Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Dispatches from the Border, August 2019

DISPATCHES FROM THE BORDER
Events and News From Borderlands Books
AUGUST, 2019

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Upcoming Events
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TOMORROW Gail Carriger, RETICENCE (Orbit, Hardcover, $26.00) Tuesday, August 6th at 6:00 pm

Michael Blumlein, LONGER (Tor.com, Trade Paperback, $15.99) and Paul Park, A CITY MADE OF WORDS (PM Press, Trade Paperback, $14.00) Saturday, August 10th at 3:00 pm

Writers With Drinks (at the Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd Street, San Francisco) with authors Lynn Breedlove,  Sarah Rose Etter, Vanessa Hua, Seth Katz, Brandon Melendez, and Namwali Serpell, hosted by Charlie Jane Anders! Saturday, August 10th at 7:30 pm

CANCELLED - Seanan McGuire, THE UNKINDEST TIDE (DAW, Hardcover, $26.00) Saturday, September 7th at 5:00 pm

Fonda Lee, JADE WAR (Orbit, Hardcover, $26.00) in conversation with Megan E. O'Keefe, VELOCITY WEAPON (Orbit, Trade Paperback, $15.99) Saturday, September 14th at 3:00 pm

Chad Stroup, SEXY LEPER (Bizarro Pulp Press, Trade Paperback, $13.99) Sunday, September 15th at 3:00 pm

SF in SF (at the American Bookbinders' Museum, 355 Clementina Street, San Francisco) with authors Mike Chen and Hannu Rajaniemi, hosted by Terry Bisson, Sunday, September 15th at 6:30 pm

Dana Fredsti and David Fitzgerald, SHATTER WAR (Titan, Trade Paperback, $14.95) Saturday, September 28th at 3:00 pm

Annalee Newitz, THE FUTURE OF ANOTHER TIMELINE (Tor, Hardcover, $26.99) Sunday, September 29th at 3:00 pm

(for more information check the end of this newsletter)


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News
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* Overheard in the Bookstore:

"I'm sorry, but you need to leave RIGHT NOW, because you're not actually wearing pants."

"He looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger, as possessed by the spirit of Ernest Hemingway."

"She's a library."
"She works in a library?"
"No, she IS a library."

"What is the duck for?"
"I think it's just a Breast Cancer Awareness duck."

"You _can't_ just go to the bathroom at Jurassic Park in the rain."

"Schadenfreude isn't just a river in Egypt."
"Right. [pause] Wait; what?"

"It's the best pop-culture writing of the last 30 years -- it's got a zombie ska band!"

"Tom Waits is mid-life crisis music for goths."

* A decent article about the creative things San Francisco comic stores have done to survive, with a dire headline: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SF-comic-book-sellers-hang-on-hoping-each-laugh-14092674.php

* Speaking of doing creative things to survive. . . Probably because we had just announced that we were closing the Cafe and people were understandably distracted, a bunch of folks missed this link when we first posted it.  Freethink Media created an awesome video on Borderlands' and Mission Comics and Arts' respective sponsorship programs and our survival models for unconventional retail!  Watch it (among other excellent reasons) to see Alan looking Very Serious Indeed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=mQD1y2yORPQ

* A really lovely post by Jud Meyers (of North Hollywood's Blast Off Comics, which sadly closed at the end of July) about the rewards of being able to give the gift of books (and comic books), and secondarily about why there were never any posters obscuring Blast Off's windows: http://www.blastoffcomics.com/2019/07/four-letter-words/

* Beloved author James A. Moore could use some financial help for medical expenses, if you can assist: https://www.gofundme.com/f/please-help-author-james-a-moore

* There's going to be a Broken Earth Trilogy role-playing game! https://greenronin.com/blog/2019/08/02/green-ronin-to-publish-the-fifth-season-roleplaying-game/

* Taking a late-summer trip? SF FY Wire has ten geeky hotels around the world for you! https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/geek-road-trip-10-nerdy-hotels-thatll-turn-vacation-into-a-fandom-pilgrimage

* Want to visit Winterfell?  Historic Castle Ward welcomes you! https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/castle-ward

* Sheffield is not _that_ far from Dublin. . . why not hit the UK's National Videogame Museum on your way back from WorldCon?  https://www.thenvm.org/

* Designer and writer Dinah Fried has created an incredibly cool book of meals from famous fiction, called FICTITIOUS DISHES. https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/04/16/fictitous-dishes-dinah-fried-book/

* The Independent suggests a pretty pedestrian list of science fiction television shows to check out now that "Westworld" is drawing to a close; which ones would you suggest? https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/westword-season-2-best-sci-fi-shows-star-trek-doctor-who-x-files-a8408031.html

