Author Archive

ANCILLARY JUSTICE is the Nebula Award winner!

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The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America announced the winners of the 2013 Nebula Awards this past weekend and we are thrilled to report that Ann Leckie has won the Nebula award for Best Novel!

Congratulations to Ann, who adds the Nebula Award to her Clarke Award, her BSFA Award for Best Novel and her Kitschie Award for Best Debut Novel, all for her spectacular first novel.

You can read a sample from ANCILLARY JUSTICE here. To find out more about the author, check out her website or follow her on twitter at @ann_leckie.

Praise for SHAMAN by Kim Stanley Robinson

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We’ve had some magnificent new praise Kim Stanley Robinson and his novel SHAMAN (US | UK | AUS). Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder had this to say:

“KSR has turned his formidable knowledge and imagination from outer space and future science onto the deep human past. He unfolds the rich and complex lives of our upper Paleolithic forebears: a lad with no family, called Loon, makes it from boyhood to a role in his small society as a Shaman, under the difficult, nutty, mentorship of an elder named Thorn. His trials, hungers, dangers, and skills remind us that our minds and tools are sophisticated and very ancient. A moment struck by watching the great beauty of a wild horse, a vision of two young women braiding each others’ hair by a stream, put us all in the same place. Wild food, vast landscapes, insight, logic, handiness, lovely and sometimes difficult sex, and talks by the fire – all under the sky – or on a long long walk – make up a world we are still in. I don’t think anyone but Kim Stanley Robinson could have brought this off.”

World-renowned artist Marina Abramović said simply that it was the “best book of the year.”

And finally the New Yorker added that “Robinson is one of our best, bravest, most moral, and most hopeful storytellers.”

You can read the full admiring piece on the author and his work here or read a sample from the novel.

Cover Reveal: THE REMAINING by D.J. Molles

We’re thrilled to share the stunning cover art for the first four books in D.J. Molles’ Remaining series, which follows Captain Lee Harden and a group of survivors as they fight to rebuild a devastated America. The eBooks of all four will be available from Orbit starting January 2014, with print additions coming out in successive months starting in May.

In the meantime here is a synopsis of the first book in the series, THE REMAINING….

In a steel-and-lead-encased bunker 20 feet below the basement level of his house, a Special Forces soldier waits for his final orders. On the surface, a plague ravages the planet, infecting over 90% of the populace.

The bacterium burrows through the brain, destroying all signs of humanity and leaving behind little more than base, prehistoric instincts. The infected turn into hyper-aggressive predators, with an insatiable desire to kill and feed.

Soon the soldier will have to open the hatch to his bunker, and step out into this new wasteland, to complete his duty: SURVIVE, RESCUE, REBUILD.

This gritty tale of survival and perseverance will enthrall fans of World War Z and The Walking Dead.

THE REMAINING (US | UK) – Paperback – May 2014, eBook January 2014
THE REMAINING: AFTERMATH  (US | UK) – Paperback – June 2014, eBook January 2014
THE REMAINING: REFUGEES (US | UK) – Paperback – July 2014, eBook January 2014
THE REMAINING: FRACTURED (US | UK)– Paperback – August 2014, eBook January 2014

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Cover design by Lauren Panepinto.

An apple a day won’t keep PARASITE away!

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When I first arrived at Orbit earlier this year the first book I read was PARASITE (US | UK | AUS) by New York Times bestselling author Mira Grant. Even though I’d been a huge admirer of her Newsflesh series I was not fully prepared for how it would affect me. One notable influence was that it added the unlikely element of paranoid thrills to a customarily mundane process: signing up for healthcare.

Ringing in my head as I reviewed benefits and added beneficiaries were these ominous words:

Your health is too important to trust to just anyone.

Choose SymboGen.

Choose freedom.

Thankfully their services were not on offer, but the machinations of this novel’s medical corporation and the plight of Sally got inside my head with a riveting blend of creepy suspense, complex characters, and a terrifyingly believable look at science gone extremely wrong.

Parasite, the first book in Mira Grant’s Parasitology series, is out today and you should not miss out.

But don’t take my word for it:

“A creepy spine-tingler of a medical thriller”— Charles Stross

“An incredible, disturbingly plausible tale of what happens to a world where medical treatments have minds of their own.” — io9.com

“A riveting near-future medical thriller that reads like the genetically-engineered love child of Robin Cook and Michael Crichton.” — John Joseph Adams

“It’s a whole lot of awesome.”— Tor.com

“An exceptionally creepy medical-horror thriller that’s the perfect spine-tingling read for Halloween.”— Fort Worth Star-Telegram

“Grant extends the zombie theme of her Newsflesh trilogy to incorporate thoughtful reflections on biomedical issues that are both ominously challenging and eerily plausible. Sally is a complex, compassionate character, well suited to this exploration of trust, uncertainty, and the price of progress.”— Publishers Weekly

“Fans of [the Newsflesh] series will definitely want to check this new book out. But fans of Michael Crichton-style technothrillers will be equally enthralled: as wild as Grant’s premise is, the novel is firmly anchored in real-world science and technology.” — Booklist

“PARASITE will be hard to dislodge from your brain.”— SciFi Magazine

PARASITE is out now in hardcover and ebook. For more about the book, visit symbogen.net or follow @SymboGenCorp on Twitter, and check here to see all the book tour dates.

New Short Fiction: THE HEIST by Will McIntosh

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Orbit signed up Will McIntosh for the terrifically imaginative novels LOVE MINUS EIGHTY (US | UK | AUS)and DEFENDERS (coming in 2014), but we never forgot that he is a supremely talented short story writer with an amazing range. In fact both novels began as short stories that were so rich and brimming with ideas that they begged to be expanded. The same could be said of any of his shorter work.

In THE HEIST (US | UK)  the Hugo Award-winning author uses an uncanny Las Vegas caper to talk about friendship, regret, and the human desire for just a little bit more time. It’s funny, sweet, heartfelt, and wholly original.

Also, if you liked “THE HEIST don’t miss McIntosh’s other short story in the Orbit Short Fiction program, THE PERIMETER (US | UK)

It’s time to wake up. LOVE MINUS EIGHTY is available now.

Love-Minus-EightyToday is the worldwide release of LOVE MINUS EIGHTY (US | UK | AUS) by Hugo Award-winning author Will McIntosh. Will is a truly original voice in SF and with this novel he’s given us a terrifying, uplifting, daring, and compulsively readable vision of where our path is leading.

Three hundred years in the future, technology has extended the lives of the rich and attractive decades. The wealthy can arrange to be reanimated multiple times, while in cryogenic dating farms, dead women await lonely suitors to resurrect them and take them home. In this big-hearted novel, the lovelorn navigate a world in which technology has found the outer limits of decency and love.

LOVE MINUS EIGHTY explores a time where we are completely entangled in social media, where life is a performance and privacy has lost all meaning, where our romances and relationships are choreographed in secret, and freedom is found in the ever-shrinking spaces off the grid. A time we can all relate to.

Read a sample, look at the amazing trailer and here is just some of the glowing praise the book has received so far:

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