Orbit Books

The Killing Moon

The Killing MoonN. K. Jemisin

The mesmerising first book of the Dreamblood duology from this critically acclaimed and Locus award-winning author is out now.
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2312

2312 Kim Stanley Robinson

A remarkable new science fiction novel from Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author, Kim Stanley Robinson.
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Posts Tagged ‘science fiction’

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Orbit signs up three new Expanse novels by James S.A. Corey!

- - March 30th, 2012

Published in summer 2011, James S.A. Corey’s LEVIATHAN WAKES (US | UK)  was an instant favorite among space opera fans. Charles Stross deemed it “a slick, fast-paced, old-fashioned yarn,” and George R.R.  Martin called it his favorite science fiction novel of the year. The second volume in the Expanse series, CALIBAN’S WAR (US | UK), is due out this summer, and a third will follow a year after that.

This saga of interplanetary intrigue, adventure, and first contact will only get bigger—so we are thrilled to announce Orbit’s new deal with agent Danny Baror and author James S.A. Corey for three new Expanse novels, plus five new Expanse novellas.

We asked Corey (the formidable writing duo of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) for a hint of what’s in store:

“Brave new worlds and broken old ones, love and loss, noble deaths and stupid ones, unexpected threats and the dangers that we all carry in our back pockets all the time.  And an ending that pulls it all together.  The Expanse is a love letter to the science fiction we grew up with, and we’re grateful that we get to tell the story the way we’d hoped to.”

Read an excerpt from Leviathan Wakes Read an excerpt from Caliban's War

by • 1 Comment • Posted in: News, Orbit US

Read an excerpt from CALIBAN’S WAR

- - March 26th, 2012

Return to the Expanse with James S. A. Corey and read an excerpt from CALIBAN’S WAR (US | UK), the follow up to the critically acclaimed LEVIATHAN WAKES (US | UK) which The Wall Street Journal called “…the future the way it was supposed to be.”

“Snoopy’s out again,” Private Hillman said. “I think his CO must be pissed at him.”

Gunnery Sergeant Roberta Draper of the Martian Marine Corps upped the magnification on her armor’s heads‑up display and looked in the direction Hillman was pointing. Twenty-five hundred meters away, a squad of four United Nations Marines were tromping around their outpost, backlit by the giant greenhouse dome they were guarding. A greenhouse dome identical in nearly all respects to the dome her own squad was currently guarding.

One of the four UN Marines had black smudges on the sides of his helmet that looked like beagle ears.

“Yep, that’s Snoopy,” Bobbie said. “Been on every patrol detail so far today. Wonder what he did.”

Guard duty around the greenhouses on Ganymede meant doing what you could to keep your mind occupied. Including speculating on the lives of the Marines on the other side.

Click to read more

by • Post a Comment • Posted in: Extracts, Orbit UK, Orbit US

BRIN IS BACK. And with an exclusive 3D cover.

- - March 23rd, 2012

Orbit UK is proud to announce the release in June of a spectacular new novel from a grand master of science fiction – with a very special limited edition cover.

Over 20 years ago, David Brin began the Uplift series – a set of novels that would sweep the board for science fiction awards year after year. David would go on to create a vast range of fiction, computer game storylines and graphic novels – as well as having his novel The Postman turned into a major motion picture.

Now, 10 years after his last book, David Brin returns in epic style with Existence (UK | ANZ), an all-encompassing novel of the near future. Both brilliant and terrifying, the book portrays mankind facing a crisis and potentially its imminent demise.

We are also thrilled to unveil the news that the first edition of Existence, released on 21st June 2012, will feature a cover with a unique 3D “lenticular” effect. The cover gives an impression of floating in space miles above Earth, and its distinctive nature means this book is likely to fast become a collectors’ item. There will be just one print run of this edition – and it will only be available until stocks last.

See the video below for a preview of what’s to come:

And see below for some of the exceptional praise the book has already received.

 ‘David Brin takes on one of the fundamental themes in science fiction – and one of the fundamental questions humanity faces in this century. Since Brin is both a great storyteller and one of the most imaginative writers around, Existence is not to be missed’ Vernor Vinge, Hugo award-winning author of Fire Upon the Deep

‘Take a world soaked in near-future strangeness and complexity . . . Hotwire with wisdom and wonder  . . . Brin is back.’ Stephen Baxter, bestselling author of Ark

 

by • 1 Comment • Posted in: Art, Fiction, News, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK, Press Releases, Videos

Two new short stories from Orbit Short Fiction

- - March 15th, 2012

We’re shaking things up this March by publishing TWO new pieces of short fiction for fantasy and science fiction readers alike. Whether you like swords or railguns, Orbit Short Fiction has something to suit your fancy.

