NEW SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY BOOKS FOR LATE 2022: Adrian Tchaikovsky, Tolkien, Moorcock & Beyond!
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- Опубликовано: 16 окт 2024
- Steve Andrews, author and expert genre bookseller picks his UK SFF publishing highlights for September-December 2022, previewing some of the most anticipated new and reissue titles of the season. Here is Literary SF & Hard SF, some high quality new Fantasy and very exciting reissue editions for collectors. Subscribe and Like, people, you know it makes sense...
Music: theoccupier.ba...
#sciencefictionbooks
#bookcollecting
#bookrecommendations
#fantasybooks
#sciencefiction
Your lack of pandering and lack of bullshit is quite refreshing.
Glad you like it, plenty more where this came from! Do subscribe and watch some more if you haven't already, thanx!
More great stuff professor! Always look forward to your recommendation videos as you always sell me on something I've never heard of. Typical salesman 😉 you really deserve tonnes of channel growth and more reach...I follow most SF booktubers and your channel is criminally underrated. As I've said before you bring a quasi-academic dimension to your videos on SF which I get no where else!!
Thanks again Paul. As I said, if you and others can Like and share, it does no harm! We'll get there..
Lots to add to the tbr! Especially looking forward to Plutoshine. I'm continually impressed and a little frightened at how much Adrian Tchaikovsky puts out. Feels like a new book/novella every other week!
Yeah, I think he over-produces myself, which will only lead to diminishing returns in terms of quality of writing. It's not like he needs the sales, either, but maybe he's like Stephen King - compelled to just pour it out. What is surprising though is how few people are aware of much of his stuff. For example, 'Dogs of War' is easily the best book 'I've read by him and 4-5 years later, I talk to people every week who say they love him but they've never heard of it. And we live in the information age...hope you are well, my friend!
Stanislaw Lem Clip: ruclips.net/video/TrqX6uMek30/видео.html
That's a good point. SFF is dominated by fantasy in both retail and social media. I've always hated how fantasy and s-f is lumped together while they are two very separate categories. I stopped actively looking for new book content on RUclips because all I ever got was just more of the same. Similiar people talking almost exclusively about the same books, usually fairly simple and recent. They often brand themselves as SFF, but still are 95% fantasy. There are few channels dedicated to s-f and I'm trying to support them as much as I can, even if it's a simple "I like that you talk about s-f" comment.
Thanks for your comments and my apologies for the delay in responding. Fantasy and SF are quite distinct things, as my next video in the 'Elements of SF' series, up in about 10 days, will show. The problem for retailers is that hardly anyone in the industry - and this is no criticism- can distinguish between the two and to be certain, you have to actually read a book t o be 100% that it isn't SF and no-one has time for this. Publishers are ultimately to blame for not making the two distinct in their imprints and following the easy money every time - at the moment, very light entry level Fantasy by and aimed at young women is getting a vast proportion of the publishing money. I'm not against women writing and reading SF or F, but I am very much against the more proficient high quality material being squeezed out in favour of short-term gratification and pap. Do subscribe and join our elite (but not elitist!) crew!
@@outlawbookselleroriginal Not sure about other markets, but local Polish online stores usually have books accurately categorized as either s-f or fantasy. This is, however, not the case in physical stores of the same brand, which is a bit sad. And strangely, my favorite local publisher does both popular fantasy and really well selected s-f, ranging from most popular titles to the obscure but great. This dichotomy amuses me.
@@TheMcMonster -I've only ever known one physical bookseller split the two genres, and that was myself in the 1980s. Generally speaking, the expertise just isn't there, I'd say because people don't have clear and well-defined thoughts about the edges of the genres.
Great stuff! A few of these books have to be added to my tbr📚
Glad you enjoyed it. I'll try and do a similar roundup for early 2023 around Christmas time.
Totally agree about Brian Aldiss, I've worn out my copies of Trillion Year Spree and Bury My Heart etc. I'd love to hear more about him.
You'll like the video coming up on tuesday, then.....
@@outlawbookselleroriginal cool 😎 thanks Steve.
Wonderful video. Informative and timely. I SO enjoy your retrospectives that I forgot that this is the PERFECT subject for an Outlaw Bookseller video.
