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.

Pages | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |

Books by Robert Silverberg

Books by Dan Simmons

Blueheart
Alison Sinclair
HarperPrism (paperback, 537 pages, $6.50 US/$8.50 Canada)
Publication date: May, 1998
Second hefty paperback from newcomer Sinclair, author of Legacies. "Of all the worlds discovered by star-wandering humanity, Blueheart with its endless, storm-tossed seas is the most beautiful. And the most doomed. Plans are already being made to terraform the planet into another Earth. But deep under the floating forests, the renegade Adaptive--the planet's first colonists--have another dream: the creation of a new aquatic human subspecies. As their struggle erupts into violence, Rache is called back to the seas, where he must choose between his humanity and his world." Lucius Shepard calls Sinclair's work "World-building of an intricacy and invention to rival Herbert and Clarke."

Deal With a Ghost
Marilyn Singer
Holt hard cover
Sixteen-year-old Delia is more eager to play a dating game than to adapt to her new school, and when she goes after a new friend's boyfriend she succeeds in winning him. But soon she finds a personal connection to the ghost said to be haunting the school: she's the ghost of a girl that Deal's grandmother wronged years ago.

Forever Knight: A Stirring of Dust
Susan Sizemore
Boulevard paperback
The murder victims were found decapitated in downtown Toronto. And Nick thinks that one of his own kind is responsible: a vampire, an inhuman monster with a centuries-old score to settle.

Virtual War
Gloria Skurzynski
Simon & Schuster hard cover
Latest work from the author of Cyberstorm. By the year 2080 plague and war have driven the two million survivors of the human race into domed cities. Young Corgan and Sharla, however, suffer little hardship -- genetically bred to fight in a virtual war between the world's remaining superpowers, they are pampered and protected. But in a war for the Hiva Islands, the first surface sites fit for human habitation, one of the casualties is truth, and Corgan and Sharla team up to find out just what truths they are being protected from.

Art: Kazuhiko Sano

Star Trek: Vulcan!
Kathleen Sky
Bantam Spectra (reprint, paperback, 175 pages, $5.50 US/$7.50 Can)
Publication date: October 14, 1998 (First Printing: September, 1978)
Part of Bantam's Star Trek reprint series, a novel by the author of Star Trek: Death's Angel Witchdame which first appeared exactly twenty years ago. "The Neutral Zone is slowly moving. Soon Arachne, a planet previously located in Federation space, will be in the hands of the Romulans. And Arachne is inhabited. Desperate not to lose any potential allies to the Romulan Empire, the Federation dispatches the Enterprise to determine, once and for all, whether the Arachnians are sentient -- and, if so, whether they deserve membership. Part of the team is Dr. Katalya Tremaine, a brilliant scientist with an irrational loathing of Vulcans. Not only must she serve with the inscrutable Spock, she finds that he will be on the away team that lands on Arachne. It is a tense situation, made all the worse when she and Spock are stranded alone on the planet, and utterly dependent on each other for survival."

Evil Eye
Michael Slade
Penguin/Signet
More creepy goings-on from Signet.

Art: Broeck Steadman

The Night the Heads Came
William Sleator
Puffin (reprint, paperback, 155 pages, $4.99 US/$6.99 Canada)
Publication date: June 1998
William Sleator's reputation as an effective deliverer of Young Adult chills is growing with each book. His latest volumes include The Boxes and The Beasties. Leo doesn't believe in aliens -- until he and his friend Tim are abducted one night on a deserted road. When Leo regains consciousness, Tim is gone, and no one believes his crazy story. After a round of hypnosis with a psychiatrist, even he doesn't believe it. But then his memories begin to come back... and so does Tim. And Leo knows they're both in terrible danger.
The Beasties review by Neil Walsh
The Boxes review by Victoria Strauss

The Children Star
Joan Slonczewski
Tor (hardcover, 349 pages, $24.95 US/$34.95 Can)
Publication date: September 10, 1998
Slonczewski's previous works, such as The Wall Around Eden, established her as a warm and human story-teller who didn't skip on the hard science. She reaffirms that talent with her newest novel, set in the same universe as two of her most popular early works. "A triumphant return to the universe of A Door into Ocean and Daughter of Elysium, this new hard SF adventure tells the story of a greedy corporation whose plans to terraform a planet will signal the end for a simple colony of orphans."

