The Stone Mage & The Sea by Sean Williams
Sal and his father have been on the run from something for as long as Sal can remember. Now they’ve come to the seaside town of Fundelry and it seems like Sal’s father may finally be giving up. Sal doesn’t know what they’ve been running from, or what happened to his mother, who left them when he was young. Most of the townsfolk are suspicious of the newcomers, but Lodo the hermit and his young apprentice Shilly take an interest in Sal. Under their tutelage, Sal learns that he has some blossoming magical powers, which might be what his father has been trying to keep concealed. He must learn to control these powers before the Sky Wardens can find him.
The Stone Mage & The Sea is the first novel in Sean Williams’ young adult series called THE CHANGE. Despite the familiar young-boy-discovers-he’s-got-a-destiny type of YA epic fanta... Read More
Issue 91 of Clarkesworld opens with “Passage of Earth” by Michael Swanwick. Swanwick is one of my favorite authors when he’s not writing about talking dogs, and this is not a Darger and Surplus story, so I was already inclined to like it. Hank, the protagonist, is the county coroner in a small rural community. One morning, in the wee small hours, an ambulance brings a Worm to his morgue, and Evelyn, a member of the (unidentified) Agency who also happens to be his ex-wife, instructs him to perform an autopsy. The anatomy of the creature, a member of the only other intelligent species in the universe that humans have yet encountered, is so completely different from that of humans that humans don’t know how to combat them — assuming combat is necessary, and the humans appear to be spoiling for war. It’s a tale of interspecies conflict writ small, but with such imagination that the Worm t... Read More
More speculative fiction by Sean Williams
Evergence — (1999-2001) With Shane Dix. Publisher: Two of Australia’s hottest new science fiction writers make their American debut with a new trilogy. Morgan Roche, a commander in the Commonwealth of Empires, is assigned to escort an artificial intelligence unit known as “the box” to her superiors. But an attack on her ship forces her to escape to a prison planet, where she must protect the box at all costs.
Orphans — (2002-2003) With Shane Dix. Publisher: In the early 22nd century, humans’ electronic reproductions, known as engrams, have been sent on fact-finding missions throughout the known universe — searching for signs of alien life. But what they find exceeds their wildest dreams — in nightmarish proportions.
Geodesica — (2005-2006) With Shane Dix. Publisher: The year is 2388. Humanity has spread to the stars, but the far-flung Arc Systems chafe under the tight control of the Exarchs, post-human AIs whose domination of Faster-Than Light technology gives them unsurpassed power. Then the discovery of a vast hyperspatial labyrinth known as the Geodesica changes everything.
The Books of the Cataclysm — (2006) Publisher: When mirror twins Seth and Hadrian Castillo travel to Europe on holidays, they don’t expect the end of the world to follow them. Seth’s murder, however, puts exactly that into motion. From opposite sides of death, the Castillo twins grapple with a reality neither of them suspected, although it has been encoded in myths and legends for millennia. The Earth we know is just one of many “realms”, three of which are inhabited by humans during various stages of their lives. And their afterlives…
Astropolis — (2007-2009) Publisher: In the forty-third millennium of human history, Imre Bergamasc awakens after two hundred years to the realization that he has been the victim of an elaborate murder plot — a plot that also destroyed the intergalactic transport milieu known as the Continuum. But now that Imre has been reborn, he will stop at nothing to help bring forth the rebirth of the galaxy.
The Broken Land — (2008-2009) Ages 9-12. Set in the same world as The Books of the Change. Publisher: Ros, a young boy living on a drought-stricken farm, makes friends with the invisible Escher, who begins to train him in the magic of the Change. His journey leads him to leave the farm in order to decide who is telling the truth and who his real friends are.
