The SF Site: New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy

The titles are sorted alphabetically by authors' last name. Links have been added to lead to related articles, excerpts, and other Web pages which might prove of interest. The cover thumbnail is a link to a larger version. A More button leads to further titles for this letter.

Michael Moorcock

Kane of Old Mars (Eternal Champion Volume 9)
White Wolf hard cover
The ninth volume of the Eternal Champion series continues the collection of Michael Moorcock's linked fiction with a fantasy series molded in the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs. On Earth, Michael Kane is a scientist, but after he's transported to the surface of an eon-old Mars he is forced to pick up a sword to survive. Oddly enough, this isn't the Mars of Pathfinder and Sojourner, but a place where monsters roam and adventure lurks behind every ancient rock... and where the clues to mankind's origins may be buried. Includes the novels City of the Beast, Lord of the Spiders, and Masters of the Pit.

Art: Bill Binger

The War Amongst the Angels
Avon (reprint, trade paperback, 298 pages, $12.50 US)
Publication date: November 11, 1998 (First Printing: December 1997)
"It's Scaramouche meets Douglas Adams as Rose and her friends fight the War in Heaven against the Dark Angel Lucifer" -- Amazon.com. Whew. How to describe this one. Well, to start with it's more or less the third novel in an unannounced trilogy which began with Blood (1995) and continued in Fabulous Harbors (1997). The main character is Rose von Bek, previously Rose Moorcock (which the author explains by admitting that this is an "autobiographical story"). Rose is born in London to upper class parents, but at the age of seven chooses the career of highwayman. Before long she discovers the doorway to the multiverse, gateway to the Second Ether, where the Chaos Engineers rule -- and where the impending war between the Chaos Engineers and the Singularity threatens all creation. "Endlessly re-inventive, purposefully bewildering, unquantifiable, and elusive -- typically Moorcock, in fact. Your move" -- Kirkus Reviews.

Fabulous Harbours
Avon trade paper
The middle book in an original "trilogy" than began with the southern fantasy Blood and continues with The War Amongst the Angels (below) is in fact a collection of eleven interlocking short stories (including two originals) featuring the Rose, von Bek, Jerry Cornelius and their companions. Follow the adventures of Elric as he enters a country where demons fall from the sky, or visit the desert where Albert Begg stumbles across lost temples and Egyptian gods. Even the marketing prose on the back of the book shines: "Moorcock fly us at dizzying altitudes from London squares, across turbulent seas, to the far Sahara and beyond -- where captive virgins shudder in impregnable towers protected by Hell and history; where angels rain down from the heavens; and where brilliant detectives track the heroes, villains and monsters who walk the worlds... or between them."

The War Amongst the Angels
Avon hard cover
The final volume in the unique trilogy that began with Blood is vintage Moorcock, the tale of Rose von Bek (a.k.a. Moorcock), a man born during the London blitz who discovers the doorway to the multiverse... and the impending war between the Singularity and the Chaos Engineers, a conflict that threatens not only the First and Second Ethers but creation itself. "Like Philip José Farmer, Moorcock agglomerates various historical and fiction mythic figures--Wild Bill Cody, Tom Mix, Sexton Blake, Dick Turpin--into his yeasty mix of characters, blurring the borderline between those composed of "mere" words and those fashioned of flesh and blood. If the Beatles' Yellow Submarine had been scripted by Fellini ... the result might have been The War Amongst the Angels." -- Asimov's SF.

Sailing To Utopia
White Wolf
White Wolf has done a superb job of reprinting Moorcock's fantasy and SF series work in attractive new volumes, and they continue that tradition with an omnibus volume that collects four of his related earlier novels: The Ice Schooner, Flux, The Black Corridor, and The Distant Suns. "Journey into the future, where today's most horrific ecological predictions are reality. In the eighth book of this exciting series, Ryan is trapped aboard a spaceship fleeing from a ruined Earth to the terrifying depths of an interstellar abyss--and his most profound fears and fantasies."

A Nomad of the Time Streams: The Eternal Champion Volume 4
White Wolf
Another quality omnibus from White Wolf. Clear some room on that bookshelf. Move the cat.

Corum: The Coming of Chaos
White Wolf
Another high-quality omnibus collection of Moorcock's early Sword and Scorcery classics, reprinting the further advantures of the Eternal Champion.

Fabulous Harbors
Avon
Moorcock returns to the multiverse of Blood with 11 interlocking stories.

Other Useful Stuff