As we head for the winter solstice, I’m thrilled to share with our readers the four amazing works that are slated to appear in 2024. All are exemplars of the layered, echo-laden storytelling that’s my weakness and métier as both editor and author.
Our 2021 lineup tilted to science fiction, the 2022 one to fantasy, that of 2023 was symmetric: two works of science fiction, two of fantasy, one of each from the incandescent imaginations of Melissa Scott and Jo Graham, who need little introduction. 2024 will once again tilt to fantasy. I will discuss each title more extensively at their respective cover unveilings, but I’m so excited about all of them that I’m introducing them here in one fell swoop.
— Justin Robinson’s Moonlight Special is the sixth entry in his sui-generis City of Devils noir pulp monsterverse, in which humanity is a beleaguered minority. Its older siblings are City of Devils, Fifty Feet of Trouble, Wolfman Confidential, A Stitch in Crime, and Unwitch Hunt. A Chandleresque outing, Midnight Special gives a glimpse of series protagonist Nick Moss—WWII veteran, Night Wars survivor, hard-bitten private eye, member of the dwindling human cohort—through the eyes of a tormented policeman who happens to be a wolfman. Projected launch: March 11, 2024.
— Jo Graham’s The Borgia Dove continues her Memoirs of the Borgia Sibyl series after A Blackened Mirror. A riveting historical fantasy, it is narrated by Giulia Farnese—known to historians as a formidably learned and intelligent advisor to two Renaissance popes. But in Graham’s vision Giulia is also a seer, despite the dangers of such a talent in her era. Seamlessly fusing magic, legend and history, and transposing the myth of Persephone and Hades onto the opulent, dangerous Rome of the Borgias, The Borgia Dove is kin to Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel works and Guy Gavriel Kay’s imaginative transmutations. Projected launch: June 10, 2024.
— Martha A. Hood’s novella Pond Man Opens a Door is a chilling take on the Garden of Eden. Whereas Martha’s The Miasma Is Not for Us to Say and The Valley and the Hill were witty, incisive takes on small-town bureaucracies and intrigues complicated by ghostly emanations or misdirected sensory perceptions, Pond Man is a mythic retelling of Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”. Projected launch: early September, 2024.
— Amy Griswold’s Gyre is the first title of a projected space opera trilogy (Gyre, Meridian, Ecliptic) in which starfaring societies battle for self-government against monopoly threats. Amy is the co-author of the Lynes and Mathey Victorian magic series (with Melissa Scott; the first title of the series, Death by Silver, won the Lambda and Gaylactic awards); she has also written Stargate tie-ins and RPG games with Melissa Scott and Jo Graham. Projected launch: mid-December, 2024.
Keep frequencies open, torpedo bays charged, spells au courant, diplomatic skills honed, and join us in these journeys down echo-laden paths. And 2025 is also shaping up to be a nova!
