The first book in the Imaginings series from NewCon Press, Cold Grey Stones by Tanith Lee (with artwork by John Kaiine) is ready and is set for release on 26 January 2012. The second volume in the series will be Last and First Contacts by Stephen Baxter, scheduled for release on 26 April 2012.  It features artwork by David Hardy.

Full details of the Imaginings project can be found at the NewCon Press website HERE

A GLASS OF SHADOW by Liz Williams. Newcon Press £9.99

Reviewed by Jay Eales

I’m not what you would call well-travelled, having been abroad precisely six times in forty-something years. That’s one of the reasons why I value the works of writers like Liz Williams. In these nineteen tales is a veritable gazetteer of lands (and indeed worlds) beyond my ken. With stories set in the worlds of her novels the Winterstrike and Detective Inspector Chen series, there’s plenty for the devoted Williams fan, and many more for the newcomers. I get to experience exotic locales such asVenice,SingaporeThree,Kazakhstan and the icy wilderness of Mars from the comfort of my sofa. No jacket or compass required.

Williams is adept at blending the everyday with the otherworldly, ably demonstrated in stories such as ‘The Water Cure’ and ‘Indicating the Awakening of Persons Buried Alive’. In ‘All Fish and Dracula’, Williams captures the flavour of a place that I have visited: Whitby, filled with jet jewellery, Goths and gollywogs. LikeGlastonbury, where the author calls home,Whitbyis a mystical focal point, torn between loving and hating the tourist trade that keeps their hearts pumping.

In ‘Who Pays’, we see a futuristic extrapolation of some of our older world myths without evoking the spirit of Stargate. Eastern asceticism infuses the otherwise alien landscape of ‘Ikyryoh’, possibly my favourite of the collection today. Ask me tomorrow, and I may pick another, as Williams has spoilt me for choice.

Ian Whates has announced his plans for NewCon Press in 2012. There are three titles planned for release at Eastercon 2012.  One is a short story collection from Ian Watson, gathering together fifteen previously uncollected stories, with an introduction by Adam Roberts. The next is a hard SF novel written by Andy West. Finally, there will be an anthology, Dark Currents, that returns to the traditional NewCon Press formula of mixing science fiction, fantasy, slipstream and horror stories, all written to a common theme.

Later in the year, there will be a collaboration between NewCon Press and Un:bound.  This will involve a podcast programme, individually downloadable readings of original stories, plus an anthology (e-book and hardcopy).

Finally, plans for the Imaginings series of signed limited editions are well under way with individual issues devoted to the work of Tanith Lee, Nina Allan, Adam Roberts, Stephen Baxter, Pat Cadigan and Jon Courtenay Grimwood. Volume 1 will feature the work of Tanith Lee. Entitled Cold Grey Stones, the book will comprise eleven stories, six of which have previously appeared in such publications as Interzone, Realms of Fantasy, and Fantasy Magazine, while five are completely original to this collection. The cover features atmospheric artwork by Tanith’s husband, John Kaiine.

THE GIFT OF JOY by Ian Whates. NewCon Press, hb, 254pp
Review by Stephen Theaker

Though Ian Whates, chair of the BSFA and organiser of Northampton’s Newcon convention, has gone on to (presumably) greater things with novels for Solaris and Angry Robot, this self-published collection of short stories is an inauspicious beginning, one that never strains to reach beyond the closest language to hand, and rarely reaches beyond the most obvious ideas.

The best of the stories are perhaps “Darkchild”, in which psychics are caught in an alien trap found in the asteroid belt – the ending was surprising – and “The Gift of Joy”, in which a former deep cover spy uses his talents for mimicry to work as a gigolo. “Hanging on Her Every Word”, horror rather than sf, has an old plot but a painful conclusion.

