Two Smart Guys Talking

There's a great video interview with End of the Century author Chris Roberson over at Transmissions from Beyond (the TTA press podcast). The interview was recorded at Denvention last year, so he is speaking of End of the Century as a forthcoming release. But it's a good insight into all of his work, as well as his publishing company, Monkeybrain Books.

Meanwhile Geosynchron author David Louis Edelman guest blogs on Pat's Fantasy Hotlist today, explaining why the acronym for his Jump 225 trilogy (Infoquake, MultiReal, Geosynchron) spells IMG. (And Pat says of the trilogy, "As good or better than most quality scifi yarns out there.") For more info on Geosynchron, you can check out the website at http://www.geosynchron.net/, which includes the first eight chapters of the book.

Heliotrope # 5: Michael Moorcock Tribute

Issue # 5 of Helioptrope is out. It's available online and as a downloadable PDF, and is entirely devoted to the genius of Michael Moorcock. It opens with Neil Gaiman's "One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock," and then a piece from Yours Truly, "Michael Moorcock: Behold the Man," wherein I talk about Mike's collosal influence on sf&f, "serious" literature, rock and roll, RPG and computer gaming, and quantum physics. Fortunately, Bryan Talbot is onhand to address my one serious omission. He discusses Mike's colosal influence on comic books in "The Moorcock Effect." Chris Roberson talks about his personal interactions with Mike the person in "Moorcock the Author, Mike the Man." Also included are appreciates by Paul S Kemp, Hal Duncan, and Catherynne M. Valente, and Rhys Hughes. There's a lot of Mike love in the issue, but that's something there can never be enough of.

Too Much Pyr News to Keep Track of!

You go out of town for a week, and look what happens:

Ian McDonald's Brasylhas made the short list for the Nebula Awards!! Meanwhile over on Boing Boing, fellow-nominee Cory Doctorow (Little Brother) reviews Ian McDonald's Cyberabad Days:

"Ian McDonald is one of science fiction's finest working writers, and his latest short story collection Cyberabad Days, is the kind of book that showcases exactly what science fiction is for. ...Cyberabad Days has it all: spirituality, technology, humanity, love, sex, war, environmentalism, politics, media -- all blended together to form a manifesto of sorts, a statement about how technology shapes and is shaped by all the wet, gooey human factors. Every story is simultaneously a cracking yarn, a thoughtful piece of technosocial criticism, and a bag of eyeball kicks that'll fire your imagination. The field is very lucky to have Ian McDonald working in it."

And Nick Gevers interviews McDonald on SciFi Wire:

"The title Cyberabad Days is a deliberate echo of the Arabian Nights. The stories are fairy tales of New Delhi. River was an Indian—novel, fat, many-voiced, wide-screen; Cyberabad Days is tales. Mumbai movies tell stories in ways that challenge our Western aesthetics and values. They're not afraid of sentiment, they're not afraid of big acting, or putting in song and dance, because Bollywood cinema's not supposed to be a mimetic art form. It's not about realism—that most pernicious of Western values—it's a show."

On io9, Charlie Jane Anders interviews Infoquakeand MultiRealauthor David Louis Edelman:

"I began with a vision of a futuristic world, and worked backwards to figure out how everything came together. Most of the backstory came about when I was writing the early chapters of Infoquake and just started randomly filling things in. When I'd get stuck writing the story proper, I'd just spend some time writing background articles. This kind of thing has always been attractive to me. I was the kid who bought AD&D modules just because I liked to read them, even though I didn't have anyone to play AD&D with. I'm the guy who always liked The Silmarillion better than The Lord of the Rings."

On the Adventures in SciFi Publishing podcast episode 75, host Shaun Farrel interviews End of the Centuryauthor Chris Roberson! Here's the direct download link. (And, as a reminder, here is part one and part two of my massive Tor.com piece on Roberson's entire career. Part two wasn't up when I left town.)

These guys are making it hard for me to get caught up!

For Your Viewing Pleasure: 2 Forthcoming Book Jackets

End of the Centuryby Chris Roberson.

Art by Dan Dos Santos.
Design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht.


Cyberabad Daysby Ian McDonald.
Art by Stephan Martiniere.
Design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht.

Nice, yes?

MIND MELD: Interesting Areas of Scientific Research

The latest Mind Meld is up at SFSignal. This one asks, "There is a lot of scientific research being performed across a wide array of disciplines. So much that it can be difficult to keep up with it all. What current avenue of scientific inquiry do you believe people should be paying attention to, and why?"

