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Back refreshed after some post-Easter holiday, I thought I’d give a little round-up of the weekend’s Eastercon excitements. These didn’t include the weather (a most distracting hail storm during Darren’s Very Important Panel), or getting lost in the hotel’s Shining-esque corridors and missing breakfast, so I’ll spare you that.

So, over the Easter weekend, two key highlights in the science fiction calendar took place. One of these was Orbital, the British national science fiction convention (otherwise known as Eastercon), We were very excited as our Ken MacLeod was on not one, but two shortlists for BSFA awards, up for both best novel with The Execution Channel and best short fiction with Lighting Out, in the anthology disLOCATIONS from Newcon Press. Many congratulations to Ken for winning in the short fiction category, and to Gollancz’s Ian McDonald, who took away the best novel award for the much-admired Brasyl.

I also have to make special mention of Charles Stross, who was guest of honour at Orbital, alongside Neil Gaiman, Tanith Lee, and China Mieville. Charlie wasn’t just guest of honour but, in an astonishing tribute to the genre, had actually managed to clone himself in order to take part in a myriad of panel discussions. Amongst others, I attended Writing the Near Future, on why it might be harder to predict 50 years in the future than 500. Charlie was as fascinating as ever, and managed to pause briefly for breath before his next panel on the Appeal of Lovecraft. His clones were no doubt equally knowledgeable in an in-depth discussion of Accelerando, and in a panel on how to be a full time novelist to name just a few. On the other side of the fence, Orbit’s Darren Nash told a packed room (yep, people were actually standing at the back) what an editor Actually Does. I found this particularly pertinent, and obviously made copious notes(!). The panel was split between editors of novels and short fiction, so covered some interesting differences in how the two forms might be edited.

But the Eastercon activities didn’t end there … the other highlight of the weekend was Swancon on the other side of the globe – the annual West Australian Science Fiction Convention and forum for the Ditmar awards. We are delighted to say that Sean Williams picked up yet another well-deserved Ditmar for best novel, for the fabulous Saturn Returns. Australia’s Dark Fiction zine HorrorScope has the full listings. Ken MacLeod also attended the convention as a guest of honour so, although much in demand, had to miss out on the British event. Sure, it would have been great to travel to Australia to help Ken and Sean out, but the Orbital invites came through first … Maybe next time!

On the PaperCuts blog Dave Itzkoff has a very cool little interview with physicist Michio Kaku on the reasons we won’t teleporting, time traveling, or – er — precoging anytime soon. Left out of his theory, however, is whether investing in the Time Travel Fund increases your odds, so I’m still hopeful.

Following up on the post below, the cover debate continues here, here, here and elsewhere. I left a comment at Lou Ander’s blog that explains a bit more on our approach to cover design.

One thing to add: a few people have expressed the view that for a publisher the most important thing about a cover is that it appeals to buyers (those people in the book industry who determine whether or not–and in what quantity–a book gets on to the shelves). For us, that’s not true. Of course, it’s a great advantage if a buyer loves a cover we’ve come up with; and it makes things more challenging if they don’t. However, we–and I’m talking only about Orbit here, to be absolutely clear–have one thought in our mind when we’re thinking about covers: how to make it as effective as possible for the widest possible readership. And by “effective”, I mean visually exciting, distinctive, and appropriate to the book’s content and style.

Of course, we listen to buyers, we talk to buyers, we take buyers’ feedback very seriously, and we’ll sometimes change a cover as a result. But we don’t ask ourselves: what kind of cover would the buyers like? We ask ourselves: what kind of cover would potential readers like?

Another aspect of this issue that’s sometimes overlooked is what the author thinks of their cover. Some authors are more interested in their covers than others–some prefer to leave it to their publisher, others have very strong views on what they would like. Either way, I’m often struck by how revealing an author’s reaction to seeing a visual representation of their work can be. In my experience, authors themselves can be great judges of whether a cover works or not. One author reaction to seeing her cover for the first time summed it up for me when she said: “That’s exactly what my book looks like!” For her, the cover had captured something exciting and important about the book and made it instantly recognizable. If a cover doesn’t achieve this–at least to some degree–I think it’s unlikely to be a particularly effective cover.

