A last short story link for 2008: from Gene Wolfe himself, The Arimaspian Legacy at InfinityPlus.
Happy New Year!
Reply
Yearly Archives: 2008
New on Kindle: December 30th
Airs of Night and Sea by Toby Bishop
Buy: Kindle Store
There is nothing like a girl and her bat-winged black steed of night. Really; it sounds like an enjoyable and down-to-earth version of Dragonriders without the SF elements. Third in the Horsemistress saga, and the sequel to Airs and Graces.
The first book in the series, Airs Beneath the Moon, is not yet available on the Kindle.
The Briar King by Greg Keyes
Buy: Kindle Store
I know Greg Keyes from his tie-in novel trilogy, Babylon 5: The Psi Corps Trilogy. If, like me, you have fond memories of his storytelling, try his Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series, all of which are now on the Kindle:
- The Briar King (there’s also another version from Ballantine for $3.99; I don’t know what the difference between the two are, but the other one lists the 105 reviews and a 4.5 star cumulative rating)
- The Charnel Prince
- The Blood Knight
- The Born Queen
Frog and Toad All Year by Arnold Lobel
Buy: Kindle Store
As mentioned in the previous New on Kindle, the Frog and Toad series is mostly available now on the Kindle for the nostalgic among us.
Frog and Toad:
- Frog and Toad are Friends (December 30th)
- Frog and Toad Together (not yet available)
- Frog and Toad All Year
- Days with Frog and Toad (December 30th)
Small Pig is also available now.
The Witch’s Grave by Shirley Damsgaard
Buy: Kindle Store
Not just a curious urban fantasy featuring a pair of witches (Ophelia, librarian and psychic, and her grandmother Abby) who solve small town cozy mysteries, but also a series where the first book, Witch Way to Murder, won the Agatha Award for best first novel.
The series, now available on the Kindle, save for one book:
- Witch Way to Murder
- Charmed to Death
- The Trouble with Witches
- Witch Hunt
- The Witch is Dead (not yet on Kindle)
- The Witch’s Grave
At Grave’s End by Jeaniene Frost
Buy: Kindle Store
Book 3 in the Night Huntress urban fantasy series, featuring a half-vampire hired by the government to hunt down other undead, which is probably not winning her friends from the vampire side. The rest of the series is also available on the Kindle:
Royal Exile by Fiona McIntosh
Buy: Kindle Store
The beginning of another epic fantasy series by the writer of the Quickening and Percheron trilogies, featuring a prince who must reclaim the throne of his family after a merciless warlord destroys them.
Her other books available on the Kindle:
Quickening Trilogy
Percheron Trilogy
Beowulf by Neil Gaiman, Roger Avary (author)
Buy: Kindle Store
The movie adaptation of Beowulf left quite a few people going what., but at the same time it was quite an interesting retelling of the story. Here’s the initial draft and the final shooting script.
By the way, if you’re looking for a translation of the original Beowulf, there are many. Here’s a rundown of the differences between each. As always, the first footsteps of translation (and available for free on the internet) are stilted, but more recent translations read (and, in the important case of Beowulf, sound) more smoothly.
Dragonwing by Tracy Hickman, Margaret Weis
Buy: Kindle Store
Also mentioned in the previous New on Kindle, the Death Gate far-future SF/fantasy series is arriving on the Kindle; the first book, Dragon Wing, is now here.
The series as currently available on the Kindle:
- 1. Dragon Wing
- 2. Elven Star
- 3. Fire Sea
- 4. Serpent Mage (not yet on the Kindle)
- 5. The Hand of Chaos (not yet on the Kindle)
- 6. Into the Labyrinth
- 7. The Seventh Gate
Star Trek: Errand of Fury Book 3: Sacrifices of Wa (Bk. 3) by Kevin Ryan
Buy: Kindle Store
The third book in the Errand of Fury trilogy, the war between the Federation and the Klingons is reaching the boiling point. Ever wonder why the Klingons and the Federation decided not to kill each other?
Kevin Ryan is famous for showing other perspectives in Star Trek apart from the obvious stars, in this case including the Klingon side. The other books in this trilogy, Seeds of Rage and Demands of Honor, are also available on the Kindle.
State of the Union: A Very Basic Ruby Epub Library
Currently I enjoy, through hacks and such, easy ways to create an ePub project directory, update the OPF and NCX files within, compile it all, and even run epubcheck, all very easily.
