Novosti iz sveta knjiga...

[Lidija]

Written during the height of the 1970s Italian domestic terror, a cult novel, with distinct echoes of Lovecraft and Borges, makes its English-language debut.

In the spare wing of a church-run sanatorium, some zealous youths create "the Library," a space where lonely citizens can read one another’s personal diaries and connect with like-minded souls in "dialogues across the ether." But when their scribblings devolve into the ugliest confessions of the macabre, the Library’s users learn too late that a malicious force has consumed their privacy and their sanity. As the city of Turin suffers a twenty-day "phenomenon of collective psychosis" culminating in nightly massacres that hundreds of witnesses cannot explain, the Library is shut down and erased from history. That is, until a lonely salaryman decides to investigate these mysterious events, which the citizenry of Turin fear to mention. Inevitably drawn into the city’s occult netherworld, he unearths the stuff of modern nightmares: what’s shared can never be unshared.

An allegory inspired by the grisly neo-fascist campaigns of its day, The Twenty Days of Turin has enjoyed a fervent cult following in Italy for forty years. Now, in a fretful new age of "lone-wolf" terrorism fueled by social media, we can find uncanny resonances in Giorgio De Maria’s vision of mass fear: a mute, palpitating dread that seeps into every moment of daily existence. With its stunning anticipation of the Internet―and the apocalyptic repercussions of oversharing―this bleak, prescient story is more disturbingly pertinent than ever.

Brilliantly translated into English for the first time by Ramon Glazov, The Twenty Days of Turin establishes De Maria’s place among the literary ranks of Italo Calvino and beside classic horror masters such as Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. Hauntingly imaginative, with visceral prose that chills to the marrow, the novel is an eerily clairvoyant magnum opus, long overdue but ever timely.

[Lidija]

Set a few years from now ... Tristan Collins quit his day job to focus 100% on developing a computer algorithm that replicates human behavior faster and more elegantly than anyone has ever seen before. He succeeds, but other members of society don't view his accomplishments in the same light he does. Tristan must navigate his way through a maze of crafty individuals who seek to reap their own form of "profit" from his work.

[Ghoul]

opa, ovaj The Twenty Days of Turin zvuči kao za mene...
overiću prvom prilikom.

[Lidija]

WINNER of the 2015 NATIONAL INDIE EXCELLENCE AWARD FOR MEDICAL THRILLERS. More than 8000 copies sold!
The Laptev Virus is like a medical detective novel. LA screen writer Steven Ramirez called The Laptev Virus “A worthy successor to the Andromeda Strain.” If you like Michael Crichton, Robin Cook or movies like Outbreak, this hard sci-fi novel is for you. The Laptev Virus begins as an oil company, drilling in the Arctic, accidentally discovers a megavirus, frozen in the permafrost. It is 30,000 years old. And it is a human pathogen. Just how would a team of scientists go about studying it? And what if the mice models they were using inadvertently became contaminated, leading the researchers to dubious conclusions? Now, imagine if the CEO of the oil company sponsoring the research put pressure on the lab to issue a certification that the coast was clear and they could return to drilling—but it turns out that he is dead wrong?

[Lidija]

Seth is a surveyor, along with his friend Theo, a leech-like creature running through his skull who tells Seth what lies to his left and right. Theo, in turn, relies on Seth for mobility, and for ordinary vision looking forwards and backwards. Like everyone else in their world, they are symbionts, depending on each other to survive.

In the universe containing Seth’s world, light cannot travel in all directions: there is a “dark cone” to the north and south. Seth can only face to the east (or the west, if he tips his head backwards). If he starts to turn to the north or south, his body stretches out across the landscape, and to rotate to face north-east is every bit as impossible as accelerating to the speed of light.

Every living thing in Seth’s world is in a state of perpetual migration as they follow the sun’s shifting orbit and the narrow habitable zone it creates. Cities are being constantly disassembled at one edge and rebuilt at the other, with surveyors mapping safe routes ahead.

But when Seth and Theo join an expedition to the edge of the habitable zone, they discover a terrifying threat: a fissure in the surface of the world, so deep and wide that no one can perceive its limits. As the habitable zone continues to move, the migration will soon be blocked by this unbridgeable void, and the expedition has only one option to save its city from annihilation: descend into the unknown.

[Lidija]

After 240 years traveling toward Tau Prius and a new planet to colonize, the inhabitants of the generation ship Argos are bored and aimless. They join groups such as the Markers and the Breeders, have costumed orgies, and test the limits of drugs, alcohol, and pain just to pass the time.

