Larry Niven and Brenda Cooper join forces for an epic SF space adventure full of machine/human hybrids, terraforming, and far-future intrigue. Building Harlequin’s Moon finds the crew of the John Glenn unexpectedly stranded on a moon near an epic gas giant!

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Do you have a soft, squishy pet sorely lacking in armor? Here’s how to fix that. Do you have a pet with it’s own, natural armor? Here’s how to make it (comparatively) soft and squishy. Read on for news on Prometheus 2, the True Blood casts' early roles, and the worst videogame of all time.

[Let’s just hope the turtle and the guinea pig can hold the rear guard for Charlemagne...]

Welcome back to the British Genre Fiction Focus, Tor.com’s regular roundup of book news from the United Kingdom’s thriving speculative fiction industry.

Not for the first time, but perhaps, alas, the last, we lead this week with an item regarding Iain Banks, whose final interview proved as powerful and powerfully funny as anything else from the mind of the late great.

Relatedly, there was anger from certain independent booksellers at the deep discounting of Banks’ new novel, The Quarry. Was Amazon and Sainsbury’s behaviour a timely tribute, scandalous profiteering, or something between these extremes?

Later on, we’ll look at the cover and blurb of “the book that everyone will be talking about in 2014” in Cover Art Corner, before closing out with news of the nominees for this year’s British Fantasy Awards.

[Read more.]

Have you always wanted to read a sequel to The Dark Crystal? Have you ever wanted to write it yourself?

[Another Great Conjunction coming up! Anything could happen! Whole world might burn up!]

Georgette Heyer always claimed to dislike the mystery novels she had churned out on a regular basis prior to World War II. In part, this was thanks to ongoing struggles with that publisher—while also noting that her mystery publishers were doing a better job of promoting her works than her historical publishers were. In part, it may have been the ongoing tendency among literary critics to regard mysteries and other genre fiction as somehow lesser than mainstream literary fiction—a convenient way to place Georgette Heyer, who continued to long for literary acceptance, into that “lesser” category. In part it may also have been that at least some of her mystery novels were collaborated with her husband, who usually supplied murder methods and motives, which partly helps explain why some of these novels turn on obscure points of inheritance law—Rougier was a barrister.

Thus these novels were not entirely “hers.” But for all of her spoken dislike of the genre, Heyer had written one a year for a decade—and even after she stopped writing them, found ways to sneak elements of her mystery novels into her historical works. Even in the subgenre that she was now building, Regency romances, in The Quiet Gentleman.

[But first, before I try to murder you—a ball!]

“The Forsaken”
Written by Jim Trombetta and Don Carlos Dunaway and Michael Piller
Directed by Les Landau
Season 1, Episode 16
Production episode 40511-417
Original air date: May 23, 1993
Stardate: 46925.1

Station log: A delegation of Federation ambassadors are on a fact-finding mission to the wormhole. Sisko has fobbed off the duty of taking charge of the diplomats—from Arbazan (Taxco, a haughty woman who insists on taking Bashir’s quarters, since the guest quarters aren’t satisfactory), Vulcan (Lojal), Bolarus (Vadosia, who has lots of ideas on how to do other people’s jobs and is oblivious to how unwelcome that advice is), and Betazed (our dear old friend Lwaxana Troi). Bashir, who is obviously under strict orders to keep the ambassadors the hell away from Sisko, tries to say that the commander is busy with a recalibration of all systems. Sadly, Lojal finds that intriguing and would like to observe it.

Bashir’s thumphering is interrupted by Lwaxana, whose hair brooch—a family heirloom—has been stolen while she was playing dabo. Lwaxana demands that the bar be sealed and everyone strip-searched—a request made while holding the most painful part of Quark’s ear (she obviously learned a lot while she was DaiMon Tog’s prisoner)—but then Odo shows up. After Lwaxana says she senses no guilt telepathically from anyone in the room, she adds that she can’t sense Ferengi. However Odo knows that Quark wouldn’t resort to petty thievery (which Quark of course takes as a compliment), but a quick glance around the bar reveals a Dopterian pickpocket. They’re offshoots of the Ferengi, so they also can’t be sensed by Betazoids. After Odo returns her brooch to her and takes the pickpocket into custody, Lwaxana—with a smile we’ve seen before when she’s set her sights on Jean-Luc Picard, a holographic bartender, and Timicin—asks Bashir for every snippet of information he can provide about Odo.

[When it comes to picnics, the only thing that really matters is the company.]

“House and Garden”
Written by Paul Dini
Directed by Boyd Kirkland
Episode #070
Music Composed by Shirley Walker
Animation by Dong Yang Animation, Inc.
Original Airdate—May 2nd, 1994

Plot: Poison Ivy gives up her criminal ways, gets married, and raises two kids in the suburbs. But if Ivy’s reformed, then who is using giant plant monsters to rob wealthy young men in Gotham, including Dick Grayson?

