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
The stormtroopers wasted no time in commandeering the decks . . .
After last year’s shenanigans at the SFX Weekender, we couldn’t wait to do it all over again. Excitement levels were therefore approaching unstable levels last Friday, as the Orbit UK team – along with THE FALLEN BLADE author Jon Courtenay Grimwood and FATED author Benedict Jacka – caught a train to Prestatyn, to attend the third SFX Weekender. The convention – run by top British science fiction magazine SFX – has quickly become one of the most anticipated events in British SFF, and this year was again well-attended by authors, editors, scriptwriters and journalists, as well as TV stars of shows such as Red Dwarf, Torchwood and Doctor Who – not to mention hundreds of happy fans and cosplayers!
Orbit's Anne Clarke on the publishing panel
After settling into our chalets (an upgrade on last year, as they had double-glazing!) we watched our very own Anne Clarke on the How To Get Published panel and enjoyed the Kitschies Awards presented by Pornokitsch’s Anne Perry and Jared Shurin. Later, we met up with INTRUSION author Ken MacLeod and SEEDS OF EARTH author Michael Cobley, and headed to a party thrown by our friends at Tor UK.
On the Saturday, once we’d recovered from our cake and alcohol intake from the previous night, we really got stuck in to the panels and signings. Mike, Ken and Benedict all signed books for fans at the Forbidden Planet booth, and took part in some pretty packed panel discussions! Benedict debated genre definitions with other urban fantasy authors on the What is Urban Fantasy? panel, Mike asked whether literature is the only place still flying the flag for space opera, and Ken MacLeod discussed apocalyptic fiction on the We’re All Doomed! panel, making interesting points about the class aspects of survivalist fiction and the ‘cosy catastrophe’. Read the rest of this entry »
If you’re in the US or the UK, here are some of the places you can see Orbit authors in February, from bookstore signings to conventions.
February 2-4th: SFX Weekender
This convention in Prestatyn Sands, North Wales, will play host to several Orbit authors. Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Benedict Jacka, Michael Cobley, and Ken MacLeod will all be on panels and signing books (full schedule) — and we will have exclusive early copies of MacLeod’s Intrusion and Jacka’s Fated available. Plus, our own Anne Clarke will appear on the “How to Get Published” panel on Friday evening.
Saturday, February 4th
Gail Z. Martin at B&N Carolina Place Mall, Pineville, NC, 1 PM.
Mira Grant (with Stephen Blackmoore) at Borderlands Books, San Francisco, CA, 3 PM.
Friday, February 10th
Gail Z. Martin at B&N Morrison Place, Charlotte, NC.
Saturday, February 11th Gail Z. Martin at Books-a-Million Concord Mills, Concord, NC.
Wednesday, February 15th
N.K. Jemisin (with Livia Llewellyn) at KGB Fantastic Fiction, New York, NY, 7 PM.
February 17-19: SheVaCon
Gail Z. Martin will be at this science fiction convention in Roanoke, VA.
Thursday, February 23rd
Kate Griffin & Benedict Jacka signing advance copies of their new books (both being published in March) at Forbidden Planet, Shaftesbury Avenue, London, 6pm
February 24-26th: MystiCon Gail Z. Martin will be at this SFF and horror convention in Roanoke, VA — including a launch party for The Dread in the con suite at 7 PM on Friday.
Saturday, February 25th
Gail Carriger as keynote speaker at the inaugural Passion & Prose Conference, Long Beach, CA.
Walter Jon Williams at Page One Bookstore, Albuquerque, NM, 7 PM.
Sunday, February 26th Gail Carriger at SF in SF, San Francisco, CA, 1 PM.
Gail Carriger at Borderlands Books, San Francisco, CA, 6 PM.
Monday, February 27th
Robert Jackson Bennett at Book People, Austin, TX, 7 PM.
Wednesday, February 29th Yes, it’s a leap year! Gail Carriger will be kicking off her tour for Timeless at Powell’s Books at Cedar Hill Crossing, Beaverton, OR, 7 PM.
‘This is one of the great ironies of contemporary literature: the books that ask the deepest and most profound questions tend to be situated in the most marginalised of genres . . . Ken MacLeod’s The Restoration Game, like his previous novels The Execution Channeland The Night Sessions, are works of science fiction so worryingly close to reality that he may well be hailed as a prophet . . .’