Answers are from Kathleen Ann Goonan, Nancy Kress, Michael S. Brotherton, Nina Munteanu, and Jennifer Ouellette, as well as our own Kay Kenyon and Alexis Glynn Latner. I am particularly struck by Kathleen Ann Goonan's comment that, "...our system of education needs to have a scientific basis. It does not now. It is so dreadful because it was created to ready immigrant children for factory work. Be on time, follow directions, don't talk, do what we tell you to do. One obvious negative outcome is that we do not begin to teach reading until children are far older than the optimal age for doing so."

Also worth mentioning: Earlier on SFSignal, John DeNardo has taken it upon himself to review as many of Chris Roberson's Celestial Empire stories as he can get his hands on.

Chris Roberson on Superheroes

Paragaeaauthor Chris Roberson is the guest-blogger today on John Scalzi's Whatever. After saying a few nice things about Chris, John reprints his earlier essay "Mark Gruenwald, the father of modern superhero comics." Worth checking out.

Conventions: Chris Roberson at Fencon IV

This weekend, Here, There & Everywhereand Paragaea: A Planetary Romanceauthor Chris Roberson will be attending Fencon IV in Addison, Texas. Catch him at the following panels:

Friday 8:00 PM Programming 1
All Things Joss
Description: A discussion of Joss Whedon and his creations.

Saturday 10:00 AM Programming 3
20th Anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation
Description: After a bit of a shaky start, TNG ran for seven years on television and spawned two other hit Trek series before moving on to the big screen. Fans discuss why this show is still special after all this time.

Saturday 11:00 AM Programming 3
Who's Your Doctor?
Description: Everyone has their own favorite incarnation of the Time Lord. Conversation may get a bit spirited, and we ask you to turn off your Sonic Screwdrivers.

Saturday 2:00 PM Main Stage
Book Business Basics
Description: What are the steps from manuscript acceptance to publication? How are royalities paid? How is promotion of a book determined? These questions and more are answered.

Roberson Rambles on Brasyl

Author Chris Roberson (Paragaea,Set the Seas on Fire) has started "Book Report Monday." In his inaugural report, he looks at Soon I Will Be Invincible, Eisenhorn, and Ian McDonald's Brasyl.The latter shares enough structural commonalities with his forthcoming End of the Century that I, as he points out, advised him not to read it until he'd finished that manuscript. Now that he has, he finds Brasyl "highly recommended. If you've been looking for a story featuring bisexual transvestite wheeler-dealers in the future, kick ass Irish Jesuits in the past, and complex TV producers in the modern day, complete with knives that will cut through the bonds of space-time and secret conspiracies across the multiverse, then Brasyl is the book for you. And if you haven't been looking for that story, then you should be now."

An Extended Family of Adventurers and Heroes

Chris Roberson talks to Sandy Auden on the UK SF Book News site. He's chiefly talking about his just released nautical fantasy, Set the Seas on Fire,but as always, he explains the interconnected nature of his canon:

UKSFBN: Will Set the Seas on Fire be a stand alone or part of a series? Is it necessary to read Paragaea before this one?

Chris R: "Seas is part of a series of stand-alone novels which can be read in any order. The series revolves around an extended family of adventurers and heroes, the Bonaventure-Carmody family. Paragaea: A Planetary Romanceis actually a sequel to Set the Seas on Fire, if you want to be specific about it, since the events of this novel predate those of Paragaea. But that said, either can be read on its own, and both can be read in any order. The same is true of my other Bonaventure-Carmody novels, Here, There & Everywhereand End of the Century. If you like one of them, chances are you'll like the others. If you don't like one, though, you still might like the others, as they're all quite different."

Chris Roberson and Zombies

Chris Roberson talks to Sci Fi Wire about his latest book, a nautical adventure with zombies called Set the Seas on Fire,and explains how it ties directly into his two Pyr novels, Paragaea: A Planetary Romanceand Here, There & Everywhere. Which is, of course, through the person of Hieronymus Bonaventure, who also appears in Paragaea and who is of the same family line as H,T&E star Roxanne Bonaventure. As to similarities between himself and his protagonist, he says, "Both of us, I suppose, are fleeing from boredom and looking for stimulation to keep our brains working. The difference is that I don't have to live on a boat, eating weevil-ridden biscuits and trying not to get scurvy."

Interminable Ramblings

Chris Roberson's forthcoming Solaris title, Set the Seas on Fire,is the subject of John Berlyne's latest review over on SFRevu. Set the Seas on Fire is actually a direct prequel to Paragaea: A Planetary Romance,which John reviewed last year. He references Paragaea again here, calling it "a hugely enjoyable pulpish adventure." Meanwhile, he finds the new book "adds another very competent and confident story to Roberson's ever-growing, increasingly impressive interconnected cannon – one can expect more from the characters one has met in this novel, and not necessarily in the same kind of setting."

