Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore Uncle Edgar's Mystery Bookstore 2864 Chicago Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55407 Newsletter #93 March-May 2011

Hours: M-F 10 am to 8 pm Sat. 10 am to 6 pm Sun. Noon to 5 pm

Uncle Hugo's 612-824-6347 Uncle Edgar's 612-824-9984 Fax 612-827-6394 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.UncleHugo.com

STORE EVENTS

Friday, February 25th - Sunday, March 6th Anniversary Sale - see Store News for details

Sunday, March 6th, 1:00-2:00pm Jeffrey Siger and Joe Krogman will be autographing at Uncle Edgar's.

Saturday, March 26th, 1:00-2:00pm Lyda Morehouse will be autographing at Uncle Hugo's.

Saturday, April 16th, 1:00-2:00pm Doug Hulick will be autographing at Uncle Hugo's.

Saturday, April 23rd, 1:00-2:00pm Dan Wells will be autographing at Uncle Hugo's.

Saturday, April 30th, 1:00-3:00pm Larry Correia will be autographing at Uncle Hugo's.

Saturday, May 7th, 1:00-2:00pm Tate Hallaway will be autographing at Uncle Hugo's.

STORE NEWS

37th Anniversary Sale: Friday, February 25th through Sunday, March 6th

Uncle Hugo’s is the oldest surviving science fiction bookstore in the United States. We opened for business on March 2, 1974. To encourage you to help us celebrate Uncle Hugo’s 37th Anniversary, we’re having a sale. Come into either Uncle Hugo’s or Uncle Edgar’s and get an extra 10% off everything except gift certificates. A discount card will save you even more–you’ll get both the 10% savings from the sale and the 10% savings from the discount card. (Sale prices apply to in-store sales, but not to mail orders.)

Award News

The Mystery Writers of America announced the nominees for the 2011 Edgar Allan Poe Awards. The nominees for Best Novel are Caught by Harlan Coben ($27.95, $9.99 pb due mid- March), Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin ($24.99, $14.99 trade pb due mid-May), Faithful Place by Tana French ($25.95), The Queen of Patpong byTimothy Hallinan ($24.99, $14.99 trade pb due early May), The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton ($24.99, $14.99 trade pb due early March), and I’d Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman ($25.99, $14.99 trade pb due early May). The nominees for Best First Novel by an American Author are Rogue Island by Bruce DeSilva ($24.99), The Poacher’s Son by Paul Doiron ($24.99, $14.99 trade pb due mid-April), The Serialist by David Gordon ($15.00), Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto ($25.00), and Snow Angels by James Thompson ($14.00).

The nominees for Best Paperback Original are Long Time Coming by Robert Goddard ($15.00), The News Where You Are by Catherine O’Flynn ($15.00), Expiration Date by Duane Swierczynski ($13.99), Vienna Secrets by Frank Tallis ($15.00), and Ten Little Herrings by L.C. Tyler ($14.95).

The nominees in many other categories are posted at the Mystery Writers of America website and at Uncle Edgar’s.

The nominees for the Dilys Award, given by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association to the mystery title they have most enjoyed selling, are Love Songs from a Shallow Grave by Colin Cotterill ($25.00), The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton ($24.99, $14.99 trade pb due early March), Moonlight Mile by ($26.99), Bury Your Dead by ($24.99), Once a Spy by Keith Thomson ($7.99) and Savages by Don Winslow ($25.00, $15.00 trade pb due mid-March).

Many mystery awards are presented at the Left Coast Crime Convention. The nominees for the Lefty Award, given to the most humorous mystery, are Stork Raving Mad by ($24.99), Swift Justice by Larna DiSilverio ($24.99), Old Dogs by Donna Moore ($15.00), Revenge for Old Times’ Sake by Kris Neri ($16.95) and The Pot Thief Who Studied Einstein by J. Michael Orenduff ($14.95).

The nominees for the Bruce Alexander Memorial Historical Mystery are A Night of Long Knives by Rebecca Cantrell ($24.99, $14.99 trade pb due mid-April), Murder for Greenhorns by Robert Kresge ($15.95), City of Dragons by Kelli Stanley ($24.99), The Demon’s Parchment by Jeri Westerson ($25.99) and The Mapping of Love and Death by ($25.99, $14.99 trade pb due early March).

The Hillerman Sky Award (a special award in honor of the convention’s New Mexico location, to the mystery that best captures the landscape of the Southwest). The nominees are Wild Penance by Sandi Ault ($14.00), The Bone Fire by Christine Barber ($24.99), The Spider’s Web by Margaret Coel ($24.95) and Snare by Deborah J. Ledford.