I guess it all comes back to what one considers to be an effective cover.

We’re very excited to be releasing our first Jim Butcher title in UK hardback. Small Favour is the excellent tenth book in the Dresden Files series. It sees Harry trying to pay off one of the favours he owes to the Winter Queen of Faerie, but things, of course, were never going to be that easy. We can’t help but love this smokin’ cover with a beat-up leather look that almost looks strokeable …

Small Favour is released on the 3^rd April. For those of you who just can’t wait the eight long days till then, it’s also available for pre-order.

2 mins and 18 secs is all it takes Philip Palmer to make me want to read Debatable Space (US/UK) again. See Philip talking about his stunning debut novel here:

The web-comic Unshelved took a look at Jeff Somer’s The Electric Church over the weekend. Check it out!

We’re delighted to announce a new addition to the Orbit team in the UK. Darren Turpin joins us on 7 April, in the role of Marketing Executive. Also known to some in genre circles as Ariel, Darren has been involved with science fiction and fantasy for many years. During his time as a bookseller, he was co-editor of The Waterstone’s Guide to Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, and he created the very-near-legendary genre website The Alien Online. Most recently, he has worked as a freelance web developer, and built websites for many of our authors, including Philip Palmer and Brian Ruckley. We’re enormously excited that he’ll be working on websites and online campaigns for our authors.

Darren, welcome!

Ron Hogan at Galleycat and a poster at Metafilter have recently drawn attention to the covers of of three Orbit authors, Charles Stross and Ken MacLeod (Orbit in the UK only), and Iain M. Banks (Orbit in the UK and US).

For the most part, when we publish an author in the US and the UK, we publish with the same cover — and some of those covers are developed in the US and some in the UK. The cover for Iain M. Banks’ MATTER, for example, was developed in the US, whereas CONSIDER PHLEBAS and PLAYER OF GAMES were developed in the UK.

If we felt that a book would appeal to a wider readership if it had a different cover in the US or UK, we’d give it a different cover. But usually we don’t. Not everyone will agree with that — but that’s fine.

Going back to the Galleycat comments, we don’t really have any rules when it comes to covers, but there’s one thing we always do first when we’re discussing them: we decide what it is that excites us about a particular book/series/author. What makes it stand out? What makes it different to everything else out there? And then we ask ourselves: how do we reflect that in the cover approach? What kind of look would be the perfect way to reflect what we think makes this particular book/series/author special?

What we don’t do is think: this book is epic fantasy therefore it has to have one of these covers; this book is military SF therefore it has to have one of these covers. And so on.

And it’s not just the cover illustration/design that this relates to — it’s the format, the production values, the entire package for a book.

This is the issue, I think, at the heart of the Great SFF Cover Debate/War. It’s nothing to do with where the book is being published in the world; it’s to do with the question that every genre publisher has to ask themselves: do we want our books to stand out or do we want them to fit in? Most genre publishers would say both: they want their books to stand out by looking exceptional, but they also want them to fit in by being immediately recognizable to readers of similar books within the genre. Depending on where you put the emphasis, though, the cover for a particular book can go in some very different directions.

Orbit is a publisher of genre fiction, and we’re proud to be a publisher of genre fiction, but at the moment we definitely seem to be putting more emphasis on trying to make our books stand out. Why? Check out the SFF section in your local book store. How quickly can you find a book from a writer you don’t know that excites you because of the way it looks? Hopefully, you’ll find something quickly and the book itself will turn out to be just as exciting as it looks. That’s why we like our covers to stand out.

