Fantasy Book Critic: Short Stories and Non Fiction: "Feast and Famine" by Adrian Tchaikovsky, "The Lowest Heaven" edited by Anne Perry and Jared Shurin and "Sibilant Fricative" by Adam Roberts (with comments by Liviu Suciu)

From Adrian Tchaikovsky, acclaimed author of The Shadows of the Apt series - see our review of latest -9th - installment, War Master's Gate, with links to reviews of all previous 8 books as well as to our interview with him - and the wonderful small UK press NewCon comes "Feast and Famine" which contains a very diverse offering ranging from hard sf to ghost stories and ending with what else but a Shadows of the Apt story set in the Dragonfly Commonweal and which features recurring characters that appear also in the story The Chains of Helleron; through the kindness of the author, you can read both these stories on the author's site following the previous link.

Here is the blurb and the table of contents:

"In Feast and Famine Adrian Tchaikovsky delivers an ambitious and varied collections of stories. Ranging from the deep space hard SF of the title story (originally in Solaris Rising 2) to the high fantasy of “The Sun in the Morning” (a Shadows of the Apt tale originally featured in Deathray magazine), from the Peter S Beagle influenced “The Roar of the Crowd” to the supernatural Holmes-esque intrigue of “The Dissipation Club” the author delivers a dazzling array of quality short stories that traverse genre. Ten stories in all, five of which appear here for the very first time.
Contents:

1. More Than Meets the Eye - An Introduction
2. Feast & Famine
3. The Artificial Man
4. The Roar of the Crowd
5. Good Taste
6. The Dissipation Club
7. Rapture
8. Care
9. 2144 and All That
10. The God Shark
11. The Sun of the Morning
12. About the Author

13. Adrian Tchaikovsky and NewCon Press

*******************************************************************

From editors Anne Perry, Jared Shurin and small UK press Jurassic London comes The Lowest Heaven with the blurb and contents below. Any anthology that has stories by Adam Roberts and Alastair Reynolds is a must buy for me, while here there are also stories by JC Grimwood, Mark Newton, Simon Morden, Lavie Tidhar, Kameron Hurley among other authors we enjoy and review at FBC.

"The Lowest Heaven is a new anthology of contemporary science fiction published in partnership with the Royal Observatory Greenwich to coincide with Visions of the Universe, a major exhibition of space imagery.

Each story in The Lowest Heaven is themed around a body in the Solar System, from the Sun to Halley's Comet. The stories are illustrated with photographs and artwork selected from the archives of the Royal Observatory, while the book's cover and overall design are the work of award-winning South African illustrator Joey Hi-Fi."
Includes:

Introduction by Dr. Marek Kukula (Royal Observatory Greenwich)
"Golden Apple" by Sophia McDougall (The Sun)
"A Map of Mercury" by Alastair Reynolds (Mercury)
"Ashen Light" by Archie Black (Venus)
"The Krakatoan" by Maria Dahvana Headley (Earth)
"An account of a voyage from World to World again, by way of the Moon, 1726" by Adam Roberts (The Moon)
"WWBD" by Simon Morden (Mars)
"Saga's Children" by E. J. Swift (Ceres)
"The Jupiter Files" by Jon Courtenay Grimwood (Jupiter)
"Magnus Lucretius" by Mark Charan Newton (Europa)
"Air, Water and the Grove" by Kaaron Warren (Saturn)
"Only Human" by Lavie Tidhar (Titan)
"Uranus" by Esther Saxey (Uranus)
"From This Day Forward" by David Bryher (Neptune)
"We'll Always Be Here" by S. L. Grey (Pluto & Charon)
"Enyo-Enyo" by Kameron Hurley (Eris)
"The Comet's Tale" by Matt Jones (Halley's Comet)
"The Grand Tour" by James Smythe (Voyager)

*******************************************************************

And finally, while not that much information yet, Sibilant Fricative, the highly anticipated non-fiction collection of Adam Roberts is moving along to be released soon by NewCon press. Agree or disagree, but there is no question that Adam Roberts' witty reviews (some would say, a bit too much so on occasion) and his genre essays are always a pleasure to read, so this is another must for me.

Here is what the author had to say when introducing the blog with the same name a few months ago, after he closed the much missed Punkadiddle last year:

"...Two: in the mid-term future, there's something else. The estimable Ian Whates, and more specifically his excellent NewCon Press, are going to publish a collection of my sf-related non-fiction. This is confected of various items, including a fair few of the less disposable Punkadiddle pieces, some of which (it turns out! who knew!) are quite lengthy; and the collection will be available soon. It will be called Sibilant Fricative, see, and when it comes out I'll use this blog for minimum-efficiency promotion, see"