Thanks for bringing up the MIT Press stuff. In fact I forget that they have a press because they are such a juggernaut for scientific research!
They look great,
I love MITs books, even the monographs turn me on!
A new Fractured Europe? Wasn't expecting that, I thought that series and been rounded off quite nicely, but definitely one to look out for. And a TV series - exciting!
Yes, it is a bit of a suprise. I mentioned it in a video a few weeks ago, but it is interesting- I think Dave is doing like a sidebar with it maybe. Studio Canal productions are usually front rank, so hopefully it'll be treated more like a Crime thing rather than the usual cliched approach we get for SF TV.
The Quiet War and Gardens of the Sun by Mcauley are two of the absolute standouts I've read in the last 15 years.
I've not read any of Paul's recent work but I am actually re-reading some of his early material currently and really enjoying it. His new book is on my 'buy pile' at work and I'm planning to expand my collection of his oeuvre as I've read so little by him since the 90s.
The fractured Europe series sounds really interesting - and I will run down to my bookshop to take a look (although not a great fan of hardbacks)
'Fractured Europe' have all been paperback originals, there have never been hardcovers - 'Europe In Autumn' is the first one. I will add that these are not the usual thing and rely on character and wit above obvious tropes. Brilliant stuff.
Would love more videos of fantasy books you have read and enjoyed.
There will be more, so stay tuned, but in the meantime, check out my fantasy playlists:
ruclips.net/p/PLClUjyQA4Bcav-w-lG-q0bcqQuT0ygUEH
ruclips.net/p/PLClUjyQA4Bca0sokQDAhSxghgg_sn6eiL
ruclips.net/p/PLClUjyQA4Bcbln0W4paTjYXQ1_dV74jqe
Keep the “bucket of water in the face” line in play-it’s a good catchphrase
Well, that's the effect I look fort instead of wanting to be lulled to sleep!
I shall be buying the Hutchinson and Roberts books and trying to restrain myself for the Priest until the paperback comes out, purely for reasons of shelf space. I normally buy everything by Moorcock but I'm not sure that I need another Elric book. I am looking forward more to his follow-up to The Whispering Storm which I think is out next year. His obsession with highwaymen gets a bit tiresome but I think his memories of life in the 60s is as close to autobiography as we shall get. I think you should give Paul McAuley another chance. Like you, I have gone right off Space Opera, but his Quiet War books are a really good examination the politics of the expoloration of the solar system by a Brazilian mafia-like society. There is a terrifying description of the attack of a domed community on one of Saturn's moons from space that really shows how disastrous a space war would be. Cowboy Angels is a spy story set in alternate versions of America, and White Devils is his Heart of Darkness story set in Africa with corrupt medical experimentation. And Fairyland is brilliant cyberpunk. Give them a try.
I was actually thinking of trying more of Paul's stuff for nostalgia's sake, as I've not read him for years. When I met him in 2006 - it was at a gathering thrown by Gollancz for Chris Priest - he was complaining to me about how so many scientists were villains in trad SF.
I looked into these MIT Press books like What Not and they seem to be part of a reprint series called the Radium Age, a term used for SF between 1900 and 1935... Is this an established term or MIT Press taking to their own vocabulary?
Yes, I mentioned the Radium Age series in a previous video and this one. It is NOT a canonical usage from SF terminology, but something I believe MIT's editorial team came up with. Unlike Comic Collecting circles, where there are established (but boundary quieried) set 'ages' covering the history of the form, SF does NOT have established 'periods', largely as these are deemed unnecessary and lacking nuance. Instead, SF has revolutionary periods when certain factors have caused evolutionary leaps forward in the genre, broadening it. For example, The Golden Age is deemed 1939-1946 by critics, referring to John W Campbell's editorship of 'Astounding' magazine. American SF in the 1950s is notable for the rise of satirical/social SF (down to the influence of the magazines 'Galaxy' and 'The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction' and the literary values of their editors). In the mid to late 1960s, New Wave SF is important, but effectively means different things in the US and UK. What is notable is that any 'revolutions' since the 1960s are not as common, genre-impacting as a whole or as broadening - Cyberpunk was a subgenre (in my view around 4 writers) and the New Radical Hard Space Opera from 1987 onwards was simply backward-looking revisionism. SF is too diverse to be bounded in the way comics have unfairly been historically categorised.
