The Sword and Laser discussion

New Thread for a new year. Please share your SFF news here.

I was refreshing my memory on the publishing order of the Elric books (I think S&L may have chosen the... not ideal part to start with), and came across the news that Apple and David Goyer (of Foundation series) are working on a potential multiverse of shows based on Moorcock's Eternal Champion concept.

Moorcock says they own the rights to Elric so one of these series could focus on the Elric incarnation of The Eternal Champion. I'm excited, and hope everyone can give Moorcock another chance if/when these series are produced.

Moorcock states he is beginning work on assisting with these series in 2023:

https://tripwiremagazine.co.uk/headli...

"TW: Is there any news on the Elric TV show or the Hawkmoon one at the BBC?  

MM: Apple are contracting for The Eternal Champion series with David Goyer who also did Sandman and Foundation and, like Neil, I’ll be working with him on the series. I’ll be starting in the New Year. Apple now hold the option in all main EC characters, including Elric."

David Goyer on 'Batman Unburied' Spinoffs, 'Eternal Champion' Series

https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/davi...

"Meanwhile, Goyer and Levine have plenty of other adapting challenges to take on, including a very new one: The two are working with “Foundation” writer Dana Jackson on developing sci-fi author Michael Moorcock’s “The Eternal Champion” and “Von Bek” books into a suite of interlinked dramatic series for Skydance and Apple.

Goyer notes that before the multiverse became all the rage, Moorcock invented the concept with many of his stories centering around Elric, a hero doomed to be reborn again and again on different planes.

“He is cursed to always remember his previous incarnations, and sometimes those incarnations are female, as well. Sometimes it’s male, sometimes it’s female, spanning different races,” Goyer said. “And until he can heal the world’s pain, he’s going to continue this quest.”"

Apple Books quietly launches AI-narrated audiobooks
https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/5/235...

A_Posthuman wrote: "He is cursed to always remember his previous incarnations..."
That doesn't sound like the Elric I know. His adventures into other planes often fade into dream-like memories if he remembers anything at all from them. When he does meet his other incarnations he sometimes feels a kinship for them but has no clue who they are.

P Djèlí Clark reviews Kindred (streaming series):

https://disgruntledharadrim.com/2023/...

https://www.philipkdickaward.org/

The Philip K. Dick Award nominees have been announced:

Arboreality by Rebecca Campbell
Widowland by C.J. Carey
Ymir by Rich Larson
January Fifteenth by Rachel Swirsky
The Legacy of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson
The Extractionist by Kimberly Unger

The winner will be announced April 7, 2023 at Norwescon 45.

Daniel O’Malley has just published his third book in the Checquy series, titled “Blitz” (following The Rook and Stiletto). The book is set in two timelines, Great Britain during the German bombing in 1940 and present time. Lots more history of the Checquy, training techniques and of course lots of strange supernatural powers!

https://deadline.com/2023/01/stephen-...

Known genre fan Stephen Colbert is joining The Walking Dead author Robert Kirkman in producing an adaptation Of Roger Zelanzny’s ‘The Chronicles Of Amber’ series.

According to Deadline the story of Nine Princes in Amber follows "Corwin, who awakens on Earth with no memory, but soon finds he is a prince of a royal family that has the ability to travel through different dimensions of reality, called shadows, and rules over the one true world, Amber.

The books, which have sold over 15M copies, are one of the inspirations for Game of Thrones, whose author George R.R. Martin is a noted fan. Martin said in October, that he “will never understand why Corwin and his siblings are not starring in their own show, and hey, if epic fantasy continues to do well, maybe we will finally get that”."

If the world is too dark for you currently: Bookriot has released their list of top 20 must read cozy fantasy novels from The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna over The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa and A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher to Root Magic by Eden Royce

https://bookriot.com/best-cozy-fantas...

New SFF books for January to June this year. Many I haven’t seen on other lists, including a sequel to Lovecraft Country from Matt Ruff.

https://www.polygon.com/23546367/new-...

Chengdu World Con announced new dates: 18-22 October 2023. Source: https://twitter.com/chengduworldcon/s...

And look at that venue (Chengdu Sci-fi Museum). Looks amazing! https://newatlas.com/architecture/zah...

I have attending rights, so hopefully I could go there. Wish me luck!

Otherwise winners announced:

https://www.tor.com/2023/01/24/ryka-a...

Sword and Laser pick Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki won along with Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon.

It turns out that the forthcoming Murderbot tale is a full-length novel (with cover reveal)!

https://www.tor.com/2023/01/24/cover-...