As John says above, Chris's novels occur in one big, interconnected multiverse, much like those of his influences Michael Moorcock and Philip José Farmer and his contemporary Kage Baker. Chris himself expands on the relationship between these two particular novels on his blog, Roberson's Interminable Ramble. Meanwhile, he is also interviewed over on Heidi's Pick Six, a blog that asks an author to pick six out of fifteen standard questions. How standard? Question number three is "coffee, tea, or milk?"

Setting The Pages on Fire

Chris Roberson is interviewed on Yatterings. "Setting the Pages on Fire," is a comprehensive-Chris interview, talking not only about his previous two Pyr novels, Here, There & Everywhereand Paragaea: A Planetary Romance,but also about his forthcoming Solaris novels Set the Seas on Fireand The Dragon's Nine Sons,as well as his forthcoming S&S/Firebird young adult Iron Jaw & Hummingbird, and even his not-even-scheduled-yet next Pyr novel, End of the Century.

Although he has written outside of it, the vast majority of Chris's published and forthcoming work is set in one of two fictional universes. First, there is his stories of the extended Bonaventure-Carmody clan. Comparable to Michael Moorcock's Beck/Begg dynasty, Chris says, "Along with the von Beck family, the other inspirations for the Bonaventure family (more properly the Bonaventure-Carmody family, though the Carmody side of the clan hasn’t much appeared in print, as yet) are Kim Newman’s Diogenes Club stories, and Philip José Farmer’s Wold-Newton stories. I’ve got a real weakness for stories that mix genres, or at least blend different subgenres, and I’ve always been a sucker for heroes." Novels in this universe include Here, There & Everywhere, Paragaea, Set the Seas on Fire (forthcoming, but featuring a pre-Paragaea Hieronymus Bonaventure) and End of the Century.

His other major universe is that of the Celestial Empire, an alternate history of a space-faring Chinese empire that diverges from our own timeline sometime in the 15th Century and follows the empire as it sets out to colonize Mars. I published the first of these tales, "O One," in my anthology Live Without a Net. Several more have appeared in Asimov's and Postscripts, with the novella The Voyage of Night Shining Whiteout from PS Publishing. Forthcoming is The Dragon's Nine Sons, which I suspect will rocket these tales to widespread attention. Speaking of the universe, Roberson says, "With a timeline that covers a thousand years, the stories I’ve written in it tend to focus on the quieter moments, on people just a little bit off to the side, right before or right after some larger and louder event has taken place. Not the larger-than-life heroes and villains, but regular people caught in the wake of extraordinary events. Even when I try to write about the more pivotal moments in the history, I find myself gravitating to those at the sidelines, for some reason." Novels in this universe include The Voyage of Night Shining White (novella), and the forthcoming The Dragon's Nine Sons and Iron Jaw & Hummingbird.

Check out the interview, and then, if you haven't already, dive into the universe of your choice. Not that you can't visit both.

Set Sail for Adventure

Publishers Weekly gave a nice review to Chris Roberson's Set the Seas on Fire. This isn't one of ours, being out from Solaris Books, but is a sort of prequel to the Pyr novel, Paragaea: A Planetary Romance, as it features Hieronymus Bonaventure before he finds his way to the counter earth of our novel. So, as to the prequel, PW says:

"Roberson adds a pulpy twist to Napoleonic-era naval adventure as the crew of a damaged English frigate finds both paradise and hell on a pair of uncharted Pacific islands. First Lt. Hieronymus Bonaventure, last seen in Paragaea (2006), serves gamely aboard the HMS Fortitude, but longs for something more exciting than harrying galleons across the South Pacific for an aging captain dreaming of padding his retirement stash. When the Fortitude is badly damaged and blown into 'mare incognita,' the 'unknown sea,' the crew manages to reach a tropical island where the natives are friendly and the ship can be repaired. An attack by bat-winged creatures foreshadows the danger awaiting on the forbidden island of “first volcano,” where Bonaventure leads his men when his native lover, Pelani, is kidnapped. Roberson delivers a fairly standard but well-crafted adventure story for most of the book before delving into the supernatural. The novel is a good bet for adventure fans who want more than your average Horatio Hornblower clone."

Meanwhile, another Paragaea has cropped up on the radar:

“…does a wonderful job of catching the feel of one of Burroughs’s Mars novels, albeit with some very well-conceived gender variations. As a special bonus, he promises that the marvels of Paragaea, which in Burroughs’s work would have been pseudo-scientific double talk, are explainable using contemporary science. It is a genuinely fun adventure novel.” -Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA)-Voyages, Blue Ridge Summit, PA, Feb 2007