Here’s video, along with the complete audio podcast, of Iain M. Banks and Ken MacLeod’s readings and conversation at last weekend’s Aye Write! festival in Glasgow.

The shortlist for the 2008 Hugo Awards has just been released, and we are delighted to see that Charles Stross’s cutting-edge near future heist thriller, Halting State, has made the ballot. This is the fifth consecutive year that a Charles Stross novel has been shortlisted for the Hugo, passing the great Robert Silverberg’s previous record, which is an amazing achievement. Many congratulations to Charlie on his most recent shortlisting - we’ve all got our fingers crossed that he walks away with the rocket ship, this year!

Oh, and I’ve read his forthcoming space opera, Saturn’s Children - don’t bet against it being six-in-a-row, this time next year . . .

If you haven’t discovered the Culture yet, check out this post at Slashdot by reviewer (and astrophysicist!) Simon DeDeo. For US newbies we can heartily recommend either Consider Phlebas or The Player of Games, both out this month from Orbit.

The News At 10:00 last night carried the sad story that Sir Arthur C. Clarke had passed away, some three months after his 90th birthday.

Although best known for 2001: A Space Odyssey, Clarke’s work encompassed so much more than just an iconic date.  The Fountains of Paradise won both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards and his brilliant Rendezvous with Rama went one better by adding the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. The scenes at the opening of Independence Day, of giant spaceships appearing over the Earth’s major cities, is straight out of the majestic Childhood’s End, written over forty years earlier.  

His incredible body of work is reason enough to consider ‘greatness’ an entirely appropriate adjective, but Clarke was so much more than simply a science fiction writer.  He gave us Clarke’s Three Laws; he served in the RAF during the Second World War, where he was involved in the development of the early warning radar defence system; and in a paper published in Wireless World in October, 1945, he practically invented the telecommunications satellite.

When I heard the news last night, I went upstairs and took my copy of The Collected Short Stories off the bookshelf.  I’ve read pretty much everything Clarke’s written over the years - certainly all the solo works - but it has probably been over twenty years since I’ve read any of his short stories.  As I looked down the contents page trying to decide where to start, it was like reading a Shakespeare play and seeing all the quotes leap out. An unremitting catalogue of brilliance stared out at me: here was Loophole, there was Rescue Party; The Wall of Darkness, Nemesis, Second Dawn, All the Time in the World, The Lion of Comarre, No Morning After, A Meeting with Medusa, “If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth. . . “, Encounter at Dawn, Expedition to Earth, The Other Side of the Sky, Transit of Earth, The Wind From the Sun, Against the Fall of Night. 

Those who know anything about Arthur C. Clarke will have spotted three glaring omissions in the above, and of course, that’s where I started. I re-read The Nine Billion Names of God, then I re-read The Star, and then I re-read The Sentinel. In some cases, the prose style may have dated a little, but the concepts and the execution are as powerful as ever. If you’d asked me as a teenager what reading Arthur C. Clarke felt like, I’d have said ‘having my brain pried open and the universe poured in’.  After reading those stories again last night, I’d say my teenage self had it spot on.

We lost one of our Greats yesterday. Farewell, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the world is poorer for your passing.

Pop over to Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist for a chance to win a copy of Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Last Wish.

The Last Wish introduces The Witcher, one of the best loved heroes of fantasy in Europe, and recently the star of the hit PC video game from Atari. You can check out the trailer for the game here, and some gameplay animation here (rated mature). There’s an enhanced edition of the game set for release this summer. The Witcher is currently PC only, so console players will have to wait (or talk their significant others into a video card upgrade… hmmm.)

Geralt was also the object of some gentle ribbing at Penny Arcade. Having read the book that inspired the game, we can assure you that yes, he is indeed the Witchest.

The Last Wish will be available from Orbit in the US in May.

We’re happy to announce that Brian Ruckley, Charles Stross, Mike Carey and Philip Palmer are going to be at this year’s Alt.Fiction event, taking place at the Assembly Room in Derby on Saturday, April 26th.

