Archive for July, 2011
author post
I started as a horror writer and now I’m also writing (quite dark) fantasy with Echo City. The combination of these two genres can produce some very memorable results, so I thought I’d share my favourite fantasy/horror crossovers in books, TV and film:
When I first saw The Dark Crystal I was mesmerised by the story, the darkness, the landscape and creatures, and the sad and heroic main characters. I fell in love with world building, and Echo City bears witness to the fun I have imagining strange, unique new worlds. I saw it again recently with my children, and was equally mesmerised by the animation, and the love and skill that went into making this unique film.
My second film choice is much more recent. Guillermo Del Toro is a genius, and Pan’s Labyrinth is his towering achievement. It’s beautiful, haunting, wondrous, and I’ve cried every time I’ve watched it. It draws you into its complex, detailed world and refuses to let you go, even after the devastating final scenes have played out. Pretty close to perfection. Read the rest of this entry »
by Tim Lebbon •1 Comment • Posted in: Guest Post
- The Orbit Team - July 11th, 2011
Hell Ship by Philip Palmer (UK | US | ANZ) is now unleashed, unabashed, unstoppable and available for reading! And it 
is in truth a rollercoaster ride featuring adventure at its most adventurous. Look no further than the info below and this free extract to see what we mean:
The Hell Ship hurtles through space. Inside the ship are thousands of slaves, each the last of their race. The Hell Ship and its infernal crew destroyed their homes, slaughtered their families and imprisoned them forever. But one champion refuses to succumb. Sharrock, reduced from hero to captive in one blow, has sworn vengeance. Although Sai-as, head of the alien slave horde, will ruthlessly enforce the status quo. But help is close. Jak has followed the Ship for years and their battles have left Jak broken, a mind in a starship’s body, focussed only on destroying the Ship. Together, can hunter and slave end this interstellar nightmare?
Philip has been kind enough to put up a ‘moodboard‘ of what has influenced his writing journey (a.k.a. time spent exploring space) and will be unveiling further creativity on this site and his blog over the next few weeks. You can also meet the man in person at Orbit’s upcoming London Summer signing on 30th July, so please come along and say hello! Read the rest of this entry »
by The Orbit Team • Post a Comment • Posted in: Fiction, New Titles, Orbit UK, Orbit US, Signings and Events
- Rose Tremlett - July 8th, 2011
Orbit UK have gathered together some of our authors with books publishing this June-Aug, and are holding a BIG SUMMER SIGNING!
Come to Forbidden Planet, London on Saturday 30th July, 3-4pm, to meet…
TIM LEBBON, PHILIP PALMER, SIMON MORDEN and NICOLE PEELER
Four brilliant authors, loads of fantastic books and an entire shop worth of other exciting distractions. What better way to spend a Saturday afternoon?
Full details on the Forbidden Planet events page, here.
by Rose Tremlett • Post a Comment • Posted in: Orbit UK, Signings and Events, Uncategorized
author post
One of the hoariest of science fictional archetypes is the idea of the artificial intelligence — be it the tin man robot servant, or the murderous artificial brain in a box that is HAL 9000. And it’s not hard to see the attraction of AI to the jobbing SF writer. It’s a wonderful tool for exploring ideas about the nature of identity. It’s a great adversary or threat (‘War Games’, ‘The Forbin Project’), it’s a cheap stand-in for alien intelligences — it is the Other of the mind.
The only trouble is, it doesn’t make sense.
Not only is SF as a field full of assumed impossibilities (time machines, faster than light space travel, extraterrestrial intelligences): it’s also crammed with clichés that are superficially plausible but which don’t hang together when you look at them too closely. Take flying cars, for example: yes, we’d all love to have one — right up until we pause to consider what happens when the neighbour’s 16 year old son goes joy riding to impress his girlfriend. Not only is flying fuel-intensive, it’s difficult, and the failure mode is extremely unforgiving. Which is why we don’t have flying cars. (We have flying buses instead, but that’s another matter.) Food pills out-lived their welcome: I think they were an idea that only made sense in the gastronomic wasteland of post-war austerity English cuisine. I submit that AI is a similar pipe dream. Read the rest of this entry »
by Charles Stross •17 Comments • Posted in: Guest Post, New Titles, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK
- Devi Pillai - July 7th, 2011
Heartless by Gail Carriger just hit the New York Times Mass Market List at #11.* Gail also hit the USA Today Bestseller list at #109! Congratulations to Gail from all of us at Orbit!
And remember, you can read samples from all of the books at the new Parasol Protectorate Facebook page.
*Goes live on Sunday the 10th!
by Devi Pillai • 1 Comment • Posted in: News, Orbit US
- The Orbit Team - July 7th, 2011
I feel like announcing this with some kind of roar or perhaps a drum roll as I’ve been waiting for this for so long and today is actually LAUNCH DAY! But as we’re open plan and I’m highly unmusical I’ll let this do the job …
Charles Stross’s Rule 34 (UK | ANZ) is many amazing things. It’s a fast-paced Edinburgh-based crime novel set a few years into the future. It also displays lashings of Charles Stross’s wry humour and I enjoyed more than a few winces and chuckle-out-loud moments. Another aspect I really enjoyed was Stross’s extrapolation of our current technology, where our usual gadgets have been moved on a step or three. The BBC’s Click technology programme covered augmented reality just last month, but in Rule 34 it’s a useful, fully-fledged reality.
