Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.

Predator: South China Sea by Jeff VanderMeer

Promo copy:

On a remote South China Sea island, a deadly hunt is underway… but not the kind of expedition the participants expected. In this remote, jungle-covered island somewhere between Thailand and Indonesia some of the most exotic animals in the world have been gathered as the prizes in a challenge of human against nature. The hunters come from all walks of life. Each has come to the island for personal reasons, some secret, some deadly. But when the encampment’s owner, ex-Khmer Rouge Colonel Rath Preap, finds the fences cut and his security men missing, it’s clear that the game has turned. And as the hunters battle for survival, they discover there is another creature out for blood… an adversary that has faced death on a thousand worlds – a Predator with an unstoppable lust for conquest!

A new VanderMeer novel is always an event worthy of celebration, regardless of subject.

And speaking of VanderMeers:

Fast Ships, Black Sails edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer

Promo copy:

Do you love the sound of a peg leg stomping across a quarterdeck? Or maybe you prefer a parrot on your arm, a strong wind at your back? Adventure, treasure, intrigue, humor, romance, danger–and, yes, plunder. Oh, the Devil does love a pirate–and so do readers everywhere.

Swashbuckling from the past into the future and space itself, Fast Ships, Black Sails, edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, presents an incredibly entertaining volume of original stories guaranteed to make you walk and talk like a pirate.

Come along for the voyage with bestselling authors Naomi Novik, Garth Nix, Carrie Vaughn, Dave Freer, Michael Moorcock, and Eric Flint, as well as such other stellar talents as Kage Baker, Sarah Monette, Elizabeth Bear, Steve Aylett, and Conrad Williams–all offering up a veritable treasure chest of piratical adventure, the likes of which has never been seen in the four corners of the Earth. Highlights include a brand-new Garth Nix Sir Hereward & Mr. Fitz novella, as the two clever ne’er-do-wells storm the sea-gates of the scholar-pirates of Sarkoe.

The idea of a Steve Aylett pirate tale alone is worth the price of admission!

Aliens: No Exit by B. K. Evenson

Promo copy:

After thirty years of cryogenic sleep, Detective Anders Kramm awakens to a changed world. The alien threat has been subdued. Company interests dominate universal trade. Terraforming is big money now, with powerful men willing to do anything to assure dominance over other worlds. But Kramm has a secret. He knows why The Company killed twelve of its top scientists. He knows why the aliens have been let loose on the surface of a contested planet. He knows that the information he has is valuable, and that The Company will do everything it can to stop him from telling his secret to the world. Haunted by memories of the brutal murder of his family, Kramm is set adrift amid billion dollar stakes . . . with aliens around every corner, waiting for him to make a mistake!

And the most exciting new acquisition:

The Dead Man’s Brother by Roger Zelazny

Promo copy:

THE FIRST NEW ZELAZNY NOVEL IN 15 YEARS!

Once an art smuggler, now a respectable art dealer, Ovid Wiley awoke to find his former partner stabbed to death on his gallery floor. That was strange enough—but when a CIA agent showed up to spring him from NYPD custody, things got a lot stranger.

Now the CIA is offering to clear up the murder charge, but only in return for a favor: They want Ovid to fly to Vatican City and trace the trail of a renegade priest who has gone missing with millions in church funds. What’s the connection? The priest’s lover, a woman Ovid knew in his smuggling days…

* First publication ever!
* Features an afterword by the author’s son, Trent Zelazny
* Manuscript was lost among Zelazny’s papers for more than 30 years; this is the only new Zelazny novel since the author’s death more than a decade ago
* Zelazny is the hugely popular author of the "Amber" series of fantasy novels and classics such as Lord of Light, Damnation Alley, and My Name Is Legion
* Zelazny won 6 Hugo Awards and 3 Nebula Awards, and was nominated a record 14 times for each

Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.

