With sinister echoes of 1984 and Brave New World, this original novel features a near-future city where medical science invents a single-dose pill for eradicating many common genetic defects . . .
Read a sample
From the acclaimed author of Mr. Shivers and The Company Man comes a new tale of gothic intrigue set during the Vaudeville era.
Visit the book site
- - January 7th, 2009
Jennifer Rardin returns this month with One More Bite (US | UK), the fifth installment in her Jaz Parks series. The action starts with Jaz and Vayl (along with a very unwelcome relation) on a flight bound for Scotland–where they have a little assassinating to do.
You can dive into chapter one right here – or start with an exclusive lead-up to the new book on Jen’s site.
- - December 22nd, 2008
Just a quick reminder that the public ballot to decide the finalists of the inaugural David Gemmell Legend Award for Fantasy opens on December 26th.
Following a recently announced change to the voting system, the five most popular fantasy titles of 2008 – as decided by the voters – will then be put forward to a second round of public voting in April 2009 (as opposed to the original panel of judges) for final consideration, with the winner announced on Friday 19th June 2009.
The final long-list of eligible nominated titles – including entries from Orbit authors Brian Ruckley, K.J. Parker, Brent Weeks, Kate Elliott, Jennifer Fallon, Karen Miller and Russell Kirkpatrick – has been made available via the DGLA website as a pdf download and an online voting form will be available from Thursday, with an additional incentive to participate early: the fist 100 voters will receive a limited edition DGLA wristband.
Visit www.gemmellaward.com for more information on the award, or to discuss the nominated titles. And don’t forget to vote, from December 26th onwards!
- - October 31st, 2008
Hello and a very Happy Hallowe’en / All Hallows’ Eve / Stuff-Your-Face-With-Candy Night to you all. Here are a few online treats (no tricks, we promise!) featuring Orbit Authors or coverage of their books:
And finally…
As always, if you see any online articles, reviews or interviews that feature an Orbit author, please feel free to drop us a line and let us know! We’ll happily name-check your website or blog with a heads-up credit in return (please remember to provide us with a link…)
- - October 15th, 2008
Tad Williams has officially announced that his massive and magnificent Otherland series is being developed as a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG).
In Tad’s words:
It’s being made by RealU in Singapore, published by dtp entertainment, and it’s a major project. The entire Singapore studio is devoted solely to the game, and they’re approaching eighty employees. More importantly, though, they’re doing a beautiful, fascinating job, not just duplicating or doing a pastiche of the books, but trying to take what is original and interesting in the work and opening it out into an entirely new realm, the MMORPG. Into the virtual world, that is, and what could be more appropriate for Otherland?
You can read the announcement in detail on Tad’s blog at www.tadwilliams.com and see him talk about the project in a video interview at www.mmorpg.com.
It sounds, from the interview in particular, as though Otherland the MMORPG will be a highly original take on the online roleplaying concept, one that puts the key element of interactive story-telling right at the heart of the gaming experience. Pre-order those virtual-reality goggles now…
- - October 14th, 2008
The one and only Iain [M] Banks has been delving into the e-postbag once more, to answer another selection of questions from fans and readers, over at his official website, www.iain-banks.net.
Topics discussed in this session include the killing of characters, happy endings, Walking on Glass, the existence (or otherwise) of godlike beings, the potential (or otherwise) for the development of a technological singularity, The Wasp Factory and living in the UK (rather than The Culture…)
You can also catch up with his two previous Q and A sessions, which were posted back in July and August.
- - October 7th, 2008
Master of the dark, Shaun Hutson, has two books out this month, the paperback release of Unmarked Graves and the new hardback release, Body Count.
Shaun was kind enough to answer some questions for us in anticipation of the books’ release:
Did the idea for Unmarked Graves come to you fully realised or did you have one particular starting point from which it grew?
It came from one idea and I expanded it. Every book I’ve ever written has come about like that. I think Unmarked Graves went through more changes than any novel I’ve ever written. The ideas I originally wanted to explore ended up disappearing in successive re-writes but the racism thing was there from the beginning.How does it compare to your other novels?
For what it’s worth, I like to try and do something different in each novel and it contained an idea and themes I hadn’t tackled before. I’d never done voodoo before so it was something new for me. I don’t like to keep recycling the same idea over and over again in a different guise. That’s cheating your readers and I’d never do that.
You can read the rest of the interview in the back of Unmarked Graves, out this month!