[Poison Ivy turns over a new leaf... and the Terrible Trio are terrible villains]

Gather ’round me, everybody, gather ’round me while I’m preachin’ the Wheel of Time Re-read!

Today’s entry covers Chapter 18 of A Memory of Light, in which you’ve got to AC-CEN-tuate the positive, E-LIM-inate the negative… but Gawyn still insists on being Mr. In-Between.

*ear-flick*

Previous re-read entries are here. The Wheel of Time Master Index is here, which has links to news, reviews, interviews, and all manner of information about the Wheel of Time in general. The index for all things specifically related to the final novel in the series, A Memory of Light, is here.

Also, for maximum coolness, the Wheel of Time Re-read is also now available as an e-book series, from your preferred e-book retailer!

This re-read post, and all posts henceforth, contain spoilers for the entire Wheel of Time series. If you haven’t read, read at your own risk.

And now, the post!

[Have faith or pandemonium’s/Liable to walk upon the scene]

Welcome back to the Short Fiction Spotlight, a weekly column dedicated to doing exactly what it says in the header: shining a light on the some of the best and most relevant fiction of the aforementioned form.

It’s such a shame that there are only so many hours in the day! I have more books than I know what to do with, and that isn’t even to speak of the new releases I receive for review each week. Reading everything I mean to hasn’t been an option for longer that I like to recall.

You mustn’t mistake me. I ain’t complaining, just saying: so many promising prospects slip through the cracks that at this point I have enough interesting genre fiction stockpiled to last me a long lifetime. A very pleasant problem to have, I’d add, yet when prior obligations preclude me from reading something I would otherwise love to, I feel frustrated in any case.

This week, I aim to address at least one such would-be bungle, because I will not stand to have the release of the first volume of The New Solaris Book of Fantasy pass by unremarked. Fearsome Journeys features original short fiction from Salahdin Ahmed, Trudi Canavan, K. J. Parker, Jeffrey Ford, Robert V. S. Reddick, Glen Cook, Elizabeth Bear and Daniel Abraham among others... others including Scott Lynch, whose long-delayed next novel is, unbelievably, nearly here.

[Read more.]

This year MacKids events at the 2013 ALA Annual Conference will feature a host of signings from Francesca Lia Block, Marcus Sedgewick, and many more.

The full MacKids ALA schedule is below. Unless otherwise noted, all events will be held at MacKids Booth 2100—2200.

[Read more.]

Now it is time. Now the curtain can be pushed back on the second half of 2013, and all the books—or at least all those with announced publication dates and online retailer pages—can be spoken of in terms of hot anticipation!

...And I’m going to stop avoiding the personal pronoun now. Dear Readers, let’s talk about what’s to look forward to in the second half of the year. By your leave, I’ll go first.

[Books!]

The Ocean at the End of the Lane, published by William Morrow, is renowned writer Neil Gaiman’s first adult novel since 2005—one many fans and critics have been eager to read for quite a while now. Generally speaking, it’s a short, poignant book that explores the dark spaces of myth, memory, and identity through the experiences of a young boy, recalled by his adult self upon a visit to the place where he grew up—the place where he brushed something larger, more grand and impossible, than himself.

As regular readers of Tor.com might recall, in early March I received an advanced copy of this book and I wrote a spoiler-free review that discussed my immediate reactions after reading it. Mostly, that consisted of exploring the novel in its larger context as well as on a thematic level. Things had to stay a step back and fairly impressionistic; it was three months early, after all. But, now, it’s not early—the book will be on shelves for readers to pounce, purchase, borrow, and wallow around with.

That means I get to return to The Ocean at the End of the Lane with carte blanche, and so here we are: a spoiler review of the novel.

[Let’s do this.]

C-3PO has never looked more dapper than in this art print by Terry Fan. All we need now is R2 with a little blue monocle, and Leia in full Victorian regalia, and Han on a tauntaun with goggles...with brass goggles. Anyway.

[Murder at E3! Eisner Award nominations! Monkeys drinking soda!]

Something about living in the small-town South fuels eccentricity, secrecy, superstition, and creativity. Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe it’s the isolation. Maybe it’s the leftover miasma of being a conquered, misunderstood people within one’s own country.

But those who’ve lived it recognize it, and write it, and sing about it in low, mournful sounds, or frantic chords. They evoke emotion from a bow drawn slowly across taut strings or fingers plucking at instruments in such a frenzied pace as to seem a physical impossibility. It’s a place where words have power, and words set to music have more power. Life plays out with a soundtrack.

[Read more.]

Are you going to the 2013 ALA conference in Chicago? First Second Books is, and we have the full schedule of the authors in attendance, as well as the events they’ll be participating in. Check below the cut for the schedule.

[Read more.]