I’m starting to refactor and redesign all that, with an eye to providing a Ruby library that allows manipulation of various parts of Epub, as well as a Project class tying the elements together (after all, when a unique identifier needs to be synced between two files with different formats of almost entirely different inheritances, it gets a bit annoying to do manually).
One day I’ll probably stick this all in a RubyCocoa interface, so that we have an opposite number to the Windows-only Mobipocket tools.
This library will one day, given the blessings of the RubyForge administrators, become a gem for people to play with. Right now it resides over at https://ruby-epub.googlecode.com/, where you can see a roadmap and browse the code and check-ins.
The state of the library is that it’s in very primitive mode at the moment, and some things still need to be tested more thoroughly (and some things are already tested fairly intensively, but you can almost always use more), so it’s not yet released. Right now there are two scripts, and
At this point we can create a basic epub and then compile it immediately and the result passes epubcheck.
as part of the last check-in proclaims.
It’s all GPLv3 licensed by the way. I like things to be open, because then people can patch stuff, or use the library and do other things of their interest, or suggest more in-depth design changes I’m missing out because I’m not an in-depth Ruby-ist, and so on. Not that I’ll listen to all of it (another reason I like things to be open: people can branch). I’m not sure how I’ll deal with things once it all goes Cocoa, but I look forwards to the future with optimism.
(And also to the new Subversion and its changelists. Changelists are godsends.)
(Now is not the time to argue with me about using wxWidgets or the benefits of being truly cross-platform. No, it really isn’t, unless you want to end up quarantined for a while. I care about as much as anybody writing Mac programs cares, which is about the amount you can fill in a thimble.)
(Nor is this time to tell me to use Python, like about the rest of the Epub tools out there use, save for the few in Java. I’ve used Python. I’m probably one of the few people who likes the syntax, in fact, but at the moment Ruby needs a library and I work in Ruby. Pardon me for being selfish, but I am indeed both open and selfish at the same time.)
During all this I ended up learning Rake and part of Gem creation, and also dove a bit more into Ruby, and thus wrote up a couple quick references (now featured on the new Quick! page).
By the way, things about my coding style and approach:
-
Copious comments, unless I’ve obviously rushed things (in which case I feel horrible). One of the first stops I made during my Ruby crash course was to find out how Rdoc worked.
-
Object-orientated, modular design. I really like responsibilities to belong to cohesive units that can be called by other cohesive units. Crazy, I know.
-
I tend not to do wild and crazy kool-kid hacker things, because I like my code to be readable. And yes, some people do think I’m stupid because I don’t use
unlessor dance around with the trinary operator and bit-mode flags and re-implementing my own XML parser, but whatever. -
I don’t worry about speed and rock-hard reliability against all edge-cases up front. I add that in later, and because the devil’s advocate unit tests keep failing until I do.
New on Kindle: December 21st – 26th
There is a considerable trend of finishing series out in the Kindle here (often with the releases of older parts of the series).
One thing about electronic books—the backlist now has a very long secondary life, because ebooks do not go stale, do not take up physical warehouse space, and do not need to be re-printed. (And if you want to correct something, it’s not like you have to pulp entire runs to do so.)
With a Tangled Skein by Piers Anthony
Buy: Kindle Store
Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality series is finally making it onto the Kindle, following just about every single Xanth book in existence. ((If you want to start with Xanth, the first two extremely good books, A Spell for Chameleon and The Source of Magic, are available as a 2-for-1 bundle. After that, keep going until the title puns become very bad, or until The Colour of Her Panties, whichever comes first.)) The rest of the series (in particular, On a Pale Horse) are not yet available, but we’ll be watching.
Waking Up Screaming by H.P. Lovecraft
Buy: Kindle Store
Yet Another H.P. Lovecraft Collection With a Title So Unsubtle He Would Be Rolling Over in His Grave Right Now and Yeah You Better Watch Out, Anthology Editor.
Although his dialogue was rather terrible, even as his sense of gripping terror was compelling, so I guess pot, kettle, green-spotted-luminous-tentacled-folds.
Stories include: “Cool Air”, “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”, “The Terrible Old Man”, “Herbert West–Reanimator”, “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”, “The Lurking Fear”, “The Hound”, “The Outsider”, “The Unnamable”, “From Beyond”, “Arthur Jermyn”, and others.
If you get this plus the first volume, Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macbre: The Best of H.P. Lovecraft, you’ll have a fairly full complement of his short story work. And yes, none of the stories are duplicated.