But perhaps most importantly, I found myself completely caught up in the colourful characters (a detective inspector, a young scalleywag called Anwar and a master criminal showing signs of psychosis known as the Toymaker). There’s not the space here to revel in the bizarre crimes DI Liz Kavanaugh has to investigate (domestic appliances in unlikely places …), or talk about the highly suspicious Eastern European bread-mix young Anwar is peddling. But you can sample for yourselves by reading this plot summary or by enjoying chapter one here. Read the rest of this entry »
by The Orbit Team • Post a Comment • Posted in: Extracts, New Titles, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK, Reviews
- Anna Gregson - July 7th, 2011
To celebrate today’s release of Terry Brooks’ Bearers of the Black Staff in paperback, we’re giving a few lucky UK readers the chance to be extremely smug and read its sequel The Measure of the Magic weeks before anyone else!
The official UK release date of The Measure of the Magic, the second book in the Legends of Shannara duology, is 1st September 2011. But at the start of August, we’ll be giving away 5 exclusive advance copies, allowing 5 people the chance to get their hands on it weeks before publication.
All you have to do to enter is be based in the UK and enter your details in the form below. The closing date is 22nd July, and winners will be announced on 1st August 2011 via the Orbit Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Good luck everyone! Read the rest of this entry »
by Anna Gregson • 2 Comments • Posted in: Contests, Orbit UK
- James Long - July 6th, 2011
THE PRODIGAL MAGE (UK/US), book one of The Fisherman’s Children duology, saw Karen Miller returning to the world of her bestselling debut novel THE INNOCENT MAGE (UK/US), spinning an epic tale of a kingdom threatened by a natural cataclysm, where the only hope of salvation was the forbidden talents of a young man named Rafel.
This absorbing story is concluded in THE RELUCTANT MAGE (UK/US), which sees Rafel’s sister Deenie setting out on a desperate quest to find her brother, missing beyond Barl’s treacherous mountains. Deenie is convinced that only her brother’s magic can heal a fractured land, yet the more she sees of the dark sorceror Morg’s deadly legacy, the more she starts to suspect her brother is somehow involved in the scheme of an evil power that now seems reborn . . .
For a taster of this powerful fantasy, check out this exclusive excerpt.
Here’s what readers have been saying about The Fisherman’s Children:
“A compelling portrait of a blighted world in the company of flawed, fascinating people” SFX
“The Reluctant Mage is one of those rare tales that keep you entertained from beginning to end” SFBOOK.COM
“All the elements that will please fans of fantasy, and above all else it’s the characters that really bring this book to life” FALCATA TIMES
by James Long • Post a Comment • Posted in: New Titles, Orbit UK, Orbit US, Uncategorized
- The Orbit Team - July 6th, 2011
Mark Yon has been a reviewer and web administrator at SFFWorld, one of the world’s biggest genre forum sites, for nearly ten years. He has also been on the David Gemmell Awards organisation committee for the last two years. In this series of rereads, Mark will guide us below through the whole of Jim Butcher’s fabulous Dresden Files series as we count down to the new hardback Ghost Story at the end of July.
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It is wintertime in Chicago and, as snow falls, we begin another tale featuring Harry’s wonderfully
complicated life.
At first glance things seem to be going swimmingly. Molly’s training as a wizard by Harry continues and this appears to be working really well. However, a sudden attack on Harry and the Carpenter family leads him to think the Winter Queen has not forgotten him – or his friends. But to Harry’s surprise, the attack actually came from the Summer Queen Titania’s goat-like militia (called by Jim ‘gruffs’). Combined with another case assisting Karrin and the Chicago PD, we are again off to a flying start.
This book is all about promises, made and broken. The small favour in this case relates to the promise that Harry made back in Summer Knight, to Mab, the Winter Queen and the Queen of Air and Darkness. Whilst snow piles up all over Chicago, the task Mab now sets Harry is a formidable one – to be her Emissary and retrieve gangster Johnny Marone, Harry’s nemesis. Johnny has been kidnapped, for reasons unknown, though as time progresses Harry finds that Johnny’s kidnapping is no more than a prelude to something much bigger. And the ‘small favour’ is anything but. Read the rest of this entry »
by The Orbit Team • Post a Comment • Posted in: Fiction, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK
- The Orbit Team - July 5th, 2011
As this is Echo City’s (UK | ANZ) launch week, we thought we’d take time to examine the man behind the city, as it
were. We were driven by a misson to explain and examine, and I guess a deep nosiness regarding our authors. But perhaps I’d best not go into that and instead go into these answers Tim was kind enough to provide …
Why are you so dark?!
The most interesting stories for me are those featuring characters either in extreme peril, or whose lives are in turmoil. The peril might be of a spiritual or psychological nature, or it could be someone threatened by a great big monster, and Echo City features characters in both situations (and sometimes at the same time!). I like creating characters, making myself and hopefully readers empathise with them … and then challenging them with some of the most dreadful trials. That’s dark. But in truth, I see light and hope in everything I write, however dark it may be perceived. Echo City is no exception. Read the rest of this entry »
by The Orbit Team • Post a Comment • Posted in: Interviews, New Titles, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK
