BookCon is almost here!

BookCon is tomorrow!  I know you've probably got your weekend all planned out, between panels and signings and remembering which galleys to fight to the death over grab before they run out, but don't forget to stop by our parent company's booth tomorrow to meet David Walton!  Prometheus Books is at booth #3249, and he'll be signing his technothriller Superposition at two different times.  Actually, you'll probably want to hop in line to meet Allen Eskens too, author of The Life We Bury from our sister imprint Seventh Street Books. Back to back thrillers? Don't say we didn't warn you.

Have you been HEXED yet?

Whether you're into comics or YA novels, (or neither, for that matter) you're going to want to check this one out.  For the first time, Michael Alan Nelson's comic book character Lucifer exists in the prose novel world. And what a terrifying world that is.  Lucifer hunts and nabs demons, travels through mirrors, and battles some very angry witches.   All of which makes for some exciting reading!

"An action-packed page-turner.”—Kirkus Reviews

“With a plot that’s fast-paced and addictive, this book is truly something special.... I found myself utterly captivated by the whole story.”—Bibliosanctum

"Nelson creates a magical world that hasn’t been seen before….  Lucifer is heroine that all YA books should look up to for inspiration.”—Seattle Geekly

“Fast paced, fun.”—Not Yet Read

"A dark magical adventure. It was fun, entertaining and enjoyable.”—Tome Tender

Have you jumped on the Hexed bandwagon yet?

May the 4th be with you.

Happy Star Wars Day! If you can celebrate with a marathon of movies, then quite frankly we're a bit jealous. If you have even more time and energy, and no more pressing needs (other than food, shelter, and clothing) then you should try your hand at some of these awesome Star Wars crafts.

 Chewbacca bookmark? Yes please, as long as he doesn't leave hair in between the pages.

 CUPCAKES! Because everything is better in cupcake form.  Send them by the dozen.

I actually can't think of a reason NOT to stock these at work.  Meeting in 5 minutes? Let me just grab my lightsaber...

Seriously? This is the cutest thing ever.

Visit our Star Wars Pinterest page for the official "how-tos" and more ways to celebrate today.

Earth Day Giveaway! (rhyming is fun)

Happy EARTH Day!  Seems like the perfect day to giveaway ALL THREE books in Janet Edwards' Earth Girl series, right?

Jarra is an ape, an outcast, stuck on a ruined Earth due to a rare defect that makes her unable to survive on other planets.  She's already proven that she's just as tough as the norms, but her actions have repercussions that spread further than she ever could have imagined, and political unrest threatens to tear apart the delicate balance of peace between humanity's worlds.

The third and final book in the series, Earth Flight, doesn't even come out until September, but today's winner will receive an advance galley! Comment below, share this post on Twitter or Facebook, or e-mail publicity@prometheusbooks.com to enter. Multiple entries will only be counted once.  One winner will be chosen tomorrow morning at 9 am ET.

Enter to win, then get outside and enjoy our planet!

Out today!

Hooray for today! David Walton's newest book SUPERPOSITION is finally available! If you like mind-bending, fast paced thrillers peppered with actual science, then you can't afford to miss this read.

"An expanding universe of delight."

-Washington Post

“A truly fascinating approach to thriller writing.… The story’s strength lies in its ingenious structure that neatly unfolds against an impressive backdrop of science.” —The Big Thrill

“An utterly addictive murder mystery with a fantastic twist…. a cleverly thought-out bit of sci-fi fun.”  —Starburst Magazine

“Gripping, suspenseful and original.”
—RT Book Reviews

 Amazon Best Book of the Month!

 iTunes "20 Best Books of April" and featured on What We're Reading!

Listed as a "mind-blowing" book of 2015 on io9

A groundbreaking discovery at the NJSC

This article was originally published on Science 2.0

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The Anti-Proton Collider experiment of the New Jersey Super Collider (NJSC) announced today that we may not be alone in the universe. 

This groundbreaking discovery by the largest scientific instrument in the world was confirmed by detectors at five locations around the NJSC’s thirty-mile superconducting loop.  The anti-matter capture team, led by Dr. Brian Vanderhall, has uncovered definitive evidence that the connected network of quantum particles that make up the universe is itself intelligent.  Whether there are one or many such intelligent minds is not certain, but it seems clear that the vast matrix of exchanging fields and forces is complex enough to have a conscious mind of its own.

The breakthrough came from an analysis of several years’ worth of missing transverse energy (MET) measurements. MET refers to the energy of particles in a transverse direction to the axis of the beam, which implies the existence of particles not sensed by the experiment’s detectors. What Vanderhall and his team discovered was that the missing energy transfers followed a complex but recognizable pattern. That pattern proved to be identifiable as the interactions of a computational device with a complexity factor far in excess of Pronsky’s Threshold—that is, sufficient to require intelligent control.

The New Jersey Super Collider (NJSC) is the largest particle accelerator in the world.  Situated under the Pine Barrens near Lakehurst, New Jersey and Princeton University, its accelerator track is a huge ring buried two hundred feet beneath the surface and stretching thirty miles in circumference.  It is dedicated to discovering the most fundamental characteristics of our universe, from its first moments until now.

The NJSC cannot, at this time, communicate with these beings, notes Vanderhall.  They are presumably as unaware of us as we are of them.  They appear not to have bodies, at least not in the sense we are accustomed to.  They exist in our world, but in a strange, parallel existence, in which the material surfaces of things may have little meaning, and where gravity or electricity are just one more method of communication, he notes.

For more than a century, we’ve looked for aliens in distant galaxies, but they were here all along, right among us.  Inside us even, in the very molecules and forces that make up our air and food and our bodies, kind of an alternative universe version of Horton Hears A Who! Another whole civilization, and one so different from our own, we never even knew they were there.  Vanderhall and his team say they are hard at work trying to understand their language and devise methods of communication.  When they succeed, it may begin the most exciting and fascinating era of human existence.

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April Fools!

This article is brought to you by David Walton, author of the quantum physics murder mystery Superposition, which comes out next Tuesday.  In Walton's book, the NJSC actually exists, and a quantum life is discovered, but when the scientist who made the discovery is found murdered in his lab, the race is on to find the real killer.

Science fiction is here to stay

We launched our imprint ten years ago with an action packed line-up of hard science fiction, and according to some independent retailers, it looks as though science fiction is on the rise again after so many years of fantasy reigning.

So cheers to the intergalactic travel and nanotechnology,  futuristic societies and dopplegangers. Here's a look at some of the coolest looking scifi books we've brought you through the years

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Special announcement! New Editorial Director!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 19, 2015

Prometheus Books Announces New Pyr Editorial Director

Rene Sears to Manage Acquisitions and Editorial Direction for SFF Imprint

Amherst, New York—Prometheus Books is pleased to announce Rene Sears as editorial director of Pyr, our science fiction and fantasy imprint. We are thrilled that this appointment coincides with Pyr’s 10th anniversary this month, as it opens the way for a new aesthetic while preserving our rich history.

When Pyr’s original editorial and art director, Lou Anders, resigned after nine years, Sears was tapped to help shepherd projects in progress during the transition. She had been part of our professional family for quite some time, having previously worked with Pyr in several capacities including acquisition support, copyediting, and promotion.

Sears has acquired titles in ongoing series (such as Rising Tide by Rajan Khanna and The Prison in Antares by Mike Resnick) and helped oversee the process of directing cover illustrators and designers. Her first original acquisition is a historical fantasy by author Stephanie Burgis—tentatively titled Masks and Shadows—planned for spring 2016 publication.

In a recent Locus interview, Burgis says the book brings together her “geeky obsessions” of fantasy and opera. With alchemists, mystery, and a plot to assassinate an emperor and empress, this wildly romantic fantasy novel is like an 18th-century Downton Abbey with magic, set in the Austro-Hungarian palace where Joseph Haydn worked as the court composer. Burgis has written a trilogy of middle-grade historical fantasy novels, and numerous short stories for adults. Masks and Shadows will be her adult debut novel.

As Pyr enters its second decade, we are excited by the combination of continuity and fresh point of view the appointment of Rene Sears provides. We’re also proud that Sears adds to the growing list of women in executive positions at science fiction and fantasy presses, joining such esteemed editors and publishers as Toni Weisskopf at Baen, Ginjer Buchanan at Ace, and Joanna Kramer at Orbit.

Before joining Pyr, Sears copyedited for mental_floss magazine. She has a BA in English literature from Duke University and an MFA in sequential art (also known as comic books) from Savannah College of Art and Design. Her short stories have been published at Daily Science Fiction and in the Fantasy Faction Anthology. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama, with her husband, two children, and dog.

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Smash 'em together

We love playing by the rules.

Yeah...sure. That's why some of our favorite books have been mash-ups of different genres, a little of this and a little of that.  A square peg that might be able to squeeze itself into the round hole but throws up it's arms in triumph yelling "You can't make me do it!" Here's what we're talking about:

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Vampires + steampunk + pulp adventure + romance + politics + alternate history

The original Vampire Empire trilogy introduced a fresh approach to vampire mythology while also starting an epic romance. Cue fangirl squee: The story of Gareth and Adele will continue with a new ongoing, character-based series that will start with The Geomancer this fall!

