Author Archive

RULE 34 by Charles Stross – the cover!

I’ve been looking forward to unveiling our cover visual for Rule 34, the latest brilliant near-future novel by Charles Stross. This one is set in Edinburgh in a future that’s just round the corner and takes us at a cracking pace though a complex series of bizarre interlinked crimes. We loved it and advance praise has been amazing too. But here’s the cover and some early quotes:

Cracking near-future crime laced with humour that’s exquisitely wrong’ Chris Brookmyre

‘A savvy, funny, viciously inventive science fiction novel that combines police procedure with the dark side of nerd culture to produce a grotesque and gripping page-turner’ Cory Doctorow

‘Charles Stross is a grandmaster of that most difficult science-fictional era, the near future. His novel, Rule 34, is a seamlessly transformation of our near-term everyday world into serious strangeness’
Vernor Vinge

‘Dazzling, chilling and brilliant’ Kirkus

GRAVE PERIL by Jim Butcher: a Dresden Files reread

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 at the end of July.
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In Grave Peril Harry now has a girlfriend, the sexy Susan Rodriguez of earlier novels, and this adds another level to the story. However, this does not mean that Harry is resting on his laurels in some sort of a love-fugue.

In fact, chapter one drops the reader straight into the action, with page one showing Harry and his colleague Michael having a rapid car drive through Chicago, off to deal with a ghost nanny who is taking the lives of babies in the Cook County Hospital.

You see, things have been hotting up recently in Chicago. Ghosts have been appearing with much more regularity than they should and have been keeping Harry very busy. This becomes even more worrying when it becomes noticeable that they have some sort of connection with Harry. As you might expect, as a result, Harry’s soon back to being thrown around, and dealing with his dark moods and his exaggerated sense of chivalry. But his main goal must be to figure out why Chicago’s ghosts have suddenly gone crazy, sometimes with deadly consequences, and put a stop to it – if he can. (more…)

Fiction to Film

Film adaptations – love ‘em, hate ‘em, the truth of the matter is, they’re loud, they’re big, they’re successful and they’re probably coming to a screen near you.  The advent of CGI in the last few years has led to an explosion of science fiction and fantasy movies, spearheaded to a large degree by Lord of the Rings and the Marvel Comics lot deciding to cash in on a good thing… now when you think of summer blockbuster, you can fairly reliably count on not just running, jumping, chasing, but you can probably also hold out for the destruction of New York by alien ship or the fall of civilizations.

I’m not going to re-tread the old arguments of book vs. film here.  There are pros and cons either way and frankly the two mediums are so different in so many respects that it seems like a rather futile bit of ground to wander over.   For my part, I should declare that I actually prefer the film of Lord of the Rings to the book, love comic book adaptations… when they’re done well, that is… and am delighted to discover that the occasional CGI fuelled bit of science fiction movie making is in fact, slipping through the net and coming up on screen with the odd bit of an idea behind it. (more…)

The Warrior

The Warrior is a short story from my new Dresden Files anthology Side Jobs (originally in my novelette from Mean Streets). The story takes place between Small Favour and Turn Coat.

Once upon a time, when moving into a new neighborhood, I spent a few days meeting the new neighbors. Nothing big, just visits to say hello, introduce myself to the other family with children my son’s age, another family with a high-school-aged daughter who often babysat for the other families on the street, the usual sort of thing. I had a bunch of innocuous interactions with them that didn’t look like anything special – at the time. Fast-forward five years. Over the next few years, I came to learn that some of the most inane, unimportant little things I had done or said in that time had impacted several of my neighbors in enormous ways. Not necessarily good or bad, but significantly, and generally in a positive fashion, or so it seemed to me.

If I’d chosen different words to speak, or timed my actions only slightly differently, it might well have altered their lives – and if I hadn’t been paying close attention, I might not have realized it had happened at all. It was my first real-life lesson in the law of unintended consequences – and the basis of my belief that big, important things are built from small and commonplace things, and that even our little acts of petty, everyday good or evil have a cumulative effect on our world. A lot of religions make a distinction between light and darkness, and paint portraits of dramatic battles between their champions.

But maybe the ‘fight on the ground’ is a lot more common than we ever really think. It happens every day, and a lot of the time we might not even be aware that it’s going on – until five years later, I guess. Our smallest actions and choices matter. They tell us about who we are. That was the idea I tried to carry into The Warrior. That, and the idea that what seems like a good thing or a bad thing might not be either, seen from another point of view. Many readers were upset with Michael’s fate at the end of Small Favour – how horrible that a character who was basically so decent got handed such a horrible fate. But judge for yourself how tragic it was from his point of view …

2011 Locus Award Nominees!

The Locus Science Fiction Foundation have put up their list of nominees for the 2011 Locus Awards. Iain M. Banks (US/UK) has been nominated for Best SF Novel. Charles Stross (UK) has been nominated for Best Fantasy Novel. And N.K. Jemisin (US/UK) seems hellbent on getting on every major award list with a nod for Best First Novel. Congrats as well to Joe Abercrombie (US) for his nomination in the Novelette category.

 

And, finally, congrats to us for being nominated for Best Publisher!

Check out the whole list here!

Doomed

Powerlessness is the foundation of most horror stories.  Whether they’re about monsters or madmen or even worse, the notion that we are not in charge of our own destiny is what makes most horror work.  It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about purely fantastic dangers like Freddy Krueger and vampires or if we’re staying in more realistic territory with murderers and natural disasters.  If a character must confront their own powerlessness, you’ve got yourself a horror story.