The Watson nominees (another special award given this year to the mystery novel with the best sidekick) are Wild Penance by Sandi Ault ($14.00), Dead Lift by Rachel Brady ($24.95 hc or $14.95 trade pb), Rolling Thunder by Chris Grabenstein ($25.00), Junkyard Dogs by Craig Johnson ($25.95) and To Fetch a Thief by Spencer Quinn ($25.00).

HOW'S BUSINESS by Don Blyly

Business has been terrible, thanks to the weather. Business was up for nine of the first ten months of 2010. Business was up nicely for the first week of November. Then winter hit hard. Saturday is usually by far our best day of the week. Of the eight Saturdays leading up to Christmas, three Saturdays we were forecast to have heavy snow (and often the forecast is more important than how much snow we really receive) and three Saturdays we had ice storms. The two Saturdays with good weather, sales were way up, but not enough to make up for the other six Saturdays. For that eight week period, our sales were down more than $10,000 from the same period the year before. The Saturday of the big blizzard, Uncle Hugo’s saw two customers and $25 in sales, while Uncle Edgar’s didn’t see a single customer. Of the four staff people on duty, I was the only one who had driven to work, so an hour after the bus system for the metro area was shut down, the four of us dug out my car and I gave everybody else rides to their homes before I started trying to dig my way into my driveway at home.

While the weather was less hostile (though very cold) in January, the city did such a bad job of plowing the streets that many people are hesitant to park at the meters, and the piles of snow has wiped out half the dentist’s parking lot, so business has continued to suffer. Let me remind you of the parking ramp on the far side of the former Sears building. If you park there and take your parking ticket with you into the Global Marketplace and buy anything from any vendor, they can stamp your parking ticket for 3 hours of free parking. People have been waiting for years for the sequel to the wonderful and award-winning fantasy The Name of the Wind ($24.95 hc, $8.99 pb) by Patrick Rothfuss. The Wise Man’s Fear ($29.95) is finally coming in early March (and received a starred review in Publishers Weekly). The publisher contacted us on October 15 to suggest a date for Patrick to sign at Uncle Hugo’s. I told them that we could have the signing on that date and suggested a time, but also suggested that a weekend signing would draw more people than a Thursday signing. I never heard back from the publisher. In January, with 100 copies of the hardcover on order for the Thursday signing, I tried to find out from the publisher what was going on, and still received no response. So I e-mailed to Patrick to see if he knew what was going on. He e-mailed back that the publisher had dropped Uncle Hugo’s from the tour, but that he’d try to find time to drive over for a signing after he was done with the publisher’s tour. We don’t yet have a date set–watch the website for updated information.

SHORT RECOMMENDATIONS by Don Blyly

Larry Correia is well-known to Uncle Hugo’s customers for Monster Hunter International ($7.99) and Monster Hunter Vendetta ($7.99), the first two of an action-packed humorous contemporary fantasy series about a Blackwater-like company that hunts supernatural threats for the secret government bounties. Vendetta was our #1 seller for 2010 and International was #3.

Hard Magic ($25.00 hardcover or $15.00 trade paperback, officially early May, but Larry will be signing at Uncle Hugo’s on Saturday, April 30) is the first of a new series, the Grimnoir Chronicles. Classifying it is pretty hard, but Larry refers to it as “noir/pulp/alternative-history/fantasy/ action with blimp fighting, hard boiled detectives, demons, teleporting magic ninjas, Cossack fighting bears, samurai, Tesla super weapons, John M. Browning, Teutonic zombies, and profane squirrels.”

The story is set in 1932, in a world where about 1% of the population has the ability to work magic to some degree (though perhaps no more than being able to light a cigarette without a match) and about 1/10 of the magic users (Actives) have significant power. Jake Sullivan is an Active who was part of a special team of Actives who helped win the World War against the Kaiser’s army of zombies, but he later ended up in prison for protecting a young black magic-user from an angry white mob. To get out of prison, he agrees to help J. Edgar Hoover catch magical murderers; when Hoover lies to him too much, Sullivan goes on the run. Meanwhile, the most powerful magic user in the world (the Chairman) is in charge of Japan’s war effort (including battleship dirigibles), and Sullivan is recruited to join a secret society (led by General Black Jack Pershing) that is convinced the Japanese will soon attack the U.S. with a magical weapon developed by Nikola Tesla. It isn’t quite as strong on humor as the Monster Hunter series, but is at least as action-packed. Larry manages to work in all those plot elements he listed above, and makes it work. It’s very hard to put down.

I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read by Elizabeth Bear, but I recently made the mistake of picking up Chill ($7.99) without realizing that it was the middle book of a trilogy. I was soon so caught up in the story of a generation ship filled with nano technology that I couldn’t force myself to put it down long enough to read Dust ($7.99), the first of the series. By the time I finished Chill, we had run out of Dust and I’m impatiently waiting for our restock order to arrive. The good news is that the final book of the trilogy, Grail ($7.99) will be arriving late in February.