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
Buy: Kindle Store
Douglas Adams’ classic Hitchhiker’s Guide series is also coming to completion on the Kindle, with most of the series following by December 31st.
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (available now)
- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (available now)
- Life, the Universe, and Everything (available now)
- So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (December 31st)
- Mostly Harmless (no date yet)
- And Another Thing… (to be written by Eoin Colfer, who pens the Artemis Fowl series)
The Salmon of Doubt, consisting of Adams’ essays and an incomplete Dirk Gently novel, is also available.
A Pip & Flinx Adventure: Sliding Scales by Alan Dean Foster
Buy: Kindle Store
The adventures of Flinx, a man born with an abnormal mind condition ((These seem to lead to telepathy in both SF and fantasy novels, especially when you combine the two: see also the Obernewtyn series for a more recent take with a larger variety of animals, although none of them are minidragons.)) and a telepathic minidragon named Pip, and they have adventures in the far future in the Humanx Commonwealth worlds.
Other books involving this odd partnership:
How Few Remain by Harry Turtledove
Buy: Kindle Store
The first book in an alternate history saga of the United States, How Few Remain is a novel that begins with: What if the South won the war?—and goes on from there through Second Civil War between the now truly divided United States.
Also the 1998 Nebula Award winner for Best Novel.
It is followed herewith by:
- American Front (The Great War, Book 1)
- Walk in Hell (The Great War, Book 2)
- Breakthroughs (The Great War, Book 3)
- Blood and Iron (American Empire, Book 1)
- The Center Cannot Hold (American Empire, Book 2)
- The Victorious Opposition (American Empire, Book 3)
- Return Engagement (Settling Accounts, Book 1)
- Drive to the East (Settling Accounts, Book 2)
- The Grapple (Settling Accounts, Book 3)
- In at the Death (Settling ACcounts, Book 4)
Caress of Twilight by Laurell K. Hamilton
Buy: Kindle Store
The second book in the Merry Gentry series, featuring private detective Meredith Gentry, who also happens to be a faerie princess. Love, sex, magic, supernatural, etc.—the usual red-hot Laurell K. Hamilton mix.
The series is now complete on the Kindle:
Frog and Toad All Year by Arnold Lobel
Buy: Kindle Store
Yes, they are indeed bringing Frog and Toad, as well as the rest of Arnold Lobel’s classic charming children’s books, onto the Kindle.
Frog and Toad:
- Frog and Toad are Friends (December 30th)
- Frog and Toad Together (not yet available)
- Frog and Toad All Year
- Days with Frog and Toad (December 30th)
Also available is the exceedingly charming Owl at Home. There’s also Mouse Soup, and Uncle Elephant.
… this is going to be like The Velveteen Rabbit all over again. Well, it’s not like I’ll ever find my tattered, third-hand Frog and Toad paperbacks, ever lost in the space of time and… well, probably time.
Wondrous Strange by Lesley Livingston
Buy: Kindle Store
Featured over on John Scalzi’s The Big Idea, she talks about the theme of faerie lore and its collision with modern Central Park. This Young Adult book is under consideration for my January review pick for Tor.com.
You know, I’m very appreciative of The Big Idea series; otherwise trying to find books with more than a cover blurb is like trying to find a needle in a haystack, especially for new authors whose fans have not yet carved out a niche in Wikipedia.
The Treachery of Kings by Neal Barrett, Jr.
Buy: Kindle Store
Strongly resembling a mix of John Swift and Alice in Wonderland, this is the second book in the adventures of Lizard Maker Finn, his companion Letitia (a half-human/half-mouse experiment left over from older times), and Julia (his intelligent mechanical lizard). Finn must deliver a gift to a the King of Heldessia, which doesn’t like Finn’s home country. This, of course, doesn’t bode well.
The first book in this series, which apparently has no more, is The Prophecy Machine.
Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks
Buy: Kindle Store
Banks’ Culture series is just now being released to the Kindle, starting with the third book, Use of Weapons. The only other book in the Culture series currently available on the Kindle is the seventh book in this 8-book series, Look to Windward. His most recent and acclaimed novel in this series, Matter, is not yet available on the Kindle either.
This should be remedied near in the future, considering that Orbit is the publisher.
The Ocean of Years by Roger Macbride Allen
Buy: Kindle Store
The second book the the Chronicles of Solace trilogy, about the far-future art of terraforming and all the things that can go horribly, horribly wrong. The first book, The Depths of Time, is not yet available on the Kindle, but the third book, The Shores of Tomorrow, is.