* Scientists are seeking materials that defy or retard friction at the atomic level: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/scientists-seek-materials-defy-friction-atomic-level?tgt=nr

* Courtesy of Tor.com, you can read Joe Abercrombie's introduction to The (GORGEOUS) Folio Society edition of A GAME OF THRONES: https://www.tor.com/2019/07/16/read-joe-abercrombies-introduction-to-the-folio-society-edition-of-a-game-of-thrones/ (Seriously, this edition is an amazing work of art. They _illustrated the inside of the slipcase_! Who does that?! https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/a-game-of-thrones.html)

* i09 has a list of great genre books coming out in August: https://io9.gizmodo.com/summer-is-fading-but-there-are-tons-of-new-sci-fi-and-1836697702

* A nine-year-old Chinese boy has now lived my childhood dream -- he found a nest of 66-million-year-old dinosaur eggs while playing on the banks of a river: https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/child-discovers-nest-of-66-million-year-old-dinosaur-eggs

* A massive asteroid is expected to pass close to Earth on August 10th: https://www.geek.com/news/enormous-asteroid-is-expected-to-zoom-by-earth-on-aug-10-1798427/

* "First Human-Monkey Chimera Raises Concern Among Scientists" -- what could possibly go wrong? https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/aug/03/first-human-monkey-chimera-raises-concern-among-scientists

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Awards News
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* Huge congratulations to 2019's World Fantasy Award finalists!  Check out the whole list here: http://www.worldfantasy.org/world-fantasy-awards%e2%84%a0-2019/

* The shortlists for the 2019 Sunburst Awards for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic have been announced! Congratulations to all the nominees: http://www.sunburstaward.org/2019-shortlist

* The 58th Japan Science Fiction Convention has announced the 2019 Seiun Awards winners, which honor the best original and translated works published last year in Japan. (The Seiun Awards are the Japanese equivalent to the Hugo Awards.)  Check out all the nominees and winners here: https://locusmag.com/2019/07/2019-seiun-awards-winners/

* The 2019 Booker Prize Longlist has been announced, and of the 13 titles on the list, quite a few will be of interest to genre fans: https://thebookerprizes.com/booker-prize/news/2019-booker-prize-longlist-announced

* The 2019 Eisner Awards were presented at ComicCon in San Diego.  Nominees and winners here: https://io9.gizmodo.com/here-are-your-2019-eisner-awards-winners-1836392844

* Congratulations to Tade Thompson, whose novel ROSEWATER won the 2019 Arthur C. Clarke Award! The other nominees (and previous years' winners) are here: https://clarkeaward.com/#about

* The Chesley Award winners have been announced!  https://locusmag.com/2019/07/2019-chesley-awards-winners/

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From The Office
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Last month I mentioned that I was going to be meeting with a specialist contractor about removing the flooring in the new store.  The flooring itself isn't a problem, but the tile and adhesive on it is.  Both contain asbestos, as is pretty typical for old tile.  Though one solution would be to simply cover it up with a new floor, I don't really want to go that route for a couple of reasons.  First off, adding a layer to the existing floor will (obviously) raise the height.  That increased height becomes a problem because we need to meet the sidewalk outside the shop without too much of a slope because of accessibility requirements.  At the current floor height we can just make it without having to build a ramp and add a handrail.  If we add even 3/4", I don't think we can manage it.

Secondly, asbestos is not very nice stuff.  There aren't a whole lot of construction materials that give me the creeps but asbestos is one of them.  If we don't take the floor out now, there's never going to be a good time to do it.  On top of that, any time we need to work on the floor in the future (like drill a hole through it for an electrical line or some speaker wiring) we'll have to deal with the asbestos risk.

The estimate to remove the floor is around $9000.  Adding the cost of a new, lovely fir floor (much like what we have in the current store), the total is probably going to be around $20,000.  That's a steep price-tag but I think I'm going to do it.  The floor is probably the absolutely hardest thing to replace after we open and so I feel like getting a truly permanent job done is in our best interests.  The schedule for that job is a bit up in the air since I need to figure out how it'll fit with the other work we're doing.  I expect that it will happen after we have the bathroom framed and the light well closed up.  Having those two jobs done will make the asbestos removal easier and it will also make it much simpler to clear everything out of the place (because we can store a bunch of the stuff inside the bathroom rather than moving it to the back yard).

Speaking of the bathroom, last weekend we got a huge amount of work done on the framing.  Almost all the walls are in place (and they all fit properly, thank goodness) and I'll be working on the final touches all this week.

