NOVEMBER 26-DECEMBER 9, 2014: A fantastic and wide-ranging fortnight of releases for you to start December, including epic fantasy, hard sf, Arthurian legend, a whimsy from Murakami, a GraphicAudio magical noir, non-fiction, and more. Do check out some of the “also out” listings as well such as Kazuaki Takano’s A Genocide of One, Richard Parks’ Yamada Monogotari, and Felicia Hajra-Lee’s The Niantic Project: Ingress for Google’s Niantic Labs, and plenty of mysteries and thrillers besides, including Moriarty, MacDonald, and Raymond Chandler, and! a free Larry Correia “Grimnoir Chronicles” short read by Bronson Pinchot. Unfortunately there’s some absolutely fantastic books in the “seen but not heard” listings as well, including Jenn Brissett’s Elysium, Chris Bucholz’ Severance, Shannon Page and Jay Lake’s Our Lady of the Islands, N.K. Jemisin’s The Awakened Kingdom, Jim C. Hines’ Rise of the Spider Goddess, and the PW-year’s-best-lsited anthology The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women. Early December also brings the Audible availability of Jeff VanderMeer’s Area X omnibus of his Southern Reach trilogy. And I’ve added another absolutely huge round of “added” titles for 2015 in the “coming soon” listings, though quite a few have large variability for measurements of “soon”. Enjoy!

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

Carbide Tipped Pens edited by Ben Bova and Eric Choi (Tor, December 2, 2014) is a an original hard sf anthology with stories from Gregory Benford, Nancy Fulda, Aliette de Bodard, Liu Cixin (translated by Ken Liu), Daniel H. Wilson, Robert Reed, and more, narrated By Stefan Rudnicki, J. Paul Boehmer, Cassandra Campbell, Gabrielle de Cuir, Alex Hyde-White, and Judy Young for Blackstone Audio. “Over a dozen of today’s most creative imaginations explore these frontiers, carrying on the grand tradition of such legendary masters as Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and John W. Campbell, while bringing hard science fiction into the 21st century by extrapolating from the latest scientific developments and discoveries. Ranging from ancient China to the outer reaches of the solar system, this outstanding collection of original stories, written by an international roster of authors, finds wonder, terror, and gripping human drama in topics as diverse as space exploration, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, climate change, alternate history, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, interplanetary war, and even the future of baseball. From tattoos that treat allergies to hazardous missions to Mars and beyond, from the end of the world to the farthest limits of human invention,Carbide Tipped Pens turns startling new ideas into state-of-the-art science fiction.” The preface by Eric Choi, read by Rudnicki, is an interesting background to the anthology and the title’s meaning; I’d also like to single out the background science given in the introductions to the stories. While any anthology will provide hit-or-miss stories for its readers and listeners, there’s quite a lot here to savor and ponder over. Taking this anthology along with Neal Stephenson’s Hieroglyph project anthology, the state of near-future extrapolative hard sf is bright. Get: [Downpour | Audible | Overdrive]

The Godless: A Novel by Ben Peek, narrated by Chris Sorensen for Audible (Dec 2) was originally published in print/ebook back in August by Tor UK and (in the US) Thomas Dune Books. It’s also the first novel since 2007 (Black Sheep) for this Australian writer of whom Jeff VanderMeer wrote “a writer I fully expect to blunder out into the scene like a run-away brontosaurus” on the strength of his previous short work. Here, Peek begins a new epic fantasy series: “The Gods are dying. Fifteen thousand years after the end of their war, their bodies can still be found across the world. They kneel in forests, lie beneath mountains, and rest at the bottom of the world’s ocean.” Sorensen isn’t one of my favorite narrators, though here some of that is no real fault of his own. His work on John Shirley’s “A Song Called Youth” seems more well-cast to me, as for good or ill when I’m reading UK or Australian-authored epic fantasy the text seems to want a non-American accent. Here he’s clear, if a bit too deliberate, but the strength of the text makes it still an audiobook worth investigating.