The Wild Wild West: The Complete Series

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James West and Artemus Gordon are two agents of President Grant who take their splendidly appointed private train through the west to fight evil. Half science fiction and half western, the Artemus designs a series of interesting gadgets for James that would make Inspector Gadget proud. A light hearted adventure series that was a fan favorite.

Includes all four seasons plus the two made-for-TV movies: Wild Wild West Revisited and More Wild Wild West

While more of an overview of the many problems with copy protection, Harry McCracken offers some fascinating evidence and arguments against the practice.

[  Mood: Happy ]
The soon-to-released Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) can be pre-ordered on disc! Although the entire operating system will be available for download on October 30, I find it useful to have the system disc as well. The discs are free and come with Live CD so you can test drive the OS before installing it.

I’ve been relying on some flavor of Linux OS for over five years and it just keeps getting easier and easier to use. I now run an entirely Open Source computer and I can do just about anything I want or need. No expensive Microsoft or Mac products on my computer. With most Open Source created with older machines in mind, barring any breakage, my hardware will be good for at least another five years!

Plus, it gives me more money to spend on books!

This excellent blog entry by 20 year publishing pro Andrew Wheeler should be read by anyone who is curious why bookstores don’t carry certain books.

Wheeler goes on to explain how the process works. An informative posting and a must for all authors.

Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.

Quofum by Alan Dean Foster

Promo copy:

Bestselling author Alan Dean Foster’s new adventure takes place in the amazing Humanx Commonwealth, home of the ever-popular Pip & Flinx. Although the dynamic redhead and his daring minidrag do not appear in Quofum, this knockout thriller sets the stage for their explosive date with destiny in the duo’s final climactic adventure, Flinx Transcendent.

The mission to planet Quofum is supposed to be a quickie for Captain Boylan and his crew. Boylan is tasked with delivering four scientists–two men, one woman, and one thranx–to the unknown world, setting up camp while the experts investigate flora and fauna, then ferrying them safely home.
The first surprise is that Quofum, which regularly slips in and out of existence on Commonwealth monitors, is actually there when Boylan and company arrive. The second surprise is more about what Quofum is not: The planet is not logical, ordered, or rational.

The team encounters three intelligent, warring species–some carbon-based, others silicate-based, all bizarre–along with thousands of unique, often unclassifiable life-forms. Quofum’s wild biodiversity doesn’t appear to be natural. But if it is by design, then by whose, and for what purpose?

There are more revelations, more highly evolved species waiting to be identified, even tantalizing clues to a civilization light-years ahead of the Commonwealth’s. But the crew members are not ready for the real shockers, because none of them expect to find a killer in their midst, or to discover that their spaceship is missing and, with it, all means of communication.

Of course, the marooned teammates know nothing about the Great Evil racing toward the galaxy, and they certainly have never heard of Flinx, the only person with half a chance to stop it. Nor do they know that Quofum could play a crucial role in defeating the all-devouring monster from beyond.

One thing the scientists do know, however, is how to ferret out the truth. But whether that will be enough to alter the course of the oncoming catastrophe is anyone’s guess.

The Watchers Out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth

Promo copy:

Venture at your own risk into a realm where the sun sinks into oblivion–and all that is unholy, unearthly, and unspeakable rises. These rare, hard-to-find collaborations of cosmic terror are back in print, including

• Wentworth’s Day A fellow figures his debt to a dead man is null and void, until he discovers just how terrifying interest rates can be.

• The Shuttered Room A sophisticated gentleman must settle his grandfather’s estate, only to find that the house shelters dark secrets.

• The Dark Brotherhood A beautiful woman and her companion meet the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, in a tale as terrifying as anything Poe himself ever created.

• Innsmouth Clay A sculptor returns from Paris to create a statue not entirely of this world–and not at all under his control.

• Witches’ Hollow A new schoolteacher puts his soul in peril while trying to save one of his students from a ravenous creature.

Going Under by Justina Robson

Promo copy:

Lila Black is off with the faeries . . .