To Laura Stein, they’re morons and, other than a small handful of friends, she’d rather spend time with her meat plant than with any of her fellow passengers. But when one of her subordinates is murdered while out on a job, Laura takes it as her responsibility to find out what happened. She expects to find a personal grudge or a drug deal gone wrong, but instead stumbles upon a conspiracy that could tear the ship in two.

Labelled a terrorist and used as a pawn in the ultimate struggle for control, Laura, with help from her friend Bruce and clues left by a geneticist from the past, digs deep into the inner working of the ship, shimmying her way through ductwork, rallying the begrudged passengers to rise up and fight, and peeking into an unsavory past to learn the truth and save their future.

[Lidija]

This "Boxset" contains the author's five science fiction works published up to February 2017. All are set in a common 'future history', where people spread throughout the solar system through private enterprise, to live there permanently. There are no big government programs, and no major breakthroughs in science - just practical application of engineering skill and principles that are already well known. Essential to this, and to the survival of everyone out there, are the engineers themselves. Unlike in conventional science fiction, it is clear that any colony on an asteroid will be isolated,more so than any humans in the modern world. So everything they take will be designed for maintainability, using only the materials and tools they have brought and such materials as they are able to mine from the asteroid. Hence their motto (and the title of this collection) "If you can't fix it, don't take it!"

[Lidija]

There was a shading of rose in the pearl arch of sky, deepening at the horizon meeting of sea and air in a rainbow tint of cloud. The lazy swells of the ocean held the same soft color, darkened with crimson veins where spirals of weed drifted. A rose world bathed in soft sunlight, knowing only gentle winds, peace, and—sloth.

Ross Murdock leaned forward over the edge of the rock ledge to peer down at a beach of fine sand, pale pink sand with here and there a glitter of a crystalline “shell"—or were those delicate, fluted ovals shells? Even the waves came in languidly. And the breeze which ruffled his hair, smoothed about his sun-browned, half-bare body, caressed it, did not buffet on its way inland to stir the growths which the Terran settlers called “trees” but which possessed long lacy fronds instead of true branches.

Hawaika—named for the old Polynesian paradise—a world seemingly without flaw except the subtle one of being too perfect, too welcoming, too wooing. Its long, uneventful, unchanging days enticed forgetfulness, offered a life without effort. Except for the mystery....
Because this world was not the one pictured on the tape which had brought the Terran settlement team here. A map, a directing guide, a description all in one, that was the ancient voyage tape. Ross himself had helped to loot a storehouse on an unknown planet for a cargo of such tapes. Once they had been the space-navigation guides for a race or races who had ruled the star lanes ten thousand years in his own world’s past, a civilization which had long since sunk again into the dust of its beginning...

[Lidija]

Richard Charles had a dream, a strange dream, one that made him think that things that seemed impossible just might, with a following wind and a cheese sandwich, be possible. With a bit of research, some astute ebaying and a bit of application, you never know he could "clean up", make a fortune, win a Nobel Prize. He decided to record everything in a diary on his beloved Kindle.



The shady crew of the White Raven run freight and salvage at the fringes of our solar system. They discover the wreck of a centuries-old exploration vessel floating light years away from its intended destination and revive its sole occupant, who wakes with news of First Alien Contact. When the crew break it to her that humanity has alien allies already, she reveals that these are very different extra-terrestrials… and the gifts they bestowed on her could kill all humanity, or take it out to the most distant stars.

[Lidija]

An act of sabotage leaves Edward's father trapped inside a virtual reality game, Extropia. In a desperate bid to save his father, Edward follows him, entering a world he knows he might never leave. A world full of artificially intelligent beings; beings subjected to a life of misery and fear in the name of human entertainment. Now one of them has found out about the real world and is determined to have his revenge...
"Robin Bootle has given the devil an update and located him in cyberspace. A rapid plot with intriguing twists and turns." Brian Keaney, Jacob's Ladder.

[Lidija]

Wealth Is the Only Reality

On the surface, stability has returned to Europe. According to all the official metrics released to news feeds, the Administration and the corporations are stronger and more united than ever. Only in the most secret of government surveillance departments and corporate security divisions would anyone suggest otherwise.

