My life in books

Most fans know that while there’s a lot of really good science fiction and fantasy being published by the large publishing companies, often through trusted imprints, there is also some interesting material being put out through small presses, and not all of it gets to your standard big box bookstore.

I like finding and supporting small presses – if they’re publishing interesting things, that is. One such press that I’ve recently discovered Norilana Books, a venture undertaken by science fiction author Vera Nazarian. Norilana has an interesting list of recent and forthcoming speculative fiction titles, ranging from from Catherynne Valente’s A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects to a YA series by Sherwood Smith and illustrated reprints of Tanith Lee’s fantasy, as well as an ambitious project to release a line of classics in world literature from author such as Sand, Trollope, Gaskell, Thackeray, Voltaire… oh, just go visit the website, there’s stuff for just about anyone. (Norilana Books has a LiveJournal, too, where new acquisitions and other announcements are posted for your convenience: norilanabooks.)

Norilana has acquired the rights to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s very successful anthology series, Sword & Sorceress, and has also released several other anthologies – at least three of which are intended as the first in a series - that appear to be modelled on the same pattern that made Sword & Sorceress such a great success: sticking to a theme that is nonetheless broad enough to encompass a lot of variety, and providing a mix of seasoned writers and new talents.

Sword & Sorceress XXII, Elisabeth Waters (ed.)

This is the classic fantasy anthology series begun by Marion Zimmer Bradley and reborn under the editorial hand of Elisabeth Waters. Represented among the list of contributing authors are some writers who published some of their first work in earlier volumes of the series , such as Heather Rose Jones and Deborah J. Ross, some well-established and well-known writers such as Esther M. Friesner and Robert E. Vardeman, and some relatively new names in the field – exactly the same kind of mix that MZB herself used to aim for. Waters has taken the vision of MZB and made it live again. It’s a fine thing to know that you can always turn to at least one anthology a year that will provide you with stories about women that begin from the assumption that women have agency in their own lives.

Warrior Wisewoman, Roby James (ed.)

With this volume, Norilana begins a new themed anthology series intended as a science fiction counterpart to the Sword & Sorceress brand. Where Sword & Sorceress featured stories with women protagonists in the sword and sorcery genre, Warrior Wisewoman is described as “an annual anthology series of science fiction featuring powerful and remarkable women.” I found the first volume to be a bit uneven, but with a lot of promise. I hope to see it become a long-running sfnal sister to Sword & Sorceress, because you can never have enough anthologies that tell stories about women in their own right.

Lace and Blade, Deborah J. Ross (ed.)

Another planned annual themed anthology series, Lace and Blade is to be an anthology of romantic fantasy “in the spirit of classic period swashbucklers, Zorro, the Scarlet Pimpernel, and D'Artagnan, brimming with romantic courtly intrigue and dangerous liaisons, with cloak and dagger and perfumed handkerchiefs, the language of the fan and stolen glances, with the manners of Jane Austen and the sparkling rapier wit of Oscar Wilde…” Ross has certainly brought together a stellar group of writers for the inaugural edition, including Tanith Lee, Sherwood Smith, Diana Paxon, Catherine Asaro, Robin Wayne Bailey and Chaz Brenchley, and I enjoyed a number of these stories, despite being rather picky about how people go about mixing romance in with fantasy. I’ll probably get the second volume when it’s out, because while some of the stories were a bit too much romance, others were just fine.

Clockwork Phoenix: Tales of Beauty and Strangeness, Mike Allen (ed.)

And finally, an annual themed anthology series devoted to “fantastic literature” (or literary fantasy, whichever you prefer): “works that sidestep expectations in beautiful and unsettling ways, that surprise with their settings and startle with the manner in which they cross genre boundaries, that aren't afraid to experiment with storytelling techniques, and yet seamlessly blend form with meaningful function.” Authors such as Tanith Lee, Ekaterina Sedia, Catherynne Valente, Leah Bobet, Marie Brennan, Vandana Singh, Cat Sparks and John Grant deliver cutting-edge fantasy. Again, I found the anthology a bit uneven, but with more than enough interesting material to justify the purchase, and I’ll be checking out the next volume of this anthology.