Also on the bathroom topic, my meeting with our plumber, Brian Fusco, went really well.  He's a total pro and I'm looking forward to working with him.  He also gets our goal of really making sure that everything is in solid shape from the outset, even if it'll cost a little more.  So, it's looking like we'll have, for the first time ever, a shop with a completely top-notch electrical and plumbing system.  Oh, and a roof that doesn't leak.  I'm not sure that, after the past 20 years, I'll know what to make of that.

Before you ask, sorry, but still no opening date.  There are still too many moving parts for anything I say to be better than a wild-ass-guess.

- Alan Beatts

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Best Sellers
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Borderlands Best-Selling Titles for July, 2019

Hardcovers
1. Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey
2. Fall; or, Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson
A Brightness Long Ago by Guy Gavriel Kay
3. Exhalation by Ted Chiang
4. This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
5. The Grand Dark by Richard Kadrey
6. The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders
7. Atmosphaera Incognita by Neal Stephenson
8. Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter
9. The Knife by Jo Nesbo
10. Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

Trade Paperbacks
1. The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
2. The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, translated by Ken Liu
3. Velocity Weapon by Megan E. O'Keefe
4. The Power by Naomi Alderman
5. A People's Future of the United States edited by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams
6. All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders
7. Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky
8. All Systems Red by Martha Wells
9. The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin
10. Hexarchate Stories by Yoon Ha Lee

Mass Market Paperbacks
1. Dune by Frank Herbert
2. Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
3. Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
4. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
5. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
6. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
7. Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
8. A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
9. Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch
10. Neuromancer by William Gibson

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Book Club Information
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The QSF&F Book Club will meet on Sunday, August 11th at 5 pm to discuss SEA OF RUST by C. Robert Cargill.  Please contact the group leader, Christopher Rodriguez, at cobalt555@earthlink.net, for more information.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Club will meet on Sunday, August 18th, at 6 pm to discuss NINEFOX GAMBIT by Noon Ha Lee.  The book for September is THE TRAITOR BARU COMORANT by Seth Dickinson.  Please contact bookclub@borderlands-books.com for more information.

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Upcoming Event Details
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Gail Carriger, RETICENCE (Orbit, Hardcover, $26.00) Tuesday, August 6th at 6:00 pm - Join us in welcoming author Gail Carriger back to Borderlands! This event, which celebrates the final book in the Custard Protocol series, is a touch bittersweet and also a bit mind-boggling, because TEN YEARS ago Gail did her first signing for SOULLESS here. Where does the time go? What is the meaning of it all? Is Percy really, finally done with hats? The answers to these and so many other questions can be found at the store on August 6th. We hope to see you here! https://gailcarriger.com/books/reticence/

Michael Blumlein, LONGER (Tor.com, Trade Paperback, $15.99) and Paul Park, A CITY MADE OF WORDS (PM Press, Trade Paperback, $14.00) Saturday, August 10th at 3:00 pm - We're very happy to host authors Michael Blumlein and Paul Park! Michael's gorgeous new novel LONGER is a science fiction study on mortality, consciousness and intimacy, and Paul's work is described by the publisher thus: "[w]ith exotic settings and characters truly alien and disturbingly normal, his novels and stories explore the shifting interface between traditional narrative and luminous dream, all in the service of a deeper humanism." Join us to meet these two fascinating authors and have the best time you've ever had gaining a deeper understanding of humanity!

Writers With Drinks (at the Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd Street, San Francisco) with authors Lynn Breedlove, Sarah Rose Etter, Vanessa Hua, Seth Katz, Brandon Melendez, and Namwali Serpell, hosted by Charlie Jane Anders! Saturday, August 10th at 7:30 pm - Writers With Drinks is the most awesome spoken-word variety show in the world, hosted by Charlie Jane Anders, and we're always happy to participate!  The amazing lineup for July includes authors Lynn Breedlove, Sarah Rose Etter, Vanessa Hua, Seth Katz, Brandon Melendez, and Namwali Serpell. Cost: $5 to $20, no-one turned away for lack of funds.  All proceeds benefit local non-profits.  Doors open at 7:00 and Borderlands will be on hand to sell books.

CANCELLED - Seanan McGuire, THE UNKINDEST TIDE (DAW, Hardcover, $26.00) Saturday, September 7th at 5:00 pm - Due to unforeseeable circumstances, this event has unfortunately been cancelled.  We will post as soon as we have a rescheduled date.

Fonda Lee, JADE WAR (Orbit, Hardcover, $26.00) in conversation with Megan E. O'Keefe, VELOCITY WEAPON (Orbit, Trade Paperback, $15.99) Saturday, September 14th at 3:00 pm - We're happy to welcome World Fantasy Award winner Fonda Lee to Borderlands! Ms. Lee will be presenting JADE WAR, the second novel in the Green Bone Series. (The first book in the series, JADE CITY, won that World Fantasy Award, and "was nominated for the Nebula Award and the Locus Award, and was named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR, Syfy Wire, and others".)  Ms. Lee will be in conversation with fabulous local author Megan E. O'Keefe (VELOCITY WEAPON).  We hope you'll join us to meet both authors and explore this epic and magical fantasy series!

