Alexis Glynn Latner Comes to Alabama; John Meaney Phones it in!

I spent a delightful six and a half hours today with new Pyr author Alexis Glynn Latner, whose Hurricane Moon will be part of our Spring/Summer 2007 season. Hurricane Moon is a wonderful novel of hard science planetary colonization, a topic which I think may come back into forefront popularity in the wake of the Titan probe, new discovers of and concerning extremophiles, the recent profusion of extrasolar planets being discovered in the real universe every day, etc... It's a fantastic novel, natch, but I've never met Alexis in person apart from email and phone conversations. She's in Georgia visiting relatives and very kindly made the trip across state lines into my neck of the woods for lunch (Bottega), coffee (Starbucks), a trip to Vulcan (not the planet), and a long afternoon discussion of science, science fiction, systematic theology, post humanity, and wildlife. Here is Alexis in my library, since I sadly forgot to bring the camera with us on our trip to pay homage to the Roman god.

Meanwhile, Mu space expert, Shotokan black belt, and genius author extraordinaire John Meaney is the subject of the latest Dragon page audio interview. Evo and Michael talk to John about his Nulapeiron sequence (Paradox, Context, and Resolution), his upcoming Pyr novel, To Hold Infinity, quantum physics, martial arts, dead bones, and other projects. John is his usual enthusiastic, engaging self and the interview is well worth a listen.

Update: Alexis has the cover story in the July/August issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. Set in the same universe as Hurricane Moon, you can read an excerpt of "Witherspin" online now.

Adam Roberts comes to America

I am very happy to announce that Pyr has just closed a deal with Orion to publish the US version of Adam Roberts's brilliant multi-generational epic of near future space colonization and revenge, Gradisil. I've long been a fan of Roberts' work and am thrilled to be able to bring him to the attention of US readers.

Speaking of the UK edition, Nick Gevers writes in the May 2006 issue of Locus, "There is powerful prose in Gradisil, a maturing mastery with language reminiscent of Ian McDonald. This is Robert's best novel to date, and quite conceivably a harbinger of greatness."

While SFX has this to say, "It all adds up to proof, if any were really needed. That Roberts belongs in the front rank of hard SF writers."

I'm equally excited to announce that Hugo-nominee Stephan Martiniere will be providing the cover art for our edition. More details soon. Meanwhile, you can visit Adam Roberts online at: www.adamroberts.com

Fiona Avery Back Online

After being largely absent from the internet for the past six months, Fiona Avery is back online with a newly redesigned website, www.fionaavery.com. In addition to being the author of The Crown Rose, Fiona is the author of some fifteen comic books and graphic novels (including Spider-Man, Tomb Raider, Witchblade and X-Men), and numerous episodes of science fiction television. Check out her new site and be sure to stop by her journal.

Genetopia praised on Fantastic Reviews

Aaron Hughes has some nice things to say about Keith Brooke's Genetopia over at Fantastic Reviews:

"...a fascinating look at the consequences when the nature of humanity begins to change at a genetic level. ...Like Mark Twain, and in refreshing contrast to the current standard of bloated multi-volume series, Brooke is able to confine his coming-of-age tale to an engaging and relatively short stand-alone novel, even as he uses it to frame important questions about the future of mankind."

More kind words about Pyr as well:

"Genetopia is an original publication of Pyr Books, which in just one year under the adroit direction of Lou Anders has established itself as one of the leading publishers of quality science fiction and fantasy, with a welcome emphasis on the current crop of outstanding British SF writers. Like many of these British Boom authors, Keith Brooke is remarkably adept at envisioning an almost unrecognizable far future, and Genetopia is an excellent example."

Washington Post on River of Gods

Marin Morse Wooster, of the Washington Post, calls Ian McDonald "one of the best sf novelists of our time" in his review of River of Gods:

"...a bold, brave look at India on the eve of its centennial, 41 years from now. MacDonald has become increasingly popular in recent years, and it's easy to see why in this novel, his first to earn him a Hugo nomination. ...MacDonald takes his readers from India's darkest depths to its most opulent heights, from rioting mobs and the devastated poor to high-level politicians and lavish parties. He handles his complex plot with flair and confidence and deftly shows how technological advances and social changes have subtly changed lives. River of Gods is a major achievement from a writer who is becoming one of the best sf novelists of our time."