STRANGE DAYS IN OLD YANDRISSA by John. R. Fultz: In an age of untamed miracles and curses, a mad vagabond may solve the mystery of a king’s dilemma. Yet in a world gone mad, the only wise man is a fool. This is a great story for readers who enjoy new voices in epic fantasy. John R. Fultz’s short fiction has appeared in Black Gate, Weird Tales, Lightspeed, and Space & Time.

A PEOPLE’S ARMY by T.C. McCarthy: In the distant future, on an ice-bound world, Choi Chung Ho is a loyal soldier in the Dear Leader’s army. Stuck in a damaged tank with the American advance quickly approaching, he must find a way to survive. Survive the Americans, the blindly patriotic members of his own crew, and, most dangerous of all, the shifting politics of the North Korean military. T.C. McCarthy  explores the nature of military and political conflict in vivid and graphic detail in a futuristic world war like no other.

If this is your first time reading the work of either author, be sure and check out their full-length novels too.

Praise for SEVEN PRINCES:

“A stand-out fantasy series from an author with an exceptional talent for characterization and world building.” — Library Journal (Starred Review)

“What Seven Princes [offers] is breakneck pacing and nonstop insanity. It’s epic with a capital EPIC.”
— io9.com, 2012

Praise for GERMLINE and EXOGENE

“Simultaneously heartbreaking and triumphant.”
— Publishers Weekly, 2012  (Starred Review)

“This exciting and thoughtful story marks McCarthy as one of sci-fi’s most promising new talents.”
— Kirkus, 2012  (Starred Review)

by • Post a Comment • Posted in: Fiction, Orbit US

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T.C. McCarthy: On Screenplays

by - March 1st, 2012

I’m reading an email; Orbit wants me to write screenplays – four of them – and my reaction is to write back “not just yes, but HELL yes.” Then I hit send. It’s only later, while I’m scraping ice and snow off the car that I realize what’s happened and that within a few months Jeremy Tolbert and Levi Thornton will have made four short films and that all will be based on what I write. Me. The concept is Jeremy’s idea but the scripts will be mine, and every word from the actors’ mouths will have come from my keyboard.  I can’t call up Christopher Markus to ask for help and what would I ask anyway? “Hey, dude, would you mind critiquing my screenplays instead of working on the next Captain America script? I know you’re busy but, come on. Can’t that McFeely guy get around to it?”

Right.

***

It’s snowing again. If we get caught in Vermont, in the snow, there’s no way to tell how long we’ll be stuck. This makes me sad because it means an early departure. The kids are crying and my daughter wants to go skiing with me one last time, but everyone is exhausted and before I know it the house is quiet because all the kids have passed out barely making it to their beds. Now I can write. Now I can take the hours to read about how to format a screen play – because they have their own rules, their own look, their own way of conveying information to the actors and the audience. “(Beat)” means pause, for example, and script dialogue has to go in a certain place on the page. Jeremy is counting on me to hand in something incredible, something that will make it all worthwhile — thoughts that bring me to a terrorized state where it occurs to me: I can’t do it. They asked the wrong guy.

But now it’s too late to quit.

***

“Balmy?” I hear the neighbor say, “what the hell is ‘balmy?’”,  but it must be the right word because the dogs are panting and I’m in my shorts despite the fact that it’s January in South Carolina and even we aren’t supposed to wear shorts in January. There’s no more patch. There’s no more patch. Quitting chewing tobacco leaves me with phantom pains, and now there are four scripts on my computer laughing at me because they know all I want is nicotine — something to take the edge off that voice, the one telling me that my work isn’t good enough.Maybe it isn’t. But there’s nothing left for it except to keep revising, to go over the words until I can’t see them anymore, and a few hours later my wife shakes me because I’ve fallen asleep in my chair.

***

The scripts are finished and I handed them in a few weeks earlier; it’s hard to say if they’re any good. Then I get an email while working on my next book, and it’s from the filmmaker with a link to a rough cut of the videos and everything becomes clear: why writing screenplays is so much fun. The actors give life to the words; the director has his/her own interpretation of the script and adds, music, lighting, camera angles — everything. Are these my scripts? What the hell is going on? The movies are so spooky that I start chewing my nails and wondering what will happen next, even though I know what will happen next. You might love these video-trailers too. You might not. If you haven’t read Germline or Exogene, you might get the sense that whatever my books are about, they’re not typical, futuristic military science fiction novels, and maybe they’re not. Maybe they’re books about the reality – the insanity – of the present and of the truth, a reflection of dark spots on my brain.

by •2 Comments • Categories: Guest Post, Orbit UK, Orbit US • Tags: , , , , , ,

Read an Excerpt from EXOGENE

- - February 28th, 2012

In GERMLINE journalist Oscar Wendell introduced us to a new breed of special forces and the surprising humanity these elite and deadly soldiers are capable of. Now read the first chapter of EXOGENE (US | UK| AZ) – a story of war from the perspective of one of these genetically engineered soldiers.