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Science fiction + legal drama + quantum physics + murder mystery 

Next month, David Walton seamlessly blends hard science fiction and particle physics with a crime so twisted, it'll keep you guessing until the end. It will be followed by a book, Supersymmetry, in September.

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Wild west + steampunk

Few stories are stranger than Mike Resnick's Weird West tales. Join Doc Holliday, Thomas Edison, Billy the Kid, and Geronimo in

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Portal story + flintlock fantasy 

A 21st-century man walks into a world of magic and mayhem.  Luckily, his enemies have never seen what weapons the modern world can create. the second book, Gold Throne in Shadow, comes in this fall!

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Steampunk + sword and planet

Ever wonder what Victorian London would look like on another planet? With aliens dressed to the nines? Wonder no more!

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It's time for this week's giveaway!  To celebrate our 10th anniversary we're once again offering up one copy of any book mentioned in this post! Yep, that even applies to the books coming out this fall. So to enter, comment below or send an e-mail with the subject "Week two giveaway" (making sure to include which book you'd like to win) to publicity@prometheusbooks.com.  This contest ends on Friday, the 20th.

No "Dead End" in sight: Mike Resnick on the future of science fiction

As the winner of five Hugos (and nominated for thirty-one more), Mike Resnick is a name every genre fiction fan should know. His Kirinyaga series, with sixty-seven major and minor awards and nominations to date, is the most honored series of stories in the history of science fiction. Resnick published his first book with Pyr, Starship: Mutiny, ten years ago in our inaugural year, and a decade later he began a new series with the recently released The Fortress in Orion.  With sixteen Pyr books in his catalog, and three with our sister imprint Seventh Street Books, we thought we'd ask him a few questions about the past and future of the science fiction and fantasy genre.

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Pyr: What drew you to speculative fiction? What are some of the earliest books or stories you remember reading that made you want to write in the genre?

Resnick: It started with Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars books when I was 8 or 9 years old. I'd graduated to Ray Bradbury's Mars by the time I was 12, and I read every science fiction book I could get my hands on while I was in high school. Its speculations fascinated me, and made almost all other fiction seem somehow lackluster and pedestrian. (Not a view I no longer hold, I should add. But in my formative years, there was science fiction and there was everything else.)

I always knew I wanted to be a writer. I sold my first article at 15, my first poem at 16, my first short story at 17...but back then I knew I had to get a lot better before I attempted to write and sell science fiction, so I didn't sell my first science fiction book (not a very good one, I admit) when I was 24.


It is interesting that your first series with Pyr (the Starship series) was a space opera, and ten years later you begin a new space opera series with The Fortress in Orion. Where were you as a writer ten years ago and where do you see your career headed now?

In both cases -- as well as the Weird Western tetralogy that split them -- (former Pyr editorial director) Lou Anders suggested I write these series. In the case of the Starship series, I'd never done any military science fiction—and indeed, this was not very typical of that sub-genre, since it was and is my firm belief that a good commanded avoids conflict whenever possible. The current Dead Enders trilogy is very like Mission: Impossible (the old TV series, not the Tom Cruise movies) where a team of experts, each with a special talent, is given a complex and dangerous situation to solve.

Looking back at your own work over the last ten years, what themes do you see emerging? How much of that is a conscious decision going into writing, and how much do you find looking back?

You have to understand: I've been a full-time and reasonably successful science fiction writer for about 40 years, and was winning awards for it as far back as 1977, so I'd have to say that 75 novels and close to 300 stories into my career, I may be revisiting and honing certain themes, doing variations on them, but brand-new themes are not emerging (though brand-new approaches still are). Like every writer, every time I get an interesting notion it goes into my idea file, where some 200+ stories and books are still waiting for me to find the time to write them.


How has science fiction as a genre changed over 10 years? What do you see on the horizons for SF?

In the mid-1950s there were 56 professional science fiction magazines, and less than 100 science fiction books were published annually. These days we have 3 digest magazines and we publish about 1,500 books a year. So the major change is obvious: we have morphed from a short story field which boasted the occasional novel to a novel field that has a much more limited market for short stories.

That's artistically. Professionally, more and more writers—new and established alike—and are finding workable and meaningful ways to self-publish and make a living at it, which was never possible as recently as ten years ago.

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Thank you to Mike Resnick for that insight!

Last week we announced a giveaway with our Women of Writing round up, and a winner has officially been chosen. Congrats to Cynthia Carter on wining a copy of Edge of Dark!  This Friday we'll have another giveaway to continue our 10th anniversary celebration.