Wastelands: Trailer + More Online Stories!

Wastelands sold out its initial print run, so Night Shade went back to press for a second printing, and from what I hear there were so many backorders that the second printing is going to be almost gone as well (though that’s bookstore orders, not actual sales per se, so it should be readily available wherever fine books are sold). To celebrate, I’ve made three more stories from the book available on the anthology’s website. So that’s now a total of six stories you can read online for free; the stories are by Elizabeth Bear, M. Rickert, Cory Doctorow, James Van Pelt, Richard Kadrey, and Tobias S. Buckell.

And speaking of Tobias, he put together a book trailer for the anthology and posted it to YouTube. It’s got some cool apocalyptic imagery, as well as original music by Jack Kincaid. Go check it out, and spread it around!

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Mind Meld: Science Fiction Series

The latest installment of SF Signal’s Mind Meld feature just went up today, and I’m again a part of the conversation. This time around, we’re talking about book series in SF and debating if they’re good or bad for the field and/or for readers. Joining me in the discussion are Lou Anders, Chris Roberson, Joe Sherry, and David Louis Edelman.

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Stuff You May Not Have Seen

Has everyone been popping over to the new F&SF blog to read all the wonderful goodness over there? I’ve posted a few more F&SF author interviews since we launched:

There’s also some other varied stuff. Like, for instance, we’re giving away a copy of the DVD of The Martian Child. Go view the contest rules and enter! Even if you don’t want it, you could give it to a friend or something. Do it for pride! I think the contest rules are fun. You should go play.

Also, I just posted the Jan. 2008: Favorite Story Poll the other day, so be sure to go vote. (Those won’t be appearing here anymore.)

So, anyway, I’m curious what you all think of the F&SF blog so far. How is it? What could we be doing better?

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Stainless Steel Review of Wastelands

Review blog Stainless Steel Droppings has a rave review of Wastelands, giving it a 4.5/5 rating. The reviewer says: "Editor John Joseph Adams’ collection of 22 stories, representing a wide-variety of post-apocalyptic scenarios from some of the field’s most prolific authors, is a must-have volume for fans of the this subgenre of science fiction. What makes Wastelands great, however, is that it contains the type and caliber of stories that should appeal to those who are simply fans of the format and are unsure of their feelings about post-apocalyptic literature." He also provides detailed commentary on each of the stories (with letter grades), singling out contributions by George R. R. Martin, Cory Doctorow, and David Grigg as being worth of A+ ratings.

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More free fiction

Jeremiah Tolbert, who has stories in both The Pirate Issue and in my forthcoming anthology Seeds of Change, just updated his bibliography on his website, and included links to all of his online fiction. Some good stuff there, go check it out.

  • "Spooning," Ideomancer, June, 2003. (read online)
  • "Storm Come’s A’Callin," Ideomancer, February, 2004. (read online)
  • "The Girl With the Sun in Her Head," Polyphony 4. (read online)
  • "Instead of a Loving Heart," All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories. (listen online)
  • "The Yeti Behind You" Fantasy Sampler, 2007. (read online)
  • "Captain Blood’s B00ty" Shimmer Magazine, 2007. (read online)
  • "Babe, I’m Going to Leave You" self-published, 2008. (read online)
     

Complete bibliography is here.

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Locus Reviews Pirates and Wastelands

There’s a new review of The Pirate Issue by Rich Horton in the new Locus. It’s very short, so the excerpt will be brief. He says "There were fine pieces in multiple modes," and adds that he liked the two SFnal stories best — Jeremiah Tolbert’s "Captain Blood’s B00ty" and James L. Cambias’s "The Barbary Shore."

Horton also reviews Wastelands, and says: "John Joseph Adams’s new anthology works quite nicely as a selection of such new stories of the end of the world. […] A first-rate anthology that quite convincingly represents the more recent SFnal view of the apocalypse."

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Download Butcher Bird by Richard Kadrey for Free

Night Shade Books is releasing the entire text of Richard Kadrey’s novel Butcher Bird available as a DRM-free download, in a wide variety of formats.

See below for the press release.

Back in 2005, a very different version of Richard Kadrey’s novel Butcher Bird began its life as a free download posted online at The Infinite Matrix. At the time, it was called Blind Shrike. In 2007, Night Shade Books published our version.

Now it’s back. With the cooperation of Richard Kadrey, Night Shade Books is proud to make the entire text of Butcher Bird available as a DRM-free download, in a wide variety of formats, so that everyone can enjoy this amazing novel of black magic and arcane mysteries, however and wherever they want. The World of Butcher Bird is one where angels and devils brawl in the streets, where the Black Clerks charged with keeping the Dominions in check have developed their own dark agenda, where the swordswoman known as Blind Shrike battles monsters in deadly combat, where a civil war has broken out in Hell, and where Spider Lee, an unassuming San Francisco tattoo artist, and his drinking buddy LuLu Garou, have been dropped right smack into the middle of the action.

Richard himself describes the book as "the Gnostic Gospels meets Wild at Heart." Butcher Bird is an odyssey that will take you from the San Francisco underground to decadent palaces to the very gates of Hell… and beyond!

Richard Kadrey is the author of six novels, including Angel Scene, Kamikaze L’Amour, and the quintessential cyberpunk novel Metrophage. His short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies, as well as the magazines Asimov’s, Interzone, Omni, and Wired.

Visit our Downloads page at http://www.nightshadebooks.com/downloads

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