Including Quireboys, Joane Shaw Taylor, Marjana Semkina and five other bohemian rhapsodists

When our eyes are on Jesus, there will always be reasons to rejoice.

Irrational fear and anxiety are among the many ways the enemy tries to shackle us. As believers, we serve the One true King. His ways, plans, and purposes for our lives will never be thwarted. We have to trust Him because He knows best.

Brian Daboll — true football guy

Original Fiction Parthenogenesis When their rental truck breaks down, two friends moving cross-country kill time by telling stories about the strange carving in front of the motel where they’re awaiting a mechanic .… Illustrated by Brian Britigan | Edited by Ellen Datlow By Stephen Graham Jones | Published on October 2, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share When their rental truck breaks down, two friends moving cross-country kill time by telling stories about the strange carving in front of the motel where they’re awaiting a mechanic . . . “It’s a bear, isn’t it?” Matty asks, his voice riding a ramp up. “That’s what they look like?” He’s talking about the ten-foot-tall wooden statue in front of the one-story motel in a town in western Colorado neither he nor Jac had planned on stopping in for a whole afternoon. The moving truck they rented had other ideas. For two hours now, after way too much coffee in the diner across the street, they’ve been sitting in the grassy shade of the motel, moving only when the sun melts a few degrees over, onto a hand, an elbow, the shoulders. “But bears don’t sit on their haunches and . . . howl like a wolf, do they?” Jac asks back, galloping her fingers on the ground in thought. Matty nods, considering this. The bear’s definitely in a wolf pose, its snout lifted to an imaginary moon. “Awoo-oo,” Jac adds, her head tilted back as well. The company they rented the truck from to move across the country is certain the mechanic they’ve contracted will be there in thirty minutes. And then thirty more minutes. Matty squints up at the statue as if checking for its wolfness, its bearness. “I mean, okay, if we’re being technical,” he finally says, shrugging as if reluctant to forge on, “then I guess wolf-bears also don’t really have actual elk antlers on their heads either, do they?” “Oh, so you want it to make sense,” Jac says, and punctuates this by pulling his blue Icee over. She shakes it to get the drinkable stuff under the straw and slurps deep, flirting with brain-freeze. She doesn’t clean the straw, either. Not because they’re together—they’re not, they promised not to ever mess things up that way—but because they’ve known each other since freshman year of high school, when Jac was selling handstamps for a club in the city, five dollars a pop, refundable if the stamp doesn’t get you in the door. The reason they’re driving a moving truck across the country together is that neither has enough to fill a truck, so it made sense to share. Jac was the one with the idea to move, just for a reset now that high school was ten years ago somehow, but Matty wasn’t hard to talk into it. Matty would rent a chair in whatever salon would have him, Jac would paralegal here and there, they’d each pay their separate rents, go on their dates with other people, and life would keep happening. Just, in a new place, now. With a different backdrop. But then, at the gas station a quarter-mile back, the moving truck had refused to start, even though they’d given it a tankful of premium. “If you want it to make sense,” Jac goes on, leaning back to really luxuriate in this, “then . . . here’s what happened.” The way she hits that last part hard, and the space she leaves after that, is part of their game. It’s an invitation into make-believe, to be anywhere but where they are. But she’s not sure Matty remembers, after all these years. “Is this back when people were stupid?” he dredges up, pitch-perfect. Jac smiles up into the sky, eyes closed, and nods. “It’s back when magic was real, yeah,” she says. “Same thing,” Matty says, lying onto the grass all at once and not undramatically. All they need are a couple of illicit cigarettes and they could be fourteen again. “When Sandra Gleason bought the motel out of receivership,” Jac leads off, talking slow at first to make it up just right, “she decided that the way to draw people in off the interstate was with local flavor. With art.” “Sculpture,” Matty says, playing along. “Someone from the last regime—” “‘Regime?’” Jac asks, sneaking a look over to him. “The previous owners who ran it into the ground,” Matty says, his tone lower because this is