Peter Peebles

The Forever Drug (Shadowrun, Book 37)
Lisa Smedman
Roc (paperback, 272 pages, $5.99/$7.99 Can)
Publication date: June 1, 1999
This is the first fantasy novel I've found set in my home town of Halifax, Nova Scotia. I don't know about you, but it's on the top of my reading list. "Working freelance for the Lone Star police department, Romulus dreams of becoming an official uniformed officer. But as a "shifter" --a wolf who can assume human form -- he is not recognized as a person by the government. When he meets "Jane Doe," a beautiful amnesiac who is linked to a major smuggling ring, he sees his chance to prove himself worthy by cracking the case. But who is importing the tentacled monsters that leave their victims smiling in their death throes? And why are so many people interested in "Jane?" In his search for the answers, Romulus may discover the secret to immortality...."

Shadowrun #23: The Lucifer Deck
Lisa Smedman
Penguin/ROC paperback
Newest installment in the series based on FASA's near-future cyberpunk-fantasy role playing game.

Art: John Bolton

Predator: Big Game
Sandy Schofield
Bantam Spectra (paperback, 228 pages, $4.99 US/$7.50 Can)
Publication date: February 9, 1999
Sandy Schofield (the pen name for husband and wife team Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch) is also the author of Star Trek: The Big Game, which no doubt is the kind of thing that causes lots of confusion on a resume. This one is based on a Dark Horse comic series from 1996 written by John Arcudi and illustrated by Denny Beauvais and Evan Dorkin, and based on the Predator movies. "Corporal Enoch Nakai is a young American Indian with a rough past and an even rougher present. Stationed in the American Southwest, he and his good buddy Dietl go on a recon patrol to investigate a small disturbance, but discover that this disturbance is anything but small. Try a seven-foot, extraterrestrial who's armed to the teeth and lookin' for trouble!"

The Tenth Planet (The Tenth Planet Trilogy, Book 1)
Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Del Rey (paperback, 264 pages, $5.99/$6.99 Can)
Publication date: June 1, 1999
The Tenth Planet is the opening volume in an adventure trilogy based an upcoming computer game of the same title (from a story by Rand Marlis and Christoper Weaver), from Bethesda Softworks, the top-notch design company behind The Elder Scrolls and Redguard. "2017: Near the Planet Uranus. After a deep-space satellite mysteriously stops transmitting, the Hubble III telescope picks up a startling image. Astronomers don't know what the strange object is--only that it orbits past Earth every two millennia. Meanwhile, archaeologist Leo Cross has discovered peculiar layers of black residue at dig sites around the globe. Stranger still, these thin bands occur like clockwork every 2,006 years, coinciding with some of the world's darkest moments in history. We have six months to prepare for the next arrival. This time we know something is coming. This time we have weapons to defend us. This time we'll be wrong... again."

Double Helix, Book Two: Vectors (Star Trek: The Next Generation #52)
Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Pocket (paperback, 260 pages, $6.50/$8.99 Can)
Publication date: June 7, 1999
Second entry in the series. Dr. Kate Pulaski, replaced by the returning Beverly Crusher, leaves the Enterprise for Terok Nor (soon to be renamed and commissioned as Deep Space 9). There she finds a mysterious plague killing both the Bajoran slaves and their Cardassian masters. As she fights to find the cause and the cure, she runs afoul of Gul Dukat's efforts to protect his station. Additional characters include the Bajoran freedom fighter Kira Nerys, Captain Picard & Dr. Crusher, as well as Odo, Quark, Rom, & Nog. While connected to the previous volume, it is advertised as a stand-alone work. The third book, Red Sector, will feature Ambassador Spock and Dr. McCoy.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
edited by Dean Wesley Smith; with John J. Ordover and Paula M. Block
Pocket Books trade paper
"All-new Star Trek adventures -- by the fans, for the fans!" Eighteen stories from fan writers that cover all four series, the product of a competition said to have drawn over three thousand entries. I dunno. Is this a good idea? Could be exciting new work which injects new enthusiasm into Trek fiction, or could be a whoppin' 400 pages of amateur fiction. Might be both. Decide for yourself.