RECENTLY RECEIVED AND FORTHCOMING SCIENCE FICTION ALREADY RECEIVED

Doctor Who Magazine #427 $8.40 (The Doctor's Death: Sarah Jane Smith and Jo Smith mourn their oldest friend in this new episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures; lunch with Tom Baker; watcher's guide to the Sontarans; more.) Doctor Who Magazine #428 $8.40 (Special soap opera-themed issue: River's Secret: Lover or Killer? Honeymoon Disaster; Blast from the Past; free double- sided monster poster; more.) Doctor Who Magazine #429 $9.99 (Back in time for Christmas; Tom Baker's most bonkers interview ever; more. Includes three exclusive collectors' cards.) Doctor Who Magazine Special #27: The Doctor Who Companion - The Eleventh Doctor Vol. 2 $13.99 (A special collector's edition showcasing exclusive info and pictures about the Eleventh Doctor, covering episodes 1.7 through 1.13.) Aliens and Creatures $39.99 (Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space Expansion: Kids; Boxed set includes: 134-page book detailing creatures from the series, plus rules for creating your own; a system for creating new worlds; 32-page ready-to-play adventure; new gadget cards; additional story point counters; and detailed creature cards.) Fantasy & Science Fiction January / February 2011 $7.50 (New fiction, reviews, more) Locus #599 December 2010 $6.95 (Interviews with Nancy Kress and Robert V.S. Redick; World Fantasy convention report and pictures; forthcoming books; industry news, reviews, more.) Locus #600 January 2011 $6.95 (Interview with Robert J. Sawyer; SF in the Digital Age with commentary by Neil Gaiman, Cory Doctorow, Elizabeth Bear, Charles Stross, Mur Lafferty, and more; industry news, reviews, more.) Locus #601 February 2011 $6.95 (Interviews with Alastair Reynolds and Sharyn November; 2010 year in review; industry news, reviews, more.) Adams, John Joseph (ed) Brave New Worlds $15.99 (Anthology; 33 dystopian sf stories) Armintrout, Jennifer American Vampire $7.99 (PBO; Penance is a town that no one enters or leaves, until somehow Graf arrives. Jessa's the only one to trust him, and she's desperate for the kind of protection only a vampire like Graf can provide.) Arnason, Eleanor A Woman of the Iron People $19.95 (Reissue; Lixia and her team are determined not to disturb the life on the planet circling the star Sigma Draconis, which they have begun exploring. But the factions on their ship may create unintended chaos for both the life on the planet and the humans exploring it.) Barclay, James Elfsorrow $17.00 (Legends of the Raven #1: Reissue; In search of mages to help rebuild the ruined college of Julatsa, the Raven mercenaries travel to a new continent, where they discover that an ancient curse has unleashed a plague that may wipe out the elven race.) Barclay, James Shadowheart $17.00 (Legends of the Raven #2: Reissue; The land of Balaia is torn by war as the four magical colleges struggle for supremacy. Can the surviving members of the Raven mercenaries keep their promises to their lost friends, to the enslaved Protectors, and to the dragon Sha-Kaan? They will fight, but can they triumph?) Barclay, James Demonstorm $17.00 (Legends of the Raven #3: Reissue; The dragons have gone home, the elves are safe. But the war between the colleges rages on. Facing certain defeat by a horde of tribesman, the Lord of the Mount unleashes magics that tear the veil between dimensions - and demons catch the scent of countless souls in Balaia. Can even the Raven prevail when the world is coming to an end?) Bear, Greg Cryptum $24.99 (Halo: Forerunner #1: Delves deep into the time of the ancient race of the Forerunners, revealing who they are, how they harnessed technology and engineering, and what caused them to disappear.) Bell, Alden The Reapers Are the Angels $15.00 (PBO; Zombies have infested a fallen America, and a young girl named Temple is on the run. Haunted by her past and pursued by a killer, she moves between the insulated remnants of society and the brutal frontier beyond, seeking salvation and a place to make a home.) Berman, Steve (editor) Wilde Stories 2010: The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction $15.00 (Anthology; reprints 12 stories.) Burk, G/Smith, R (eds) Time, Unincorporated: The Doctor Who Fanzine Archives Vol. 2 $24.95 (PBO; Nonfiction; over 70 essays, 10 original to this volume, examining the classic TV series that ran from 1963-1989, as well as the 1996 Fox TV movie.) Burns, Cliff Of the Night $11.00 (Novella; people are disappearing, borne off in savage attacks launched from above. With uncanny forces at work, police detective Gus Novak will need unusual allies to defeat an inhuman adversary.) Burns, Cliff So Dark the Night $17.95 (Welcome to After Hours Investigations, open from dusk 'til dawn. Cassandra Zinnea and Evgeny Nightstalk find themselves faced with a ruthless foe who is willing to employ the blackest arts in pursuit of a goal.) Cashore, Kristin Fire $9.99 (YA; Companion novel to Graceling. In the