months a time.
(on that note: It’s from 1971? Woah Nelly, it’s much older than me. o.O)
(I’m gonna plock the other two Jupiter books onto my miles long to-read list too – That planet’s responsible for my love of science fiction, and revisiting it would be nice. :) )
Carina, you are most welcome! :-)
I just bought Above/Below in Epub format from Twelfth Planet. It’s cool that I can order this book conveniently and cheaply since it was published in Australia. Although, I really wish they’d taken more time to make the document look nice. I feel like the formatting had a lot to be desired for.
Hey Just to update, Twelfth Planet gave me free access to other file formats that worked better than their epub edition after I emailed them about the issues I was having with it and with Adobe Digital Editions reader. It was really nice of them!