so obvious it’s practically beneath saying. “Go on,” Jac says all the same, hungry for the salacious details. “The previous motel dictators had a suggestion box, but they never checked it. Then Sandy—” “Sandra. She hates when people call her Sandy.” “Ms. Gleason, renovating, popped the back off that suggestion box and read how one couple from Ohio stood in line at the registration desk waiting their turn for ten minutes, and nearly left, disgusted.” “People from Ohio are historically impatient.” “But Ms. Gleason thought—” “She thought that sweet retired couple from Ohio wouldn’t have been so frustrated if there had been some invigorating art right outside the window that they could have studied while standing in line.” “Was it her brother who was a chainsaw artist?” Matty asks, leadingly, always trying to inject a piece into their stories that might stump Jac. “It was, it was,” she says, right in stride. “But ever since the inheritance squabble about which no Gleason will ever speak again, well . . .” “Say no more.” “So she solicited bids and pitches from local artists, like you do.” “Bringing in an out-of-towner would be bad for business.” “The first artist who answered the call was a retired welder who turned tractor parts into old-fashioned robots.” “‘Old-fashioned?’” Matty asks, reaching over for his Icee. Jac nudges it into his fingers for him. “Retro, like. What we imagined the future would be, back in 1950.” “Back when we were stupid, yes, yes,” Matty says. “But, while his bid was low enough, he couldn’t have a robot for the motel until the following summer, and Sandra was looking to open the doors for business again in two months, for ski season.” “So she widened the net, so to speak.” “The next bid was from a stoneworker—actually a reformed cheerleader who had started out carving Easter Island heads from foam blocks, for parade floats. But—” “She got hooked, imagining the bodies that would someday stand up from under those heads, dirt and roots falling away.” “The problem with her work, though, was that granite invites spray paint, and Sandra didn’t want to have to commit time every week to cleaning obscenities from her statue.” “Who would?” “She tells the third artist that something in keeping with the local fauna would be nice, wouldn’t it?” “And this isn’t Sumatra, so no tigers. It’s not Africa, meaning elephants were out. And it’s not South America—no peccaries.” “You mean capybara?” “Are they not the same thing?” “And,” Jac says, “what’s local to this altitude?” “Bears,” Matty says. “Bears and wolves. And that king of the jungle, the mighty elk.” “King of the forest,” Jac corrects, gently. “They agree on a price, a deadline, but . . .” Now her voice is riding that ramp up, leaving blank spaces for Matty to fill. “The beetles came,” Matty pulls right out of the ether, his voice dripping with sadness. “They were, um—they were Dutch elm hickory beetles. The ones that bore those crawly little open-top tunnels in trees, like tracing their circulatory system, or carving one out.” “Dutch elm hickory . . .” Jac repeats, pressing her lips together to keep from smiling. “Otherwise known as the fire beetle,” Matty says, sitting up all at once, his hands up before him, fingers spread with the danger these beetles portend. “So . . . the forest burned down?” Jac asks. “From the inside,” Matty whispers. “Fire beetles bore into the trunks of every tree they can, and the friction of their little legs moving forward generates enough heat that—that they start to glow with heat, like burners on a stove. It’s why they evolved that special ceramic belly armor.”“To keep their carapaces and thoraxes from burning.” “Is that really how you plural that?” “It is now,” Jac says, looking up the tall, tall statue. “What this beetle infestation meant to the third artist was that her precious wood supply was greatly reduced.” “It nearly tanked the stock market.” “So she only had one tree trunk with which to satisfy this order . . .” “But fulfill that order she did. A bear, a wolf, an elk.” Jac swipes the Icee away, shakes and slurps, then, bowing forward on her knees like a proper supplicant, careful to keep her face down, she ceremonially places the cup at the foot of the statue, splashing the last drink up on its inner calf. “Oh, great bearwolfelk,” she says. “Please accept this offering, and know that, in your presence, we weren’t the least bit bored or fidgety.” “And we’re from Virginia,” Matty says, on his knees beside her now, ceremonially holding his hands up in approximation of antlers, and raising his own mouth to simulate a long, mournful howl. Jac