Ghost Town by Joan Lowery Nixon
Buy: Kindle Store
Seven young adult Western stories that all take place in seven different ghost towns. By the talented journalist and fiction writer behind The Other Side of Dark.
Muddle Earth Paul Stewart, illus. by Chris Riddell
Buy: Kindle Store
A young adult parody of Lord of the Rings, where Joe, an ordinary boy, is pulled into the world of Muddle Earth by the wizard Randalf, who works for the Horned Baron and his wife Ingrid. Amusing parallels listed on Wikipedia.
New Tor.com Review: The Devil’s Eye
Jack McDevitt’s The Devil’s Eye is not about the mystery. Or rather, the story doesn’t simply begin with the mystery and end with its solution as mysteries generally do, whether inside or outside the SF/F genre, but becomes a much larger narrative that encompasses two species in conflict throughout the Alex Benedict series: the humans (natch) and the towering, insect-like, intrusively telepathic Ashiyyur. Most detectives don’t get involved in showy international, much less intra-galactical, issues; but then Alex and Chase, thanks to Alex’s penchant for digging into cultural nooks and crannies that turn out to be entire keystones of civilization, are not your typical pair of detectives.
[continue reading]Buy from Amazon.com: Kindle Edition • Hardcover
New Tor.com Review: The Devil's Eye
[continue reading]Buy from Amazon.com: Kindle Edition • Hardcover
Quick: Is It Under United States Copyright?
This information is now collected on the Quick! (References) page: Is It Under United States Copyright?, which is the most up to date.
New on Kindle: December 9th to 20th – Part 2
Continued from Part 1.
Winterbirth by Brian Ruckley
Buy: Kindle Store
The first book in the Godless World series that debuted in 2007 with much success, its sequel Bloodheir is also on the Kindle.
The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski
Buy: Kindle Store
If you’ve played The Witcher you’re probably familiar with the lead character, but what you probably won’t be familiar with is the twisted way he works in the Grimm fairy tales into the story of Last Wish.
Elven Star by Tracy Hickman And Margaret Weis
Buy: Kindle Store
The Death Gate Cycle is a post-nuclear war fantasy that takes place in the far future; think of it as Tolkien’s Middle Earth taken into another direction and on another plane. This series is seven books long, and started with Dragon Wing which is… not yet on the Kindle.
The full series:
- 1. Dragon Wing (not yet on the Kindle)
- 2. Elven Star
- 3. Fire Sea
- 4. Serpent Mage (not yet on the Kindle)
- 5. The Hand of Chaos (not yet on the Kindle)
- 6. Into the Labyrinth
- 7. The Seventh Gate
Presumably the others will show up at some point.
The Poison Master by Liz Williams
Buy: Kindle Store
I know Williams from her distinctive Inspector Chen series; truth is, her writing has always had the distinct touch of fantasy wrought with science fiction, coupled with wonderful writing. Think Ursula K. Le Guin.
The Poison Master predates Inspector Chen by a few years, wherein Alivet Dee (descendent of alchemist John Dee) tries to save her twin from slavery in the hands of the Lords of Night, visiting multiple planets during her quest.
Baltimore,: Or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire by Christopher Golden
Buy: Kindle Store
Illustrated by Mike Mignola, whom you may know from the gothic horror comic Hellboy. Christopher Golden has written Hellboy novels before (such as The Dragon Pool), but this isn’t one of them. Instead, it’s an original novel with more than a little bit of Hellboy flavor, with the mix of 20th century warfare (WWI in this case, WWII in that of Mignola’s world) and the supernatural—specifically, vampires.
The Braided World by Kay Kenyon
Buy: Kindle Store
In this sequel to Maximum Ice, Bailey Shaw needs recover the genetic diversity of an entire world ecosystem after most of it was killed by a global disaster. The world? It happens to be Earth. The solution lies on another Earth-like planet, but with a rather un-human like species….
The Eye of Night by Pauline Alama
Buy: Kindle Store
A disillusioned priest, a foolish beauty, and an abused prophet (who happens to be a human dwarf) make their way across an elegantly drawn fantasy world, carrying The Eye of Night, which may end the world or save it.
The Fire Dragon by Katharine Kerr
Buy: Kindle Store
Part of a long (over 14 books and counting) series that occurs in the kingdom of Deverry, the Dragon Mage series is but a later subset. Currently only this and the latest in the series, The Shadow Isle, are available on the Kindle.