- - September 17th, 2008
We recently released all three books (to-date) in Robert Buettner‘s Jason Wander series in the UK (having first re-published them with new cover art in the US this April) and it’s lead to a definite resurgence of interest in the series.
Over at UK-based blog / webzine Concept SciFi, blogger Gary Reynolds has posted a detailed email interview with Robert, which covers a range of topics including the author’s inspiration for the series, his writing processes (“Compared to most writers, who are planners, I’m a duct tape improviser. I begin with an idea of where my story will end, and some idea of who will live it and how. But I don’t know exactly what has to happen next.”) and his current projects and plans for the future.
Meanwhile, over at Grasping For The Wind, John Ottinger has reviewed the first Jason Wander book, Orphanage [US / UK]. John explains that the book is a (freely-acknowledged by the author – see the ConceptSciFi.com interview, above) homage to Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and Haldeman’s The Forever War, but points out that Buettner also brings “post-9/11 sensibilities” to the classic ‘young man goes to war’ storyline. He also points out that whilst this isn’t a hard-sf novel, it’s a gripping and engaging one, summing it up by saying:
“Some suspension of disbelief will be required for those who like their science fiction to be based wholly in reality. But if you can let that go, you will end up with a deeply emotional and adventure filled novel of particularly high quality.”
We recently asked Robert to introduce the Jason Wander series in his own words, and this is what he told us.
The first three books in the series are currently available, as follows:
Book four in the series, Orphan’s Alliance is scheduled for publication by Orbit US in late October 2008 and Orbit UK in January 2009. Book five in the series, Orphan’s Triumph is currently being finished.
- - September 16th, 2008
You say ‘to-MAY-to’ and I say ‘to-MAH-to’,
You say ‘shu-NAR-a’ and I say ‘SHAN-uh-ra’,
‘shu-NAR-a’ . . . ‘SHAN-uh-ra’,
‘shu-NAR-a’ . . . ‘SHAN-uh-ra’,
Let’s call the whole thing Geekspeak. . .
Behold! The Gods of Geek have seen fit to bestow upon me a brand new, super-shiny iPhone, and – lo! – I have become addicted to podcasts.
Hmm. So what does the above mock-portentous gibberish have to do with the ill-conceived George and Ira Gershwin pastiche that opened this blog post? I’m glad you asked! This morning on the train in to work, I passed the time standing up, plotting horrible deaths for the train company executives who can’t organise enough seats for paying customers listening to Terry Brooks discussing his career on Rick Kleffel’s excellent Agony Column podcast.
This particular episode is a ‘cast of Geekspeak, Santa Cruz public radio station KUSP’s live weekly show. Terry talks about how he got started as a writer, his Shannara series (the latest volume, The Gypsy Morph, is available now), Star Wars, writing the Episode One tie-in and a whole lot more.
Check it out
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- - September 12th, 2008
Over at his ConceptSciFi blog and ezine, Gary Reynolds has been talking to novelist, screen- and radio-writer Philip Palmer, author of the gloriously head-mashing space opera Debatable Space [UK | US] about a whole range of subjects, including (of course) the book itself, as well as Philip’s approach to writing, his techniques and processes and his experiences with writing and publishing.
Philip had the following to say on the subject of his love of science fiction:
“Science fiction is a genre that deals with exciting ideas. It’s about speculation and dreaming and imagining; and once you add real vibrant characters to that mix, it’s unbeatable.”
And in an update on his current projects, he drops a few hints about his next Orbit novel:
“I’ve just started a second draft of Red Claw, my latest Orbit novel, which is a high concept action thriller – think Predator on an alien planet and you pretty much have it. I wanted to do something exciting and visceral and also brainy … I also wanted to write a science fiction book in which the ‘science’ isn’t quantum physics or astrophysics, it’s biology. This is a book which brims with aliens of every sort, not just alien monsters – alien grasses, alien bugs, alien soil, alien plankton, alien everything.”
You can read the whole interview over at www.conceptscifi.com and find out everything you ever wanted to know (and a whole lot more) about Philip Palmer over at his blog/website www.philippalmer.net.
- - August 29th, 2008
Over at the official Iain [M] Banks website, we’ve just posted the second Iain Banks email Q&A session, in which Iain answers selected questions from his fans and readers.
This time around you can discover Iain’s predictions for the next big UK literary stars, his view of the Minds’ attitude toward the rest of the Culture, a question as to would he / wouldn’t he write an episode of Doctor Who, whether he thinks there will ever be a Culture-based MMORPG, and more…
Head on over to www.iain-banks.net to read the full piece.
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