Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.
Collected Stories by Lewis Shiner
Promo copy:
Containing 41 stories and extensive author’s notes, Collected Stories is the definitive compilation of Shiner’s short work. His best known stories are all here, including “The War at Home,” “Twilight Time,” “The Circle,” “Perfidia,” and “Mozart in Mirrorshades,” as well as a brand new story, “The Death of Che Guevara.”
A new Shiner book is always a cause for celebration!
Galileo’s Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson
Promo copy:
The winner of every major science fiction award, Kim Stanley Robinson is a novelist who looks ahead with optimism even while acknowledging the steep challenges facing our planet and species: a clear-eyed realist who has not forgotten how to dream. His new novel offers his most audacious dream yet. At the heart of a brilliant narrative that stretches from Renaissance Italy to the moons of Jupiter is one man, the father of modern science: Galileo Galilei.
To the inhabitants of the Jovian moons, Galileo is a revered figure whose actions will influence the subsequent history of the human race. From the summit of their distant future, a charismatic renegade named Ganymede travels to the past to bring Galileo forward in an attempt to alter history and ensure the ascendancy of science over religion. And if that means Galileo must be burned at the stake, so be it.
Yet between his brief and jarring visitations to this future, Galileo must struggle against the ignorance and superstition of his own time. And it is here that Robinson is at his most brilliant, showing Galileo in all his contradictions and complexity. Robinson’s Galileo is a tour de force of imaginative and historical empathy: the shining center around which the novel revolves.
From Galileo’s heresy trial to the politics of far-future Jupiter, from the canals of Venice to frozen, mysterious Europa, Robinson illuminates the parallels between a distant past and an even more remote future—in the process celebrating the human spirit and calling into question the convenient truths of our own moment in time.
Sexton Blake, Detective Edited by George Mann Introduction by Michael Moorcock
Promo copy:
Created at the tail end of the Victorian era, Sexton Blake rapidly became one of the most popular fictional characters of the 20th Century. He featured in thousands of adventure stories written by more than two hundred authors and published in countless papers, magazines and comics. He also appeared in stage plays, radio dramas, films and television serials. One of the most written about characters in the English language, he was a household name and a publishing phenomenon. This book contains the finest stories from this vast output, edited by leading publisher and author George Mann.