Muse's Resistance

I take this opportunity to direct your attention to a slightly gushy review (by the AR Project, over at Strange Horizons) of Muse's new, sciencefictional, proggish release. The Project loves it prog, and of course loves its science fiction, so is particularly pleased when the two coincide. And isn't the album's cover an appealing piece of work? The ocular 'O' of that colour-sample chart pierced by the filed-off, orange, pyramidic A, with its defiant tiny human passenger. Very striking. I'm not sure I understand what it is, exactly ('resistance', presumably) or why there are two shells of multicoloured hexagonals surrounding the earth. Nevertheless, UK readers of a certain age will understand what I mean when I say: 'I'll have an M, please, Bob...'

The Office of Shadow final cover

Here's the cover for my next novel, The Office of Shadow, the sequel to Midwinter. It continues the story of the struggle between the Seelie Kingdom of Queen Titania and the Empire of Mab. It's a story of high adventure and espionage in Faerie; if Midwinter was "The Dirty Dozen with elves," then this is "The Sandbaggers with Elves." That fellow on the cover is Silverdun, Mauritane's stalwart companion from Midwinter, and the young lady with him is Sela, a new character with an extremely weird and troubled past.

The beautiful cover artwork is by Chris McGrath, and the cover design is by Grace M. Conti-Zilsberger. (Click the image to embiggen.)

In other news, I've sold the German rights for both Midwinter and Office of Shadow to Verlagsgruppe Lübbe. Will I become the David Hasselhoff of fantasy literature? Only time will tell.

Woot!

For Your Viewing Pleasure: The Silver Skull

The Silver Skull© Mark Chadbourn

Cover Illustration © Chris McGrath
Design by Jacqueline Cooke

A devilish plot to assassinate the queen, a cold war enemy hell-bent
on destroying the nation, incredible gadgets, a race against time
around the world to stop the ultimate doomsday device...
and Elizabethan England's greatest spy!

Meet Will Swyfte—adventurer, swordsman, rake, swashbuckler, wit, scholar and the greatest of Walsingham's new band of spies. His exploits against the forces of Philip of Spain have made him a national hero, lauded from Carlisle to Kent. Yet his associates can barely disguise their incredulity—what is the point of a spy whose face and name is known across Europe? 

But Swyfte's public image is a carefully-crafted façade to give the people of England something to believe in, and to allow them to sleep peacefully at night. It deflects attention from his real work—and the true reason why Walsingham's spy network was established. 

A Cold War seethes, and England remains under a state of threat. The forces of Faerie have preyed on humanity for millennia. Responsible for our myths and legends, of gods and fairies, dragons, griffins, devils, imps and every other supernatural menace that has haunted our dreams, this power in the darkness has seen humans as playthings to be tormented, hunted or eradicated. But now England is fighting back! 

Magical defences have been put in place by the Queen's sorcerer Dr. John Dee, who is also a senior member of Walsingham's secret service and provides many of the bizarre gadgets utilised by the spies. Finally there is a balance of power. But the Cold War is threatening to turn hot at any moment... 

Will now plays a constant game of deceit and death, holding back the Enemy's repeated incursions, dealing in a shadowy world of plots and counter-plots, deceptions, secrets, murder, where no one... and no thing... is quite what it seems.

io9 Book Club Selects The Quiet War for Inaugural Read

io9 have announced that they are starting a book club, and choosing as their first selection, Paul McAuley's Clarke award nominated The Quiet War,conveniently just out from Pyr this month. They write:

The Quiet War explores the tensions between two factions in the solar system. The Outers, who live on the outer planets and their moons, are post-humanists by default. They're reengineering their bodies and environments to make it possible for human societies to spread far beyond Earth. But the Earth governments of Greater Brazil want to stop the Outers' blasphemy against pure, untrammeled Nature. Of course, the real threat is the Outers' greater productivity, scientific innovation, and success as a society. A series of skirmishes escalate into a war, and that's when things get explosive. We picked this novel because it's packed with great ideas and fascinating science.