Live forever. The thought lingered like an annoying dog, to which I had handed a few scraps.

I felt Megan’s fingers against my skin, and smelled the paste—breathed the fumes gratefully for it reminded me that I wouldn’t have to wear my helmet. Soon, but not now. The lessons taught this, described the first symptom of spoiling: When the helmet no longer felt safe, a sign of claustrophobia. As my troop train rumbled northward, I couldn’t tell if I shook from eagerness or from the railcar’s jolting, and gave up trying to distinguish between the two possibilities. It was not an either‑or day; it was a day of simultaneity.

Deliver me from myself, I prayed, and help me to accept tomorrow’s end.

Click to read more

Also check out The Subterrene War Clips – an in-world introduction to the destruction and political intrigue tearing the front-lines apart. Welcome to hell. Welcome to Kazakhstan.

by • Post a Comment • Posted in: Extracts, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK, Orbit US

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Elizabeth Moon: My Fascination with ‘Good’ Characters

by - February 27th, 2012

I spend at least a year – for multi-volume works several years – inside the heads of the POV characters.  Their thoughts, their feelings, their wishes, dreams, fears, and worst moments are part of my daily thought stream. 

It’s like having a stranger move into the house or apartment, sharing every detail of his/her life, dirty underwear and all. 

Yes, of course I know characters are fiction – I made them up – but I have to feel them as if they were real in order to write them.  And that means I’m vulnerable to their moods, their thoughts.  

So I don’t want to spend a year inside the head of someone I wouldn’t want to be around in real life.  Most people wouldn’t want to be around them, either: the bitter, resentful, envious whiner and the arrogant, narcissistic, backbiting, backstabbing, climber just don’t have that many friends.  It doesn’t matter if they’re nice to their cat, raise fancy koi, or paint exquisite miniatures on porcelain: if they’re generally rotten, I don’t want to them in my head, poisoning my days with their constant negativity.  Writing one self-deluded whiny character’s train wreck from the inside (Luap in SURRENDER NONE and LIAR’S OATH) was enough. 

Elizabeth Moon's epic fantasy trilogy 'Paladin's Legacy'

Elizabeth released ECHOES OF BETRAYAL, the third epic fantasy novel in her Paladin's Legacy series, just last week.

Of course I still do write bad characters, but I write them from outside (or mostly outside) where I can show their effect on others and offer some glimpse of how they got to be bad, if that’s important to the story.  Sometimes it’s not: a story with a single strong protagonist – especially one with an unusual viewpoint, like Lou in THE SPEED OF DARK – would lose its intensity if the reader’s attention were diverted to his employer’s viewpoint.  Bad characters vary in their own motivations.

Good characters aren’t perfect – they would be boring if they were – and their flaws, their mistakes, their internal conflicts with their own competing motivations make them interesting companions for the time I spend writing them (in a several-volume story, it’s several years).  In fact, my “good” characters are so flawed that I’ve had some people question how I can possibly consider them good.  None of them qualify for the Perfect Person of the Year award by conventional standards of Perfect.

After all, Paksenarrion (THE DEED OF PAKSENARRION) disobeyed her father, ran away from home to become a mercenary soldier, has a hot temper, and killed people for a living.  Gird (SURRENDER NONE, LIAR’S OATH) not only led a violent peasant revolt resulting in thousands of deaths, he drank too much and had a ferocious temper.  Heris Serrano, in the Serrano/Suiza books, disobeys an order (albeit a vicious order), makes bad decisions, quarrels with her family, and is contemptuous of rich civilians – like her employer.  Ofelia, in REMNANT POPULATION, evades an evacuation order, deliberately staying behind so that she can be alone (she thinks) on the planet, free to indulge herself for the rest of her life, using whatever was left behind as if it belonged to her (misappropriation of property, if not worse).  Ky Vatta, in the VATTA’S WAR series, gets a thrill out of killing – she’s shocked at herself, but she can’t change the reaction.  Her batty Aunt Grace, a harmless-looking old lady who bakes fruitcakes, breaks the law on a regular basis and brings down a government. 

So . . . why do I insist they’re good?

Because good isn’t simple.   And these characters do more than whine, rage, complain and posture about themselves.  They intend to be constructive and not destructive, even when they’re starting quarrels that have dire consequences (Esmay Suiza) and trusting the wrong person (Ky Vatta).  If Paksenarrion had been conventionally good, she would never have saved the lives she’s saved (and she’d have made a very bad pig-farmer’s wife).  All the “good” characters are bad sometimes – all have had enough trouble to last a lifetime – but they are capable of growth and change, and how they change – exactly what decisions they make under the pressure of past experience and current events – is what interests me. 