Steel
Dean Wesley Smith
Tor
Based on the screenplay by Kenneth Johnson and Kenny Buford and the DC comic book, this is the novelization of the new Warner Bros. movie starring Shaquille O'Neal. L.A. is threatened by the arrival of a devastating superweapon on the street. John Henry Irons, former weapons expert in the U.S. military, returns home only to find the top secret weapons he helped create in the hands of local street thugs.

Jim Burns

Bretta Martyn (Henry Martyn, Book Two)
L. Neil Smith
Tor (reprint, paperback, 433 pages, $6.99/$8.99 Can)
Publication date: October, 1998 (First Edition: August, 1997)
Sorry -- I'm just such a sucker for pirate novels, especially space pirate novels. And let's face it, there just isn't a big market for Space Pirate novels these days. Who knows why, but it's all tied in with the decay and downfall of Western Civilization, I'm certain of it. "Bretta, Henry Martyn's daughter, is ejected from a spaceship by her father's old nemesis... left for dead, adrift in space. But resourceful Bretta finds haven on a strange world of escaped slaves. Determined to seek justice and have her revenge, Bretta blazes a new chapter in the interstellar piracy of her father, the dread Henry Martyn."

Tom Hallman

One of Us
Michael Marshall Smith
Bantam Spectra (reprint, paperback, 349 pages, $6.50 US)
Publication date: July 6, 1999 (First Edition: August 1998)
New novel of near-future suspense from the author of Spares. "Hap Thompson had never been that good a criminal. So it's a lucky thing he's discovered something that pays even better than crime. And it's legal. Almost. Hap is a receiver at REMtemp, working during the night hours, having people's dreams for them. Hap is one of the best REMtemp has ever seen. He's so good they offer him some under-the-cover work -- taking on memories instead of dreams for clients who have something to forget. And in a world falling apart at the seams, there's no shortage of business. All Hap has to do is carry the memories for a couple of hours. Just long enough for a client to have an affair without guilt. Or pass a lie detector test for a crime she suddenly can't remember. Everyone wins. Until a beautiful young woman who committed murder leaves Hap her memory... and won't take it back."

Spares
Michael Marshall Smith
Bantam Spectra paperback
Ex-detective Jack Randall was one of the first soldiers sent into The Gap, a portion of Virginia where the ever-expanding virtual world coalesced into something solid. He emerged two years later, scarred by The Fear, The Gap's defense mechanism. Twenty years later Jack is addicted to Rapt, the only known drug able to fight The Fear, and working at the only job still available to him: a guard at a Spares farm. Spares are clones for the rich, grown to be cannibalized when their originals require replacement parts. But when Jack grows attached to a group of Spares, he soon finds himself on the run with seven of the Farm's inmates. Optioned by DreamWorks SKG, for those of you who care about such things. "If a novel was ever destined to follow Ridley Scott's classic filming of Philip K. Dick's Blade Runner, this is it." -- Kirkus Reviews.

Shadowrun #24: Steel Rain
Nyx Smith
Penguin/Roc paperback
It falls to a female member of an elite battalion of Elven samurai to uncover a sinister blackmail scheme involving the death of several top executives. But to do so means defeating a foe with seemingly unlimited powers and absolutely no mercy. Nyx Smith also wrote the Shadowrun novel Striper Assasin, also based on the popular SF/Fantasy role-playing game from FASA.

Books by Sherwood Smith

Other Nature
Stephanie Smith
Tor trade paper
She had two superb DAW titles in the mid-80's, Snow-Eyes and The Boy Who Was Thrown Away. It's the middle of the next century, after a series of diseases have ravaged the civilized world. But in a small community on the Oregon coast, something startling is happening. A novel of hope, transformation, and genetic engineering.

