The Leaning Pile of Books is a feature where I talk about books I got over the last week – old or new, bought or received for review consideration (often unsolicited). Since I hope you will find new books you’re interested in reading in these posts, I try to be as informative as possible. If I can find them, links to excerpts, author’s websites, and places where you can find more information on the book are included.
This week brought one book, but first up is an update on plans for Sci-Fi Month hosted by Oh, the Books! and Rinn Reads.
On Monday, I’ll have a guest post by Karina Sumner-Smith on hope and wonder in science fiction. I finished reading Yesterday’s Kin by Nancy Kress last weekend and loved it but didn’t manage to finish a review of it last week like I’d hoped. There should be a review of it this week, though, most likely on Wednesday. For more science fiction fun, check out the Sci-Fi Month schedule or you can follow on Twitter.
On to this week’s book!
Old Venus edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois
This anthology containing sixteen new science fiction stories will be released on March 3, 2015 (hardcover, ebook, and audiobook). It sounds like fun, and it includes stories by Elizabeth Bear, Garth Nix, Gwyneth Jones, Ian McDonald, Lavie Tidhar, and more!
Sixteen all-new stories by science fiction’s top talents, collected by bestselling author George R. R. Martin and multiple-award-winning editor Gardner Dozois
From pulp adventures such as Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Carson of Venus to classic short stories such as Ray Bradbury’s “The Long Rain” to visionary novels such as C. S. Lewis’s Perelandra, the planet Venus has loomed almost as large in the imaginations of science fiction writers as Earth’s next-nearest neighbor, Mars. But while the Red Planet conjured up in Golden Age science fiction stories was a place of vast deserts and ruined cities, bright blue Venus was its polar opposite: a steamy, swampy jungle world with strange creatures lurking amidst the dripping vegetation. Alas, just as the last century’s space probes exploded our dreams of Mars, so, too, did they shatter our romantic visions of Venus, revealing, instead of a lush paradise, a hellish world inimical to all life.
But don’t despair! This new anthology of sixteen original stories by some of science fiction’s best writers—edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author George R. R. Martin and award-winning editor Gardner Dozois—turns back the clock to that more innocent time, before the hard-won knowledge of science vanquished the infinite possibilities of the imagination.
Join our cast of award-winning contributors—including Elizabeth Bear, David Brin, Joe Haldeman, Gwyneth Jones, Mike Resnick, Eleanor Arnason, Allen M. Steele, and more—as we travel back in time to a planet that never was but should have been: a young, rain-drenched world of fabulous monsters and seductive mysteries.
FEATURING ALL-NEW STORIES BY
Eleanor Arnason • Elizabeth Bear • David Brin • Tobias S. Buckell • Michael Cassutt • Joe Haldeman • Matthew Hughes • Gwyneth Jones • Joe R. Lansdale • Stephen Leigh • Paul McAuley • Ian McDonald • Garth Nix • Mike Resnick • Allen M. Steele • Lavie Tidhar
And an Introduction by Gardner Dozois
