Here's a list of what's coming out in the US this month in Science Fiction and Fantasy. If we missed something or you have a title coming out in the future, email us at news@sfrevu.com

Ah, June.  A time for reflecting on the past as we move forward into the future. June graduates, June Brides, June book releases - what do they have in common? Something old, something new, something borrowed...

  ACE is scheduled to release two hardcovers this month, first is the much anticipated fourth volume in Anne McCaffrey's Freedom series, Freedom's Ransom  which to a certain extent can be considered a exercise not only in revolution but in economics in what Publisher's Weekly describes as an entertaining lesson on supply and demand - of black gold - no not oil, coffee! McCaffrey is an author well known for creating characters and worlds readers are happy to return to again and again.  Fans of this series have had a four year wait but should be  pleased.  Also out will be an updated and revised hardcover edition of the long-out-of-print debut fantasy by Peter David Knight Life reworking the tale of a most intriguing race for mayor of New York City featuring candidate Arthur Pendragon, Once and Future King. For readers enjoying a blend of romance and fantasy out in a Trade Paperback edition from Ace will be Patricia McKillip's Winter Rose ('96) which Book List found to be well crafted and intriguing...a curiously intimate fantasy about two sisters and the young man who affects them both.

New and reissued works released in mass market paperback editions in June include a debut magical adventure First Truth by Dawn Cook;  a collection of short stories set in the Deryni universe culled by its creator, and the editor of this volume, Katherine Kurtz from the Deryni Archives fanzine - Deryni Tales also includes a new story by Kurtz herself;  Revelation Space Alastair Reynolds' acclaimed debut novel which Publisher's Weekly called a distant-past/far-future, hard sci-fi tour de force. Our man in London, John Berlyne spoke with the author - read about his revelations in our SFRevu May'01 interview; and,  Myth Directions/Hit or Myth a double volume of two classics from Robert Asprin's popular series.  Also, for the younger reader the second in the Young Merlin series, in a new digest edition, The Seven Songs of Merlin ('97) by T.A. Barron a sequel to The Lost Years of Merlin reissued in a digest edition last month.    .                                                                                                                                            From AVON/EOS comes Light Music by Kathleen Ann Goonan as the author concludes her Nanotech Quartet. Editor/reviewer Ernest Lilley speaks highly of it in his review this issue (See review). Also out in a trade edition is the third and final book in British author Stephen Baxter's Mammoth trilogy (Longtusk, Silverhair).  Icebones picks up the story with Silverhair's daughter and transports the action to the Sky Steppe of Mars.  Publisher's Weekly praised the novel saying the author fills the tale with taut adventure and splendid settings, making it easy to suspend disbelief. Also out from the publisher will be the newest collection edited by David G. Hartwell , Year's Best SF 7.

For young readers comes The Book of Alfar by Peter Hassinger, a fantasy set in the Hudson River with a cast including a Dwarf prince, an young Algonquin girl, a Hessian ghost and an eleven year old boy.

Out in paperback is Krondor: Tear of the Gods by Raymond Feist is the third in the author's Krondor series, and when a magical jewel (the Tear of the Gods) falls into the hands of the enemies of Kondor, slaughter ensues.

Releases from BAEN BOOKS in June include in hardcover  the latest Charles Sheffield novel, The Amazing Dr. Darwin   and a Trade Paperback edition of the third volume of the  popular Honor Harrington series, The Short Victorious War originally published in mass market paperback in 1994.  See SFRevu 2.10 for reviews of several books from this SF Military series and an interview with its author David Weber, a writer many of our reviewers admire. Scheduled in mass market paperback are Changespell Legacy by Doranna Durgin and a mix of magic and myths from L. Warren Douglas The Sacred Pool (HC Jan'01).

BANTAM DOUBLEDAY DELL will be one of two publishers releasing various editions of several volumes from George R.R. Martin's acclaimed Song of Fire and Ice fantasy series.  They will be bringing out a Trade paperback edition of the first book in the projected series of six, the Nebula nominated (1996) A Game of Thrones which Book List had commended for its combination of intrigue, action romance and mystery.  Meisha Merlin Publishing will be releasing a limited edition hardcover of this novel with commentary by Jeffrey Jones for $250.  Bantam has also scheduled a Trade edition of the third book A Storm of Swords. 

BANTAM DOUBLEDAY DELL will also be releasing at the end of June in Trade paperback Contacting Aliens: An Illustrated Guide to David Brin's Uplift Universe a collaboration between Brin and artist Kevin Lenagh. The Uplift series was very popular with a number of SFRevu's crew and we are looking forward to checking this volume out. With the same June 25th publication date BANTAM 's SPECTRA imprint will bring out in mass market paperback Pauline Alama's debut fantasy novel, The Eye of Night which promises to be an interesting tale of a magical world on the verge of collapse. 