If you’re not familiar with Alt.Fiction it’s a fantastic weekend of writers, writing and all things genre. The schedule of events and more information is available here and here. Hope to see you all there!

Over at her livejournal Jo Graham discusses the “Warrior Princess” archetype in fantasy, and explains how she aimed to make Gull – the priestess in Black Ships – distinct from it.

“I think it’s important that our stories talk about the full range of human experience. Throughout human history important and interesting things have been done by people of both genders, playing a variety of gender roles. Our popular fiction chooses to focus on a few. Why not talk about Ruling Queens? About Sacred Whores, as Jacqueline Carey does in Kushiel’s Dart? About the neglected male archetypes of The Priest and The Psychopomp?”

You can read the whole post here.

Black Ships is out now in the US, and is forthcoming in the UK. Click here to read an excerpt.

Your intarwebs would have to be broken for you not to know that the shortlist for this year’s Arthur C. Clarke Award has just been announced.  Shortlists are inevitably the source of much discussion and usually some controversy, and this year’s Clarke Award shortlist is no exception. There has been much written already about whether some books have been unjustly omitted and others undeservedly included. We, of course, couldn’t possibly comment. One thing we can comment on, though, is the completely uncontroversial shortlisting of Ken MacLeod’s excellent The Execution Channel (also shortlisted for this year’s BSFA Award for Best Novel - don’t forget to vote!).

Many congratulations to Ken on The Execution Channel’s double shortlisting.  Ken’s previous book, Learning the World, was in the running for the BSFA, Clarke and Hugo Awards, in 2006. We at Orbit have our collective fingers crossed that he goes one better this year and walks away with a trophy!

Via Charlie Huston’s excellent website comes news that Charlie has been interviewed in Second Life - or, more correctly, his avatar has been interviewed on the Second Life Cable Network, SLCN.TV. As the man himself says:

“Carlos Suave is a Latin R&B Producer, the owner of a West Hollywood lounge, and a Promoter Extraordinaire, and, if you catch him on the right night, he will admit he knows a guy who can get you a little maryjane, comprende? Also, he writes bloody thrillers and horror novels. Trust us: This ese es loco!”

This will all make sense if you go here and here. Your third destination should probably be your local book shop to pick up a copy of Half the Blood of Brooklyn, published by Orbit in the UK just last month.

Stan Nicholls’ ORCS is one of the most entertaining fantasy books of recent years. The idea is simple: take fantasy’s ultimate bad guys (the orcs); add a teaspoon of compassion, followed by a great big dollop of aggression. Sit back and enjoy the fun. ORCS has already been a huge bestseller, with worldwide sales rapidly approaching a million copies. Orbit will be unleashing them for the first time in the US this September. And do we love this cover? We certainly do.

Just a reminder to all those in the Glasgow area - and all those who have a chance to get to the Glasgow area - the Aye Write! Bank of Scotland Book Festival is on this weekend. Iain Banks and Ken MacLeod will be discussing their latest novels, Matter and The Execution Channel, at The Mitchell Library at 6pm on Sunday, March 9th.

Find out more about the festival and buy your tickets here.

This week, 11 of the Top 20 Fantasy bestsellers in the US are urban fantasy titles, including the Top 3. Most people are aware of the growth of urban fantasy over recent years, but I wonder how many are aware of the degree to which it now dominates the fantasy bestseller lists? This week’s chart shouldn’t be a surprise, either. Looking back over the fantasy bestseller charts of recent years, there’s a clear trend:

2004: 1 urban fantasy title in the Top 20.
2005: 4 urban fantasy titles.
2006: 5 urban fantasy titles.
2007: 7 urban fantasy titles.

Without any doubt, urban fantasy has changed the face of SF and Fantasy publishing in the US over recent years and there’s no sign that it won’t continue to do so.