A.M. Dellamonica is at it again! The thrilling adventures of Gale Feliachild and Captain Parrish continue in a series of prequel stories that offers to take us deeper into the fascinating world of Stormwrack.
When Gale and the crew of the Nightjar are called back to the fleet to handle an issue involving a law regulating new patents and a missing magical inscription, they soon find themselves embroiled in a plot that is could potentially pit island against island. Now, they must discover the mystery of the glass galago before time runs out for both it and the fleet.
We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to publish internationally bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson’s first stand-alone short story in twenty-five years. In it, we get a glimpse of a very green future through the lens of a Supreme Court transcript.
It’s been a while since I got personal in one of these columns. So I thought while everyone in the northern hemisphere is sleeping off the midwinter revels, it might be a good time to slip some deep and philosophical navel-gazing in under the wire. Exciting, right? (It’s okay. You can still go back to sleep if you like.)
Many people have written a lot of things concerning fanfiction. Most of them have a wider appreciation of the history—and the breadth—of the form than I do. Fanfiction and fairytale exist on the same continuum, I remember reading somewhere: it’s all part of the human impulse to take the stories we hear and make them our own. And that makes a lot of sense.
George R. R. Martin has posted an update on the completion status of The Winds of Winter, the awaited sixth book in his Song of Ice and Fire series, announcing that he has not yet completed the manuscript. With the sixth season of HBO’s Game of Thrones set to debut in mid-April 2016, this means that the television show will officially exceed the progress of the book in regards to the series’ overall storyline.
Childhood friends Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead didn’t expect to see each other again, after parting ways under mysterious circumstances during high school. After all, the development of magical powers and the invention of a two-second time machine could hardly fail to alarm one’s peers and families.
But now they’re both adults, living in the hipster mecca San Francisco, and the planet is falling apart around them. Laurence is an engineering genius who’s working with a group that aims to avert catastrophic breakdown through technological intervention into the changing global climate. Patricia is a graduate of Eltisley Maze, the hidden academy for the world’s magically gifted, and works with a small band of other magicians to secretly repair the world’s every-growing ailments. Little do they realize that something bigger than either of them, something begun years ago in their youth, is determined to bring them together—to either save the world, or plunge it into a new dark ages.
A deeply magical, darkly funny examination of life, love, and the apocalypse, Charlie Jane Anders’ All the Birds in the Sky is available in January 26th from Tor Books, and we’re pleased to share the first four chapters with you now!
The holidays are over and for many that means heading back to work. For others it means there’s finally new episodes of television to watch! But I bet you didn’t realize just how much TV was starting so soon. Here’s a primer to get you prepared for the new and returning genre series hitting the small screens this January.
“The Ring of Wax” / “Give ’em the Axe” Written by Jack Paritz and Bob Rodgers
Directed by James B. Clark Season 1, Episodes 23 and 24 Production code 8725
Original air dates: March 30 and 31, 1966
The Bat-signal: At Madam Soleil’s Wax Museum, they are unveiling a new wax likeness: Batman. Except when Soleil opens the curtain, it reveals instead a wax statue of the Riddler, complete with a tape recorder that plays a riddle: what’s black and white and red all over? And it’s “red,” not “read,” because the statue is holding a rifle that squirts red paint all over the visiting dignitaries. The recording has a second riddle: what has branches and leaves but no bark?
Everybody loves David Bowie’s iconic Aladdin Sane album cover–it’s such a simple depiction of other-worldliness, a perfect encapsulation of the hold Bowie has on pop culture. That’s why it’s such fun to emulate and imitate–so for his birthday, we thought we’d gather some examples of our favorite characters putting on their best lightning bolt.
We found one last stack of galleys of Charlie Jane Anders’ All the Birds in the Sky—out January 26th from Tor—and we want to send one to you!
Childhood friends Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead didn’t expect to see each other again, after parting ways under mysterious circumstances during high school. After all, the development of magical powers and the invention of a two-second time machine could hardly fail to alarm one’s peers and families.
But now they’re both adults, living in the hipster mecca San Francisco, and the planet is falling apart around them. Laurence is an engineering genius who’s working with a group that aims to avert catastrophic breakdown through technological intervention into the changing global climate. Patricia is a graduate of Eltisley Maze, the hidden academy for the world’s magically gifted, and works with a small band of other magicians to secretly repair the world’s every-growing ailments. Little do they realize that something bigger than either of them, something begun years ago in their youth, is determined to bring them together–to either save the world, or plunge it into a new dark ages.
Want to know more? Read the first four chapters here, and 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 1:30 PM Eastern Time (ET) on January 8th. Sweepstakes ends at 12:00 PM ET on January 12th. 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.
Astronauts Nicole Aunapu Mann, Anne McClain, Jessica Meir, and Christina Hammock Koch, photographed at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
While a manned mission to Mars is at least 15 years away, NASA is currently partnering with SpaceX to train the astronauts who will hopefully touch down on the red planet within a generation from now. And for the first time, half of NASA’s latest class of astronauts is female. Last fall, Glamour shadowed astronaut candidates Nicole Aunapu Mann, Anne McClain, Jessica Meir, and Christina Hammock Koch, during their training in Houston, Texas—talking about the varied paths that brought them here, why they all want to go to Mars, and what they would most miss from Earth. Some of their answers were entirely unexpected, and put a very human face on this daunting mission.
Whenever I encounter a piece of fiction with characters straight out of mythology, I pause. Half of me craves it—the part of me that’s a raging geek for all things mythological, from Olympian gods to Sumerian demons to wayang kulit to narco saints. There’s something cozy in re-encountering the familiar, something exciting in spotting details you spent a long time acquiring knowledge of.