Morning Steve, you posted a picture of a book with a red cover and it had a hand with a face on it. I didn't catch the author of that book. Could you kindly pass the name of it cheers
That's 'Red Dreams' by Dennis Etchison, a collection of horror stories from the late 80s or early 90s. It was a reference to my current dental treatment (second round tomorrow!)
Hi Steve! Another fantastic video, I’m pretty new to SF and watching you talk has really inspired me to read more. A rather open and wide question, but are there any authors you’d recommend to some body starting out in SF and looking at building a collection- I really enjoy books with an interesting idea at its core (I’ve been making my way through some PKD and I’m enjoying them a lot).
That’s a question that you should sit down for several beers/coffees and discuss with Steve! I’ve been doing that for over 20 years and there’s always more to discover!
@@timcoombs2780 -Thanks for the compliment Tim, looking forward to the next time we and The Occupier (Phil) and NN can do this!
Well, if you're reading PKD already and enjoying his work, you've bypassed the entry level (though you should get some Wells under your belt) so I'd avoid 'The Big Four' (Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke and Herbert) for now as their literary quality is not representative of the true Golden Age of SF, the 1950s to late 1980s. I'd say watch more of my videos, get a copy of my book for a contextual/historical overview of the genre and maybe look at Silverberg in 67-74 and Bester's work next. But I'd really need to know more about what you've read to lead you further. But that is what this channel and the book are about. be prepared to take risks and don't get too sucked into book hauls before you develop more instincts about your taste. Slow and steady is best for beginners.
@Outlaw Bookseller Amazing thanks! I think that’s part of the problem, I’m not entirely sure what my ‘taste’ is yet, so don’t want to commit to buying loads of stuff up front. I’m definitely going to pick up your book as a good reference point.
So I’m a little guilty that I started off with some of the more well known stuff Herbert’s ‘Dune’ and Clarke’s ‘ 2001 Space Odyssey’ and ‘Rendezvous with Rama’. They didn’t put me off, but I wasn’t 100% blown alway. I enjoyed Clarke’s style of writing, find he’s very efficient and no word is wasted, but thought the plot a little simple. For Dune, I enjoyed the world building and politics, but wasn’t amazed by the style and pace (perhaps controversial opinion ).
I then stumbled across PKD and have started making my way through his novels and short stories and I’m enjoying them so far.
For my birthday I spoilt myself on a lovely set of John Wyndham books from the folio society. The day of the triffids (1962) was probably my first intro into SF and being from the UK I was really interested in reading some Wyndham. Think it has has three books: Day of the triffids, midwick cuckoos and the chrysalids.
@@ashley857 I don;t find your 'Dune' opinion controversial, I think many of the most famous novels aren't essentially the best for he contemporary reader. Wyndham is a great entry point, since he wrote so well- 'Midwich' and 'Chrysalids' are his best, I feel, plus they are opposite sides of a similar coin, so they're great as a training point to help you evaluate an author's key themes. I started around age 7 with these authors in (more or less) this order - Doyle ('Lost World', I was a dino nut as a kid), Wells (the first three), Wyndham, Clarke, Crichton, Heinlein, Dick....I could tell immediately on reading Crichton that he was limited but effective and Heinlein I found sprawling and prurient from the start, but it was Dick who was my first 'mature' US SF read I'd say. Clarke has great ideas but his prose is pretty undistinguished, though I like his visionary quality. The real meat is in 1950s satirical/social SF and 1960s New Wave, which is the two-decade period in which genre SF reaches a level of ambition matched by skill in writing. Of course, SF in the mainstream (i.e. outside the magazine publishing market) was always interesting Orwell, Huxley and many others are worth reading.
Hardcover fiction has all but disappeared off Australian bookseller shelves over the last decade, replaced with trade paperbacks. For collectors, it's online or nothing for the most part. I remember it took ages for my order for the Lem collection "The Truth and Other Stories" to be fulfilled.