Ever since the Quantum Bomb of 2015 things have been different; the dimensions have fused and suddenly our world is accessible to elves, demons, ghosts and elementals and their worlds are open to us. Things have been different for Special Agent Lila Black too: tortured and magic-scarred by elves, rebuilt by humans into a half-robot, part-AI, nuclear-fueled walking arsenal, and carrying the essence of a dead elfin necromancer in her chest, sometimes she has trouble figuring out who she is.

And a mission to the world of the fae may not help her work it out.

The fae are beautiful, glamorous, exotic, and talented. Their inventions make food taste better, make beer divine, and bring sparkle and mischief to the world but that’s only the surface. And Lila is being sent in at the deep end, to the deepest, darkest levels of Faerie: on the primal level, nothing about the fae is glamorous at all.

In a winter-locked, raw, and primitive world, Lila has to deal with the fae at their most basic levels, as tricksters and dealmakers and the only deals worth making are bloody ones. If Lila’s quest is to succeed, and if she is ever to escape Faerie, the right question must be asked, the right sacrifice must be made, and the right quarry must be hunted down on the winter solstice. All of which is difficult, when the only aides Lila brought to Faerie are her friends . . .

Justina Robson’s new series combines her trademark themes of identity and reality, magic and technology, break-neck plots, a mischievous sense of fun, and a seriously sexy new heroine.

More in Part Two.

Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.

End of the Century by Chris Roberson

Promo copy:

UNCOVER THE SECRETS OF THE HOLY GRAIL

Three people. Three eras. One city. Endless possibilities. End of the Century is a novel of the distant past, the unimaginable future, and the search for the Holy Grail. Set in the city of London, the narrative is interlaced between three ages, in which a disparate group of heroes, criminals, runaways, and lunatics are drawn into the greatest quest of all time.

Twilight – Londinium, Sixth Century, CE

Galaad, a young man driven by strange dreams of a lady in white and a tower of glass, travels to the court of the high king Artor in Londinium, abandoned stronghold of the Roman Empire in Britain. With the dreams of Galaad as their only guide, Artor and his loyal captains journey west to the Summerlands, there to face a threat that could spell the end of the new-forged kingdom of Britain.

Jubilee – London, 1897
Consulting detective Sandford Blank, accompanied by his companion Roxanne Bonaventure, is called upon to solve a string of brutal murders on the eve of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The police believe that Jack the Ripper is back on the streets, but Blank believes that this is a new killer, one whose motive is not violence or mayhem, but the discovery of the Holy Grail itself. And what of the corpse-white Huntsman and his unearthly hounds, who stalks the gaslit streets of London?

Millennium – London, 1999
At the eve of the new millennium, American teenager Alice Fell is on the run, and all alone. On the streets of a strange city, friendless and without a pound to her name, Alice is not sure whether she’s losing her mind, or whether she is called by inescapable visions to some special destiny. Along with a strange man named Stillman Waters, who claims to be a retired occultist and spy, she finds herself pursued by strange creatures, and driven to steal the priceless vanishing gem that may contain the answers to the mysteries that plague her.

The three narratives Dark Ages fantasy, gaslit mystery, and modern-day jewel heist alternate until the barriers between the different times begin to break down, and the characters confront the secrets that connect the Grail, the Glass Tower, and the vanishing gem. And lurking behind it all is the entity known only as Omega.

Given Roberson’s skill and track record, I’m really looking forward to this one.

Without Warning by John Birmingham

Promo copy:

John Birminghams big new breakout geopolitical thriller asks what would happen to the world if America suddenly vanished.