The Innamorati
Midori Snyder
Tor (hardcover, 381 pages, $24.95 US/$34.95 Canada)
Publication date: July 10, 1998
Snyder is the author of the unusual novel The Flight of Michael McBride, and it doesn't look like she's moved any closer to the safe, crowded centre of the genre with this one. Four sets of companions in Renaissance Italy undertake a journey to the magical Great Maze at the heart of the city Labirinto, there to come together in search of the legendary cure the great labyrinth is said to bestow. Among the pilgrims are Anna Forsetti, the finest mask-maker in Venice, who can no longer practice her craft; Captain Rinaldo, a duelist who longs to give up a life of violence; Fabrizio, a would-be actor plagued by a stutter; and Erminia, the siren disguised as a goatherd, who hopes to outwit her ancient enemy Orpheus and win freedom for her people. "Snyder's Renaissance Italy is a supremely entertaining setting, teeming with hustlers, poets, and lovers, and her shimmering Maze will work its magic on readers as well." -- Booklist.

The Flight of Michael McBride
Midori Snyder
Tor paperback
here is a fantasy novel of the American West.

Star Trek Sketchbook: The Original Series
Herbert F. Solow and Yvonne F. Fern
Pocket hard cover
Latest in the seemingly endless series of tomes devoted to Paramount's cash cow. This one at least has an original approach: "Construct new and strange worlds. Create new life forms. Devise a futuristic look. And do it all in a week and on budget. This was the mission for the creative staff of the original Star Trek series." A nice presentation of sketches and ideas from the folk behind the curtain of the original series.

Darker Angels
S. P. Somtow
Tor hard cover
Supernatural horror from the author of Moon Dance and Vanitas, based on his Bram Stoker Award-nominated short story of the same title. Spanning the bloodstained battlefields of Virginia to the slave auctions of Haiti, and with a cast of characters that includes Walt Whitman, Abraham Lincoln, Lord Byron, and Marie Leveau -- the legendary voodoo queen of New Orleans -- Darker Angels spins the epic story of a mysterious, one-eyed shaman who plots to raise the dead from the battlefields of the Civil War. I saw the PBS series -- I'd say he's got his work cut out for him.

Vanitas: Escape From Vampire Junction
S.P. Somtow
Tor hard cover
Timmy Valentine is back and a mortal in this sequel to Vampire Junction and Valentine. But will this ageless rock star locked in the body of a twelve year-old boy still be able to deliver the goods his fans expect?

The Taming
Heather Spears
Tesseract paperback
The final volume of the series begun with Moonfall and The Children of Atwar--by Canadian author Spears (Govenor- General award-winning poet).

Shadowrun: Worlds Without End
Caroline Spector
Roc paperback
Here is the newest installment of series based on the game.

Irrational Fears
William Browning Spencer
White Wolf (hardcover, $19.99 US)
Publication date: August, 1998
The latest novel from the talented author of Zod Wallop and Resume With Monsters is as unique as you'd expect -- featuring alcholism, Lovecraftian horror, and bizarre humor in equal mix. Senior Editor Neil Walsh enjoyed it and shares his thoughts in his review below. "Browning's latest excursion into horror and humor finds his oddball characters passionately contending with chaos, self-help, alcoholism, recovery, and -- of course -- real monsters."
SF Site Review by Neil Walsh

The Return of Count Electric
William Browning Spencer
White Wolf paperback
A fine collection of eleven fantasy stories from the author of Resume With Monsters, Zod Wallop, and the upcoming Irrational Fears, and one which demonstrates Spencer's gifted range -- and just how far he can bend the boundaries of traditional "modern fantasy." "The Wedding Photographer in Crisis" finds a photographer, faced with a reluctant groom and the prospect of a completely wasted day, seeking his own solution to the problem. In "Haunted by the Horror King," a young man is convinced he can hear Stephen King's typewriter clattering day and night, and "The Entomologists at Obala" presents us with two battling naturalists in a South American rain forest violently at odds over which endangered species is more important. The title story concerns a narrator desperately searching the house of his serial killer father for a death machine, and the novella "Looking Out For Eleanor" is a black comedy of a social worker obsessed with an attractive client, eventually going so far as to follow her and her seedy boyfriends to Florida. "Spencer's intimacy with perversion and obsession makes for exceptional storytelling, and his serial killers, fighters, and demented souls make unforgettable companions." -- Booklist.

