SF/Fantasy/Horror Notes

In the 11 years since publishing Anne McCaffrey: A Critical Companion, Robin Roberts has been collecting material for Anne McCaffrey: A Life with Dragons, a detailed biography of the trail-blazing author. Roberts’s overview of McCaffrey’s life covers much the same ground as previous bios by Todd McCaffrey (Anne’s son and occasional collaborator) and Martha P. Trachtenberg, but gossipy anecdotes about SF industry bigwigs from Isaac Asimov to Virginia Kidd will keep readers entertained. (Univ. Press of Mississippi, $28 240p ISBN 978-1-57806-998-9)

Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory open a new trilogy with The Phoenix Unchained, set 1,000 years after the events of the Obsidian Trilogy. Characters from the earlier books are now legendary figures in a world where High Magick has been forgotten and mages no longer rule the city of Armethalieh. Lackey and Mallory’s fans will enjoy this exploration of how stories of past heroics are twisted over centuries into something both more and less than they were. (Tor, $27.95 400p ISBN 978-0-7653-1593-9)

Somewhere a Band Is Playing peels away the layers of celebrated author Ray Bradbury’s writing process, following his novella by the same title from conception to completion over a span of 50 years. In addition to the full text of the finished story, a bittersweet meditation on growing old gracefully and embracing mortality, this slender hardcover collector’s edition includes excerpts from drafts, illustrations and a teleplay outline, as well as cover art by the author. The novella’s final version will simultaneously appear in Now and Forever from William Morrow, reviewed previously by PW. (Gauntlet [www.gauntletpress.com], $75 190p ISBN 978-1-887368-98-8)

Genre-blurring stories, poems and articles by a few major authors—including Theodora Goss, Sarah Monette and Karen Joy Fowler—and a host of relative unknowns appear in The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, edited by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant. With a major SF imprint publishing this hefty anthology, LCRW’s times as a low-profile fringe zine may be at an end, though it remains to be seen whether mainstream readers will share Link and Grant’s fondness for the oddball and peculiar. (Del Rey, $14.95 paper 416p ISBN 978-0-345-49913-4)

Prolific SF and mystery author Richard A. Lupoff gleefully skewers 14 of his fellow writers in The Compleat Ova Hamlet. This short story collection will be best enjoyed by fans of those being mocked; readers less familiar with Fritz Leiber and Barry Malzberg may not appreciate Lupoff’s parodies of their work, and his mimicry of better-known authors such as Stephen King and Kurt Vonnegut is less successful. (Ramble [www.ramblehouse.com], $18 paper 256p ISBN 978-0-9774527-7-4)

The Complete Hammer’s Slammers Volume Two comprises David Drake’s first four Slammers military SF novels: At Any Price, Counting the Cost, Rolling Hot and The Warrior. Completists will be particularly pleased by the inclusion of Drake’s previously unpublished novella “A Day of Glory.” (Night Shade [www.nightshadebooks.com], $35 505p ISBN 978-1-892389-73-2)