Star Wars: Millennium Falcon by James Luceno

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Two years have passed since Jacen Solo, seduced by the dark side and reanointed as the brutal Sith Lord Darth Caedus, died at the hands of his twin sister, Jaina, Sword of the Jedi. For a grieving Han and Leia, the shadow of their son’s tragic downfall still looms large. But Jacen’s own bright and loving daughter, Allana, offers a ray of hope for the future as she thrives in her grandparents’ care. And when the eager, inquisitive girl, in whom the Force grows ever stronger, makes a curious discovery aboard her grandfather’s beloved spacecraft–the much-overhauled but ever-dependable Millennium Falcon–the Solo family finds itself at a new turning point, about to set out on an odyssey into uncertain territory, untold adventure, and unexpected rewards.
To Han, who knows every bolt, weld, and sensor of the Falcon as if they were parts of himself, the strange device Allana shows him is utterly alien. But its confounding presence–and Allana’s infectious desire to unravel its mystery–are impossible to dismiss. The only answer lies in backtracking into the past on a fact-finding expedition to retrace the people, places, and events in the checkered history of the vessel that’s done everything from making the Kessel Run “in less than twelve parsecs” to helping topple an evil empire.

From the moment the Falcon broke loose from a Corellian assembly line like an untamed creature with a will of its own, it seemed destined to seek out trouble. It wasn’t long before the feisty YT-1300 freighter went from shuttling cargo to smuggling contraband. But it‘s a fateful rendezvous on Coruscant, at the explosive height of the Republic/Separatist uprising, that launches a galaxywide cat-and-mouse game whose newest players are Han, Leia, Allana, and C-3PO. And they’re not alone: Crime lords, galactic pirates, rogue politicians, and fortune hunters alike loom at every turn of the quest–each with his or her own desperate stake in the Millennium Falcon’s most momentous mission. Through the years and across the stars, from the Rim worlds to unknown points beyond, the race will lead them all to a final standoff for a prize some will risk everything to find–and pay any cost to possess.

Jacen Solo?

See Part One here.

My review of Quark: The Complete Series is now available at SF Site.

[  Mood: Very Sad ]
I received an email from Michael Moorcock that Barrington J. Bailey died yesterday from bowel cancer. He was 71.

When I published Barry on RevSf, we exchanged several interesting emails. He was generous with his time and his work. Barrington J. Bayley, a talented and unheralded writer, never got the break he deserved. He is survived by his wife Joan and two kids.

If you’ve never read or heard of Barrington J. Bailey, check out the Astounding Worlds of Barrington J. Bailey . Complete with fiction, interviews, and other stuff, the site serves as a brilliant introduction to this important writer.

Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.

Looney Tunes: Golden Collection, Vol. 6

Promo copy:

Here comes the highly-anticipated sixth volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, the studio’s largest Looney Tunes compilation of animated shorts to date. Fans won’t want to miss this golden opportunity to own over 60 classic, fully re-mastered and restored cartoons, presented in their original un-edited format. Most of the shorts in the collection have never been available on DVD before.

Contents:

Disc One: Looney Tunes All Stars
1. Hare Trigger
2. To Duck or Not to Duck
3. Birth of a Notion
4. My Little Duckaroo
5. Crowing Pains
6. Raw! Raw! Rooster!
7. Heaven Scent
8. My Favorite Duck
9. Jumpin’ Jupiter
10. Satan’s Waitin’
11. Hook Line and Stinker
12. Bear Feat
13. Dog Gone South
14. A Ham in a Role
15. Often an Orphan

Disc Two: Patriotic Pals
1. Herr Meets Hare
2. Russian Rhapsody
3. Daffy the Commando
4. Bosko the Doughboy
5. Rookie Revue
6. The Draft Horse
7. Wacky Blackout
8. The Ducktators
9. The Wekaly Reporter
10. Fifth Column Mouse
11. Meet John Doughboy
12. Hollywood Canine Canteen
13. By Word of Mouse
14. Heir Conditioned
15. Yankee Dood it

Disc Three: Bosko Buddie and Merrie Melodies
1. Congo Jazz
2. Smile Dam Ya, Smile!
3. The Booze Hangs High
4. One More Time
5. Bosko’s Picture Show
6. You Don’t Know What You’re Doin’!
7. We’re in the Money!
8. Ride ’em Bosko
9. Shuffle Off to Buffalo
10. Bosko in Person
11. The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon
12. Buddie’s Day Out
13. Buddie’s Beer Garden
14. Buddie’s Circus
15. A Cartoonist’s Nightmare

Disc Four: Most Requested Assorted Nuts
1. Horton Hatches the Egg
2. Lights Fantastic
3. Fresh Airedale
4. Chow Hound
5. The Oily American
6. It’s Hummer Time
7. Rocket Bye Baby
8. Goo Goo Goliath
9. Wild Wife
10. Much Ado About Nutting
11. The Hole idea
12. Now Hear This
13. Martian Through Georgia
14. Page Miss Glory
15. Norman Normal

Plus fifteen other shorts.