System Collapse by Martha Wells is coming November 24, 2023 from Tordotcom Publishing

John Scalzi is the 2023 winner of the Robert A. Heinlein Award.

https://twitter.com/Balticon/status/1...

The award is bestowed for outstanding published works in science fiction and technical writings that inspire the human exploration of space. It will be presented at Balticon2023

Scalzi on winning the award
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2023/01/2...

Green Ronin is running a crowdfunding campaign for a Fifth season RPG. Looks like they will soon be funded.

https://www.backerkit.com/c/green-ron...

Debra wrote: "Daniel O’Malley has just published his third book in the Checquy series, titled “Blitz” (following The Rook and Stiletto). The book is set in two timelines, Great Britain during the German bombing ..."

I assume this is an publication date in USA, I bought the ebook in October (Kobo).

Today is library award day, and I always check what the American Library Association's RUSA subdivision recommends as their genre books of the last year.

https://rusaupdate.org/2023/01/2023-r...

I'll paste in the Fantasy and Sci-fi winners.

Fantasy:

Winner

“Nettle & Bone” by T. Kingfisher (A Tor Book, published by Tom Doherty Associates)

A reclusive princess and her unlikely companions, including a loyal bone dog, her fairy godmother, and a demon chicken, embark on an epic quest to save her sister.

Read-alikes: “The Bone Houses” by Emily Lloyd-Jones; “Uprooted” by Naomi Novik; “Once More Upon a Time” by Roshani Chokshi

Short List

“Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution” by R. F. Kuang (Harper Voyager, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers)

“In the Shadow of Lightning” by Brian McClellan (A Tor Book, published by Tom Doherty Associates)

“Legends and Lattes: A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes” by Travis Baldree (Cryptid Press)

“The Monsters We Defy” by Leslye Penelope (Redhook, an imprint of Orbit, a division of Hachette Book Group)

Science fiction

Winner

“Drunk On All Your Strange New Words” by Eddie Robson (A Tordotcom Book, published by Tom Doherty Associates)

Lydia works as a telepathic translator for an alien cultural representative. When he is murdered on a night Lydia barely remembers due to hours of translating, she comes under suspicion. Determined to clear her name, Lydia investigates a lead from an unexpected source.

Read-alikes: “Station Eternity” by Mur Lafferty; “Axiom’s End” by Lindsay Ellis; “Embassytown” by China Miéville

Short List

“Braking Day” by Adam Oyebanji (DAW Books, Inc.)

“Mickey7” by Edward Ashton (St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group)

“The Mountain in the Sea” by Ray Nayler (MCD, Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

“Under Fortunate Stars” by Ren Hutchings (Solaris, an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd)

Also awarded at ALA, the Alex Awards, which recognize the ten best adult books that appeal to teen readers, including a few SF&F titles (linked).

https://www.tor.com/2023/01/30/john-s...

The 2023 Alex Award winners are:

A Lady’s Guide to Fortune-Hunting by Sophie Irwin (Pamela Dorman Books)
Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R. F. Kuang (Harper Voyager)
Chef’s Kiss, written by Jarrett Melendez, illustrated by Danica Brine (Oni Press)
Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan (Harper Voyager)
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (Simon & Schuster)
Solito: A Memoir by Javier Zamora (Hogarth)
The High Desert: Black. Punk. Nowhere. written and illustrated by James Spooner (Harper)
The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi (Tor Books)
True Biz by Sara Nović (Random House)
Wash Day Diaries, written by Jamila Rowser, illustrated by Robyn Smith (Chronicle Books)

Locus has posted their 2022 Recommended Reading list:

https://locusmag.com/2023/02/2022-rec...

This month's pick is listed.

Other favorites of mine:

The Spare Man
Sea of Tranquility
The Golden Enclaves

Boom! Studios just launched (and funded) a kickstarter for a new The Expanse graphic novel. Well technically three graphic novels.

http://kck.st/3I4uYmN

My part of the internet has recently been set "ablaze" by the news that Lego is releasing in March a 6,000+ piece Lord of the Rings "Rivendell" set.

It looks so good!

It has 15 mini figures!

And it's 500 $....

*sigh*

https://jaysbrickblog.com/reviews/exc...

Jan wrote: "My part of the internet has recently been set "ablaze" by the news that Lego is releasing in March a 6,000+ piece Lord of the Rings "Rivendell" set.

It looks so good!

It has 15 mini figures!

