Kage Baker left us far too soon. Her untimely death in 2010, at age 57, was an immense loss for the science fiction and fantasy world, but she’s sure to pop up on recommended reading lists for many years to come thanks to the treasure trove of genre fiction she left us, spread across about a dozen novels and several short story collections.

The Best of Kage Baker is a brand new collection from Subterranean Press containing twenty examples of her brilliant short fiction as well as a set of beautiful, eerie illustrations by J.K. Potter.

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As is so often the case with great novels, the opening chapter of N.K. Jemisin’s The Killing Moon offers a snapshot of the conflicts and relationships that end up driving the whole story. We meet the Gatherer Ehiru as he stealthily travels through the city-state Gujaareh at night, collecting tithes of “dreamblood” for the goddess Hananja from its dying or corrupt inhabitants. This dreamblood will then be used by his order’s Sharers to heal and help others. Ehiru’s first commission is an old man who gladly and peacefully goes into his final dream, but the second one is a foreigner who doesn’t have the same outlook on Gujaareh’s religious practices — especially now they mean his own untimely death. He calls Ehiru a “Gualoh” or demon and then, mysteriously, tells Ehiru that he is being used...

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Miriam is a drifter with an unusual gift: when she touches someone skin to skin, she sees a brief vision of the circumstances of that person’s death. It could be decades into the future or later the same day. Some deaths are accidents, some are of old age. Regardless, the first time Miriam touches someone, she sees when and how that person will die.

She occasionally uses this gift (or curse?) to loot some cash from the recently or soon-to-be deceased, which allows her to stay in motels and keep a steady supply of booze on hand to numb herself, but one night her life changes drastically: when she touches a friendly trucker giving her a ride, she sees not only that his death will be a violent one, but also that the very last word he utters is her name...

[... into the light of the dark black night...]

My path to Bradley Beaulieu’s writings was probably different from most people’s: I discovered him only recently through Strata, the excellent science fiction novella he co-wrote and self-published with Stephen Gaskell (review). I enjoyed Strata so much that I immediately went back to check out his ambitious full length debut The Winds of Khalakovo. Now, about a year later, Night Shade Books delivers the second novel in the Lays of Anuskaya series: The Straits of Galahesh.

Short version: if you enjoyed The Winds of Khalakovo, I’m relatively sure you’ll like The Straits of Galahesh even more. The new novel brings to the table the same strengths and weaknesses as its predecessor, but all in all it’s a more polished work that promises great things for Bradley Beaulieu’s future.

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In the year 2035, all that’s remaining of humanity is a group of twenty-six people who live in the Shell, an enclosure built two decades ago by the alien race known as the Tesslies when an environmental cataclysm made our world uninhabitable. The six genetically mutated children who were born inside the Shell are mankind’s final hope of survival, also because they are the only ones who can use the Tesslie technology known as the “Grab”: a brief ten minute trip back into the time before the Earth’s environment was destroyed, during which they can gather precious supplies and capture other young children to augment the survivors’ gene pool.

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This week sees the release of The Legend of Eli Monpress, an omnibus containing Rachel Aaron’s first three novels: The Spirit Thief, The Spirit Rebellion, and The Spirit Eater. The fourth novel in the series, entitled The Spirit War, is due out in June, so this book is a great way to catch up if you’re unfamiliar with this light but entertaining fantasy series. I enjoyed these novels, back when they were first released within three months of each other in 2010, but the new omnibus edition is a nice improvement over the individual books. That’s partly because the cover illustration by Sam Weber suits the series so much better than the original covers — and partly because the price tag is more attractive.

So, if you didn’t catch these novels when they were originally released and if you enjoy light, action-packed (and often funny) fantasy, this is a great opportunity to check out Rachel Aaron’s The Legend of Eli Monpress.

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Whether you call it climate change or global warming, by the time Tobias Buckell’s long awaited new novel Arctic Rising gets started, the results are obvious: the Arctic ice cap has melted down, and the Northwest Passage has opened completely for shipping. Companies are rushing into areas like Greenland to take advantage of the abundant natural resources that are much more easily accessible now all that pesky ice is no longer in the way.