The book club will discuss the book online Thursday, October 8th, at which time io9 readers will be asked to provide questions for Paul McAuley for a special Q&A follow-up session. So if you were thinking of checking the novel out, now's a good time!

It's here!

This Crooked Way by James Enge is shipping from Amazon. Stores follow soon. Just got my copies yesterday. Damn do they look good!

Baxter's Ark

I've just finished reading Stephen Baxter's new novel, Ark, and it's superb: the sequel to his end-of-the-world narrative of global inundation, Flood, it's an immensely readable account of the building and flight of a starship to take a select few humans to an extrasolar planet where humanity can, hopefully, start again. I'll write a review when I've a moment; but until then I'll just note that the cover, above, strikes me as just lovely. I like the illustration very much; I like the design, and I like the shape and size of the font. Above all I love the way the arc (ha!) of the starship's launch mimics the curve of the 'a'; and the sharp diagonals of the 'k' take us down to the rocks at the bottom of the image.

Mars Now!

While gloom increases about the new NASA budget, widely feared to be too low to fund plans to a return of astronauts to the Moon by 2020, there's been some bullish noises about reconfiguring plans to send manned missions to Mars.

First, there's been a revival of Fred Singer's 'Ph-D project', which suggested establishing a forward base on one of Mars's two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, before landing astronauts on the planet. It would be economic in terms of fuel, would provide a platform that would allow astronauts to control rovers on the surface of the planet in real time, and would enhance our knowledge of small bodies. The possibility that the moons may harbour ice deposits and could have collected material blasted off Mars by large impacts are enticing bonuses. And Russia's Fobos-Grunt mission, which plans to study Phobos in detail and land on its surface a probe that will return a soil sample to Earth, could pave the way for manned missions. (We'd better make up our minds relatively quickly; the orbits of both Phobos and Deimos and decaying, and in only ten million years the moons will enter the atmosphere and break up and bombard with surface of Mars with debris.)

Second, Paul Davies has an even more radical suggestion to cut costs: send explorers to Mars on a one-way ticket, and begin colonisation of the planet without any prelimary and expensive round-trip manned missions. Supplies could be sent ahead in robot landers; costs would be slashed by 80%; there is, he claims, 'no shortage of eager scientists, young and old, who say they would accept a one-way ticket'. Anyone who's read Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars will feel a definite tingle of recognition; although the pioneers in Robinson's novel were preceeded by manned expeditions rather than a horde of versatile robot explorers, the ethos is the same. As, no doubt, would be the human complications. It's hard to believe that Davies and his supports will overcome NASA's cumbersome caution (although maybe the Chinese would be more receptive), but I thought this raison d'etre very fine:

'A worldwide project to create a second home for humankind elsewhere in the solar system would be the greatest adventure our species has embarked upon since walking out of Africa 100,000 years ago, and provide a unifying influence unparalleled in history.'

And after Mars, why not the moons of Jupiter and Saturn?

Xposted to Pyr-o-mania.

Hitchhiker's Guide Reissues

What do we think of the cover-art for the reissues of Douglas Adams's sublime Hitchhiker's Guide novels? I know what Ian Sales thinks. He thinks the 'new cover art for Hitch-Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy novels makes them look like self-published books.' That's what he thinks. (Check out the complete set here)

The World Falls Under His Shadow

Next summer will see the release of debut author Jon Sprunk's new fantasy, Shadow's Son, the first in a trilogy that continues with Shadow's Lure and Shadow's Master. I'm getting close to being able to debut the awesome cover from Michael Komarck (our first time working with him and all I can say is, "Wow".) Meanwhile, Shadow's Son is still a year out and already making a splash. Jon has already sold French rights to the entire trilogy to Bragelonne, and right on its heels, UK rights to Gollancz. Obviously, this suggests good things ahead for this author. Here's just a quick tease about the novel:

In the holy city of Othir , treachery and corruption lurk at the end of every street, just the place for a freelance assassin with no loyalties and few scruples.

Oh, and Jon will be attending the forthcoming World Fantasy Convention in San Jose, and he won't know anyone, so seek him out if you are going to be there. I'm sure if you tell him "Lou promised you would buy me a beer," he'd be happy to.