Ian McDonald é o autor de um dos melhores livros de ficção científica, River of Gods. Se este decorre na Índia, Brasyl no Brasil e Chaga em África, o próximo livro, The Dervish House, passa-se em Istambul no ano de 2027. A descrição promete:

Welcome to the world of The Dervish House; the great, ancient, paradoxical city of Istanbul, divided like a human brain, in the great, ancient, equally paradoxical nation of Turkey. The year is 2027 and Turkey is about to celebrate the fifth anniversary of its accession to the European Union; a Europe that now runs from the Arran Islands to Ararat. Population pushing one hundred million, Istanbul swollen to fifteen million; Turkey is the largest, most populous and most diverse nation in the EU, but also one of the poorest and most socially divided. It’s a boom economy, the sweatshop of Europe, the bazaar of central Asia, the key to the immense gas wealth of Russia and Central Asia.

Gas is power. But it’s power at a price, and that price is emissions permits. This is the age of carbon consciousness: every individual in the EU has a card stipulating individual carbon allowance that must be produced at every CO2 generating transaction. For those who can master the game, who can make the trades between gas price and carbon trading permits, who can play the power factions against each other, there are fortunes to be made. The old Byzantine politics are back. They never went away.

The ancient power struggled between Sunni and Shia threatens like a storm: Ankara has watched the Middle East emerge from twenty-five years of sectarian conflict. So far it has stayed aloof. A populist Prime Minister has called a referendum on EU membership. Tensions run high. The army watches, hand on holster. And a Galatasary Champions’ League football game against Arsenal stokes passions even higher.

As histórias de Paolo Bacigalupi normalmente centram-se em mundos devastados, de recursos ecológicos esgotados e imersos em poluição. Ship Breaker não parece ser excepção:

Set initially in a future shanty town in America’s Gulf Coast region, where grounded oil tankers are being dissembled for parts by a rag tag group of workers, we meet Nailer, a teenage boy working the light crew, searching for copper wiring to make quota and live another day. The harsh realities of this life, from his abusive father, to his hand to mouth existence, echo the worst poverty in the present day third world. When an accident leads Nailer to discover an exquisite clipper ship beached during a recent hurricane, and the lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl, Nailer finds himself at a crossroads. Should he strip the ship and live a life of relative wealth, or rescue the girl, Nita, at great risk to himself and hope she’ll lead him to a better life. This is a novel that illuminates a world where oil has been replaced by necessity, and where the gap between the haves and have-nots is now an abyss. Yet amidst the shadows of degradation, hope lies ahead.

Stories: All New Tales é a nova colectânea de histórias do género fantástico, seleccionadas por Neil Gaiman e Al Sarrantonio. Entre os autores escolhidos podemos encontrar Joe Hill, Peter Straub ou Joanne Harris:

Joe Hill boldly aligns theme and form in his disturbing tale of a man’s descent into evil in “Devil on the Staircase.” In “Catch and Release,” Lawrence Block tells of a seasoned fisherman with a talent for catching a bite of another sort. Carolyn Parkhurst adds a dark twist to sibling rivalry in “Unwell.” Joanne Harris weaves a tale of ancient gods in modern New York in “Wildfire in Manhattan.” Vengeance is the heart of Richard Adams’s “The Knife.” Jeffery Deaver introduces a dedicated psychologist whose mission in life is to save people in “The Therapist.” A chilling punishment befitting an unspeakable crime is at the dark heart of Neil Gaiman’s novelette “The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains.”

City of Ruin é o título do segundo volume de Legends of the Red Sun de Mark Charan Newton. No primeiro, Nights of Villjamur, ficámos a conhecer a cidade de Villjamur, uma cidade numa sociedade quase medieval, onde coexistem diferentes espécies sapientes. No mundo composto por ilhas Villjamur é a capital, para onde convergem os habitantes de todo o Império em busca de abrigo face ao longo e rigoroso Inverno que se avizinha. Neste segundo volume conhecemos uma outra cidade:

Villiren: a city of sin that is being torn apart from the inside. Hybrid creatures shamble through shadows and barely human gangs fight turf wars for control of the streets. Amidst this chaos, Commander Brynd Lathraea, commander of the Night Guard, must plan the defence of Viliren against a race that has broken through from some other realm and already slaughtered hundreds of thousands of the Empire’s people. When a Night Guard soldier goes missing, Brynd requests help from the recently arrived Inqusitor Jeryd. He discovers this is not the only disappearance the streets of Villiren. It seems that a serial killer of the most horrific kind is on the loose, taking hundreds of people from their own homes. A killer that cannot possibly be human. The entire population of Villiren must unite to face an impossible surge of violent and unnatural enemies or the city will fall. But how can anyone save a city that is already a ruin?

A colecção SF Masterwoks da Gollancz (Orion) reúne alguns dos melhores livros do género como Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep de Philip K. Dick, The Dispossessed de Ursula K. Le Guin, More Than Human de Theodore Sturgeon ou I Am Legend de Richard Matheson.

A colecção continua a crescer e este ano foram já publicados:  The Inverted Worlds de Christopher Priest, Cat’s Cradle de Kurt Vonnegut ou Childhood’s End de Arthur C. Clarke.

Olhando para as datas disponibilizadas na Amazon, podemos esperar, nos próximos tempos, The Island of Doctor Moreau de H. G. Wells, Dhalgren de Samuel R. Delany, The Time Machine de H. G. Wells, Helliconia de Brian Aldiss, The Food of the Gods de H. G. Wells, The Body Snatchers de Jack Finney ou The Female Man de Joanna Russ.

Para além de novos números, os primeiros dez foram lançados com novas capas, como The Forever War de Joe Haldeman, Lord of Light de Roger Zelazny ou The Stars my Destination de Alfred Bester (listagem dos números publicados na colecção até 2009)