I Live Here by Mia Kirshner, J.B. Mackinnon, Paul Shoebridge, and Michael Simons

Promo copy:
I Live Here is a paper documentary–an intimate journey to humanitarian crises in four corners of the world: war in Chechnya, ethnic cleansing in Burma, globalization in Mexico, and AIDS in Malawi.

~THE BOOK~

I Live Here is a visually stunning narrative — told through journals, stories, images, and graphic novellas — in which the lives of refugees and displaced people become at once personal and global. Bearing witness to stories that are too often overlooked, it is a raw and intimate journey to crises in four corners of the world: war in Chechnya, ethnic cleansing in Burma, globalization in Mexico, and AIDS in Malawi.

The voices we encounter are those of displaced women and children, in their own words or in stories told in text and images by noted writers and artists. The stories unfold in an avalanche: An orphan goes to jail for stealing leftovers. A teenage girl falls in love in a city of disappeared women. A child soldier escapes his army only to be saved by the people he was taught to kill.

Mia Kirshner’s journals guide us through a unique paper documentary brought vividly to life in collaboration with J.B. MacKinnon, Paul Shoebridge, and Michael Simons, with featured works by Joe Sacco, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Phoebe Gloeckner, Chris Abani, Karen Connelly, Kamel Khelif, and many others.

~THE JOURNEYS ~

Ingushetia
The border of the Russian republic of Ingushetia is not even fifty miles from Grozny, the capital city of Chechnya. Today, some 15,000 Chechen refugees live in Ingushetia. Mia Kirshner and Joe Sacco traveled here together, returning with first-person accounts, video, photographs, and other materials gathered in Nazran and Moscow. The chapter includes journals by Mia Kirshner, the story of a young refugee as told by J.B. MacKinnon, the story of a young piano virtuoso as told by Ann-Marie Macdonald, and a graphic novella of Chechen refugees by Joe Sacco.

Burma
Ethnic cleansing by the Burmese military has displaced an estimated 500,000 to 1 million people; over 100,000 live in refugee camps along the Thailand-Burma border. Burma is also believed to be home to more child soldiers than any other country in the world. Mia Kirshner and Michael Simons took separate trips to the region; this chapter is based on their interviews, photos, and video, as well as writing by sex workers and Karen refugees. It includes journals by Mia Kirshner, as well as work by Chris Abani, Karen Connelly, J.B. Mackinnon, and a graphic novella by Kamel Khélif.

Juárez
Ciudad Juárez is a large industrial border city in Mexico across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. Since 1993, young women, many of them employees of Juárez’s more than three hundred maquiladoras, or global trade zone factories, have been disappearing from the streets. Mia Kirshner and Phoebe Gloeckner made independent journeys to this region; this book is informed by the stories and images they brought home. It includes journals, a story of one of the victims by Lauren Kirshner, and a graphic novella by Phoebe Gloeckner.

Malawi
Malawi is one of the world’s poorest countries, and has an AIDS rate close to twenty percent. The disease touches every aspect of daily life in the African nation, introducing immense chaos, particularly in the case of orphan children. Mia Kirshner and J.B. MacKinnon made the trip to Malawi and returned with interviews, photographs, writing, and artworks. This book includes journals, a children’s story by J.B. MacKinnon with art by Julie Morstad, and the stories and artwork of boys in a local prison.

Check out the amazing interiors at the official site. There has never been anything quite like this impressive production.