Posts Tagged ‘the Expanse’

Goodreads Readers Choice Awards: Opening Rounds

The first round of voting for the 2013 Goodreads Choice Awards is officially open! Below are the Orbit books we’re thrilled to see still on the list.

FantasyVOTE NOW!
A MEMORY OF LIGHT by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (UK | AUS)
THE CROWN TOWER by Michael J Sullivan (US | UK | AUS)
PROMISE OF BLOOD by Brian McClellan (US | UK | AUS)

A MEMORY OF LIGHT crown-tower-highRez PROMISE OF BLOOD

Paranormal FantasyVOTE NOW!
COLD DAYS by Jim Butcher (UK | AUS)
FROST BURNED by Patricia Briggs (UK | AUS)
HUNTED by Kevin Hearne (UK | AUS)

COLD DAYS   FROST BURNED   Hunted

Science FictionVOTE NOW!
EARTH AFIRE by Orson Scott Card & Aaron Johnson (UK | AUS)
ABADDON’S GATE by James S.A Corey (US | UK | AUS)

EARTH AFIRE   Abaddon's Gate

HorrorVOTE NOW!
PARASITE by Mira Grant – Parasite (US | UK | AUS)
THE REMAINING: FRACTURED by DJ Molles  (US | UK)

Grant_Parasite-HC   Molles_TheRemainingFractured-TP.jpg

Debut Goodreads Author
PROMISE OF BLOOD by Brian McClellan (US | UK | AUS)

PROMISE OF BLOOD

The first round of voting closes on November 9th so don’t forget to cast your vote before then. This is also your only chance to write-in titles for the various categories. Let your voice be heard!

Who would you cast in an Expanse television series?

This week Variety announced that Iron Man and Children of Men scribes Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby will script the pilot of The Expanse, based on a series bestselling novels written by James S.A. Corey, for Alcon Television Group.  Check out the full scoop here.

This of course begs the question: who would you like to see cast in any television adaptation of the series?  Go wild. We can’t wait to hear who you would choose.

Leviathan Wakes   Corey_CalibansWar TP   Corey_AbaddonsGate_TP   Corey_CibolaBurn_HC

Like the freshly unveiled cover of CIBOLA BURN? Go to SF Signal to see a larger version and also the cover of Daniel Abraham’s upcoming THE WIDOW’S HOUSE, book four of the Dagger and the Coin series.

ABADDON’S GATE: a literary blockbuster of epic proportions

abaddons-mockup “Abaddon’s Gate is literary space opera at its absolute best…” io9 

Things started simply enough: a ship is found mysteriously abandoned by its crew, but we’ve all watched and read enough space adventures to know that nothing is ever quite so simple. With each twist and page-turning sequence, the Expanse series has grown to become an absolute gem of the subgenre and today, the latest novel ABADDON’S GATE (US UK AUS), begins hitting bookshelves. Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, the writing team behind James S.A. Corey,  knocked it out of the park once again as you’ll see in the terrific reviews the novel has already gotten.

Check out the James S.A. Corey Facebook page to read the first few chapters and whet your appetite until you get a hold of your own copy. If you haven’t taken the leap yet, here’s an excerpt from LEVIATHAN WAKES ( US | UK | AUS).

As an extra treat, we made a set of wallpapers from the stunning cover illustration by Daniel Dociu. Enjoy!

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Praise for ABADDON’S GATE

“High adventure equaling the best space opera has to offer, cutting-edge technology, and a group of unforgettable characters bring the third installment of Corey’s epic space drama (after Caliban’s War and Leviathan Wakes) to an action-filled close while leaving room for more stories to unfold. Perhaps one of the best tales the genre has yet to produce…” Library Journal (Starred Review)

“Corey (a shared pseudonym for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) delivers a politically complex and pulse-pounding page-turner to continue the Expanse space opera series.” – Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“Courageous and audacious, with short chapters, smart characters, and a snappy narrative, it’s leaps and bounds bigger and better than the vast majority of space opera. And the fun is undoubtedly far from done.” – The Speculative Scotsman

Become a fan of James S. A. Corey on Facebook!

There is a new way to receive updates on James S. A. Corey’s publishing activities over on Facebook.  Become a fan of the official Facebook fanpage and connect with other fans of the Expanse series. You’ll also gain access to exclusive excerpts from the upcoming novel ABADDON’S GATE!

For those of you who haven’t picked up these books yet, you can read  a sample from LEVIATHAN WAKES (UK | US  | AUS)  here and get hooked on this critically-acclaimed SF  series.

Praise for The Expanse series

“It’s been too long since we’ve had a really kickass space opera. Leviathan Wakes is interplanetary adventure the way it ought to be written.” — George R.R. Martin

This is the future the way it was supposed to be.” –  The Wall Street Journal on Leviathan Wakes

“A worthy sequel to Leviathan’s Wake. Compelling characters and a plot that combines political intrigue with military sf create a memorable story that begs for film adaptation.” –  Library Journal

 

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.

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. :)

 

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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