June's releases from DAW include in hardcover The Curse of Arkady by Emily Drake the sequel to last year's YA Harry Potter-ish fantasy, The Magickers which this month will be published in mass market paperback.  Also in paperback will be a collection of seventeen stories set in the ever-popular SF milieu, Mars. Edited by Peter Crowther, Mars Probes includes a Ray Bradbury story never previously published in the US.  Also being released is To Trade the Stars the third and culminating volume in Julie Czerneda's SF adventure/romance Trade Pact Universe series that began in 1997 with her highly-praised debut novel A Thousand Words for Stranger.

DEL REY this month is featuring in hardcover Dragonstar the third volume in Barbara Hambley's Dragon series (Dragonsbane '85, Dragonshadow' 00) continuing the tale of bookish John Aversin, slayer of dragons and his witchly wife Jenny Waynest.   Late in the month  they are also scheduled to release in hardcover the most recent installment in Harry Turtledove's alternate history saga begun in 1997 with How Few Remain which is now up to the sixth volume and into its second trilogy.  The Center Cannot Hold is Book two in the American Empire the postwar follow-up to The Great War trilogy, this latest tale is set in an alternate 1924.   A  paperback edition of Book I, Blood and Iron is set to be released at the same time.   See next month for an update on this series if requested review copies arrive.  A Trade paperback edition scheduled for June 25th is the US debut of British author China Mieville's The Scar reviewed in our Apr'02 issue upon its UK release.  John Berlyne found both book and author to be fascinating - see his review and interview to see why. 

Del Rey's media tie-ins in June will include in Trade paperback Inside Men in Black II by Brad Munson the official behind-the-scenes book with exclusive movie art, interviews, photographs and according to the cover, the complete screenplay from the film. For another view of the exploits of Agents J and K there will also be Esther Friesner's official novelization Men in Black II in mass market paperback. Also in paperback continuing with #12 in its Star Wars tie-in series The New Jedi Order will be Enemy Lines II: Rebel Stand by Aaron Allston.  

POCKET BOOKS will release several works set in the Star Trek universes.  In mass market Paperback will be Book One in the new Janus Gate trilogy by  L.A. Graf.  Present Tense is a TOS tale featuring Captain James T. Kirk and the early crew of the Enterprise NCC-1701 focusing on a new crewman, Ensign Pavel Chekov.  Story line contains some fairly familiar elements with the ship barely escaping the destruction of a dying planet and being accidentally catapulted through time by an antimatter engine explosion.  Pocket will also be releasing in eBook format  Starfleet Corps of Engineers #16: Oaths in which the captain and crew of the U.S.S. da Vinci and the population of Sherman's planet are endangered by a virulent virus.  Additionally, the publisher will be brining out in mass market paperback a story set in the Warhammer game universe, Farseer, an Eldar novel by William King. 

ROC  has several mass market paperbacks scheduled for release in June including a SF/Mystery Tainted Trail by Campbell Award nominee Wen Spencer that Ernest Lilley recommends in his enjoyable review elsewhere in this issue . Also, Book Three in Mindy Klasky's fantasy series, The Glasswrights' Journey continuing Rani's quest from last year's The Glasswright's Progress and the earlier The Glasswrights' Apprentice (Jul'00).  Finally there will be a Battletech #65: Operation Audacity by Blaine Lee Pardoe.

TOR is promising an interesting mix of the old and the new with June's line up.  New in hardcover will be  Charisma by Steven Barnes a Techno-Thriller that Ernest found to be a cautionary tale of nature versus nurture in his review, Evening's Empire by David Herter whose debut SF adventure novel Ceres Storm was so well received is described as a contemporary fantasy in the mode of Gene Wolfe and Charles De Lint that is an homage to Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.  See our July issue for the upcoming review to see if it lives up to its billing.  Spaceland by Rudy Rucker also sounds intriguing. Publisher's Weekly describes it as SF satire that tweaks the dot-com Y2K subculture in a hilarious tribute to Edwin Abbott's Flatland. Check next month for our review of this one too.  This month Ernest Lilley does review the newest and culminating volume in Neal Shusterman's Star Shards trilogy Shattered Sky featuring five super-powered teens pitted against a most deadly foe.  Continuing another series will be the sixth volume in Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict:: Legacy by Glenn R. Sixbury which appears to be scheduled in both hardcover and trade editions. 

Among the tried and true also coming out in hardcover  in June will be a collection of some of the late Poul Anderson's best known works, including several Hugo and Nebula award-winning stories, interspersed with the author's own commentary.  SFRevu Editor Ernest Lilley takes a look this much admired author's legacy in this month's review of this varied collection that crosses several SF subgenres.  Two other new Tor hardcover releases return with new looks at long established and well-loved creations.  Forty years ago master storyteller Andre Norton introduced readers to Hosteen     Storm, Navajo, Terran soldier and survivor of Earth's destruction by the alien Xiks along with his commando team of American eagle, dune cat and meercats in Beast Master ('59) and its sequel The Lord of Thunder ('62).  Movie and TV treatments have ensued in the intervening years and now, along with collaborator Lynn McConchie, Norton brings this classic into the new millennium with new technology and plain old good story telling in Beast Master's Ark.  See our review next month of this latest tale and a look back at its antecedents. Years ago Lynn Abbey co-created with Robert Asprin the first shared-world universe, Thieves' World.  This month she returns alone to the forbidding city of Sanctuary in a novel complete with enough  backstory history for the uninitiated to appreciate the new Thieves' World shared-world anthology Tor has scheduled for later in the year.  Vicki McManus joins the crew of SFRevu with her review of Sanctuary.  (See also her review of Phyllis Gottlieb's Mindworld, as promised in last month's column.)   