At the same time, nuclear electricity generation has become even more indispensable due to the dwindling fossil fuel reserves, and illegal dumping of its toxic waste is rampant. Anika Duncan is an airship pilot with the United Nations Polar Guard who monitors the Northwest shipping lanes for possible offenders. When she approaches a ship with suspiciously high radiation readings, it suddenly opens fire on her airship. After she is rescued, she tries to investigate the incident, but it looks like everyone is trying to cover up what happened — including even her superiors. This sets off a far-reaching plot that will involve the highest levels of power and affect the future of the Arctic and the Earth’s climate....

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In the 22nd century, resource depletion and Earth’s ever-increasing energy demands have led humanity to a brand new frontier: huge platforms circle the Sun and draw energy directly from its surface. In the past, corporations offered enticing contracts that included free transfer to the platforms in order to motivate workers to join the solar workforce and leave an often dire existence on Earth, but what they neglected to mention was carefully hidden in the fine print: transfer back to Earth is insanely expensive and not included. The result is a class of indentured servants, toiling away in unpleasant and dangerous conditions, trying to earn passage back to Earth while their corporate masters grow ever richer.

[Have you never heard a way to find the sun?]

You know that saying “For want of a nail”? Well, in Easie Damasco’s case, it was for want of a piece of bread, a chunk of fish and some cabbage that the fate of the entire land of Castoval was changed. When Easie is caught pilfering food from the baggage train of the invading warlord Moaradrid’s army, he is summarily pressed into service and assigned to a unit that’s ominously referred to as the “disposables.” Easie has no interest in becoming cannon fodder, and he sort of likes his home land the way it is, sans invading warlords, so he immediately plans to escape.

His ticket out of this predicament proves to be Saltlick, one of the terrifying giants in Moaradrid’s army. The thing is, Easie doesn’t just steal the giant — he also steals a money bag that, without his knowledge, contains the item that allows Moaradrid to control his contingent of giants. This unwitting theft sets off a long chase that will change the face of the Castoval forever...

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Will McIntosh’s debut Soft Apocalypse, which I reviewed here, was a brilliant novel about normal people trying to survive while society gradually collapses around them. It was easily one of my favorite novels of 2011. His catalog of strong short stories includes “Bridesicles,” which won the Hugo and was a Nebula finalist. It’s one of those rare stories where emotion and technology merge to form a perfect little SF universe. I can’t be the only reader who was eagerly awaiting this very exciting author’s second novel.

Well, it’s finally here, and it’s called Hitchers. People who are familiar with Will McIntosh’s debut will immediately notice that this is a completely different animal: a contemporary supernatural/horror novel rather than dystopian science fiction. Keep an open mind, because different as it is, it’s definitely worth your time.

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Three hundred years ago, a strange and seemingly invincible alien ship visited the Sakhran Empire. Exactly what happened is unclear, because the events were only recorded in the Book of Srahr, a text only Sakhrans are allowed to read. After the ship left, the Sakhran Empire went into a slow but irreversible decline.

Three centuries later, the Sakhrans have been assimilated into the larger interstellar empire known as the Commonwealth, when suddenly the strange, immensely powerful ship returns. The Commonwealth dispatches an Outsider, one of only nine in its ultimate class of warships, to stop this inscrutable enemy.

John Love’s stunning debut novel Faith is the story of this confrontation.

[To the last I grapple thee]

Angry Robot is one of those publishers you just have to keep an eye on, because they come out with some unique, surprising fiction. Their books tend to defy genre conventions and often are impossible to classify. To mess with our heads even more, they then stick weird little filing instructions on them, such as “File Under: Fantasy [ Aztec Mystery | Locked Room | Human Sacrifice | The Dead Walk! ]” for Aliette de Bodard’s Servant of the Underworld, or “[The Mob & Magic | Ancient Secrets | Zombie Wizardry | Bet Your Life]” for Matt Forbeck’s Vegas Knights.

So when Angry Robot announced Adam Christopher’s Empire State and mentioned a Prohibition-era parallel universe in the book description, deftly combining two topics I dearly love, I couldn’t wait to get my copy. (And if you’re wondering, this one says: File Under: Science Fiction [ Pocket Universe | Heroes or Villains | Speak Easy | Loyalties Divided ]). Unfortunately, Empire State didn’t entirely live up to my expectations, but there’s still a lot to love about this intriguing debut novel.

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Since this is apparently the season to be jolly, here’s a real cause for celebration: December 12th sees the birth of Unstuck, a brand new periodical for your amusement and literary delight.