 

by •1 Comment • Categories: Guest Post, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK • Tags: , , , , ,

A Fiery New Deal for Michael Cobley with Orbit

- - January 6th, 2012

SEEDS OF EARTH, the first book in Michael Cobley’s space opera trilogy Humanity’s Fire, was first published in the UK in March 2009. Since then, the series described by Iain M. Banks as “Proper, galaxy-spanning space opera” has kept readers glued to its pages and eager to read more. Given the outstanding quality of Michael Cobley’s science fiction and its major success so far in the UK, Orbit is thrilled to announce a worldwide deal for a new book by this bestselling author. Orbit have acquired World English rights from agent John Parker at the Zeno Agency for a new standalone novel by Michael Cobley, set in the Humanity’s Fire universe.

the three covers for Michael Cobley's Seeds of Earth science fiction trilogy

The new book, WARCAGE, is a high-action space adventure currently scheduled for worldwide hardback release in autumn 2013. Ahead of that publication, all three existing books in the Humanity’s Fire series will be published by Orbit US, who are releasing SEEDS OF EARTH in the US in October, ORPHANED WORLDS in November and THE ASCENDANT STARS in December 2012. Anne Clarke, Editorial Director for Orbit UK, says:

We’re all delighted with the continuing success of Michael Cobley’s superb Humanity’s Fire series, and we’re very excited about WARCAGE and looking forward to sharing it with Mike’s fans next year. Michael Cobley is becoming an increasingly important name in science fiction, so we’re extremely happy that our colleagues in the US will be on this adventure with us too.”

by • 3 Comments • Posted in: Deals and Deliveries, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK, Orbit US, Press Releases

Cover Launch: EMPEROR MOLLUSK vs. THE SINISTER BRAIN by A. Lee Martinez

- - September 12th, 2011

Like I was saying when I posted the Chasing the Moon wallpapers, I love that Will Staehle’s covers really work together to give the author a cohesive look and feel, but they work as the stand-alone stories they are. I thought Monster was my favorite…until this one came in. A squid riding a body with a suit and tie! I mean come on, that’s hilarious. And the squid has a crown. And the back cover art is pretty fab too, just wait and see. So here’s another great one, to look and and to read, for a tale of intergalactic politics and a galaxy-wide scourge…who just might be sick of keeping up his reputation.

And really, the best reading line i’ve put on a title in a long time. “He came, he squirmed, he conquered!” ha!

Here’s a teaser, and all A. Lee Martinez’s covers together after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

by • 2 Comments • Posted in: Art, Covers, Orbit US

Cover Launch: EXOGENE by T. C. McCarthy

- - July 19th, 2011

Mid-series covers are at the same time a relief and a challenge. On one hand you already have the general look and feel of the art established, so a lot of the trial and error is skipped. Unless something has gone terribly wrong you are usually commissioning art from the same artist, and they start working a lot closer to the target. The type style is usually set, and overall it’s kind of fun to be able to play within those constraints. However you also can’t play it too safe and end up with boring art, or at least, art that isn’t pushed to its full potential. Because sometimes, especially in the case of a new author, the second cover is even more important than the first—you want to really show this author is establishing a strong series and the world is something you want to be drawn into. I know a lot of people—in fact, I am married to one—that won’t start a series if just the first book is out. (For example, he’s recently got into Game of Thrones on HBO and was really interested in reading the books until he heard it wasn’t a completed series…and yes, these are the fights that go on in my house) Thus, it’s really important to make mid-series covers as awesome, if not MORE awesome, than the first cover.

This brings me to Exogene, the next book in T. C. McCarthy’s Subterrene War series (Germline is the first, which just came out and is getting great reviews). Steve Stone did a fabulous job on the Germline cover – it was the perfect tone – obviously military SF but the attitude tells you there is something deeper going on here. Of course, this makes the Exogene cover harder. For one, a female lead character which means you are immediately fighting certain clichés, and (I don’t want to give away anything here) she is a character full of contradictions. We wanted to capture her maybe right on the edge between blind belief and doubt. A soldier still heroic, but perhaps with just the slightest uncertainty beginning to show on her face. And add to that delicate proposition the fact that it’s a beautiful young woman who also happens to be bald. And then make her look like a convincing soldier. Not an easy task. But in my opinion, yet again, he nailed it.

After the jump, see the cover next to Germline and get a teaser…. Read the rest of this entry »

by • 3 Comments • Posted in: Art, Covers, Orbit US

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