Live Life to the Fullest

The Buffalo News's Jane Kwiatkowski profiles the founder of Pyr's parent company, Prometheus Books, in "Paul Kurtz's philosophy? Live life to the fullest." If you're curious...

Starlog on Killswitch: Tight and Crackling!

Starlog on Killswitch:

"Shepherd continues to improve with each installment. Readers who have been wanting a far more intense story will find themselves amply rewarded as Shepherd puts his remarkable heroine through her paces. As with the previous novels, there are shifts between a great many characters also vying for attention, but the writing here is tight and crackling and turns the entire trilogy into an excellent adventure, with the spotlight clearly on Cassandra."

Brasyl works for Brazilians!

Jacques Barcia has posted a review of Brasylat Human 2.0. "McDonald was able to capture, with amazing precision, th Brazilian spirit. And he did this without clichés, without hullabaloos, but with critical observations regarding the importance Brazilian people gives to beauty, soccer and TV. Besides, geographically everything is right and linguistically, it is better than most foreigners trying the language of Camões."

The conclusion: Despite a great deal of Portuguese mispellngs, Brasyl is "A hell of an accomplishment for a gringo, definitely Brasyl is a book Brazilians must read."

The 2008 Pyr Sampler eBook

We've just made a 326-page sample book we printed to give out at conventions available as a free PDF-format ebook. It contains sizable excerpts from 7 of our 2008 titles and is online for download here from both the catalog and forthcoming book pages. If you are viewing this on the pyrsf.com (as opposed to the pyrsf.blogspot.com page), click "catalog" and "forthcoming" in the menu bar on your left, or you'll get a window in a window, and who knows where it will end.

Excerpts are from Joe Abercrombie's Before They Are Hanged, Kay Kenyon's A World Too Near, Theodore Judson's The Martian General's Daughter, Robert Silverberg's Son of Man, David Louis Edelman's MultiReal, and Mike Resnick's Stalking the Unicorn and Stalking the Dragon.

Happy Reading!

Pyr Honored with Four Major Award Nominations

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 24, 2008

CONTACT: Jill Maxick

800-853-7545, jmaxick@prometheusbooks.com

Pyr Honored with Four Major Award Nominations

Pyr Gets Two Hugo® Nominations plus Two Authors up for

John W. Campbell Best New Writer Award!

Amherst, NY—Pyr, the highly acclaimed science fiction and fantasy imprint of Prometheus Books, is proud to announce that its Editorial Director, Lou Anders, and three of its authors have been nominated for highly esteemed awards in science fiction:

• Lou Anders for Best Professional Editor, Long Form Hugo® Award
• Ian McDonald’s Brasyl for Best Novel Hugo® Award
• Joe Abercrombie (The Blade Itself) for John W. Campbell Best New Writer Award
• David Louis Edelman (Infoquake) for John W. Campbell Best New Writer Award

The Hugo® Award is the leading award for excellence in the field of science fiction and fantasy. For the second year in a row, Pyr Editorial Director Lou Anders has been nominated for the Hugo® for Best Professional Editor, Long Form in recognition of his ability to produce a high-quality and intelligent line of science fiction and fantasy titles. Anders says, “I am personally very honored to be nominated for a second year in a row… but when one honors an editor, what they are really doing is sending along an endorsement of that editor's tastes, so I am over the moon to see a book from Pyr in the ‘Best Novel’ category and two Pyr authors on the Campbell list."

USA Today called Ian McDonald’s Brasyl—up for the Hugo® for Best Novel—“the most rewarding science fiction in recent memory.” McDonald, hailed by Asimov’s Science Fiction as “one of the most interesting and accomplished science fiction writers of this latter-day era, indeed maybe the most interesting and accomplished,” comments on this nomination: “As they say, the honor is simply being nominated. I'm thrilled to have been nominated for Brasyl (even if, as umpteen Brazilians have told, my spelling is terrible!) —but what's especially exciting is that it's a double whammy: for me, and for Lou Anders as editor (and a real old school hands-on editor) as creative director of Pyr. This, I hope, is the first of many for the ballsiest imprint in SF.”

The John W. Campbell Best New Writer Award is given to the best new writer whose first work of science fiction or fantasy appearing in a professional publication was published in the previous two years. Nominee Joe Abercrombie’s best-selling fantasy debut The Blade Itself: The First Law: Book One has earned him much praise and the designation by Locus as “a rough-and-tumble, bold new voice in the heroic fantasy ranks.” With the same dark wit that colors his novels, Abercrombie says, “I’m delighted to have been nominated, especially at a time when there are so many great new authors coming out. My Uruk Hai hit squad are already on their way to Wisconsin to ‘dramatically reduce’ the chance of a Scott Lynch victory. They may well stop by David Anthony Durham’s house on the way back …”

David Louis Edelman is also up for the John W. Campbell Award: “I'm beyond thrilled to be nominated for the Campbell Award. It's an honor to even be mentioned in the same sentence as the other esteemed nominees. I feel especially honored considering I only had one eligible published work, Infoquake, during the 2006-2007 time period.” SFF World called Infoquake “A stunning debut novel by a lucid, precise, and talented new voice…This may be THE science fiction book of the year.”

Prometheus Books and Pyr congratulate Lou Anders, Ian McDonald, Joe Abercrombie and David Louis Edelman for their outstanding work. We are proud to be associated with such talent and quality.

Brasyl Wins the BSFA award

The British Science Fiction Association Awards were given out at this weekend's Eastercon in London. I'm very happy to hear that Ian McDonald's Brasylwas the winner in the novel category. Congratulations to Ian and to his editor at Gollancz, that man of impeccable tastes, the wonderful Simon Spanton!

(Ian also took the 2005 BSFA for River of Gods,and the 2006 short fiction award for "The Djinn's Wife," set in the world of River. Look for a collection of these future-India short stories, Cyberabad Days, in early '09.)

3 Years Old - Happy Birthday Pyr

I just realized Pyr is three years old this month. Let's recap, shall we:

• 2008 Hugo Award nominee - Best Novel: Ian McDonald, Brasyl
• 2008 Hugo Award nominee - Best Professional Editor, Long Form: Lou Anders
• 2008 John W. Campbell Best New Science Fiction Writer Award nominee: Joe Abercombie, David Louis Edelman
• 2008 Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Memorial Award nominee: Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself
• 2008 Silver Spectrum Award - Book Cover: Stephan Martiniere’s illustration for Kay Kenyon’s forthcoming City Without End
• 2008 Nebula Award nominee: Mary Turzillo’s “Pride” (published in Fast Forward 1)
• 2007 American Library Association’s Reading List Awards: Ian McDonald’s Brasyl, Kay Kenyon’s Bright of the Sky
• 2007 Philip K. Dick Award nominee: Adam Roberts, Gradisil
• 2007 Quill Award nominee: Ian McDonald, Brasyl
• 2007 Hugo Award nominee - Best Professional Editor, Long Form: Lou Anders
• 2007 Chesley Award winner - Best Cover Illustration: Stephan Martiniere's cover for Ian McDonald's River of Gods
  
• 2007 Chesley Award nominee - Best Art Director: Lou Anders
• 2006 World Fantasy Award nominee - Special Award, Professional: Lou Anders
• 2006 John W. Campbell Award for Best Novel nominee: David Louis Edelman, Infoquake
• 2006 Independent Publisher Book Award winner: John Meaney, Paradox
• 2005 Philip K Dick Award nominee: Justina Robson, Silver Screen
• 2006 John W Campbell Best New Science Fiction Writer nominee: Chris Roberson
• 2005 John W Campbell Best New Science Fiction Writer nominee: Chris Roberson

Not too shabby for three years, no?

2008 Hugo Awards Nominations List

The 66th World Science Fiction Convention has made public the 2008 Hugo Nomination List. And I am delighted to report that, counting the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Writer, Pyr has no less than four people on the ballot!

In the Best Novel category - Ian McDonald's Brasyl(published by Gollancz in the UK)

In the category of Best Professional Editor, Long Form - Yours Truly

And up for the John W. Campbell, both Joe Abercrombie (who I share with Gollancz) and David Louis Edelman.

I also have to extend my congratulations to three artists who have graced Pyr covers, Bob Eggleton, Stephan Martiniere, and John Picacio. And to our author Mike Resnick, for his Hugo nomination in the short story category for "Distant Replay" (published in Asimov's April/Nay 2007 issue).

A huge congratulations to all the nominees across the board!

Killswitch: Thoughtful and Action Packed!

Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review on Joel Shepherd's final Cassandra Kresnov book, Killswitch:

“This year it already feels like I’ve read more sci-fi than I did in the whole of last year and this is mostly down to my having had the good fortune of getting stuck into Joel Shepherd’s ‘Cassandra Kresnov’ books. The bottom line is that I think they’re brilliant and incredibly easy to get sucked into, the most fun I’ve had with sci-fi in a long time…Placing all three books together shows how well the author has done at plotting a story that goes on for longer than one book. There’s a real sense of progression throughout the trilogy and, for the most part, everything is wrapped up neatly in the closing chapters. There’s scope for more adventures here and I’d certainly pick up more ‘Kresnov’ books if they were ever written…an intelligent and engaging read that will appeal to anyone who likes their sci-fi thoughtful and action packed at the same time. Highly recommended by me! Nine out of Ten.”

Kay Kenyon in the Wenatchee World

I love Kay Kenyon. In the past two days, I've been talking with a journalist at a major newspaper about "big idea" science fiction and with a major chain buyer about women who write science fiction (as opposed to fantasy), and I've been involved in a discussion of cover art with both said buyer and SFSignal, so how could Kay Kenyon's name not come up in all of this? Beautifully written, mind-expanding sensawunder with cover illustrations to match.

Kay is interviewed by The Wenatchee World this week. And - lo and behold! - she's talking about all three of these topics too! Speaking about the protagonist of A World Too Near,she says, "hes, he's almost an antihero, in a way, because he has some bad-boy qualities, and he's thumbing his nose to some extent at the status quo. Although I meant to suggest that he's becoming seduced by the grace and the monumental scope of the Entire — and he's in this dilemma of loving this new world, but realizing that he was too co-opted by it last time around. The last time he was there, he was a prince of the Demon City, if you will, and he has this guilt about that. Yet he can't help himself that he loves it still. And that need to have redemption from past actions, and the love of the Entire — I think they fight with each other and make for an interesting internal story."