Dells, young King Nash faces armed rebellion. The mountains and forest are filled with spies and thieves. This is where Fire, the last human monster, lives. She is irresistibly beautiful - and can control the minds of everyone around her.) Clegg, Douglas Neverland $7.99 (The children gather in a shack in the woods, not knowing it has a history. There, they begin to worship a creature of shadows - but all gods demand sacrifices, small ones at first, until a nightmarish presence rises among the trees.) Crossley, Robert Imagining Mars: A Literary History $40.00 (Nonfiction; from Galileo to Kim Stanley Robinson, Crossley traces the history of our fascination with the red planet, focusing on the interplay between scientific discovery and literary invention) Csicsery-Ronay Jr., Istvan The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction $27.95 (Nonfiction; looks at the formative elements of sf, including: new words and other signs of worlds changed from our own; radical transformations of human life initiated by new things; future history; imaginary science; and more.) Davies/Balchin/Hamer Fantasy Art in Watercolour: Painting Fairies, Dragons, Unicorns, and Angles $29.95 (PBO; Full color. Advice on how to draw these fantasy figures, and use watercolor to bring them to life. Includes step-by-step instructions and pull-out tracings.) Files, Gemma A Book of Tongues $16.95 (Hexslinger #1: Pinkerton agent Ed Morrow infiltrates an outlaw gang led by hexslinger Asher Rook, hoping to map the extent of Rook's power to help unlock the secrets of magic itself. Caught between a passel of dead gods and monsters, hexes galore, Rook's witchery, and his own ruthless masters, Morrow's only real hope of survival lies with Rook's notorious lieutenant and lover Chess Pargeter.) Fisher, Catherine Incarceron $9.99 (Incarceron #1: YA; 17-year-old prisoner Finn and the warden's daughter Claudia plan to escape from a prison so vast that it contains not only cells, but also metal forests, dilapidated cities, and vast wilderness.) Foglio, Phil & Kaja Agatha H. and the Airship City $24.99 (Girl Genius Novel: In a Europe ruled by dynasties of mad scientists, university student Agatha Clay seems incapable of building anything that actually works. But when the University is overthrown by a tyrant, and Agatha finds herself a prisoner aboard his airship, it begins to look like she might carry a spark of Mad Science after all.) Frei, Max The Stranger $15.95 (Labyrinths of Echo #1: Max Frei contacts a parallel world in his dreams, and becomes a member of the Department of Absolute Order, solving cases that take him down the winding paths of this strange universe.) Gernsback, Hugo The Scientific Adventures of Baron Munchausen $12.95 (Compiled, edited, and abridged from the pages of The Electrical Experimenter, May 1915-February 1917. Includes the original illustrations. Exploring the moon and Mars, the Baron discovers that the Martians use devices such as telepathy machines and molecular disintegrators. ) Golden, Christie The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm $26.00 (World of Warcraft: Tie-in to the newest World of Warcraft game expansion.) Goscinny & Uderzo Asterix & Obelix's Birthday: The Golden Book $10.95 (Full color graphic novel; celebrates 50 years of Asterix and Obelix with new comics) Grant, Maxwell The Key / The Case of Congressman Coyd $14.95 (Shadow #43: Pulp reprints) Grant, Maxwell Atoms of Death / Buried Evidence $14.95 (Shadow #44: Pulp reprints) Grant, Maxwell Terror Island / City of Ghosts $14.95 (Shadow #45: Pulp reprints) Gresh, Lois H. Blood and Ice $14.95 (PBO; Alien vampires have awakened in Antarctica and are invading the Mediterranean. Desperate to leave her village and abusive family, Chloe decides to travel with a hypnotic, murderous, shapeshifting stranger who saved her from a would-be rapist.) Griffith, George Around the World in 65 Days: The Journal of the Real Phileas Fogg $12.95 (In 1894, English sf writer George Griffith was recruited to follow in the footsteps of Jules Verne's character Phileas Fogg. In just 65 days, he traveled through 24 time zones, establishing a new world record. Here is his account of his travels, plus biographical information.) Harkaway, Nick The Gone-Away World $15.95 (Gonzo Lubitch and his best friend studied martial arts, rebelled in college, and fought in the Go-Away War together. Now they have been tapped for a perilous mission. Before it is over they will have encountered everything from mimes, ninjas, and pirates to a mastermind bent on world domination.) Holt, Tom Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Sausages $13.99 (PBO; A tale of magic, real estate, chickens who think they are people, and a very important pig.) Hurley, Kameron God's War $14.99 (PBO; On a ravaged world, a centuries-old holy war rages. When a dubious deal between her government and an alien gene pirate goes bad, former government assassin Nyx is the top pick for a covert recovery. The head they want