Matthew Hughes's Blog: barbarians of the beyond - Posts Tagged "gardner-dozois"

I had an email from Gardner Dozois today to say that ROGUES, the latest cross-genre anthology he has co-edited with George R.R. Martin, has been turned in to the publisher. A publication date will be announced soon.

I have a story in it called "The Inn of the Seven Blessings" about a thief named Raffalon, who made his first appearance in "Wearaway and Flambeau" in last year's July/August issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

George R.R. Martin has announced that Old Venus, a theme anthology he has co-edited with Gardner Dozois, has been turned in to the publisher, Bantam Spectra. It should be out next year.

It's an anthology of stories set in that swampy, dinosaur-ridden Venus-of-the-mind that used to exist before we sent probes that revealed it to be a sulphurous hell-hole.

The antho brings together some stellar names. My contribution is a Jeeves and Bertie Wooster romp, with the names changed to protect the innocent (me) from lawsuits.

Here is the Table of Contents:

INTRODUCTION, by Gardner Dozois
FROGHEADS, by Allen M. Steele
THE DROWNED CELESTRIAL, by Lavie Tidhar
PLANET OF FEAR, by Paul McAuley
GREEVES AND THE EVENING STAR, by Matthew Hughes
A PLANET CALLED DESIRE, by Gwyneth Jones
LIVING HELL, by Joe Haldeman
BONES OF AIR, BONES OF STONE, by Stephen Leigh
RUINS, by Eleanor Arnason
THE TUMBLEDOWNS OF CLEOPATRA ABYSEE, by David Brin
BY FROGSLED AND LIZARDBACK TO OUTCAST VENUSIAN LEPERS, by Garth Nix
THE SUNSET OF TIME, by Michael Cassutt
PALE BLUE MEMORIES, by Tobias S. Buckell
THE HEART'S FILTHY LESSON, by Elizabeth Bear
THE WIZARD OF THE TREES, by Joe R. Lansdale
THE GODSTONE OF VENUS, by Mike Resnick
BOTANICA VENERIS: THIRTEEN PAPERCUTS BY IDA COUNTESS RATHANGAN, by Ian McDonald

A couple of months before its scheduled October release, here's the first early-bird review of Old Mars, the theme anthology edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois beringing together fifteen stories about the red planet that could have appeared in the old pulp mags.

About my story in he antho, reviewer Mel Odom says, “The Ugly Duckling” by Matthew Hughes reminded me a lot of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles with all its psychological trappings and intrigues".

Which is exactly the effect I was aiming for.

With the retro anthology Old Mars scheduled for release in three days time, the publisher has posted the first fifty pages here.

Since my story, "The Ugly Duckling," starts on page 35, its first half is included in the free-read excerpt.

I'm pleased by the story, for two reasons. First, I was not supposed to be included in the invitation-only antho, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. But one of the initial invitees apparently dropped out, and I was asked shortly before turn-in date, if I could fill in. I was delighted to do so.

The second reason: I wanted to write a Mars story that had some of that wondrous sense of mood and tone that I remembered from my reading of Ray Bradbury's stories back in my teens and early twenties. I wanted it to be an homage to one of the favorite authors of my youth, and would have been delighted if he'd read the story and approved of it. But I had just gotten started on the first draft when word came that Bradbury had died.

So now it wasn't an homage; it was a tribute.

At Tor.com, Robert H. Bedford has reviewed Old Mars, the George R.R. Martin/Gardner Dozois-edited retro-antho of stories set in the Mars sf authors used to imagine before robot probes and explorers revealed the hard, cold facts. Of my story, he says:

“The Ugly Duckling” by Matthew Hughes finds an archaeologist exploring the ruins of the Martian past in a place from which few have returned. Hughes plays with identity, past, and personality in this tale of obsession driving a man to discover what might be best left unexplored. Hughes conjured up a deep past for Mars in this story, and in some ways, a civilization that isn’t too dissimilar to our own.

Actually, Ray Bradbury did the conjuring. I borrowed the background from The Martian Chronicles.

And over at Tangent Online, Collen Chen reviews "Stones and Glass," my story in the November/December issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, now just out. She says the story is "engaging and tension-filled, with a solid fantasy world behind three-dimensional characters."

Lois Tilton reviews a couple of my short stories for Locus online. About "The Ugly Duckling," a Bradburyesque tale in Old Mars , the retro-anthology edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, she says,"The descriptions of the Martian ruins and the recordings of Martian life they hold are truly wondrous neat."

