Archive for News

2008 Locus Poll open for voting

We’ve been checking out the 2008 Locus Poll & Survey in the office this week. This is the final voting poll, and you don’t actually have to be a Locus subscriber to register your vote.

In each of the categories there are a number of suggested titles, sourced from the 2007 Locus Recommended Reading List, or you can add your own titles via the write-in boxes on the form.

We’re particularly happy to see a number of Orbit’s lead publications for last year included in the recommendation shortlists, including:

Ken MacLeod and Charles Stross also have long-listed pieces in the Best Novella, Best Novelette and Best Short Story lists. And what’s that you say? Orbit are long-listed under Best Publisher? Well, yes, but we’re all far too polite to mention it…

2010 and All That

Further to Bella’s post, below, on the 2008 Eastercon, I thought it worth mentioning that Eastercon returns to the Radisson Edwardian at Heathrow (amusingly nicknamed the “Radisson Non-Euclidean” by convention wags), in two years time. Even more exciting for us at Orbit Towers is that the convention committee have shown the great good taste to invite Mike Carey as one of their Guests of Honour.

First Charles Stross, now Mike Carey – they can hold Eastercons at Heathrow every year, as far as we’re concerned!

Dead Men's Boots

The Devil You KnowVicious Circle

New Orbiteer

We’re delighted to announce a new addition to the Orbit team in the UK. Darren Turpin joins us on 7 April, in the role of Marketing Executive. Also known to some in genre circles as Ariel, Darren has been involved with science fiction and fantasy for many years. During his time as a bookseller, he was co-editor of The Waterstone’s Guide to Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, and he created the very-near-legendary genre website The Alien Online. Most recently, he has worked as a freelance web developer, and built websites for many of our authors, including Philip Palmer and Brian Ruckley. We’re enormously excited that he’ll be working on websites and online campaigns for our authors.

Darren, welcome!

Hugo Stross!

Halting StateThe shortlist for the 2008 Hugo Awards has just been released, and we are delighted to see that Charles Stross‘s cutting-edge near future heist thriller, Halting State, has made the ballot. This is the fifth consecutive year that a Charles Stross novel has been shortlisted for the Hugo, passing the great Robert Silverberg‘s previous record, which is an amazing achievement. Many congratulations to Charlie on his most recent shortlisting – we’ve all got our fingers crossed that he walks away with the rocket ship, this year!

Oh, and I’ve read his forthcoming space opera, Saturn’s Children – don’t bet against it being six-in-a-row, this time next year . . .

Sir Arthur C. Clarke (1917 – 2008)

The News At 10:00 last night carried the sad story that Sir Arthur C. Clarke had passed away, some three months after his 90th birthday.

A Space OdysseyAlthough best known for 2001: A Space Odyssey, Clarke’s work encompassed so much more than just an iconic date.  The Fountains of Paradise won both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards and his brilliant Rendezvous with Rama went one better by adding the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. The scenes at the opening of Independence Day, of giant spaceships appearing over the Earth’s major cities, is straight out of the majestic Childhood’s End, written over forty years earlier.  

His incredible body of work is reason enough to consider ‘greatness’ an entirely appropriate adjective, but Clarke was so much more than simply a science fiction writer.  He gave us Clarke’s Three Laws; he served in the RAF during the Second World War, where he was involved in the development of the early warning radar defence system; and in a paper published in Wireless World in October, 1945, he practically invented the telecommunications satellite.

When I heard the news last night, I went upstairs and took my copy of The Collected Short Stories off the bookshelf.  I’ve read pretty much everything Clarke’s written over the years – certainly all the solo works – but it has probably been over twenty years since I’ve read any of his short stories.  As I looked down the contents page trying to decide where to start, it was like reading a Shakespeare play and seeing all the quotes leap out. An unremitting catalogue of brilliance stared out at me: here was Loophole, there was Rescue Party; The Wall of Darkness, Nemesis, Second Dawn, All the Time in the World, The Lion of Comarre, No Morning After, A Meeting with Medusa, “If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth. . . “, Encounter at Dawn, Expedition to Earth, The Other Side of the Sky, Transit of Earth, The Wind From the Sun, Against the Fall of Night

Those who know anything about Arthur C. Clarke will have spotted three glaring omissions in the above, and of course, that’s where I started. I re-read The Nine Billion Names of God, then I re-read The Star, and then I re-read The Sentinel. In some cases, the prose style may have dated a little, but the concepts and the execution are as powerful as ever. If you’d asked me as a teenager what reading Arthur C. Clarke felt like, I’d have said ‘having my brain pried open and the universe poured in’.  After reading those stories again last night, I’d say my teenage self had it spot on.

We lost one of our Greats yesterday. Farewell, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the world is poorer for your passing.

Iain M. Banks: Website News and Book Reviews

bankswebsitescreengrab-copy.jpgThe official Iain (M.) Banks website has been re-launched at www.iain-banks.net. Check it out for all the news and reviews, along with some very interesting contests coming up…

Meanwhile, in an interview at io9.com Banks reveals the hidden Thunderbirds influence that runs through the Culture novels:

“Thunderbirds gave me a love of big explosions I’ve yet to shake off. It’s kind of ingrained by now. Almost the first thing I think of when I’ve come up with an idea for a Really Big Artifact is how you could blow the living bijeesus out of it…”

And in the i09 review of Matter, Annalee Newitz sums up her thoughts on the book in the headline: “Iain M. Banks’ New Novel Kicks Ass on a Galactic Scale.”

While at BookPage Gavin Grant writes:

Matter is Banks in top form. His characters—whether human, alien or drone—are spiky, opinionated, diverse, occasionally short-sighted and tragically believable

Matter is available from Orbit in the US and the UK.

Ditmar Shortlist

More award news, with the shortlist for the 2008 Ditmars being announced over the weekend, and we’re delighted to see Sean Williams’ Saturn Returns and Marianne de Pierres’ Dark Space on the shortlist for best novel. Sean and Marianne were also both shortlisted for the Aurealis Award, and we’ve got our fingers crossed that one of them will win this time. Or perhaps both – is a tie too much to ask for?

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.

The Ditmars will be presented at Swancon, the 47th Australian National Science Fiction Convention, to be held over the Easter weekend.  Guests of Honour include Orbit’s very own Ken MacLeod and Glenda Larke. Ken’s The Execution Channel is, of course, on the shortlist for this year’s BSFA Award for Best Novel (also to be presented over Easter), and Glenda’s Song of the Shiver Barrens was shortlisted for last year’s Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel.

On the whole, we’re rather pleased with the way 2008’s shortlists are developing.