The book bears a self-inflicted wound: author’s notes at the end of every story. At best such notes are like a magician showing the secrets of his tricks; how much worse when the tricks weren’t all that magical. For example, we learn with very little interest that the plot of “Knowing How to Look” was sketched out in a pub. That “The Final Hour” – which features seconds ticking away between paragraphs, an interesting effect spoilt by dialogue that would take much more than a second to say – was rejected by the anthology for which it was written. And that “Fear of Fog” lifted the collection’s most interesting idea – a human world living peacefully in alien space when Earth is at war with those aliens – from Stephen Baxter.

“Ghosts in the Machine” provides a line that could well be applied to the whole book: “What remained of the adventure was pretty straightforward.” The Gift of Joy is not awful; that would at least be entertaining. It’s just unremarkable, generic and straightforward, the stories feeling more like competent assignments than bursts of inspiration.

The part of the book I’m most likely to remember, unfortunately, is when the protagonist of “Flesh and Metal”, prior to his fight with a shape-shifting android assassin, passes blithely by the scene of a gang-rape, describing the girl as a “stupid cow” for wearing the wrong clothes. “She’d certainly have something to tell her friends in the morning.”

If you’re looking for quality books at bargain prices, both NewCon Press and PS Publishing are currently having clear-outs to make way for new stock!

NewCon Press is offering its vampire anthology The Bitten Word signed limited edition hardback, at half price.  336 pages, seventeen original stories from the likes of Kelley Armstrong, Tanith Lee, Storm Constantine, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Gail Z. Martin, Freda Warrington, Simon Clark, Chaz Brenchley, etc, all in a beautifully presented dust-jacketed hardback. This limited edition book is signed by all the authors on two bespoke signing pages and includes a full colour plate of the magnificent back cover art by award winning artist Les Edwards, plus a bonus story by Ian Watson.  All for just £16.00 (plus p&p – £2.50 in the UK) rather than the listed £32.00.

In addition, they are offering the following at half price:

Limited edition hardback (unsigned) and paperback of the anthology Myth-Understandings: featuring all women authors, themed on ‘communication’, with stories from:  Gwyneth Jones, Pat Cadigan, Justina Robson, Liz Williams, Tricia Sullivan, Sarah Pinborough, Storm Constantine, Deborah J Miller, Freda Warrington, Leigh Kennedy, etc.

Limited edition hardback (signed by author, introducer, and cover artist) and limited edition paperback (signed by the author) of Andrew Hook’s existential zombie novel And God Created Zombies (introduction by Sarah Pinborough).

Limited edition hardback (signed) and paperback of The Beloved of my Beloved – a collaboration between British SF author Ian Watson and Italian surrealist Roberto Quaglia.  Surreal, shocking, inventive, bizarre, hilarious, outrageous, obscene, and quite, quite brilliant:  Arabian Nights meets the Illustrated Man with added weirdness.

Please contact NewCon Press using the contact form on the website if you are interested in purchasing any of these titles.

Meanwhile, PS Publishing are having a clearance sale with several paperbacks at just £2.99.  Some novellas, novels, collections and anthologies are priced at under £10, together with a handful of signed slipcased editions at just £12.99. ARC copies are being sold at £4.99 plus postage for the novellas and £8.99 plus postage for everything else.

Author, editor and publisher Ian Whates will visit the Birmingham Science Fiction Group in November 2011. Ian’s prolific career in SF has included his authoring of five novels as well as many short stories (one of which, “The Gift of Joy”, was shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Awards). Furthermore, Ian has edited a string of SF anthologies, from Dislocations: Nine Stories of Speculation and Imagination (2007) to Solaris Rising: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction (2011). On top of all this Ian set up NewCon Press in 2006, which has published a range of original fiction which have themselves garnered various awards.

With such a breadth of experience in the field of SF Ian is sure to give a fascinating insight into his process of writing, editing and publishing books.

The meeting is on 4 November 2011 at the Briar Rose Hotel on Bennett’s Hill, Birmingham; this venue is just 5 minutes walk from New Street Station and handy for all bus routes. The meeting opens its doors at 7:30 pm.

Please note that this meeting is on the first Friday in November, which varies from the BSFG’s usual tradition of meeting on the second Friday of the month!