Twinmaker — (2013-2015) Publisher: M. T. Anderson meets Cory Doctorow in this teen debut from #1 New York Times bestseller Sean Williams, who also coauthors the Troubletwisters series with Garth Nix. When a coded note promises improvement — the chance to change your body any way you want, making it stronger, taller, more beautiful — Clair thinks it’s too good to be true, but her best friend, Libby, falls into a deadly trap. With the help of the school freak and a mysterious stranger, Clair races against the clock and around the world to save Libby, even as every step draws her deeper into a deadly world of cover-ups and conspiracies. Action and danger fuel this near-future tale of technology, identity, and the lengths one girl will go to save her best friend.
Other Novels:
Metal Fatigue — (1996) Publisher: In a dystopic world after nuclear war, the American city of Kennedy has walled itself off from the decline of the former USA. Determined to continue as a functioning metropolis, Kennedy strictly patrols its boundaries and struggles to maintain the semblance of a modern city. Now, 40 years after the end of the war, Kennedy is in crisis. Technologies are failing and replacements and repairs are not forthcoming. It is within this atmosphere of technological and social stagnation that news of a Re-United States of America emerges — a RUSA that wants Kennedy to rejoin. But not everybody in Kennedy agrees with re-assimilation, and a series of political assassinations and data thefts begin. As the deadline for reunification looms, Phil Roads, the investigator assigned to solve the killings and robberies, is under increasing pressure. Caught between murderous opposing forces, and with dangerous secrets emerging from his past, his own life and career are on the line.
The Resurrected Man — (1998) Publisher: Private detective Jonah McEwen is wanted for murder. Someone has been killing women who resemble Marylin Blaylock, his former colleague and ex-lover. The latest grisly discovery is right on his doorstep. He is the obvious suspect. The problem? He has been in a coma for three years — a coma he has no memory of entering. And there’s worse to come. Using matter transporter technology, or ‘d-mat’, a serial killer know only as the Twinmaker has been brutally torturing and killing perfect facsimiles of his victims and leaving the originals alive. As legal arguments rage about whether this even constitutes murder, Jonah finds himself in the awkward position of defending his innocence when his own exact copy might actually be guilty. Set in a time where the lines between human and machine are increasingly blurred, “The Resurrected Man” explores the future of terrorism, law enforcement, and globe-spanning conspiracies. A perfect blend of suspense and science fiction, the novel follows the complexities of Jonah and Marylin’s relationship and their quest to find the killer before he strikes again, as well as unravelling the tensions between Jonah and his father — a man who has been dead for three years but who might yet hold the key to everything…Nominated for the Aurealis Award and winner of the Ditmar Award, “The Resurrected Man” was hailed as a ‘tour de force’ in Australia, the author’s home country, and described as ‘compulsively readable’ by Locus.
Cenotaxis — (2007) Publisher: In the far future, in the aftermath of a mysterious galactic catastrophe, a false prophet comes face to face with his greatest adversary yet: a man who thinks he’s god, and might very well be right. While the battle for Earth rages around them, they face off, one wanting to conquer the world and the other to redeem it, and the victory may well decide the future of the galaxy, and of humanity itself.
Magic Dirt: The Best of Sean Williams — (2013) Publisher: WINNER OF THE AUREALIS AWARD. “Sean Williams is without doubt the premier Australian speculative fiction writer of the age.” – Aurealis An award-winning 15-year retrospective collection of award-winning fiction by the New York Times-best-selling writer.
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Fantasy by Garth Nix and Sean Williams
TroubleTwisters — (2011-2014) Ages 9-12. Garth Nix and Sean Williams. Publisher: A spectacular new middle-grade fantasy series from NYT bestselling authors Garth Nix and Sean Williams, in which two twins find that they must act as wards against a threatening evil. The Evil has been trying to break into our dimension and dominate the earth for centuries. Unbeknownst to most of us, there are Wardens all over the globe, who protect humanity from the Evil that asserts itself at the Portals, which are the only places through which the Evil may pass into our world. Jaide and Jack Shield don’t know that the world is under attack. They don’t know that their dad and their Grandma X, who they move in with, are Wardens, or that they themselves are troubletwisters, young Wardens just coming into their powers.
(1967- )