Turning the Storm by Naomi Kritzer
Buy: Kindle Store
The second part of the duology Eliana’s Song, which began with Fires of the Faithful (not yet available on the Kindle) and ends with Turning the Storm: sixteen-year-old musician Eliana becomes the unlikely leader of a revolt against the Circle, mysterious and powerful mages who control the land.
Obernewtyn by Isobelle Carmody
Buy: Kindle Store
In a post-apocalyptic world where the population has been reduced to small and remote communities, it’s not a good idea to have a mental mutation not understood to be anything other than a danger that must be kept under strict control. For one thing, they can communicate with animals, as if beasts were intelligent. Elspeth is such an unfortunate—and she is sent to Obernewtyn, a mountain ward and prison.
All of the Obernewtyn chronicles are available on the Kindle:
- 1. Obernewtyn
- 2. The Farseekers
- 3. Ashling
- 4. The Keeping Place
- 5. Wavesong
- 6. The Stone Key
Dr. Sigmundus: The Cracked Mirror by Brian Keaney
Buy: Kindle Store
The second book in the Promises of Dr. Sigmundus trilogy. In the future, every person over the age of 14 is regularly dosed with a mind-altering substance that removes all violent tendencies and, as these things tend to do, hollows them out personality-wise as well. Dante and Bea find themselves immune to the effect—and you know that’s just going to get them into trouble.
The previous book, The Hollow People, is also available on the Kindle.
Wiley & Grampa #1: Dracula vs. Grampa at the Monster Truck Spectacular by Kirk Scroggs
Buy: Kindle Store
A series of children’s books involving a feisty and rambunctious 80-year-old grampa who gets involved in phenomenon at once supernatural and also somehow over-the-top normal. Also in this series:
Vasco, Leader of the Tribe by Anne-Laure Bondoux
Buy: Kindle Store
Vasco is a rat—just a regular rat. When his entire family dies, he discovers a conspiracy by the city humans to eliminate rats entirely, and decides to come up with a plan to save his people. Translated from the French series, Le peuple des rats.
Falcondance by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Buy: Kindle Store
Part of the Keisha’ra series, five books that detail a saga involving the intrigue and conflict between races of animal shape-shifting peoples, such as the serpiente (snakes), the shm’Ahnmik (falcons), and others.
All of the books are now available on the Kindle:
Dear Santa Claus
A. Jericho
Secret Snowbound Island Base
Pacific Northwest
December 24th, 2008
Santa Claus
North Pole
Dear Santa,
Here is a list of what I would like for Christmas.
Please note that it’s very short. I’ve had a few good years, relatively speaking, and while the economy seems dire, I’ll probably hang onto my house since it isn’t on one of those crazy ARMs.
As for bigger things in life, I figure I can make those on my own more or less, although if you have any spare good luck that isn’t better spent elsewhere, I wouldn’t mind.
There are things people generally ask for, like World Peace and Please Don’t Let the Economy Break, but those are probably in our hands, and not in yours.
So here’s what I really want for Christmas:
deep-crust triple cheese mushroom sausage pizza
snow shovel
leather gloves
ETA: 9V and D batteries, 8ct packs
I’m kind of snowed in (again) and the electricity is really kind of unreliable, and I don’t think these are something normally found in the magic Christmas sack of holding. But if you could pick them up somewhere and fly them in, I would be grateful.
Sincerely,
A. Jericho
P.S. Hopefully reindeer like sunflower seeds, because that’s all I have for possibly ruminant food that doesn’t need heating.
P.S.S. Also, the rice milk is a change from last year, but the Oreos are a standard.
Kindle Advent Calendar: Merry Christmas – All Seated/Just Like…
All Seated on the Ground
by Connie Willis
SITE: Original • Kindle-friendly ((The Kindle-friendly version is NOT hosted on my site; this is a CGI script that filters the more annoying framing HTML from the story text. You can still save the filtered HTML and convert it for your Kindle (with some help from Amazon). And remember: don’t distribute this thing.))
A Hugo Award nominee for best novella, this is a warm Christmas romance involving alien contact (and the most disapproving aliens ever) delivered with the charming humor that’s just the Connie Willis touch.
Also available is a shorter novelette, Just Like the Ones We Used to Know (Original, Kindle-friendly), which is even warmer and cozier.
No one does Christmas and Science Fiction better (and more often) than Willis. You can also buy her anthology, Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, although it’s not yet available for the Kindle.