And then she looks at "Sleeper," the second episode in The Kaslo Chronicles, the science-fantasy novel I'm serializing in Lightspeed Magazine . She says, "The combination of character, setting, narrative voice and twisty plot make for the sort of entertaining tale that readers familiar with the author will expect . . ."

As an author of unabashedly old-fashioned science fantasy, I like Paul DiFilippo's take on Old Mars, the retro-anthology of stories set in the "Mars of the mind" that existed before the Mariner probe began the cold, hard factual exploration of the red planet.

He poses a good question: What is the relationship of the genre’s past to the present, actual and ideal? Should certain old-school tropes and themes be abandoned as false and inutile? Can we ever step in the same stream twice, and recapture glories and pleasures of old? Can postmodern approaches somehow lend a fresh aspect to the antique? Are attitudes toward such SF strictly determinable and predictable by membership in a given generation? Is the medium stagnating or advancing by continuing to create such stories?

Advancing, I'd say. The mileage of others may, however, vary.

The cross-genre anthology, Rogues , edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, has had its release date moved up by the publisher, Bantam. It will now be in stores as of June 17, instead of the fall. My story in the antho is "The Inn of the Seven Blessings," a tale of Raffalon the thief and his uncomfortable relationship with a minor deity.

George R.R. Martin has posted the ToC and release date (March 3, 2015) for Old Venus, another retro-sf anthology consisting of stories written by current authors set in the Venus-of-the-mind that existed before space probes and fly-bys showed our sister planet to be an acidic hell-hole hot enough to melt the eyeballs of anyone dumb enough to go there.

Here's who's in:

INTRODUCTION, by Gardner Dozois
FROGHEADS, by Allen M. Steele
THE DROWNED CELESTRIAL, by Lavie Tidhar
PLANET OF FEAR, by Paul McAuley
GREEVES AND THE EVENING STAR, by Matthew Hughes
A PLANET CALLED DESIRE, by Gwyneth Jones
LIVING HELL, by Joe Haldeman
BONES OF AIR, BONES OF STONE, by Stephen Leigh
RUINS, by Eleanor Arnason
THE TUMBLEDOWNS OF CLEOPATRA ABYSS, by David Brin
BY FROGSLED AND LIZARDBACK TO OUTCAST VENUSIAN LEPERS, by Garth Nix
THE SUNSET OF TIME, by Michael Cassutt
PALE BLUE MEMORIES, by Tobias S. Buckell
THE HEART'S FILTHY LESSON, by Elizabeth Bear
THE WIZARD OF THE TREES, by Joe R. Lansdale
THE GODSTONE OF VENUS, by Mike Resnick
BOTANICA VENERIS: THIRTEEN PAPERCUTS BY IDA COUNTESS RATHANGAN, by Ian McDonald

My contribution, "Greeves and the Evening Star" is a Jeeves-and-Bertie style Wodehousian romp.

This is the fourth Martin/Dozois antho I've been included in since Songs of the Dying Earth came out in 2010. The others are Old Mars and Rogues, the latter to be on sale a couple of weeks from now. I'm very interested to see if Rogues brings me new readers, because it looks to be heading for New York Times bestsellerdom, judging by the Amazon ranking. At the moment of writing, it's the number one selling sf/fantasy anthology, based on pre-orders, although it's actually a cross-genre work and a hardcover priced at US$22.21.

I haven't checked all the ToCs closely, but I may be the only author to be in all four anthos. I wasn't supposed to be in Old Mars, though; George and Gardner asked me to put in a story -- "The Ugly Duckling," a Martian Chronicles pastiche -- when someone dropped out at the last minute.

"Avianca's Bezel," a new adventure of my archetypal Dying-Earthish thief, Raffalon, is now scheduled to run in the September/October issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

For Raffalon aficonados who wish to keep track, this will be the third Raffalon story to appear in F&SF, after "Wearaway and Flambeau" and "Stones and Glass." I've sold two more of them to editor Gordon Van Gelder -- "Prisoner of Pandarius" and "Telltale" -- which should run over the next year.

And those who can't wait for the September/October ish of F&SF might want to consider picking up a copy of Rogues, the cross-genre anthology co-edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. It comes out on June 17 and contains the Raffalon novelette, "The Inn of the Seven Blessings."