Unstuck is an independent, non-profit annual based in Austin, Texas and edited by Matt Williamson, a promising SF writer who came to my attention via the stunning short story “Sacrament” in John Joseph Adams’ Brave New Worlds anthology. Matt’s works can or will also be found in Bat City Review, Barrelhouse, Gulf Coast, Cimarron Review, Portland Review and the Fraudulent Artifacts anthology, and to that résumé we can now also add Executive Editor of this impressive new annual journal.

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I’m a pretty big fan of Ian McDonald, so when I learned that a brand new novel by the author was on the way, I got suitably excited. Then, when I found out that the new novel would be the start of a series, and that this series would deal with alternate dimensions and multiverse-type ideas (very different from his last few books), I got really excited. And then, when I discovered that the series would be a young adult series — well, it took me a while to come down from that one.

So, here it is: Planesrunner, book one in Ian McDonald’s brand new Everness series, which — based on this first novel — I hope will be a very long series of YA science fiction novels. Boy, this book was fun.

[Goalkeeper, mathematician, traveller, planesrunner]

Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail! is a cross-genre anthology of stories themed around riots, revolts and revolution with a dash of crime and noir thrown in the mix. The book came to my attention because it features a story co-written by Cory Doctorow in addition to contributions by Michael Moorcock and Kim Stanley Robinson, but I’m glad I took the time to check out the rest of the collection because it offers a potent (not to say, incendiary) and diverse mix of original and previously out-of-print stories that work together to deliver a powerful punch.

(If you’re curious about the origin of the book’s title, check out this song by The Flys.) 

[Get your grind on]

About a century from now, climate change has caused a new Dust Bowl in the Corn Belt, resulting in major famine across the United States. Most of the surviving population leads a nomadic existence, migrating across the ravaged landscape in search of habitable, arable land. Decades of war, resource depletion and population decline have left the government practically powerless. Gangs and warlords rule the land.

The only thing staving off full-blown starvation is Satori, a hive-like living city that produces genetically engineered drought-tolerant seed. Its population is a mix of transhuman Designers, Advocate warriors and “landrace” Laborers. When one of Satori’s Designers leaves the fold and goes rogue, the desperate U.S. government sends the ex-military Secret Service Agent Sienna Doss to track her down.

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In a pattern that’s by now familiar for L.E. Modesitt Jr., Scholar marks a new beginning in the Imager Portfolio series. The book is set several hundred years before the events portrayed in the three “Rhentyll” novels Imager, Imager’s Challenge, and Imager’s Intrigue. (For a quick refresher on that trilogy, read this recent look back on the series.) Because of this, Scholar shares no characters with the earlier novels in the series and can be read separately. However, if you haven’t read the Rhentyll novels yet and are in the mood for some good, thoughtful fantasy, I still recommend reading them first, just so you can see the events of the new novel in the broader historical context Modesitt Jr. likes to build for his fantasy worlds. 

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Scholar, the fourth book in L.E. Modesitt, Jr.’s excellent Imager Portfolio, is due out on November 8th. In a familiar pattern for this author, the novel will start a new sub-arc in the series, set hundreds of years before the start of Imager. Because of this, it’ll probably be possible to start reading the Imager Portfolio from this point, but as I’m a fan of the author who enjoyed the first three books in the series and who generally recommends reading almost any series in its original order of publication, I’d still suggest picking up the three earlier novels first.

What follows below is a brief look back at the three “Rhenthyll” novels: Imager, Imager’s Challenge, and Imager’s Intrigue. It contains some spoilers for those three books, so you may want to skip this post if you haven’t read the Rhenthyll books yet, but this post contains nothing about Scholar.

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When we meet Jimmy Yensid, the hero of Cory Doctorow’s new novella The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow, he is aboard his giant mecha and hunting down a wumpus in the abandoned city of Detroit, until he comes under attack from a rival group of mechas. The resulting action scene is spectacular — and really made me want to dig out my ancient Mechwarrior games — but as you’d expect from Doctorow, there’s much more going on than meets the eye.

Jimmy is a transhuman boy, genetically engineered to be as close to immortal as you can get. The wumpuses are ravenous mechanical monsters who consume any non-organic matter they find and recycle it into arable soil. Meanwhile, Jimmy’s father is actually trying to preserve Detroit, the last standing city in the United States, as a historical artifact.

[The status quo doesn’t protect itself; it needs defending if it’s going to stay put.]