This is why Alien is a horror story, and Aliens is an action adventure film.  In one, a crew of poorly armed, non-combat astronauts are slaughtered by a sneaky predator.  In the other, a squad of soldiers blasts scores of aliens.  It’s true that the soldiers in Aliens are facing some long odds, but though they are in desperate straits, they can still fight back.  They might all die, but they are sure as hell going to take a lot of the enemy with them.  And in the end, it all boils down to Sigourney Weaver in a power suit grappling with the alien queen.  Certainly, not an easy victory, but a victory nonetheless, through guts, determination, and a handy dandy airlock. (more…)

FOOL MOON by Jim Butcher: a Dresden Files reread

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 at the end of July.
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Fool Moon takes place six months after the events of Storm Front.

Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden is Chicago’s only professional ‘wizard for hire.’ But he’s not been employed by the Chicago Police Department’s Special Investigations Squad since the events of Storm Front, the previous novel. His friend, police chief Karrin Murphy, has been giving him the cold shoulder because of these events – and because it’s down to him that she’s now under the suspicious watch of Chicago Police’s Internal Affairs.

Then one October night, he gets a visit from Lieutenant Murphy about a murder – one that has been very, very messy and seems to be the latest in a series of gruesome events, which coincidentally happen at full moon. And there are more moonlit nights on the way…   (more…)

Trudi Canavan hits the Sunday Times top ten for THE ROGUE

Congratulations to Trudi Canavan for hitting the Sunday Times top ten fiction list last weekend – and we’ve just heard today that The Rogue will be in the Sunday Times top ten again this week too! To celebrate, here’s a round-up of her action-packed tour so far…

After a busy launch day and extended signing session in London’s Forbidden Planet last Thursday, Trudi was whisked away to sunny Dublin on Friday morning. First stop was Eason’s, who had this fantastic window in place…

…and a full house of over 80 fans for the evening event. Trudi read a passage from the book, did a Q&A, and then some signing:

 

On Saturday there was a quick run around some of the other stores, signing stock including pre-ordered dedications for her fans who couldn’t be there to meet her in person. After a lot more signings and interviews Trudi even managed to squeeze in a little sightseeing before flying back to London, where she has spent the afternoon today in the Orbit UK office doing a ‘twinterview’ with Waterstones – see #tcav on Twitter for the final list of questions and answers. Now our Marketing guys are making her answer yet another set of questions, after which we will be releasing her for a well-deserved evening off!

Thank you to all Trudi’s fans who have already been to an event or followed the interview on Twitter – and if you haven’t caught her yet, check the tour dates via the link on the right of this page to find out where she’ll be next.

A Tale of Two Cons

I was talking with my greengrocer about where I was disappearing off to over the Easter weekend, and he listened to the sort of stuff that goes on, raising a skeptical eyebrow. Then he said: “A few years ago, I would have said you were mad, but I caught myself looking at this advert in my tropical fish magazine for a Fish Fair in Germany and thinking whether I could afford to go.” Neon tetras or science fiction: a gathering of disparate people with a shared but niche interest, meeting together for a short but intense period of time to celebrate everything fishy/skiffy, and then go back home where no one understands you and you indulge in your passion either ignored or mocked.

Okay. Let’s talk about the paradigm-shifting elephant in the room from the outset. The internet. I’m pretty certain it’s been as revolutionary for the tropical fish community as it has been for fandom. I remember the first time as a baby scientist that I emailed someone whose paper I’d been reading, back in the early days of JANET, UNIX line commands and glowing green-screen terminals. I wanted some more technical information – before, it’d have been a letter, a formal barrier to communication, slow and time-consuming – now the answer came flashing back from half a world away. Anyone in my tiny specialisation was no further than a short walk down the corridor to the computer room. I was abruptly, immediately, not alone. (more…)

Trudi Canavan takes London by storm!

The lovely Trudi Canavan arrived in London this week, and her UK tour kicked off yesterday in style with a welcome glass of bubbly at the Little, Brown office, where she was ambushed by a flurry of inhouse fans eager for her to sign their copies of her newly published hardback The Rogue (which she did, very graciously) followed by a jampacked signing at Forbidden Planet in London. Here’s how the evening went in photos:

Pre-mayhem pose in Forbidden Planet, just before we let in the hordes:

 Hope your arm doesn’t fall off, Trudi – the queue doesn’t look like going down any time soon . . .

And here’s your first fan:

We’ve never had a request for an author to sign a Kindle before, but last night not one but two superfans were delighted when Trudi agreed to do just that – in permanent silver marker!

A close-up of the freshly autographed Kindle:

Finally, here’s a posh arty pic of Trudi signing a non-digital book:

All in all it was a great evening – over 200 books signed for the extremely happy fans, Trudi was touched and delighted to see everyone, and it was the best possible start to her first major UK and European tour. Trudi is off to Ireland today for some events in Dublin, then back to England next week where she will be meeting fans at Costa Coffee in The Peacock’s Centre, Woking on Monday 9th May at 7pm – tickets are still available from Waterstone’s Woking.  She will also be on twitter for a Waterstone’s ‘twinterview’ at 4pm on Tuesday 10th May.  Just tweet your questions using #tcav and there are signed copies of The Rogue for the best questions!

For a list of all Trudi’s other UK events, just click here or click the link on the right hand side of this page to find the one nearest you.