The next two picks are widely divergent novellas of about two hours each, starting with The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami, translated by Ted Goossen (Knopf and Random House Audio, Dec 2, 2014) — an illustrated short novel of “A lonely boy, a mysterious girl, and a tormented sheep man plot their escape from the nightmarish library of internationally acclaimed, best-selling Haruki Murakami’s wild imagination.” Narrated very well by Kirby Heyborne for Random House Audio, it’s got quite a lot of Murakami’s themes in there: libraries, strange inexplicable things, but dialed down a bit for the younger audience. (But only a bit.) Get: [Downpour | Audible | Overdrive]

Winterswim by Ryan W. Bradley, read by Paul Michael Garcia for Blackstone Audio (Dec 8) “weaves religiosity and mythology into a tale of drugs, sex, and murder set against the frozen backdrop of blue-collar Alaska.” This one’s pretty dark and explicit and disturbing, very much in the vein of Katherine Faw Morris’ Young God and sharing with that title a blurry edge between “poverty drug sex porn” and a worthwhile literary examination of humanity’s darker corners. While the themes and events are themselves problematic, it is the Pahlaniukian (or evocative of Bret Easton Ellis, for that matter) use of the abuser/perpetrator’s POV in several chapters which causes the most flinching when I attempt to wrestle with this work. Many may have no interest (or be repulsed, or offended, or even hurt) in inhabiting the point of view of a disturbed drug-using pastor whose religious delusions cause him to prey upon vulnerable young girls in the worst ways possible. (This is not a spoiler — this is drawn from the prologue.) This is a novella of power, delusions, and it is not for everyone. It is however very well narrated by Paul Michael Garcia, written very well by Bradley, author of a short story collection, a novel, and three poetry collections including this year’s The Memory of Planets, and evokes more of the better forms of this genre than of the lurid, self-indulgent strains. Through the chapters from more sympathetic characters, we get a better picture of the wrongness here, though the overall affect is one more of emptiness and confusion than of any sort of redemption. Get: [Downpour | Audible]

The Martian Race by Gregory Benford, read by Gabrielle de Cuir for Skyboat Media (Dec 9) is Benford’s 2000 Locus Award and Prometheus Award nominee, set in a somewhat similar vein to Lewis Shiner’s 1984 novel Fontera, on which de Cuir narrates and which also just recently was released in audio. “From the Nebula Award–winning author of Timescape and Foundation’s Fear comes a hard-science thriller about the race to Mars. When an explosion of the rocket launching the Mars Transit Vehicle kills four crewmen, the US decides to redirect its energies to near-Earth projects, killing the manned mission to Mars. But tycoon John Axelrod assembles a consortium to fund the project, and he expects to net billions. But a European-Asian airbus will make a similar expedition. Now, the race is on to get to the Red Planet first.” Get: [Downpour | Audible]

The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell, narrated by Jonathan Keeble for Harper Audio (Dec 2) finally brings Cornwell’s mythology-infused historical fantasy to unabridged audio: “The tale begins in Dark Age Britain, a land where Arthur has been banished and Merlin has disappeared, where a child-king sits unprotected on the throne, where religion vies with magic for the souls of the people. It is to this desperate land that Arthur returns, a man at once utterly human and truly heroic: a man of honor, loyalty, and amazing valor; a man who loves Guinevere more passionately than he should; a man whose life is at once tragic and triumphant.” Get: [Downpour | Audible]

Hot Lead, Cold Iron by Ari Marmell (GraphicAudio, Dec 1) — out in print/ebook earlier this year, book one of Marmell’s new 1932 supernatural Chicago-set “Mick Oberon Job” series, adapted for full cast audioplay. For those not familiar with GraphicAudio, this isn’t a weird abridgment/radioplay adaptation kind of thing. It’s the text including descriptions of the novel, minus some dialog tags (“he said” and “she said” and “Mick yelled” — the appropriate actors simply perform these lines as they should be performed) and a few aural events (doors slamming, guns firing, etc. — we hear the appropriate sound effect instead) and plus a soundtrack, atmospheric/immersive sound effects, and more. The always-creative Marmell’s Chicago prohibition setting and colorful characters are a perfect fit for this format. (And if you like this kind of thing, stay tuned, GraphicAudio has a pile of fantastic titles coming up in the next months. And! The next Baen Audio Drama, due out in time for Christmas, has a very similar feel.)

Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age by Cory Doctorow, with forewords by Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer, read by Wil Wheaton for Blackstone Audio (Dec 2) was originally published by McSweeney’s on Nov 18. “In sharply argued, fast-moving chapters, Cory Doctorow’s Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free takes on the state of copyright and creative success in the digital age. Can small artists still thrive in the Internet era? Can giant record labels avoid alienating their audiences? This is a book about the pitfalls and the opportunities that creative industries (and individuals) are confronting today — about how the old models have failed or found new footing, and about what might soon replace them.” Wheaton narrating this is a perfect fit, so for those looking for some creative non-fiction listening this month, this is where it’s at.

ALSO OUT THIS WEEK:

ALSO ALSO OUT THIS WEEK:

SEEN BUT NOT HEARD:

COMING SOON:

2015 and LATER: