Posts Tagged ‘James S.A. Corey’

New Short Fiction: GODS OF RISK

One of the unexpected and, I think, very good things that the rise of ebooks has done is haul the novella back out of the shadows.  When I started writing, the common wisdom went that novella-length work, that is stories between 17,500 and 40,000 words, was the sweet spot to write if you wanted awards because so few got published.  If there are only fifteen stories written in your category in a single year, it’s not that hard to get in the top five.  Or at least that was the theory.

That day, I’m pleased to report, has passed.

It was never the novella’s fault.  It’s actually the length that is best suited to the modern reader and to science fiction.  It’s got about as much room for plot as a two-hour movie.  There’s enough room to really go into an idea or set of ideas, and not so much room that it threatens to get dull.  I love novellas.  But once the golden age of the Ace double passed, they were a pain in the ass to publish.

For a magazine, printing a novella meant there wasn’t room for much else in a given month.  And that meant there were fewer authors’ names to put on the cover.  And that meant there were fewer sales of the magazine, so novellas were pretty much a non-starter.  For a book publisher, a novella is too small to charge full price for, even though the costs of setting up a production run aren’t that much less.  The wise choice, especially among the mass-market publishers, was to print something a little bit longer that you could charge full price for.

But then ebooks came and when we signed the contracts for the second run of Expanse books, part of it was a call for five novellas set in the same world.  I was delighted.  We’d written a short story before – The Butcher of Anderson Station – but it was done with print markets in mind.  To have the luxury of a full novella’s length was great.  We got to tell the stories that didn’t quite fit in the big epic-sized books, we didn’t have to try to compress the stories into the constraints of magazine wordcounts, and there would be a new James SA Corey story out that was big enough to satisfy folks between the major novels.

The only down side is that there’s not an easy category for awards anymore.

Small price to pay, I think.

GODS OF RISK , a new story of The Expanse, by James S.A. Corey is available now in the US. Corey’s space operas have traveled the far reaches of our solar system, and now turns their attention to our neighbor, Mars. Visit the Orbit Short Fiction today to find out where you can pick up this new fantastic novella.

Hugo Awards voting reminder!

Voting  for the Hugo Awards closes tomorrow, July 31st! You can see the full list of nominees on the Chicon 7 website.

When you’re voting, don’t forget to consider works by some of our fabulous Orbit authors. Mira Grant’s DEADLINE (US | UK | ANZ) and James S.A. Corey’s LEVIATHAN WAKES (US | UK | ANZ) are both up for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, while Mira Grant’s COUNTDOWN, published as part of the Orbit Short Fiction program, is up for Best Novella.

Mira Grant, as Seanan McGuire, is up for another two Hugos: for Best Related Work for her album Wicked Girls and for Best Fancast as part of SF Squeecast. This ties the record for nominations on a single Hugo slate, and marks the first time a woman has been nominated for four Hugo Awards in the same year.

Mur Lafferty, author of the upcoming THE SHAMBLING GUIDE TO NEW YORK CITY, is also a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

July Events

Orbit will be at San Diego Comic-Con this year! Watch this space for details.

July 7
Rachel Aaron at Barnes & Noble, Forest Drive, Columbia, SC, 7:00 PM

July 12-15
James S.A. Corey (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) at ReaderCon, Burlington, MA

July 13
Kate Locke (with Eli August) at the Way Station, Brooklyn, NY

July 25-28
Nicole Peeler at RWA Annual Conference, Anaheim, CA

July 27-29
Mira Grant (Seanan McGuire) will be Guest of Honor at Confluence, Pittsburgh, PA
Robert Jackson Bennett at ArmadilloCon, Austin, TX

July 28
Kate Elliott (with Lynn Flewelling) at Mysterious Galaxy, Redondo Beach, CA, 2:30 PM

James S. A. Corey’s CALIBAN’S WAR is out!

Please stand by for a tightbeam from Orbit Books:

For anyone who enjoyed last year’s Hugo-nominated barnburner LEVIATHAN WAKES  (US | UK | AUS) the next book in the Expanse series is a must-read.

Earth and Mars are rattling sabers following a grisly attack on the asteroid colony Ganymede, and heroes familiar and new are drawn into the fray. This reader would happily follow Captain James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante to the ends of the solar system, and may yet. But some new faces have joined the cast, including Bobbie Draper, gunnery sergeant in the Martian Marines (and her beyond-deadly combat suit), and Chrisjen Aravasala, an Earth politician as grandmotherly as she is shrewd, sharp-tongued, and determined to keep UN forces and Mars from all-out war.

CALIBAN’S WAR (US | UK | AUS) keeps up the faster-than-light pace set by LEVIATHAN WAKES, and raises the stakes, putting the fate of the entire solar system (and one missing little girl) in the balance. Says Kirkus Reviews: “Topnotch space opera … The characters, many familiar from before, grow as the story expands; tension mounts, action explodes and pages turn relentlessly.”

More Stories:

Wallpapers for CALIBAN’S WAR by James S. A. Corey

God, I love this series. So much so… I think all of you should titivate that calculator on steroids you have on your person with the absurdly cool art from CALIBAN’S WAR (US | UK | AUS) by James S. A. Corey by Daniel Dociu.

Bring it on.

BRING IT ON!!!

Below are all the wallpaper download links. If anyone needs a specific dimension… you’re on your own.

BA HA HA HA HA

Just kidding. Let us know and we’ll hook you up. :)

 

1024 x 768 | 1280 x 800 | 1440 x 900 | 1680 x 1050 |1920 x 1200 | iPhone | iPad | Facebook

June Events

May 30 – June 3
Kim Stanley Robinson at SpaceFest

May 31 – June 3
Jaye Wells at Imaginales

June 1-3
Rachel Aaron at ConCarolinas

June 5
Kim Stanley Robinson at Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA, 7 PM
N.K. Jemisin at New York Review of Science Fiction, New York, NY, 7 PM

June 6
N.K. Jemisin at New York Public Library, New York, NY, 6 PM

June 7

Jaye Wells and Kevin Hearne at A Real Bookstore, Dallas, TX, 7 PM

June 8
Kim Stanley Robinson at Topping & Company Booksellers, Bath, 7:30 PM

June 9
V.M. Zito at Friendly Neighborhood Comics, Bellingham, MA, 12 PM
Kim Stanley Robinson and Iain M. Banks in conversation at Conference Centre, British Library, London, 3 PM

June 16
Kim Stanley Robinson at Capitola Book Cafe, Capitola, CA

June 23
James S.A. Corey (Daniel Abraham and Ty  Franck) at Alamosa Books, Albuquerque, NM, 2 PM

June 30

Jaye Wells at Murder by the Book, Houston, TX, 4:30 PM

An Interview of James S. A. Corey by Daniel Abraham

DANIEL:  Well. This is odd, isn’t it? I mean, I’ve done interviews before, but seeing that I’m half of the team that writes as “James S. A. Corey” and you are James S. A. Corey, this whole project feels a little meta.

JIMMY: Eh. Meta’s for chumps. Meta and twee have been what’s wrong with science fiction for decades. You got me here to ask questions, ask questions. I’ll answer ’em. I got nothing to hide.

DANIEL: All right. So Leviathan Wakes is the first book in the Expanse series. That’s been out for almost a year now.  How has your view of the book changed since it came out?

JIMMY: More distance, mostly. It’s not like I go back and reread it. Did that enough when it was in production. The editing pass, the copy edits, the galley proofs. I still go back if there’s something I’m looking for, but you have to understand, I’m coming in sight of the end of the third book. The opening page of Leviathan Wakes is a long way from here. Like what I remember, though. Not a bad book. Still love that cover though.

(more…)

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

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

Read an excerpt from CALIBAN’S WAR

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