hip-checks him, he falls over laughing, and a mother pushing her stroller past hurries her step, which only makes Jac and Matty laugh more. They walk down to the gas station restroom one more time, meet at the ice fountain for the free refill the sign guarantees, and by dusk the mechanic’s showed up, done his grumbly thing, and then they’re making time again. Heading west, leaned over their headlights. At least until the state line, when the moving truck’s gauges ring the alarms. “No, no, c’mon,” Jac says, patting the dash like this is a good truck, a good truck. But it’s not. “This isn’t happening,” Matty says, shaking his phone like that can make it get a signal. But it is happening. The truck dies, the power steering and power brakes evaporate, and—it’s not an emergency, it’s just where they are—Jac directs the truck onto the shoulder, and up the first few yards of a runaway-truck ramp. The sand glitters in the headlights. Jac turns them off. “What was that about ‘back when people were stupid?’” Matty says. “Meaning?” “My idea to move across the country.” “And I’m the one who found this discount truck.” “But I’m—” A long, lonely howl interrupts, wending its way in from the great darkness out there. Jac and Matty make concerned, about-to-laugh eyes to each other, roll their windows up. “What now?” they ask at the same time. “Walk?” Matty tries, not hopefully. “Says the man who doesn’t have to think about the dangers of that at night,” Jac says. “You think they’re going to like my blue hair?” Matty asks. “They?” “Whoever lives out this far.” “This doesn’t feel like an adventure anymore,” Jac says, hugging the wheel to study the darkness before them. “We could sleep in back with the furniture,” Matty says with a noncommittal shrug, peering over to gauge whether this will fly or not. “And suffocate in the night,” Jac tags on. “Leave the door cracked.” “So a hook-handed maniac can paint the walls with our insides.” “Subject change, please.” “Maybe Sandy Gleason will come save us,” Jac says. “You mean ‘Sandra?’” Matty asks. “I’m saying it like that to get her goat,” Jac says, slumping back into her seat in defeat. “She’ll want to come give us what for. And maybe we hitch a ride after she chews us out.” “We can get a room at her motel.” “Where you check in, but you never—” “Don’t say it!” “I’m sure it’s a very nice motel,” Jac says, then spooks her voice down a gear. “But the boiler, it doesn’t run on wood, it runs on—” “Stop! Stop stop stop!” Jac’s shoulders hitch with laughter. She hits the top of Matty’s thigh with the side of her fist. “You’re so easy,” she tells him. “And you’re so mean,” he tells her back, albeit lovingly. “At least there’s all these stars, right?” Jac leans forward, squints into the darkness at all the flecks of light. “But it was cloudy, wasn’t it?” she says. “It even sprinkled on us back there, didn’t it?” It did. It’s how they found out the wipers on the truck were worse than not having wipers at all. “Clouds blow away,” Matty says, talking himself into it. He flourishes his arm over the dash, presenting all the stars out there for proof. “But stars are white . . .” Jac says, popping her door open. The dome light comes on and she nuzzles her toe into the hinge, finds the button, lets the darkness shroud over them again. She’s right about these thousand points of light: they’re . . . flickering orange? “Close it, close it, please,” Matty says. She looks over to be sure he’s serious, then—slowly—she does. The deep clap of the door resounds. “Fire beetles . . .” she says. Matty’s back is straight against the seat, his feet are pressed hard to the floor, his hands are balled into fists, and his eyes are closed against this. In sympathy, Jac clicks the locks. Two hours later, her phone dead, Matty’s barely holding on, they make a pee pact. It means they’ll go out together to do it, but while each one’s peeing, the other will keep his or her hand on the pee-er’s shoulder. Their shoes crunching through the sand is deafening, but the blanket of pine needles farther out in the darkness, wet from the rain, are worse—not loud, but the kind of squishy it’s hard to trust. “Sing, sing, something loud,” Jac says, squatting, Matty’s hand clamped tight to her shoulder. Matty sings the fight song from their high school. It’s the only thing he can think of. For his turn, Jac sings it just the same, to drown out first the long sound of nothing, then the sound of trickling, then splashing. Then nothing—Matty’s pinched it off. “What?” Jac says. “Another song?” “Did you hear that? A . . . I don’t know. A huffing.” “Huffing?” “What