And half of me knows I’m going to be disappointed, especially when we’re talking about gods. Gods make for terrible characters. How do you present someone more than human making them relatable without diminishing what ought to make them alien? With ancient gods, how do you present something that’s so intrinsically linked to the culture that birthed it in a way that connects to your modern audience? More often than not, it feels less like Paradise Lost and more like Big Brother—shallow, zany, and full of jokes about banging swans.
In her popular writing advice newsletter, author Susan Dennard is painfully honest (her own words) about the ups and downs of the writing life. Not surprisingly, that same candor translated well to her Reddit Ask Me Anything thread for her new novel Truthwitch (out this week from Tor Teen), which she described as “Avatar: The Last Airbender meets Sabriel.” Check out an excerpt, then check out the highlights from her charming AMA, in which she unabashedly geeks out about Fallout and meeting her author heroes. Dennard also has the sweetest real-time reaction to discovering that Truthwitch made it into a recent io9/Gizmodo roundup (“OH MY GOSH WHAT NO SHUT UP WHAT”). Read on for her 2015 obsession and the 2016 trend she’d like to start.
In this ongoing series, we ask SF/F authors to describe a specialty in their lives that has nothing (or very little) to do with writing. Join us as we discover what draws authors to their various hobbies, how they fit into their daily lives, and how and they inform the author’s literary identity!
I have always needed a truck. I am continually in the mountains, I keep a vegetable garden larger than any apartment I’ve lived in, and I got lost trying to find my way out of the horse business. I don’t really need a nice truck, which is great, because I also can’t afford a nice truck.
If you know even little bit about Stephen Hawking, then you know that you’re dealing with someone so extraordinary that his life and work might seem to be fashioned from the pages of science fiction. As a physicist, Hawking pushed our understanding of black holes into new frontiers, but as a person, he is nothing short of an enduring example of someone who just will not give up.
Today is his 74th birthday: happy birthday, Professor Hawking!
Artist Brian Kesinger taps into a whole other vein of nostalgia with his The Force Awakens fan art in the style of Calvin & Hobbes! We’ve already seen some touching Kylo Ren and Darth Vader art, but Besinger, a story artist at Walt Disney Animation Studios and an artist on Marvel Comics’ Groot, really gets us in the feels. And because Bill Watterson’s series has provided us with so many iconic images, Kesinger didn’t stop there.
This may be the only Potter film that I hadn’t watched since its release in theaters. And that’s because I was distinctly unhappy about it. Having been over six years, I was trying to recall what bothered me so much that I avoided the film for so long—
—I only remembered that it was mostly about the portrayal of Ginny.
Illustration by Warwick Goble for The Fairy Book, 1923
Technically speaking, Beauty and the Beast is not quite a tale as old as time—time, after all, more or less got going right after the Big Bang, well before anyone was telling any fairy tales at all. But in human terms, the story of Beauty and the Beast is very old indeed, with literary roots stretching well back into antiquity, making this arguably the second oldest story in this Read-Watch, after the stories of Hercules.
Which makes it all the more remarkable that in the original literary version, the Beast isn’t a Beast at all, although some people think he is.
Only four months after the events of A Darker Shade of Magic, Red London prepares itself for the pageantry of the Elemental Games, while Black London threatens to rise again, throwing magic out of balance. Kell and Delilah Bard return in A Gathering of Shadows, available February 23 from Tor Books (US) and Titan (UK); read an excerpt! Meanwhile, you can join V.E. Schwab on tour, along with special guests including Marie Lu and Sam Sykes. Check out the full list of tour dates below.
Safiya is a Truthwitch—she can tell between lies and the truth, and there hasn’t been a witch with her ability in a century or more in the Witchlands. She’s kept her ability hidden from most, aware that she can forcibly be made a pawn in the political games being played out by the noble society she was born into, with a twenty year peace treaty between three empires having nearly run its course. What will the future hold for this magic infused world? Safi isn’t interested—she wants to live her own life with her Threadsister Iseult in Susan Dennard’s Truthwitch.
Iseult is a Threadwitch, powerful in her own right. Iseult and Safi have grown up together under the tutelage of men who have taught them well and trained them to defend themselves, but the girls appear to get in a fair bit of trouble regardless, which is why, when we meet them, they are on the run.
We want to send you a copy of Steve Kamb’s Level Up Your Life, available January 12th from Rodale!
For the past five years, Steve Kamb has transformed himself from wanna-be daydreamer into a real-life superhero and actually turned his life into a gigantic video game: flying stunt planes in New Zealand, gambling in a tuxedo at the Casino de Monte-Carlo, and even finding Nemo on the Great Barrier Reef. To help him accomplish all of these goals, he built a system that allowed him to complete quests, take on boss battles, earn experience points, and literally level up his life.
If you have always dreamed of adventure and growth but can’t seem to leave your hobbit-hole, Steve’s book, Level Up Your Life, is for you. He will teach you exactly how to use your favorite video games, books, and movies as inspiration for adventure rather than an escape from the grind of everyday life. Hundreds of thousands of everyday Joes and Jills have joined Steve’s Rebellion through his popular website, NerdFitness.com, and leveled up their lives—losing weight, getting stronger, and living better. In Level Up Your Life, you’ll meet more than a dozen of these members of The Rebellion: men and women, young and old, single and married, from all walks of life who have created superhero versions of themselves to live adventurously and happily. With this guide, you’ll follow in their footsteps!
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 1:30 PM Eastern Time (ET) on January 7th. Sweepstakes ends at 12:00 PM ET on January 11th. 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.
For nearly two decades, Jim Killen has served as the science fiction and fantasy book buyer for Barnes & Noble. Every month on the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog and Tor.com, Jim shares his curated list of the month’s can’t-miss new SF/F releases.