Chad Stroup, SEXY LEPER (Bizarro Pulp Press, Trade Paperback, $13.99) Sunday, September 15th at 3:00 pm - Join us for a pre-Halloween bizarro book event with Chad Stroup!  From the book description: "It's Halloween in the Hollywood Hills, and Kat Dyer's going to have the sexiest costume for a night of shameless debauchery.  However, Kat's plan is derailed when the costume shop screws up her order and gives her a costume that is the polar-opposite of sexy.  Deciding it's better to be temporarily ugly and seen than beautiful and quickly forgotten, Kat attends the biggest party of the year, only to awaken with the strangest post-Halloween hangover ever: partygoers are transforming into the likenesses of the costumes they wore the night before.  Meanwhile, a mysterious force begins to stalk and pick them off on by one. Kat and her friends must discover the cause of the horror, and what they find will haunt them forever."

SF in SF (at the American Bookbinders' Museum, 355 Clementina Street, San Francisco) with authors Mike Chen and Hannu Rajaniemi, hosted by Terry Bisson, Sunday, September 15th at 6:30 pm - (Suggested donation $10.)  Doors and bar at 6:00 pm, event begins at 6:30 pm.  We're so happy to participate in the Science Fiction in San Francisco reading series!  This month we're joined by fabulous local authors Mike Chen and Hannu Rajaniemi.  The authors will read a selection from their work, followed by Q&A from the audience moderated by Terry Bisson.  Authors will schmooze & sign books after.  Books will be available for sale.  Seating is limited, so first come, first seated.  Bar proceeds benefit the American Bookbinders Museum. Questions?  Email sfinsfevents@gmail.com.

Dana Fredsti and David Fitzgerald, SHATTER WAR (Titan, Trade Paperback, $14.95) Saturday, September 28th at 3:00 pm - Hometown favorites Dana Fredsti & David Fitzgerald present: SHATTER WAR, the thrilling follow-up to TIME SHARDS.  Earth's past, present, and future have shattered in "the Event," yielding a terrifying new world of prehistoric monsters, lost cultures, strange technologies, and displaced armies. Coming from different points throughout history, a desperate band of survivors join "Merlin," a mysterious figure who may be their only hope to save the world -- if he can be trusted. When their twenty-third-century ship the Vanuatu is sabotaged by an unknown enemy and thrown far off its course, the team must discover who is responsible, even as they are split apart and fight to survive in the war-torn Shard world. . . .

Annalee Newitz, THE FUTURE OF ANOTHER TIMELINE (Tor, Hardcover, $26.99) Sunday, September 29th at 3:00 pm - We're always thrilled to welcome local author Annalee Newitz to the store! Here's some info about the new novel from the publisher: "In a modern-day United States just a step away from our own, time travel is possible -- in fact, it has existed for as long as humanity itself. Jumping into the past is simple, and scientists say that altering the timeline is almost impossible. But Tess, an idealistic geology professor, has figured out how to use time travel to try to undo a horrible injustice in the past whose effects are still being felt in her own time. Meanwhile, in 1992, teenage riot grrl Beth's ordinary life is about to become a tangle of toxic friendship and murder. And across the timeline, a secret war is brewing as a group of men attempt to destroy time travel. If they succeed, only a small elite will have the power to shape past, present, and future. Tess and Beth are part of this hidden war that stretches back millions of years. But with the help of unlikely allies from times past and times yet to come, they may be able to save each other -- and build a different future." We do hope you'll join us to meet Annalee and check out this awesome book!

Borderlands event policy - all events are free of charge.  You are welcome to bring copies of an author's books purchased elsewhere to be autographed (but we do appreciate it if you purchase something while at the event).  For most events you are welcome to bring as many books as you wish for autographs.  If you are unable to attend the event we will be happy to have a copy of any of the author's available books signed or inscribed for you.  We can then either hold the book(s) until you can come in to pick them up or we can ship to you.  Just give us a call or drop us an email.  If you live out of town, you can also ship us books from your collection to be signed for a nominal fee.  Call or email for details.

This newsletter is distributed monthly free of charge and may be distributed without charge so long all the following information is included.

Dispatches from the Border
Editor - Jude Feldman
Assistant Editor - Alan Beatts

All contents unless otherwise noted are the property of Borderlands Books, 866 Valencia St.
San Francisco CA 94110
415 824-8203
http://www.borderlands-books.com
Comments and suggestions should be directed to editor@borderlands-books.com

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