huffs?” “Your imagination,” Jac says, and starts to turn to him, realizes his fly’s still open. “Sing, sing!” Matty commands. She does, he finishes, but then, because there are no sinks, less soap, they discover they don’t really want to hold hands for the walk back to the dark monolith the truck’s become, against the flickering orange stars crawling through the trees. Back in the cab of the truck, which is a slow process at first, then a desperate rush, like diving into bed fast enough to beat the light you just turned out, Jac says, “Whoah.” “Whoa what?” Matty says. Jac directs his eyes down to where she can’t stop looking: the console between the seats. A full blue Icee is there. Matty flinches away, presses himself against his door so hard that Jac locks it from her side, so he won’t spill out. “This is wrong, this is bad,” Matty’s saying. “Somebody else was in here,” Jac says, in wonder. Then, dragging a finger line in the condensation beading on the clear cup, she adds, “That sign did say free refills, though, didn’t it? Maybe they take customers very seriously out here, where there’s hardly any customers. You have to really impress the few there are.” “I can’t do this anymore,” Matty says. “The couch?” Jac asks. When Matty’s finally able to pull his eyes from the Icee, she tilts her head to the back of the truck. Matty nods. “Wait, wait,” he says though, when they both open their doors. “We can’t—if we both get down to go back there, then we’re alone on either side of the truck, aren’t we?” Jac nods, following his logic. “And how do you know I’m me when we meet?” he says. “Because you will be.” “Will you?” Jac peers into the darkness on her side of the truck. The stars out there are scrawling lava trails into the trees. “Okay, yes,” she says, and, careful not to dislodge the volcano lid of the Icee in the cupholder, she spiders her way over to Matty’s side of the truck. She’s practically sitting in his lap. “On three,” Matty says, and pops his door handle. When the door doesn’t open, he scrabbles desperately at it, a forlorn noise in his throat, burbling past his lips. “Here, wait,” Jac says, and reaches across the console for the ignition key, still in its place on the steering column. She presses the fob and the door locks clunk open along with the door, spilling them out in a pile. They come up spitting sand, looking every direction at once. “When people were stupid . . .” Jac says again, their chorus for the night, now. “And not liking this even a little,” Matty adds. Jac stands, moving to heave the door shut, except suddenly Matty’s hand is there, stopping her. “Too loud,” he says. “There might be ears out there. Connected to eyes. And mouths.” “Paranoid much?” Jac asks. “It’s called survival instinct.” Holding hands now, who cares about bathroom germs, they skirt the side of the truck, keeping their back to it, and then, remembering the padlock too late, they have to make their way back to the cab, for the key in the glove box. “My heart can’t take this,” Matty says. Jac squeezes his hand tighter, to keep him from exploding up out of his skin. As quietly as they can, they twist the key in the padlock. Jac works the grimy strap at the bottom of the door out. The problem now is how to pull this loud, loud door up. “They can’t be out there like that,” Matty says, about the stars. About the fire beetles. “That Icee shouldn’t be cold like that,” Jac says. “It shouldn’t be there at all,” Matty says, cranking his head around all at once, like to catch something trying to hide behind them. “What?” Jac asks, looking as well. “I’m going to open it now,” Matty says like talking himself into it, then pulls up on the strap all at once, yanking until the springs or counterweights or whatever take the door and rattle it up all at once in a rush like thunder made of great thin sheets of metal. “Announce us, why don’t you,” Jac says. “They’re not real,” Matty says. “Fire beetles.” Inside the truck’s cargo box, it’s inky black. Velvet-black. No stars. “Back when people were stupid . . .” Matty says again, squeezing Jac’s hand hard now. “This is smart, this is safe,” Jac says, and palms her phone to light this interior space up. But of course her phone’s dead. And Matty’s is up in the cab. “What’s that?” Matty says. Their eyes are adjusting, slightly. Inside, there’s something tall, regal, pointed, and . . . woody? “Can’t be,” Jac says. But she’s not stepping forward. Behind them on the interstate, a truck whines around the corner of this long downhill. When its lights line up with Jac and Matty, it makes their shadows plunge into the cargo box