An..."

I was eyeing up this set on the Lego website yesterday evening! Our house is rapidly running out of space for Lego sets already… but it does look awesome.

This is the first time I've seen the Wall Street Journal review a fantasy book, and they reviewed two. I hope it's not behind their paywall.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/science-...

Cy wrote: "This is the first time I've seen the Wall Street Journal review a fantasy book, and they reviewed two. I hope it's not behind their paywall.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/science-......"

It’s paywalled. No way I’m giving Rupert Murdoch any damn money.

Trike wrote: "Cy wrote: "This is the first time I've seen the Wall Street Journal review a fantasy book, and they reviewed two. I hope it's not behind their paywall.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/science-...-..."

I understand. I feel the same about the NYT.

I looked in Google hoping to find a non-paywall version. Nope. Clicked the link from Google just to see. It opened for me. Had to close some annoying boxes but only that.

Paper "examines Frank Herbert's science fiction classic Dune from the perspectives of economic history and institutional economics".

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...

Somewhat interesting, if you're ok with the academic perspective. Open access, click one of the Download/PDF links to see the actual content.

Edit: Moved the info for the release of "The Swarm" adaptation to the thread for trailers.

That's a long book too (37 hrs audiobook). I read the author's other book about the moon.

They whittled it down to an 8 episode mini series. ;-)

Streaming starts in Germany tomorrow --- I'll report on discord how it is!

Jan wrote: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Squf...

There is a new trailer for the adaptation of Frank Schätzing's Science Fiction novel "The Swarm". It's the most expensive German TV show ever made (whic..."

There’s a thread for trailers: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I know it's maybe not meant as an attack but suddenly I am losing a little bit of interest in looking for stuff for the quick burns

Follow your passion.

Jan wrote: "I know it's maybe not meant as an attack but suddenly I am losing a little bit of interest in looking for stuff for the quick burns"

I wasn’t attacking, just pointing out that a thread exists. Tom once mentioned that movies and TV series are a bit outside the scope of S&L, so it’s easier to just keep them in one place.

Thanks for clarifying!

I think the stuff about movies and TV series only applies to those that are not adaptations of novels. If it's an adaptation of a science fiction or fantasy novel (like The Swarm) it should be fair game for the quick burns.

Yes PLEASE post TV and movie stuff here if related to SciFi and fantasy books. Thanks Jan!!!

Tom wrote: "Yes PLEASE post TV and movie stuff here if related to SciFi and fantasy books. Thanks Jan!!!"

In that case, prepare thyself for the avalanche, ‘cause I’m all about dem trailers, boyyy.

The shortlists for the LA Times book prizes are announced here:
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment...

This includes their Ray Bradbury prize for Science Fiction and Fantasy, those nominees are:

Sara Gran, “The Book of the Most Precious Substance”

Nicola Griffith, “Spear”

Alex Jennings, “The Ballad of Perilous Graves”

Ray Nayler, “The Mountain in the Sea: A Novel”

George Saunders, “Liberation Day: Stories”

From Deadline:

Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav announced during the company’s Q4 2022 earnings call that New Line Cinema and Warner Bros Pictures have agreed with Embracer Group’s Middle-Earth Enterprises to make new Lord of the Rings movies.

https://deadline.com/2023/02/lord-of-...

A newly rediscovered trove of Terry Pratchett stories is on its way to publication. News comes courtesy of Gail Carriger's twitter feed.

Gail's note:
https://twitter.com/gailcarriger/stat...

Direct link to article:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...

A stage version of Stranger Things is coming to London
https://uk.strangerthingsonstage.com/...

It appears to be a prequel and is co-authored by Jack Thorne who co-wrote the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (this might not be a recommendation)

They have various Social Media bits set up (@STOnStage) including YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwDB...

Orbit Books announces more Fonda Lee! Orbit will publish a new science fiction duology from the World Fantasy Award-winning author of Jade City!

"Inspired by samurai movies and Fonda’s former business career, The Last Contract of Isako is a searing space opera like no other that takes aim squarely at late-stage capitalism. Get ready to meet an aging contractor, Ithmus Isako, whose final mission thrusts her deep into a world of espionage and sword fights on an isolated colony planet."

https://www.orbitbooks.net/2023/03/01...

Mark wrote: "Orbit Books announces more Fonda Lee! Orbit will publish a new science fiction duology from the World Fantasy Award-winning author of Jade City!

"Inspired by samurai movies and Fonda’s former busi..."