Tor will also publish in hardcover two collections of classic SF favorites - A Stainless Steel Trio reprints three of Harry Harrison's tales featuring thief and con man extraordinaire Jim DiGriz: A Stainless Steel Rat is Born ('85), The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted ('87) and The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues ('94).  Dorasi Spirit by Gordon Dickson, is an omnibus edition reprinting two classic military SF novels Dorsai, the initial novel in the author's Childe Cycle and The Spirit of Dorsai.  Several of our reviewers expressed interest in a chance to  revisit the world of the Dorsai - see next month what was found.   In another return to a classic setting and character, Tor also is reprinting in hardcover Conan The Liberator  L. Sprague De Camp and Lin Carter's treatment of  Robert E. Howard's Conan No.14 that our reviewer Bruce Wallace was most happy to revisit with. See this issue for his review of Conan and next month for a look back at The Stainless Steel Trio. 

Trade Paperbacks of note will include Donna McMahon's near future debut novel Dance of Knives (May'01) a cyberpunk thriller set in 22nd century Vancouver and The Wolf Hunt (Aug'01) by Gillian Bradshaw set in the age of chivalry with  fairy-tale overtones tempered by the day-to-day realities of life in feudal times. Gillian Bradshaw also has a new book being published this month in hardcover under the FORGE imprint Cleopatra's Heir, a blend of fact and fiction  that has generated interest here at SFRevu with its premise of what if Cleopatra and Julius Caesar's son Caesarion had survived.

Mass market paperback editions of interest out this month from Tor include Piers Anthony's How Precious Was That While (Jul'01) his autobiographical sequel to 1988's Bio of an Ogre; the second book in Juliet Marillier's wonderful Sevenwaters trilogy, Son of the Shadows (May'01), reviewed here when released in Trade (SFRevu Feb'02); Through Wolf's Eyes (Jul'01) which Publisher's Weekly called an engrossing tale of feral myth and royal intrigue by Jane Lindskold who has co-authored several books with Roger Zelazny;  Terry McGarry's debut fantasy novel Illumination (Aug'01); Not Quite Scaramouche (Jan'01) Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame sequel to Not Quite the Three Musketeers and The Chronoliths (Aug'01) by Robert Wison, named one of Amazon.com's Best of 2001 and described as an intelligent, fascinating, and frightening account of a unique incarnation of time travel.

 Taking advantage of new technologies Tor/Forge together with Publishing Dimensions, a company specializing in eBook and print-on-demand conversion solutions, on June 1st released a Special Edition eBook annotated version of Vernor Vinge's Hugo Award winning novel A Fire Upon the Deep. The author's notes were written during the writing and editing process of the original novel and as the press release notes the cumulative effect is that of a director's commentary on a DVD as the author walks the reader through the novel.  It will be availabel in numerous e-reader formats. 

Finally, from Tor's YA SF & F line of trade paperback editions STARSCAPE will be The Garden Behind the Moon by Howard Pyle as well as Orvis by Helen Hoover

WARNER ASPECT is bringing out in mass market paperback editions  Kingdom of Cages ('01) by Sarah Zettel which Publisher's Weekly recommended as a winning coming-of-age story, a seamless blend of concept, plot and characterization;  The Dreamthief's Daughter: A Tale of the Albino (Apr'01) by Michael Moorcock and Time Past by Maxine McArthur. 

WIZARDS OF THE COAST will publish in hardcover in June the climax to the War of Souls trilogy Dragons of a Vanished Moon by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman. Also out will be a Trade paperback edition of  Ed Greenwood's Crown of Fire the second volume in the Shandril's Saga trilogy due to be culminated next month with a all-new novel.   In mass market paperback this month will be the first novel in the Fifth Age of Krynn series The Dawning of a New Age by Jean Rabe a re-release from the Dragonlance trilogy that takes place between Dragons of Summer Flame and the War of Souls trilogy and, Heirs of Prophecy a Forgotten Realms novel by Lisa Smedman.

Several smaller presses also have  releases planned for June.  

GOLDEN GRYPHON PRESS is scheduled to publish the first story collection by World Fantasy Award winning author Jeffrey Ford, The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories. 

GREEN KNIGHT PUBLISHING will be bringing out in Trade edition an anthology of original stories set in the early days of King Arthur's reign, Legends of the Pendragon edited by James Lowder.  

NORTH ATLANTIC has scheduled Bright Segment: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Vol VIII  spanning the years between 1953 and 1955 when many favorite Sturgeon stories were written.           

WILDSIDE PRESS will release in hardcover A Princess of Mars Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic from 1912 with an introduction by Amy Sterling Casil.