of the truck, which feels for a moment like a mistake, like their shadows are going to stick in there, and then snap Jac and Matty in with them. But the headlights also reveal, for a split instant, Matty’s coatrack. The one his granddad made for his grandma, seventy years ago. His one family heirloom. He finally breathes, shakes his head. “I don’t think we’ll suffocate,” Jac says, and, using the handrail, steps up onto the wide rear bumper. She holds her hand back to pull Matty up. He lets her, and they balance there for a moment, not outside, not quite inside. “I’m not going to be able to sleep,” Matty says. “Sleep is for beds,” Jac says. “Tonight’s about standing guard.” Together, they step in, the truck’s springs creaking, adjusting to their slight weight. Then those springs adjust more. A lot more. Enough that Jac and Matty have to balance with their arms, their fingertips trying to find a wall. As one, they look back to what could be so heavy. Silhouetted in the wide doorway against a backdrop of a thousand tiny, crawling campfires, is a bear standing up on two legs, a bear with a long wolfy snout. A bear with a wide rack of elk antlers. Instead of making sense—of being this or that or the other, not all three at once—it reaches up for the dirty strap at the bottom of the door and pulls it down hard in front of itself. Matty and Jac fall back onto the couch. They’re clutching onto each other. They’re breathing too fast, too deep. “That wasn’t—” Matty says. “Couldn’t have been,” Jac assures him. Which is when a hand from behind the couch claps down onto Matty’s left shoulder. Another settles onto Jac’s right shoulder. They flinch and wriggle away. From the metal floor in front of the couch, they look up. It’s a woman. She’s wearing a flannel shirt, jeans, and has her hair up under a scarf, reading glasses hanging around her neck. She’s staring down at Jac and Matty, her eyes intense, like she’s trying to catalog them, make sense of them. “Sandy Gleason?” Jac has no choice but to say. “Sandra,” Sandra Gleason corrects, her delivery getting across how tired she is of having to make this distinction. “No, no, we were only—” Matty says. “You’re not real,” Jac says. Insists. “Real, not real,” Sandra Gleason says, stepping neatly over the couch and plopping down, then cocking an appreciative eye at the door when the padlock out there clicks shut. “Is that really a big concern out here in the darkness, you think?” Jac blurts out, “We’re sorry, we didn’t mean—” “We were just having fun!” Matty finishes. “Me too,” Sandra Gleason says, and angles over to reach behind the couch for something, still speaking: “I should tell you, though. My brother and I, we finally reconciled—did you not get to that part? Oh, yes, yes. He even lets me use this, now.” What she hauls up, sets on her lap like the trusty thing it is, is a toothy chainsaw. Matty and Jac kick hard away from this, into the door, one of them yipping, one groaning, both of their dreams of a new backdrop for their lives screaming away when that chainsaw rips to life, not stopping to sputter, just instantly revving higher and higher. Up in the cab, from the shaking of the truck, a clump of the drops perched on the clear side of the Icee pool together, are now heavy enough to zigzag down the side of the cup, eating up more and more condensation on the way, until it’s less tears crying, more just wetness tinged berry blue. Outside the truck, the stars in the trees scribing orange lines in the night, spelling out words no one will read, the silhouette of a bear that’s a wolf with elk antlers looks up from the tuft of grass it’s tugging on with its mouth, and when the round tip of that furious chainsaw chews through the side of the cargo box for about six inches, this bear cocks its elk ears, twitches its wolf nose, its great antlers cocked at an inquisitive angle, but when the blade sucks back in, this creature with the heart of a fairy tale goes back to pulling at the stubborn grass. It’s not easy with sharp teeth, but it’s got all night, doesn’t it? Unlike—the little two-stroke engine in there chugging down now, from the deep work the blade’s doing—unlike Jac and Matty, who, if they’re lucky, will find themselves carved into a piece of art to keep those pesky Ohioans out of the suggestion box. “Parthenogenesis” copyright © 2024 by Stephen Graham JonesArt copyright © 2024 by Brian Britigan Buy the Book Parthenogenesis Stephen Graham Jones Buy Book Parthenogenesis Stephen Graham Jones Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget The post Parthenogenesis appeared first on Reactor.