Zod Wallop
William Browning Spencer
White Wolf paperback
There is no way to describe this book. For fans of Jonathan Carroll.

Journals of the Plague Years
Norman Spinrad
Bantam trade paper
How about a novel of a sexual plague and its effects on society? First published in Full Spectrum in 1988.

Pictures at Eleven
Norman Spinrad
Bantam paperback
Eco-terrorists take a California television station hostage. Dark satirical thriller.

Luis Royo

Prom Night
edited by Nancy Springer
DAW (paperback, 309 pages, $6.99/$8.99 Can)
Publication date: June 1, 1999
For most of us, Prom Night was a night of wonder and fantasy to begin with. Now Nancy Springer (author of Fair Peril and Larque on the Wing) shows us we didn't know the half of it. "For all those new graduates with a little time on their hands, here's a chance to attend a prom that is beyond your wildest dreams! From an elf who can only stay in the mortal realm if he can get a date for the prom to a young man who finds out that forbidden acts sometimes depend on your perspective to a girl who gives a whole new slant to the legend of "Pygmalion", here are 22 evenings to remember -- and be thankful that none of these people were in your class."

I Am Mordred
Nancy Springer
Penguin/Philomel hard cover
A tale of Camelot, told from the perspective of Mordred, son of King Arthur. Mordred survives the death ordered by King Arthur at his birth, and grows up to learn of his parentage from the sorceress Nyneve. As he ages, his burning ambition is to be acknowledged by his father, and to circumvent his ordained fate: to kill King Arthur. From the highly respected fantasy author of Fair Peril and Larque on the Wing.

Fair Peril
Nancy Springer
AvoNova
When overweight, fortyish, divorced Buffy encounters a talking frog, she knows when to leave well enough alone. But when she takes the frog home and her rebellious teenage daughter Emily administers the magic kiss, she and handsome Prince Adamus disappear into the enchanted land of Fair Peril -- the local mall. It is up to Buffy to rescue them both.

Daughter of Darkness
Steven Spruill
Doubleday hard cover
Dr. Jenn Hrluska is a skilled physician, but she's also a hemophage. She's fought the urge to kill, taking only small amounts of blood from sleeping victims. But her secret life threatens to spiral out of control when a killer leaves a bloody corpse on her apartment threshold -- a killer who wants her to wake to her true calling. 1^st US printing.

The Dictionary of Science Fiction Places
Brian Stableford; illustrated by Jeff White
Fireside (trade paperback, 384 pages, $19.95/$29.50 Can)
Publication date: April 29, 1999
Stableford is the author of more than thirty books, including The Werewolves of London, The Empire of Fear, and The Angel of Pain. But he's also well known as a critic and scholar of SF and horror, and this weighty reference volume is a fine example. "A.E. van Vogt's Imperial City, the seat of power of the Isher Dynasty... Monarch Tower, the 23rd century New York skyscraper in Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man... These are but a few of the many places Brian Stableford visits in this extraordinary directory of the most famous and interesting locations, both on and off Earth, invented by writers of science fiction. In fascinating detail, Stableford illuminates the history, geography, and inhabitants of the strange worlds created by more than 250 writers."

Inherit the Earth
Brian Stableford
Tor (hardcover, 320 pages, $23.95 US/$33.95 Can)
Publication date: September 9, 1998
Near-future SF thriller from a master of modern horror, author of The Empire of Fear, The Werewolves of London, The Angel of Pain, and The Carnival of Destruction. "In the 22nd-century, biomedical nantechnology has given everyone in the world long life and robust health. But the achievement of this paradise is not without cost, and now, the son of one of this Utopia's creators is being forced by a group of terrorists known as the Eliminators to face the sins of his father."
SF Site Review by Jean-Louis Trudel

Pages | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |

Other Useful Stuff