Posts Tagged ‘Exogene’

CHIMERA: the final installment of The Subterrene War

CHIMERA (US | UK | AUS), the concluding volume of the Subterrene War series is available now!

As with GERMLINE (US | UK | AUS) and EXOGENE (US |UK | AUS), CHIMERA follows a different combatant into the dark underbelly of the warfront. Escaped Germline soldiers need to be disposed of quickly, and Stan Resnick is just the man for that job.

Back in June, T.C. McCarthy first introduced us to Stan Resnick saying,

“If Germline and Exogene are character studies about a man who can’t handle war and a girl who rejects it, respectively, then Chimera is a study of someone for whom war is a natural habitat: Stan Resnick. I’ve seen this. These types of soldiers exist — ones who genuinely thrive in settings that would make most of us want to huddle under a rock and stay there until everything dies down.”

You can read the entire article here and find out how his short story, SUNSHINE, connects to the secrets that are revealed in CHIMERA.

Pick up CHIMERA today or start elsewhere in this rich and complex setting featuring a futuristic world at war.  There are many ways to immerse yourself in The Subterrene War series, including short fiction and video.

 “The highly detailed, brutal depiction of futuristic warfare brilliantly complements the intimate narrative, which examines the insanity of war and those personally affected by it. Breathtaking and heartrending, this is the future of military science fiction.”  – Publishers Weekly, starred review

Two new short stories from Orbit Short Fiction

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)

T.C. McCarthy: On Screenplays

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.

Read an Excerpt from EXOGENE

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.