Books book review Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud Is the Beginning of a Genre-Defying Journey A review of Nathan Ballingrud’s new horror novel. By Martin Cahill | Published on October 2, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share Crypt of the Moon Spider does more in its first page than some books do in their entire first acts. Nathan Ballingrud is an author with many admirers for many reasons; whether you love his work already or are just hearing of him, his newest novella (the first in a planned trilogy) will draw you in like a helpless fly on a silk strand all the same. In a single page, you learn all you need to lose yourself to this haunted lunar tale. It is the early 20th century, Veronica has been experiencing several mental health maladies, and today is the day her husband takes her to the moon to be quote-unquote fixed. And she cannot rip her eyes from what she sees below, on a celestial body she has been in love with all her life. A wide, dark-green forest of silence and shadows awaits on the pitted surface of the moon, where the institute of Dr. Cull lies in wait, a proclaimed genius who has created a home for the ill of mind to come and be healed. The forest used to hold a massive spider, whose webs stretched across the lunar canopy, but they’re no more; the last of them died a long time ago. Veronica is enchanted by the stories of this last spider, this wondrous place, and firmly believes that if she embraces this opportunity, Dr. Cull will remove the dark and sad thoughts from her and make her whole. Dr. Cull promises upon first meeting her that not only will he excise that darkness from her mind, he will replace it with something better: spider silk from that long-dead moon spider which, he promises, will fix everything. From these first few pages, the reader has been positioned as much as Veronica has; on the threshold of mystery, horror, and hope, Veronica and the reader both are taken somewhere stranger and more horrifying than anyone could have predicted. Veronica is a compelling character and fits the role of gothic protagonist perfectly: enough trepidation to worry and be cautious, enough hope to continue to persist, each step forward faltering, but complete, and enough curiosity to peer into shadows for far longer than warned. Her presence on the moon in the care of Dr. Cull and his right-hand man, a massive, quiet, and violent man she names Grub, is both lonely and frightening. The addition of Dr. Cull’s medical assistant doesn’t help either, being a secretive and silent member of the Alabaster Scholars, a cult dedicated to the dead spider and obsessed with understanding the mysteries of their webs. As Veronica undergoes her treatment, Ballingrud twists the surgical knife against the page, until he has not so much let the light in, as he has bid the darkness to leak out. As we come to learn the secret behind Dr. Cull’s treatments, the brutal history inside Grub, and the violent pressure building in the heart of the moon, Ballingrud conducts his orchestra of terror with absolute confidence and aplomb. I say it often of Ballingrud’s work, but my God, it’s a gift to watch a master at work, and this story is made of such graceful horror.  Buy the Book Crypt of the Moon Spider Nathan Ballingrud Buy Book Crypt of the Moon Spider Nathan Ballingrud Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget There is some bricklaying, as Ballingrud is very clear about this being the first in a planned trilogy. As we rocket toward the end, you might wonder at this character or that fade-to-black. You may even have a curiosity about a sudden departure in narrative as we spend time in the mind of Grub for a while before learning the ultimate fate of Veronica. But fear not; there is reason in the shift, and a quick preview of the next installment, Cathedral of the Drowned (isn’t this guy great at titles!) quickly illustrates just what kind of story Ballingrud is building here.  But fear not, friends, for every mystery Ballingrud leaves dangling before readers like muscle fibers loosened from a severed arm, he never loses sight of Veronica’s journey, which ultimately brings her into the bowels of the moon itself. Ballingrud has such a grip on the emotional pulses of his world and characters, and yet his touch is light; quietly and subtly is how he best weaves his web, as strands of sorrow, loneliness, loss, and transformation touch Veronica and begin to hold her fast. Like any of those who find themselves in the middle of a tale of horror, she realizes too late at her fate. However, this is Nathan Ballingrud. Endings are not always endings pure, but rather a glimpse into some strange and beautiful new beginning. Veronica is one of many in this institute who has come seeking help, a return to who she was; she may find, as we see in Ballingrud’s expert hands, there is no going back. If there is to be life, if there is to be freedom, it must be found in embracing change. What kind of change, you will have to read to find out. It only makes me more eager to see him pick up these story strands once more and keep weaving.  If you’re not reading the work of Nathan Ballingrud, Crypt of the Moon Spider is a perfect place to begin. Effortlessly pirouetting through and across genres, gathering pulp and gothic and horror and science fiction, and yes, even some noir, this first novella of a planned trilogy only makes me hungry for whatever comes next. Again, Ballingrud has outdone himself in the crafting of horror and humanity, the emotions resonating between people and monsters, and the struggle to resist the alien until we see it for the mirror it can be. I’ll do my best to be patient for this next installment; should I need inspiration, I will look at any web nearby, and ponder those beautiful forests on a moon only a story away.[end-mark] Crypt of the Moon Spider is published by Nightfire. The post <i>Crypt of the Moon Spider</i> by Nathan Ballingrud Is the Beginning of a Genre-Defying Journey appeared first on Reactor.