On the surface, Senior Para-investigator Toreth’s year is ending badly. His boss hates him, his junior is looking for a way out, and his new case seems like a dud. Even the upcoming holidays bring more unwelcome news. But the new year starts him down a trail that will lead him from an unpromising beginning, via an unappetizing corpse, right into the financial heart of the Administration and the highest-stakes investigation of his career.

On the surface, corporate director Keir Warrick’s life is on the up. His virtual reality corporation SimTech has weathered the storm of the revolt, and new opportunities are appearing. Away from work, though, more clouds are gathering. What should be good family news brings concerns for the future. With so many secrets to keep, where can he turn to finally guarantee the safety of his family and corporation? And what will the consequences of his choices be for his relationship with Toreth?

This is the ninth book in the Administration series, and follows the intertwined private and professional lives of somewhat justifiably paranoid senior para-investigator Val Toreth and overly inquisitive corporate director Keir Warrick.

[Lidija]

The first novel of a new space-opera sequence set in an all-new universe by the Hugo Award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Redshirts and Old Man's War.

Our universe is ruled by physics and faster than light travel is not possible -- until the discovery of The Flow, an extra-dimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transport us to other worlds, around other stars.

Humanity flows away from Earth, into space, and in time forgets our home world and creates a new empire, the Interdependency, whose ethos requires that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It’s a hedge against interstellar war -- and a system of control for the rulers of the empire.

The Flow is eternal -- but it is not static. Just as a river changes course, The Flow changes as well, cutting off worlds from the rest of humanity. When it’s discovered that The Flow is moving, possibly cutting off all human worlds from faster than light travel forever, three individuals -- a scientist, a starship captain and the Empress of the Interdependency -- are in a race against time to discover what, if anything, can be salvaged from an interstellar empire on the brink of collapse.



A fascinating collection of new and classic tales of the fearsome Djinn, from bestselling, award-winning and breakthrough international writers.

Imagine a world filled with fierce, fiery beings, hiding in our shadows, in our dreams, under our skins. Eavesdropping and exploring; savaging our bodies, saving our souls. They are monsters, saviours, victims, childhood friends.

Some have called them genies: these are the Djinn. And they are everywhere. On street corners, behind the wheel of a taxi, in the chorus, between the pages of books. Every language has a word for them. Every culture knows their traditions. Every religion, every history has them hiding in their dark places. There is no part of the world that does not know them.

They are the Djinn. They are among us.

With stories from: Nnedi Okorafor, Neil Gaiman, Helene Wecker, Amal El-Mohtar, Catherine King, Claire North,  E.J. Swift, Hermes (trans. Robin Moger), Jamal Mahjoub, James Smythe, J.Y. Yang, Kamila Shamsie, Kirsty Logan, K.J. Parker, Kuzhali Manickavel, Maria Dahvana Headley, Monica Byrne, Saad Hossein, Sami Shah, Sophia Al-Maria and Usman Malik.

[Lidija]

malo kurioziteta:


The Last Dangerous Visions

The Last Dangerous Visions might be the most famous science fiction book to never exist. 'TLDV' was the long-mooted and nearly-almost-published sequel to Dangerous Visions (1967) and Again, Dangerous Visions (1972) - two vastly important and influential publication in modern speculative fiction.

This ambitious anthology, seemingly intended to be the final word in contemporary SF, was delayed for numerous reasons, documented elsewhere by both Ellison and many others. The anticipation, the delays, and the numerous authors it affected made for, to put it mildly, a great deal of drama.

Ellison released a number of 'Tables of Content' for The Last Dangerous Visions over the years. The aggregated, and, I suppose, "final" TOC is available on Wikipedia.

What follows below is interesting, to me at least, because it is the 'first' such TOC, released in November 1973 in the letters page of The Alien Critic: An informal science fiction and fantasy journal. At

The table of contents is presented in the form of an (open) 'letter to the editor', beginning with an apology for missing a deadline on a 'long essay' for a variety of reasons.

Ellison shares:
Just to show I haven't been dogging it, here is a current (as of 13 September, 1973) table of contents for [The Last Dangerous Visions], with word-lengths appended. The manuscript for the anthology is now in a file box, ready to go to New York, with the manuscripts standing on end. The box is three feet long, and it is jammed. Please bear in mind, as you read this Table of Contents, that this is not the order the stories will appear in the book, that the book is closed and I DAMMIT TO HELL DON'T WANT TO SEE SUBMISSIONS FROM ANYONE EVER AGAIN IN THIS LIFE! and that I'm waiting on rewrites from Charles L. Harness, Wyman Guin, and Gardner Dozois, but beyond those three, the book is complete. Save for the 60,000 words of introductions that I have yet to write, or the 50,000 words of Afterwords that are written but haven't been included in the total wordage indicated on the list. The total also doesn't include the over 75 full-page illustrations done by Tim Kirk. Illustrations that are fucking unbelievable!