Life after BEA

Book Expo America has come and gone. While this year's show felt less hectic than last year - no doubt due to the venue of D.C. as opposed to New York - it was a productive and fun weekend.

Highlights included the number of independent bookstore owners we met with, and the chance to put a face on and hang out with Pyr author David Louis Edelman (Infoquake). Here is a picture of Dave with his dashingly handsome editor.

And here is a picture of the whole BEA-attending Prometheus/Pyr gang. Pictured from left to right: Marcia Rogers, Jill Maxick, Richard Snyder, Jonathan Kurtz, Gretchen Kurtz, Lou Anders, & Linda Regan.

Bookgasm Wild for River of Gods

Ryun Patterson of Bookgasm can't get enough of Ian McDonald's River of Gods:

"It’s one hell of a novel. Easily trumping any speculative fiction from the past couple of years, River of Gods is an exuberant leap into the future of India through the eyes of nine disparate characters. As their stories mingle and merge, McDonald not only weaves a tremendous yarn of mysteries and technological magic, but the truly illustrates the dilemmas lying in wait for humanity as we continue to leapfrog from one discovery to the next, inevitably toward a future we could never predict."

Ryun goes on to say, "readers are left needing more, despite the fact that, unlike certain doorstop-sized tomes of recent years, McDonald knows how to end a story. Revelation after revelation resolve themselves in a cascade of denouement that is at once thrilling and sorrowful, as if the author wants to stay in 2047 as much as the reader does. "

Those readers who want to hang around Ian's mid-21st Century India, as well as those new to his vision of 2047, can see a sample of his Hugo and Sturgeon nominated novella, "The Little Goddess," which takes place in the same milieu as River of Gods and is partially excerpted on Asimovs.com. Also of note, Ian recently delivered to Yours Truly another tale of future India, "Sanjeev and Robotwallah," a short story to be included in the upcoming Pyr anthology, Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge.

SciFi Weekly gives Genetoia an A-

SciFi.com's SciFi Weekly just posted a review of Keith Brooke's Genetopia. Reviewer D. Douglas Fratz gives Genetopia an A-, and says in his review:

"... a startlingly original creation, filled with memorable characters and places.... The greatest strength of this novel may be its thematic handling of the issues of slavery, the nature of humanity and the values of diversity. ...should be recognized as one of the most thought-provoking novels of the year."

SciFi.com gives Paragaea an A

SciFi.com's Science Fiction Weekly just posted a review of Chris Roberson's Paragaea: A Planetary Romance. Reviewer Paul Di Filippo gives Paragaea an A, and says in his review:

"Roberson has certainly learned a lot from his literary ancestors, and he manages to hit all the high notes perfectly. ...the illusion of being cast away in some exotic realm that combines the best elements of Jack Vance, The Arabian Nights and a hundred other glorious pulp adventures will linger in the lucky reader's mind throughout the tale, and long after."

SFFWorld Reviews the Crooked Letter

A wonderful review by Rob H. Bedford of Sean Williams' The Crooked Letter, posted to SFFWorld:

"...explores the nature of life, death, and reality. Big subjects, but with the precision of an archaeological expert, Williams is more than up to the task. There is a lot to admire in Williams epic fantasy, the wide range of global religions and myths of which his afterlife is comprised, to the characterization of the protagonists. The story has the mythic resonance of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and American Gods, the dark fantasy/horror one might associate with something like Stephen King’s Dark Tower saga, the multiple universes/realities of Moorcock’s Eternal Champion mythos, and the strange, weird creatures one might associate with China Miéville’s Bas-lag novels. Williams imagined world is equal part those novels which preceded his, but fortunately, there is enough newness to both the approach and vision to make this the work of a singular vision."

Bedford has some nice things to say about Pyr in general as well:

"...reading many of the other titles Lou Anders has published with Pyr, I shouldn’t have been surprised with both the quality of the writing and the breadth of Williams’ imagination. Like a lot of the other books published by Pyr, Williams captures what makes a tried and true genre like Epic Fantasy so popular and enjoyable of a genre and spins a tale with his unique voice. This is the type of book you finish and can’t wait to read the sequel."