Books new releases All the New Science Fiction Books Arriving in October 2024 October’s new science fiction releases feature ace pilots, astrophysicists, and, yes, a space-faring cat named Pumpkin! By Reactor | Published on October 2, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share Here’s the full list of new science fiction titles heading your way in October! Keep track of all the new SFF releases here. All title summaries are taken and/or summarized from copy provided by the publisher. Release dates are subject to change. October 1 The Last Gifts of the Universe — Riley August (Hanover Square)When the Home worlds finally achieved the technology to venture out into the stars, they found a graveyard of dead civilisations. What befell them is unknown. All Home knows is that they are the last ones left—and whatever came for the others will one day come for them. Scout is an Archivist who scours the dead worlds of the cosmos for their last gifts: interesting technology, cultural rituals—anything left behind that might be useful to Home and their survival. During an excavation on a lifeless planet, Scout unearths something unbelievable: a surviving message from an alien who witnessed the world-ending entity thousands of years ago. Now Scout, their brother and their sometimes-fearless, space-faring cat, Pumpkin, must race to save what matters most. 1635: The Weaver’s Code — Eric Flint, Jody Lynn Nye (Baen)A young gentlewoman, Margaret de Beauchamp, finds her fate twisted into the lives of the up-timers when she meets the Americans imprisoned in the Tower of London. In exchange for her help, Rita Simpson and Harry Lefferts give her a huge sum of money to keep her family’s manor and its woolen trade from falling into the hands of the crown and its unscrupulous minister, Lord Cork. But Margaret’s troubles are not at an end. Her family’s fortunes are in a downward spiral. Her trip to Grantville brings unexpected dangers and a possible up-time solution. Inspired by books in the Grantville library, Margaret has an idea to restore her family’s fortunes with an innovation never before seen in fabric design. With the help of Aaron Craig, an up-timer programmer using aqualators, water-powered computers, they teach her father’s craftsmen to create a combination machine loom that can produce a new type of woolen cloth. The ornate and perfect patterns quickly trend among the nobility. However, the Master Weavers of the county’s Weaver’s Guild aren’t happy about being overshadowed by the changes to the status quo, and take their grievance to Lord Cork, who is still looking for the people who helped the Americans escape from the Tower. Cork isn’t interested in squabbles between mere tradesmen, but he is very interested in taking over the new calculating machine that is fueling the upsurge in the de Beauchamp fortunes. He sends agents ordered to stop at nothing to secure it for his own ends. Margaret has to protect her new business, and prevent anyone from discovering that up-timers are in the country to assist her, but she still has to deal with an uprising at home. Freelancers of Neptune (Sol Blazers #1) — Jacob Holo (Baen)The Solar System ain’t what it used to be! In the far distant future, Saturn’s rings are gone, Mercury is a gas giant, and Earth is remembered only as a unit of measure. Nearly godlike AIs reshaped the Solar System in eons past, but they too are now nothing more than a fading memory. Captain Nathaniel Kade cares for none of that. He’s but a simple freelancer from the orbital ring of Neptune, struggling to make ends meet and to keep his understaffed spaceship from falling apart. All he wants is a decent, uneventful job to help put his finances back in order. What he receives instead is Vessani S’Kaari, a mysterious and beautiful cat girl who tried—and failed—to steal a ship belonging to a band of space pirates. Vessani’s in over her head and is clearly more trouble than she’s worth, but she also has a lead on what may be the greatest treasure trove of lost technology the Solar System has ever seen. Nathan pulls her butt out of the fire, and together they begin to assemble a team to seek out this long-lost bounty. But other interested parties have their eyes on the same prize; the Jovian Everlife has dispatched a fleet of warships with one of their elite, many-bodied agents in command, and he’d like a few words with Nathan and his new crewmember. October 8 Dark Space — Rob Hart, Alex Segura (Blackstone)If life were fair, ace pilot Jose Carriles should have ended up a desk jockey like his former friend Corin Timony, back on the lunar colony of New Destiny. Instead, he’s the pilot of the Mosaic—a massive ship taking the Interstellar Union’s first-ever mission to outside our solar system. Timony should have been the best spy at the Bazaar, the lunar colony’s international intelligence arm. Instead, she’s been demoted to admin duties like monitoring long-range communications. She has no