As the first airing of The Last Dangerous Visions, this TOC reveals two things:

First, Ellison's initial 'snapshot' of what would constitute the best of contemporary science fiction. If this is the ultimate word in the ultimate trilogy of science fiction, this is the closest we'll get to the anthologist's version of a first draft; the writers that Ellison went to (or accepted) first to achieve his vision.

Second, with the above in mind, it is especially interesting to see the changes over time. Despite Ellison's protests, there were many more authors to come, including Stephen King, John Varley and Ian Watson. Christopher Priest, for example, was not even involved in the project until June 1974. [This is a conversation he documents in The Last Deadloss Visions, his chapbook about the TLDV experience that went on to receive a Hugo nomination in 1995 (showing that, amongst other things, SF fandom enjoyed inside baseball long before the internet!)] Even stepping aside from the publishing repercussions of these changes, they revised TOCs are fascinating because they represent Ellison's 'vision' of science fiction as it changed over time.

THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS (1973 edition)

Ellison had the entries 'Listed at random - not as they will appear finally in the anthology.'

For ease of reading, I have alphabetised by author's last name.

Russell Bates - "Search Cycle: Beginning and Ending 1. The Last Quest; 2. Fifth and Last Horseman" (5,000)
Alfred Bester - "Emerging Nation" (2,000)
Michael Bishop - "Dogs' Lives" (6,000)
Anthony Boucher - "Precis of the Rappacini Report" (850)
S. Kye Boult - "Cargo Run" (18,800)
Mildren Downey Broxon - "The Danaan Children Laugh" (5,300)
Edward Bryant - "War Stories" (9,500)
Frank Bryning -"The Accidents of Blood" (5,500)
Dortis Pitkin Buck - "Cocophony in Pink and Ochre" (5,500)
Octavia Estelle Butler - "Childfinder" (3,250)
Grant Carrington -"Doug, Where Are We? "I Don't Know. A Spaceship, Maybe." (3,800)
Delbert Casada - "The Bing Bang Blues" (2,000)
A. Bertram Chandler - "The True Believers" (7,000)
Graham Charnock - "The Burning Zone" (6,000)
John Christopher - "A Journey South" (21,500)
Gerard Conway - "Blackstop" (5,500)
Arthur Byron Cover - "Various Kinds of Conceits" (2,000)
Jack M. Dann - "The Carbon Dreamer" (9,500)
Chan Davis - "The Names of Yanila" (9,000)
Han David - "Copping Out" (1,000)
Avram Davidson - "The Stone Which the Builders Rejected" (2,000)
Gordon R. Dickson - "Love Song" (6,000)
Stan Dryer - "Halfway There" (3,000)
Gordon Ecklund - "The Chlidren of Bull Weed" (17,000)
Geo. Alec Effinger - "False Premises: 1. The Capitals Are Wrong; 2. Stage Fright; 3. Rocky Colavito Batted .268 in 1955" (5,500)
Howard Fast - "All Creatures Great and Small" (1,200)
Leslie A. Fielder - "What Used to be Called Dead" (2,800)
The Firesign Theatre - "The Giant Rat of Sumatra, or By the Light of the Silvery" (5,000)
Franklin Fisher - "Adversaries" (4,700)
Jacques Goudchaux - "A Day in the Life of A-420" (2,600)
Ron Goulart - "The Return of Agent Black" (3,800)
Joseph Green - "Play Sweetly, In Harmony" (6,300)
James E. Gunn - "Among the Beautiful Bright Children" (9,100)
Joe W. Haldeman - "Fantasy for Six Electrodes and One Adrenaline Drip (A Play in the Form of a Feelie Script)" (10,000)
Graham Hall - "Golgotha" - (3,200)
Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett - "Stark and the Star Kings" (10,000)
Frank Herbert - "The Accidental Ferosslk" (3,500)
Steve Herbst - "Leveled Best" (1,300)
Leonard Isaacs "√−1 Think, Therefore √−1 Am" (1,000)
Susan C. Lette - "Grandma, What's the Sky Made Of?" (1,500)
John Jakes - "Uncle Tom's Time Machine' (3,000)
Robert Lilly - "Return to Elf Hill" (00)
Anne McCaffrey - "The Bones Do Lie" (7,000)
Vonda N. McIntyre - "XYY" (1,600)
Michael Moorcock - "The Swastika Setup" (10,000)
Ward Moore - "Falling From Grace" (4,000)
John Morressy - "Rundown" (1,200)
Janet Nay - "Las Animas" (6,800)
Edgar Pangborn - "The Life and the Clay" (6,500)
Doris Piserchia - "The Residents of Wingston" (5,000)
Charles Platt - "The Red Dream" (9,800)
Jerry Pournelle - "Free Enterprise" (11,000)
Mack Reynolds - "Ponce de Leon's Pants" (1,800)
Fred Saberhagen - "The Senior Prom" (4,800)
Thomas N. Scortia - "The Isle of Sinbad" (10,000)
Robert Sheckley - "Primordial Follies" (4,000)
Clifford D. Simak - "I Had No Head and My Eyes Were Floating Way Up In the Air" (6,600)
James Sutherland -"The Amazonas Link" (5,500)
Robert Thom - "Son of Wild in the Streets" (15,800)
Robert Thurston - "The Ugly Duckling Gets the Treatment and Becomes Cinderella Except Her Foot's Too Big For the Prince's Slipper and is Webbed Besides" (3,500)
Lisa Tuttle - "Child of Mind" (6,800)
A.E. van Voght - "Skin" (7,000)
Daniel Walther - "The 100 Million Horses of Planet Dada" [nb. Entry includes (English Version) and (French Version) both at 4,200, as well as a cryptic note saying "1st translation, 25.00 2nd translation 50.00". Not sure this was meant to be included?]
Richard Wilson - At the Sign of the Boar's Head Nebula (47,000) [nb. Ellison had this novel-length entry in all caps, rather than in quotes like the others]
David Wise - "A Rousing Explanation of the Events Surrounding My Sister's Death" (1,800)
Robert Wissner - "A Night at the Opera" (3,000)
Laurence Yep - "The Seadragon" (17,000)
Plus "Waiting for rewrites from Wyman Guin, Charles L. Harness, Gardner Dozois."