Book Expo America

Hello from BEA.
We, along with parent company Prometheus Books, will be here all weekend.
Stop by booth #1404 and say "hi" if you're at the show.

Paragaea Review

Paul Haggerty has posted an enthusiastic review of Chris Roberson's Paragaea: A Planetary Romance up at SfRevu:

"Paragaea is an old tale told to a modern audience. It's a classic John Carter of Mars type tale set on a strange alien planet, with strange new creatures both hostile and friendly. It's got heroes and monsters, swords and guns, high technology and low. At the core is a small plucky cosmonaut desperate to fulfill her mission and report back to her superiors after her ship is plucked out of orbit and deposited on the not-quite Earth named Paragaea.... The book ends with possibilities for continued adventurers; a possibility I look forward to. Oh, and it has zeppelins! How can you turn down a book with perky cosmonauts, super-science, cat-men, and zeppelins!"

An Update on the Infoquake

David Louis Edelman's latest newsletter:

It's now approximately two months until the release of Infoquake. Pre-orders are available on Amazon.com, Booksense, and Barnes & Noble.

News this month:

Chapter 2 of the Infoquake Podcast Now Available
Chapter 2 of Infoquake is now available as a podcast read by the author (me). Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or RSS to get each chapter as it appears, or download audio files from the website in MP3, Ogg Vorbis or Windows Media formats. The first seven chapters of the novel will be published online over the next several months.

Over 26,000 Words of Infoquake to Be Published Free Online
Pyr has approved the publication of four additional chapters of Infoquake on the website. Once published, the entire first section of the book and all of the appendices (a total of over 26,000 words) will be available for free on the web. Chapter 4 is available now in HTML, Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, and plain text; Chapters 5-7 will be available in the upcoming months.

Final Cover Available on Website
You can now view the final front and back cover for Infoquake online. (Dial-up users, take note that this is a 457 KB file.) The front cover looks pretty much the same as it always has, but the back cover hasn't been published before.

Network with the Author on MySpace, LiveJournal, and LinkedIn
If you're interested in the whole online social networking phenomenon, you might want to check out the pages I've set up recently on several of the different services. I now have a space on MySpace, am journaling on LiveJournal, and have linked in to LinkedIn. (You might also want to stop by my blog and say hello if you haven't done so yet.)

Last and yeah, probably least, for now... A tantalizingly brief mention of Infoquake on Rick Kleffel's mainstay of SF book reviews, The Agony Column: "Infoquake will be one of the most praised first novels this year." One can only hope a full review will be forthcoming...

Towards Perfection,

David Louis Edelman
Author of INFOQUAKE
www.infoquake.net

Paradox wins IPPY award!

We are very proud to announce that John Meaney's Paradox: Book One of the Nulapeiron Sequence has just won the 2006 Independent Publisher Book Award in the category of Fantasy/Science Fiction.

Congratulations to John, and also to the finalists: New Wilderness, by Brian S. Matthews (Aydy Press) and Broken: A Plague Journal, by Paul Evan Hughes (Silverthought Press)

Also worth noting, Pyr's parent company Prometheus Books won in the category of Current Events for Feet to the Fire: The Media After 9/11, by Kristina Borjesson, and placed as a finalist in the Humor category for Republican Like Me: Infiltrating Red-State, White-Ass and Blue-Suit America by Harmon Leon, and a simi-finalist in the Science category for The Joy of Chemistry: The Amazing Science of Familiar Things by Cathy Cobb and Monty L. Fetterolf.

The full awards list, including all 60 national categories, regional categories, honorable mentions, and finalists, is online as a downloadable PDF. See also www.IndependentPublisher.com.

The 10th Annual Ippy Awards presentation ceremony will be held in Washington, D.C., during Book Expo America, Friday, May 19, 2006 - 6:30p.m. - 11:30p.m.

