If you could fix the world, with just one pill, how far would you go to force society to swallow?
Imagine a near-future London where advances in medical science have led to the development of a single-dose pill which, taken when pregnant, eradicates many common genetic defects from an unborn baby.
When Hope Morrison refuses to take the pill, is this a private matter of individual choice, or wilful neglect of her unborn child?
‘This near-future sci-fi novel could almost be a sequel to George Orwell’s 1984 – 2084, perhaps’ Sun
‘A disturbingly real socialist dystopia’ Guardian
‘Thoughtful, plausible and scary’ Sunday Telegraph
‘Excellent’ Daily Mail
‘Intrusion is a finely-tuned, in-your-face argument of a novel… MacLeod will push your buttons – and make you think’ SFX
‘The message is powerful and the warning crystal clear’ SciFi Now
‘MacLeod creates a frighteningly plausible dystopia’ Interzone
‘A twistedly clever, frighteningly plausible dystopian glimpse’ Iain M. Banks
‘A haunting, gripping story of resistance, terror, and an all-consuming state that commits its atrocities with the best of intentions’ Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
‘MacLeod certainly delights in raising questions which creatively discomfort his fellow socialists’ Morning Star
‘It’s all so close to the bone it’s almost painful… Intrusion is a rather frightening vision of the road we are taking with our smoking bans and our obesity epidemics and our CCTVs. Particularly if you’re a woman’ Bookbag.co.uk
There’s more to being a writer than writing (and reading and research and self-promotion and whatever that leaves over for, you know, life).
There’s also all the other jobs that being a writer qualifies you for, such as reviewing books and teaching creative writing. Being a science fiction writer gives you expertise on all that and on science, technology, and the future.
If that’s what people think, who am I to tell them otherwise?
Actually, most of the time I can hold my head up – though do hold my hands up about one or two occasions when I’ve been asked for a media comment on some scientific breakthrough about which I know next to nothing. (‘So, Ken, what do faster-than-light neutrinos mean for the Scottish off-shore wind-farm industry?’)
One area where I’m fairly sure I’ve delivered the goods is in public engagement with science. Some time ago one of my former tutors at Glasgow University asked me to give a guest lecture on SF and the public understanding of science, and invited me back to give the same lecture several years in a row. I’ve since delivered variants of the lecture in far too many venues. When it achieved peer-reviewed publication in the SF studies journal Extrapolation, its work on this planet was done.
In 2009 I was one of two writers in residence at the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum, based at Edinburgh University. Part of a network of research institutions set up to look at the social aspects of the new life sciences and their associated technologies and industries, the Forum specialises in connecting social science research to policy-makers, the media, and civil society. It’s sponsored numerous events at the Edinburgh Book Festival, and supported creative residencies – last year it was a playwright, this year it’s a photographer and a documentary film-maker. In 2009 it was me and Pippa Goldschmidt – a terrific new writer (look out for her forthcoming novel, Wider Than the Sky) and former astronomer who as a civil servant once held the official job title ‘Controller of Outer Space’. Together, we fought crime…
Two of our initiatives I’m particularly proud of are: The Human Genre Project, a website of poems and short stories inspired by genomics; and The Social Sessions, a series of public events that included Ian Rankin and Lyn Anderson talking about crime and DNA, science journalists and social scientists discussing ‘Climategate’, and poets on science as an inspiration for poetry. The sessions came out of a wild notion that Scottish writers and journalists could be lured to relaxed, open-ended, informal discussions that offered free wine. ‘Hmm … it’s a crazy idea, but it might just work!’
Working with social scientists taught me a great deal, such as not to say ‘Social scientists and, uh, actual scientists …’
Especially not in conversations with social scientists.
Some of what I learned – and a lot I made up – is in my novel Intrusion. Along the way I also did some work with science communications people, which (via yet another outing for my SF-and-science lecture) got me an unexpected but welcome commission: to write what may be my most widely-read work to date: the script for an online informational comic about stem cell medicine, Hope Beyond Hype.
After the Edinburgh launch event for Intrusion at Pulp Fiction back in April, I was told a big secret, which I found hard to keep (but did). A few days ago it was officially out in the open: I’ve been appointed Writer in Residence at Edinburgh Napier University, with the job of mentoring students on the MA in Creative Writing course.
My immediate predecessor in this post was the great Dr Who writer Rob Shearman. The course leaders Sam Kelly and David Bishop know all there is to know about SF and about the ways of SF writers. It’s a wonderful opportunity and terrifying responsibility, and I’m looking forward to it.
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!
- - March 8th, 2013
Your intarwebs would have to be broken for you not to know that the shortlist for this year’s 