one to blame but herself—and maybe Carriles. But when the Mosaic experiences a series of strange malfunctions and Carriles is forced to take a wild gamble to save the ship, he begins to suspect the reasons behind the exploratory mission weren’t exactly on the up and up. At the same time, Timony’s old instincts kick in as she realizes the distress call she received from the Mosaic has been wiped without a trace. As people start to end up dead and loyalties are tested, Timony and Carriles find themselves entangled in a star-spanning conspiracy that drags them through the darkest corners of their government—and their own personal failures—and face-to-face with a reckoning that could destroy humanity as we know it. October 15 Alliance Unbound (Hinder Stars #2) — C. J. Cherryh, Jane S. Fancher (DAW)When Cyteen opened up faster-than-light travel, it gave the technology for free to any ship that could reach it; and with that technology, it provided a map of jump-points, points of mass enabling starships to navigate hyperspace safely. The map of jump-points, however, stopped with the route to Alpha—thus excluding Sol, and Earth, and the Earth Company, whose gateway to the stars was Alpha. Cyteen knew exactly what it was doing with its gift. Sol and the EC could still reach Alpha with sub-light pusher-ships as it always had—but Sol and the Earth Company no longer had any authority in the Beyond. But Sol intends to take back control of its star-stations and stop Cyteen’s unbridled expansion, however it can. To do that, they are willing to starve Alpha and concentrate their efforts on a huge FTLer capable of carrying military force. On Vicious Worlds (Kindom #2) — Bethany Jacobs (Orbit)The Jeveni have found a fragile sense of peace on the ice planet of Capamame, far from the Kindom’s domineering control. There, Jun Ironway and Masar Hawks are tasked with the impossible: protecting their colony from a faceless saboteur who is hell-bent on spreading mayhem and murder through the colony. Meanwhile, stoic Cleric Chono and Six, the wild manipulator responsible for outwitting the Nightfoot family, struggle to stay one step ahead of their enemies. A collision is on the horizon. One that could ignite the spark of revolution. And over it all hangs the cruel legacy of Esek Nightfoot. A legacy that may prove impossible to escape. October 22 Absolution (Southern Reach) — Jeff Vandermeer (MCD)When the Southern Reach trilogy was first published a decade ago, it was an instant sensation, celebrated in a front-page New York Times story before publication, hailed by Stephen King and many others. Each volume climbed the bestseller list; awards were won; the books made the rare transition from paperback original to hardcover; the movie adaptation became a cult classic. All told, the trilogy has sold more than a million copies and has secured its place in the pantheon of twenty-first-century literature. And yet for all this, for Jeff VanderMeer there was never full closure to the story of Area X. There were a few mysteries that had gone unsolved, some key points of view never aired. There were stories left to tell. There remained questions about who had been complicit in creating the conditions for Area X to take hold; the story of the first mission into the Forgotten Coast—before Area X was called Area X—had never been fully told; and what if someone had foreseen the world after Acceptance? How crazy would they seem? October 29 Nether Station — Kevin J. Anderson (Blackstone)Space is vast. Space is full of wonders. Space is terrifying. In the darkest part of the solar system lies a wormhole. Nether. Astrophysicist Cammie Skoura has joined a research team up to the Nether anomaly—the first team to investigate it in person—to understand the mechanics of the wormhole, and to explore its possibilities as a shortcut to Alpha Centauri. But another race of ancient beings has already been here, an impossibly long time ago, leaving remnants of their vast complexes and the gigantic temples they built to horrific beings beyond comprehension. What dangers did those elder races find in the hidden corners of spacetime? What did they unleash? And what remains? Now, Cammie and the crew of Nether Station must find the answers—before the darkest part of the cosmos swallows them up. Usurpation (Semiosis #3) — Sue Burke (Tor Books)Stevland, the dominant sentient lifeform of Pax, has clandestinely sent some of its progeny to Earth. To explore, to spread, to report back. Since their germination, Earth has been a powder keg. Human rebellion, robot uprisings, and global pandemics have created chaos, distrust, and deaths. As more and more conflicts break out across Earth, Stevland’s children work in the background, in an attempt to control human behavior and perhaps, bring peace to the planet. Stevland took control of Pax. Earth shouldn’t be too difficult. The post All the New Science Fiction Books Arriving in October 2024 appeared first on Reactor.