So says Scotland on Sunday and I’m hardly inclined to argue. As you can see, Ken MacLeod‘s latest novel, The Restoration Game, published earlier this month, is already garnering high praise from the critics:
As ever, MacLeod’s grasp of political intrigue is first rate, and in Lucy he’s created a complex heroine forever in doubt as to the true nature of events’ Guardian
This is a writer at the peak of his powers’ SFX
Hear! Hear! And to celebrate publication, we are delighted to present this small but perfectly formed interview that Ken did on a recent trip to Orbit Towers.
What, exactly, is the hitherto undisclosed secret of Ken MacLeod? Watch closely and learn. The answer may shock you . . .
So, how did you spend your Saturday evening? I spent mine at LX 2009, the 60th Eastercon, watching multiple World Fantasy Award-winning author, Tim Powers, present Ken MacLeod with a well-deserved BSFAAward for Best Novel for his latest book, The Night Sessions. A gripping hybrid of SF thriller and police procedural, The Night Sessions is set in the future of The Second Enlightenment, where religion has finally been crushed and removed from political life:
A priest is dead. Picking through the rubble of the demolished Edinburgh tenement, Detective Inspector Adam Ferguson discovers that the explosion wasn’t an accident. When a bishop is assassinated soon afterwards, it becomes clear that a targeted campaign of killings is underway. No one has seen anything like this since the Faith Wars.
After the Middle East wars and the rising sea levels – after Armageddon and the Flood – came the Great Rejection. The first Enlightenment separated church from state. The Second Enlightenment has separated religion from politics. In this enlightened age there’s no religious persecution, but believers are a marginal and mistrusted minority. And now someone is killing them. But who? And – perhaps more importantly – why?
The more his team learns, the more the suspicion grows that they may have stumbled upon a conspiracy way outside their remit. Nobody believes them, but if Ferguson and his people fail, there will be many more killings – and disaster on a literally biblical scale . . .
It’s a terrific book with a mystery to unravel and a future world to explore, told with the characteristic dry wit and insight that makes Ken MacLeod one of British science fiction’s most consistently interesting and acclaimed voices. But don’t take my word for it – you can read an extract of The Night Sessions, here, and if that whets your appetite, you’ll be delighted to learn that it’s out now in paperback from all good booksellers. Or you could always buy it in hardback if you wish – it is an award-winning novel, after all!
Following on from Ken MacLeod‘s excellent showing on last year’s awards shortlists, we’re delighted to announce that 2009 has begun in similar fashion. We’ve just received news that his dark, near-future SF thriller, The Night Sessions, has been shortlisted for the BSFA Award for Best Novel!
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!
Awarded since 1969 in recognition of outstanding achievement in Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror, the Ditmar is one of the premier awards for Australian speculative fiction. Previous winners of the Ditmar for Best Novel include Garth Nix, Peter Carey, George Turner, Victor Kelleher, Greg Egan and – on no fewer than five occasions – Sean Williams.
Fighting has spread across the Middle East and Central Asia to the borders of China. In the US, refugees from climate-change disaster subsist in FEMA camps. Images of official executions circulate on the Internet like al Qaeda videos. State agencies sponsor conspiracy theories as cover-ups. As the troops of the last superpower stand astride the last of the oil, China and Russia aren’t the only states considering their options: certain nations of Old Europe are quietly preparing for the worst.
The war on terror is over. Terror won.
As with all of Ken MacLeod’s novels, The Execution Channel has garnered great critical acclaim. The Times calls it ‘Politically engaged, speculative fiction at its finest, with a conclusion that’s absolutely mind-blowing’; noted critic Paul Kincaid, writing for Strange Horizons, says ‘A very good book, perhaps the best Ken MacLeod has written to date . . . an extraordinary novel’; while SFX sums it up as ‘Jaw-droppingly audacious’.
The BSFA Awards will be presented on 22nd March at Orbital, this year’s Eastercon, where a very smartly attired paperback edition will be available for your reading pleasure!
Hmm. . . ‘Orbital’, eh? Dare we see that as an omen . . . ?
- - February 7th, 2012
Your intarwebs would have to be broken for you not to know that the shortlist for this year’s 