Winter 2025!

…I will have completely forgotten about it by then. (Oh, who’m I kidding? I’ll have forgotten it 15 minutes from now. My “coming soon” retention is getting shorter and shorter.)

Trike wrote: "I will have completely forgotten about it by then. (Oh, who’m I kidding? I’ll have forgotten it 15 minutes from now. My “coming soon” retention is getting shorter and shorter.)"

or you could put it in your calendar

Season 2 of Shadow and Bone, based on the Grishaverse books by Leigh Bardugo, will drop on Netflix on March 16th. You can watch the trailer here:
https://youtu.be/0dOmcdz-PN0

Gene Wolfe (1931-2019) joins other notable authors who have released books posthumously; he has two collections coming out this year.

The Wolfe at the Door - Tor
https://us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

An all new collection from an American literary icon

The circus comes to town… and a man gets to go to the stars.

A young girl on a vacation at the sea meets the man of her dreams. Who just happens to be dead. And an immortal pirate.

A swordfighter pens his memoirs… and finds his pen is in fact mightier than the sword.

Welcome to Gene Wolfe’s playground, a place where genres blend and a genius’s imagination straps you in for the ride of your life.

The Wolfe At The Door is a brand new collection from one of America’s premiere literary giants, showcasing material never been before seen. Short stories, yes, but also poems, essays and ephemera that gives us a window into the mind of a literary powerhouse whose world view changed generations of readers in their perception of the universe.

The Dead Man and Other Horror Stories - Subterranean Press
https://subterraneanpress.com/tdmaohs/

Although best known for his world-building Book of the New Sun science-fantasy saga, Gene Wolfe wrote brilliant fiction that resisted encapsulation within rigid genre categories. This volume collects twenty-eight tales spanning nearly a half century—six of them never before collected—and gathered from venues as varied as men’s magazines, periodicals devoted to short works of fantasy and science fiction, and tribute anthologies to the works of authors as wildly opposed in their literary visions as Dante and H. P. Lovecraft. Although selected for their overtones of “horror,” they frequently defy the conventions that contemporary category label conjures.

Take “Talk of Mandrakes,” a tale of malignant exo-biology spun from an ancient occult legend steeped in sex magic. Or “The Other Dead Man,” a story set aboard an interstellar spacecraft that would distinguish any anthology of zombie fiction it appeared in. “Innocent” is cast in the form of a dramatic monologue whose creepy first-person narrator details increasingly aberrant behavior that defies the formal psychological diagnosis it cries out for. And “In the House of Gingerbread” recasts a classic children’s fairy tale as a dark noir whodunit.

To be sure, Wolfe Willingly embraced horror’s classic tropes, but he reworked them into remarkably original signatures through his personal creative ingenuity: There is much lycanthropy, but nary a hairy transformation in his futuristic “The Hero as Werwolf.” “The Vampire Kiss” reinterprets its titular monster as a scourge of the poor in Dickensian London. And in “Why I Was Hanged,” the disadvantages of accepting advice from the ghosts of the living are made abundantly manifest.

Their macabre inflections notwithstanding Wolfe’s horror stories abound with affecting character studies that cleave the distance between the horrible and the human: the changeling child adapting to an unfamiliar life as a mortal in “Queen of the Night”; the investigator in “The Detective of Dreams” dedicated by occupation to freeing his clients from their nightmares; the woman in “Uncaged,” whose feral persona may be an expression of her true self. Wolfe’s tales of horror, like all of his fiction, are stories in which readers—however uneasily—recognize, and relate to, much of themselves.

Limited: 1000 numbered hardcover copies

Cover reveal for the sequel to Legends & Lattes, titled Bookshops & Bonedust:



It’s a prequel set 20 years before L&L.

Travis Baldree
@TravisBaldree
I turned in my current draft of Bookshops & Bonedust today - a sort-of-prequel to Legends & Lattes set 20 years prior. This is right about the time I wrote the outline for L&L for last year’s NaNoWriMo. An awful lot has happened in the last 12 months. Thank you for everything. ❤️
9:01 PM · Oct 25, 2022

Nov 7, 2023: https://us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

Trailer for Silo, based on the Hugh Howey novel: Wool Omnibus. Apple TV, May 5th.

https://youtu.be/bBMajXwi6Cs

Looks amazing. What a set!

Breaking Dragon Week editorial!

What Kind of Burrito Would You Feed a Dragon? John Scalzi Answers!

https://www.torforgeblog.com/2023/03/...