I know books have always been expensive in Australia and the whole trade paperback situation reflects what has long been in the case in Ireland, where the market for hardcovers is too small to result in cased editions much of the time- a huge number of novels are published in Ireland as trade paperback originals in the demy or royal formats, which leads to some confusion for British book buyers (and novice booksellers) - the number of times someone has said to me 'I know it's in paperback, as I've seen it,' about a new book before I say 'Yes, but you were in the republic of Eire or on the other side of customs in an airport bookshop, right?'.
Trades as substitutes for hardcovers have generally been fading away in the UK for a couple of decades and they are now uncommon. They are common in demy format as paperback originals - especially for translated fiction or collections- as publishers don't always feel that the UK market can take too many untried authors or short story collections in hardcover, but then there are lots of exceptions to this. The main issue in the UK is that there are simply way too many titles published.
Great video. Also getting series fatigue and 'overly long novel' fatigue. I think they do make for lazy writing and too much filler. I do miss the days of 200-300 page standalones.
Singletons are invariably superior. My default setting is usually 'avoid series' or just read the first. In SF, this is due to the creeping dominance of artificial fantasy trilogy publishing since 1977 (see my video on the same in the Fantasy playlist here)
@@outlawbookselleroriginal I've never been a big fantasy reader. However, just as COVID lockdown kicked off I found myself with sci-fi and popular science fatigue so I dipped my toe into some fantasy. In this case it was Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy. Much to my surprise I enjoyed that far more than a lot of modern sci-fi series. But then most sci-fi series are space opera, and I'm not a huge fan of that unless it's done REALLY well.
@@JohnG225 I can understand that. This series was a cut above- Joe can write pretty well (his choice of titles alone is very good) and he characters are well-drawn. I did an event with him a few years ago as he lives locally.
Thanks for the vid . SF is shrinking on the book shelves , replaced by paranormal , urban, soft core fantasy . SF can be ordered but with shipping , cost can be high . Truth be told i get most of my SF from flea market , garage sales and the few remaing second hand stores. Any how , there is always NALIS..the national library . I tend to want my own . Ok . Thanks again and bye.
Well, secondhand is ok if the author is dead, but if they're alive, they might need the royalties, which is another part of my urging people to buy new if poss. I recognise cash is short though. I know mine is!
@@outlawbookselleroriginal 👍
Ive been buying more new Sci-Fi from bookshops lately and all the different brand name shops here in Australia mix the Sci-Fi and Fantasy together... except for Star Wars.. That gets its own section.
The integration of SF & Fantasy into one section has been pretty much the default from the start. This is more due to historical and publishing reasons than anything else, since Fantasy & SF are totally different things (video coming on this on my channel in not too distant future). Until the early 80s, there was very, very little Fantasy published compared to SF and the switching of publishing budgets from Fantasy to SF is currently threatening the future of SF, The inability of most booksellers to differentiate between the two (which is admittedly very difficult at times) has prevented the section separation which should be the norm - I used to keep them separate during my 80s bookselling days.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal yeah right... that's crazy to think.... I've always thought and still think to this day that 2nd hand booksellers in their shops should conjoin the genre.. just seems right in that setting.. but when I'm in a new bookshop I'd like my scifi separate please... haha.... also.. do you have an instagram?!?!?
@@Conan_The_Librarian -No I don;t do instrgram but am thinking about it. Will let you know if I do- I'll mention it on the channel, natch!
Steve, do you still work at/own a physical bookshop? Or do you sell online only? Or something else?
Yes, I still work in a real bookshop, part time, just as a bookseller these days, but 24 years of my 38 year career in bookselling and writing have been as a manager in said industry. I sell the odd thing from my collection on ebay, but mostly sell the bulk of my unwanted books to dealers. I do not, however, discuss or identify my employers online in any context as the views represented here are my own and not theirs and employers these days are quite sensitive about social media statements by employees being identified as potentially damaging to them if people assume the statements echo the views of said employers. If I owned my own shop, you'd see it on this channel, but it will (sadly) never happen as I don't have the capital and am too aware of the huge risk element if I mortgaged property to do this. Also, I'm nearer retirement age than career-rebuilding age, so it's a non-starter.
Thanks. I do appreciate you not letting things intrude on content (as you said - no Patreon etc.) so I fully see the merit of not mentioning places of work etc.