A glimpse of the future

First, I'm very happy to announce a number of new acquisitions:

Kay Kenyon's Bright of the Sky, book one in her four book sci-fantasy adventure series, the Entire and the Rose. This is epic storytelling on a grand scale, the saga of Titus Quinn, a man who holds the fate of two universes in his hands. Kay just delivered the first book this week, and I'm equally pleased to announce that the very talented Stephan Martiniere is at work on the cover.

Alexis Glynn Latner's Hurricane Moon. Alexis is a veteran of Analog magazine, a hard science fiction writer whose first novel delivers a story of planetary exploration and colonization - our first such novel at Pyr - served up with a dash of mystery and a pinch of romance. Brian W. Dow is providing the cover.

Chris Roberson's End of the Century, a search for the real Holy Grail told across three timelines, which combines characters from Roberson's Here, There & Everywhere and Paragaea: A Planetary Romance with new characters in a novel that pulls the curtain a ways back on the inner workings of Roberson's fascinating universe(s).

Mike Resnick's Starship: Mercenary, third in his ongoing military SF epic, detailing the adventures of the Teddy R., once a not-so-proud member of the Republic, now fighting for life on the edges of the galactic frontier.

Next, author and noted blogger John Scalzi has just kicked off a new interview feature on his AOL blog, By the Way. For his inaugural interview, he talks with Chris Roberson about his just-released Paragaea: A Planetary Romance. And speaking of Paragaea, SF Reviews has just posted a wonderful review of same:

"If you're going to write a book with a hero not only actually nicknamed 'Hero'", but whose full name is Heironymous Bonaventure, and do so with a straight face, then by golly, that book had better be a completely guileless, wide-eyed love letter to pulp adventure fiction of yore, chock full of monsters, lost cities, sword fights, high seas action, hairs-breadth escapes from certain doom, really big scorpions, and chicks who kick ass. By a happy coincidence, this is precisely the sort of book Chris Roberson has delivered in Paragaea. Had this novel been released 30 years ago, it would've been published by DAW, had a Frank Kelly Freas or George Barr cover, and spawned 38 sequels with titles like Swords of Paragaea. Had it come out 30 years before that, it would've been serialized in one of the old magazines, and you'd have had to hide it from your mom and read it under the covers at night with a flashlight .... The book's sensawunda and spirited storytelling are simply irresistible... fantastically entertaining...put Chris Roberson at the top of your reading list."

There is also a rather nice review of Keith Brooke's Genetopia up at SF Site:

"Keith Brooke's Genetopia is a fascinating creation. Though unquestionably a work of science fiction, it is set at a point in the future where the boundaries between SF and fantasy blur; and the novel has features of both: the heightened sense of reality common to the best fantasy, coupled with the inherent plausibility of the best SF.... One of the hardest things to do in life is to look change in the eye without flinching. Keith Brooke's superb novel is an invitation to do so; and it's an invitation you should accept. "

Welcome!

Hello, and welcome to the Pyr blog, a new feature which will allow us to provide speedier news on the various science fiction and fantasy books that comprise the growing Pyr line. Here, we will post information on upcoming books, debut artwork, post author signings and convention appearances, call attention to reviews & articles, as well as post information about the Pyr website itself.

So, to get us started...

• David Louis Edelman, author of the upcoming novel Infoquake, is podcasting. The first chapter is available free in a variety of audio formats, with more chapters to come.
• Sean Williams, author of The Resurrected Man and The Books of the Cataclysm quartet, has started blogging in earnest. Here, he posts about some of the science behind his fantasy series. Meanwhile, noted anthologist Jonathan Strahan has written about the entire quartet on his blog, Notes from Coode Street, and also published first chapters online to all four novels.
  
• George Zebrowski, author of Macrolife: A Mobile Utopia, was recently interviewed on The Dragon Page. The interview is available as a free podcast.
• Chris Roberson's Paragaea: A Planetary Romance debuts this month. Described by Publishers Weekly as being crafted "in the best pulp manner," those wanting a taste of Roberson's neo-pulp adventure fiction can sample an entire prequel novel for free on his website.
• Finally, over the last few weeks, we have added a great many chapter excerpts to the individual book pages on our site. Curious about one of our books? Then sample chapters from Ian McDonald's River of Gods, John Meaney's Resolution, andMartin Sketchley's The Destiny Mask, to name just a few.