Hello everyone, and welcome to another issue of Words for Worlds!
First up, a writing update, and this time it’s a publishing one: as I’ve mentioned previously in this newsletter, Novel #3 has been in the works for a while, and it will be coming out at last, in mid-2024. It will be almost three years since The Horizon was released (in late-2021), and that has less to do with the writing itself, as it has to do with the exhaustingly fruitless process of querying.
More details on this - and an official publishing announcement - in early 2024. What I can say for now is that this one’s more on the science fiction side, and it features anarchists, cold coffee, and the death penalty.
What I’m Reading
I read Robert Jackson Bennett’s City of Stairs a decade or so ago, and loved it: epic-fantasy-within-one-city, done just right. Foundryside is one of the books that has been on the edge of my SF-consciousness, but I never got around to reading it, until I finally caught sight of a physical copy at the Galaxy bookstore in Sydney, and picked it up (another reason for having good SF bookshops near you - they prompt you to read those books on your mental TBR by placing actual copies in your line of sight!).
I’m glad I did finally get around to it, because much like City of Stairs, Foundryside is an excellent work of city-set fantasy. It’s also reminiscent of the early Ursula Le Guin, in that it takes a core SF trope (in this case, AI), but places it in a fantasy setting. It’s particularly fascinating how Foundryside straddles that fine line between leaving the reader enough of a breadcrumb trail to figure out what’s happening, while also showing the struggles of the characters, who lack the vocabulary to understand or articulate it, and therefore can only think of it in terms of magic. All in all, a great read, and I’ll be getting around to the sequels quicker than it took me to finally read Foundryside!
For the January meeting of the Delhi Science Fiction Reading Circle, we finally got to Iain M. Banks. Look To Windward, in particular. It was a re-read for me, and I realised how on a second read you really start paying attention to the quality of Banks’ prose. There is an effortless lyricism to it that I think I missed the first time around, caught up in the intricacies of the plot. The re-read also affirmed for me why this will always be my favourite Banks: the melancholic grandeur of the premise infects the entire story, so that at all times you feel swept up in its scale and its vastness, right up until the end.
What’s Happening at Strange Horizons
I’ve seen a bit of a buzz around Shubnum Khan’s novel, The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years, and the SH review of the book has me more intrigued. Speculative fiction written by a South African author of Indian origin - and drawing on both sets of experiences - is definitely something we don’t get near enough of. Going by the review, there is also a dash of early-20th C South African historical fiction, which makes this all the more interesting.
The Indian Scene
Congratulations to Amal Singh for the cover reveal of The Garden of Delights (out in mid-2024 with Flame Tree Press). The pre-order links are also out, so if you want to read the debut novel of a very talented SF writer, and support Indian SF, in one go, here’s your chance.
This is what the book blurb says:
In the city of Sirvassa, where petals are currency and flowers are magic, the Caretaker tends to the Garden of Delights. He imparts temporary magical abilities to the citizens of Sirvassa, while battling a curse of eternal old age. No Delight could uplift his curse, and so he must seek out a mythical figure. A god.
When a Delight allows a young girl an ability to change reality, the Caretaker believes he’s at the end of his search. But soon a magical rot takes root in his Garden, and the Caretaker must join forces with the girl and stop it from spreading.
Even as he battles a different rot that plagues Sirvassa, he learns that Delights are always a precursor to Sorrows.
Recommendations Corner
I was recently able to pick up this translated Kalpavigyan novel - Sumit Bardhan’s Avarice - which is steampunk set in colonial Calcutta. Although steampunk isn’t entirely my genre of choice, alt-early-20th century Calcutta with airships was quite the delight, and of course, there’s something to finally being able to access the great tradition of Bengali SF, even if it’s just in translation. Here’s the blurb:
It is the early twentieth century in an alternate-reality Calcutta. Here airships fly in the air, alchemy is an established practice and mythical races live alongside humans. Against this backdrop, private investigator Dhoorjoti is tasked with solving the case of a theft at the prestigious Indo-British Clockworks.
so there's a novel coming, finally then, patience paid off. Won't be any point asking about the agent and all here so I'll see in the official announcement until then, best wishes to you! and waiting for the announcement.