The editors of The Alien Critic also noted that there's "one last solicited story from a writer who had a challenging letter in TAC #6" (the previous issue of this periodical). Which means that Ellison was, despite his protests, still growing the anthology further, and the very recipient of this (open) letter knew it.



A o detaljnijim razlozima svojevremenog neobjavljivanja ima ovde:


HARLAN ELLISON AND THE ‘LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS’ SAGA

[Lidija]

At the end of the day, Death visits everyone. Right before that, Charlie does.

You might meet him in a hospital, in a warzone, or at the scene of a traffic accident.

Then again, you might meet him at the North Pole - he gets everywhere, our Charlie.

Would you shake him by the hand, take the gift he offers, or would you pay no attention to the words he says?

Sometimes he is sent as a courtesy, sometimes as a warning. He never knows which.

[Lidija]

John Kessel, one of the most visionary writers in the field, has created a rich matriarchal utopia, set in the near future on the moon, a society that is flawed by love and sex, and on the brink of a destructive civil war.

In the middle of the twenty-second century, over three million people live in underground cities below the moon’s surface. One city-state, the Society of Cousins, is a matriarchy, where men are supported in any career choice, but no right to vote—and tensions are beginning to flare as outside political intrigues increase.

After participating in a rebellion that caused his mother’s death, Erno has been exiled from the Society of Cousins. Now, he is living in the Society’s rival colony, Persepolis, when he meets Amestris, the defiant daughter of the richest man on the moon.

Mira, a rebellious loner in the Society, creates graffiti videos that challenge the Society’s political domination. She is hopelessly in love with Carey, the exemplar of male privilege. An Olympic champion in low-gravity martial arts and known as the most popular bedmate in the Society, Carey’s more suited to being a boyfriend than a parent, even as he tries to gain custody of his teenage son.

When the Organization of Lunar States sends a team to investigate the condition of men in the Society, Erno sees an opportunity to get rich, Amestris senses an opportunity to escape from her family, Mira has a chance for social change, and Carey can finally become independent of the matriarchy that considers him a perpetual adolescent. But when Society secrets are revealed, the first moon war erupts, and everyone must decide what is truly worth fighting for.