It’s time to wake up. LOVE MINUS EIGHTY is available now.

Love-Minus-EightyToday is the worldwide release of LOVE MINUS EIGHTY (US | UK | AUS) by Hugo Award-winning author Will McIntosh. Will is a truly original voice in SF and with this novel he’s given us a terrifying, uplifting, daring, and compulsively readable vision of where our path is leading.

Three hundred years in the future, technology has extended the lives of the rich and attractive decades. The wealthy can arrange to be reanimated multiple times, while in cryogenic dating farms, dead women await lonely suitors to resurrect them and take them home. In this big-hearted novel, the lovelorn navigate a world in which technology has found the outer limits of decency and love.

LOVE MINUS EIGHTY explores a time where we are completely entangled in social media, where life is a performance and privacy has lost all meaning, where our romances and relationships are choreographed in secret, and freedom is found in the ever-shrinking spaces off the grid. A time we can all relate to.

Read a sample, look at the amazing trailer and here is just some of the glowing praise the book has received so far:

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Cover Reveal: HOW GREEN THIS LAND, HOW BLUE THIS SEA

Get ready to put those survival skills to the test and return to the world of the bestselling Newsflesh Trilogy. HOW GREEN THIS LAND, HOW BLUE THIS SEA is an all new digital novella by Mira Grant, but this time we’re headed to the outback. And yes, yes that is a zombie kangaroo (thus setting a new definition for the word awesome). Check out the cover and synopsis below, and pre-order your copy today from your preferred retailer.

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Synopsis: Post-Rising Australia can be a dangerous place, especially if you’re a member of the government-sponsored Australia Conservation Corps, a group of people dedicated to preserving their continent’s natural wealth until a cure can be found. Between the zombie kangaroos at the fences and the zombie elephant seals turning the penguin rookery at Prince Phillip Island into a slaughterhouse, the work of an animal conservationist is truly never done–and is often done at the end of a sniper rifle.

 

“Weapons, Weapons, Weapons!” Elizabeth Moon on Research for Epic Fantasy

Limits of Power – released today

Elizabeth Moon publishes LIMITS OF POWER (UK | ANZ), the penultimate volume in her epic fantasy series Paladin’s Legacy, today. As an author who’s returned to the classic fantasy world she first created in the Paksenarrion series again and again, we asked her how she keeps the details about this world realistic, and consistent . . .

My first visit to New World Arbalest wasn’t a quest for crossbow knowledge, but a chance to see a period (real, not modern make) rapier . . . to hold and flourish a sword that had been used, several hundred years ago, either to mark someone’s rank or kill someone’s foe.  I had met “Master Iolo” (David Watson) and his wife Kathleen – both fencing instructors – at a convention.  But in that first visit I saw the shop at the back of the house, full of wood, sawdust, shavings, antlers, arrays of tools, and crossbows in every stage of construction.  I knew very little about crossbows then, except that I wanted to learn more.

Writers are often research junkies.  We need to find out about all sorts of things in order to write stories that go beyond our own personal experience. Whether it’s a thriller or a mystery or a contemporary slice of life story – or epic fantasy – there’s always something we need to learn.  So we haunt libraries, have overstuffed bookshelves in our own homes (or, now, overstuffed e-readers, or both), spend hours hunting down facts (we hope) on the internet.  When we meet someone with first-hand knowledge of something we know we’ll need for later books, that poor soul hasn’t a chance.  A writer in full research mode is like a hungry vampire: we will get what we want . . . (more…)

Iain Banks, 1954-2013

Iain M. BanksWe are incredibly sad to report that our beloved author, Iain Banks, died on Sunday, 9th June, following his cancer diagnosis in March. It has been Orbit’s great privilege to publish all of Iain’s SF works. Over the course of 25 years since the publication of CONSIDER PHLEBAS, we have been dazzled, entertained, heart-broken, inspired, exhilarated and – on a number of occasions – horrified, by the stories, characters (human and otherwise) and words that he has shared with us. As a person, and a writer, Iain’s generosity was boundless; his imagination spectacular; his intelligence piercing; and his spirit irresistible. The science fiction genre has lost one of its greatest and most original voices and we have lost one of our heroes. We will miss Iain enormously, and we extend our deepest sympathies to his family and friends.

The Orbit Team

June Events

In June, we have bookstore events for two great new books! If you’re in the area, be sure to stop by.

Abraham_TyrantsLaw_TP Elliot-Cold Steel-TP
(US | UK | ANZ)                                      (US | UK | ANZ)

Saturday, June 8
Daniel Abraham @ Alamosa Books, Albuquerque, NM, 3 PM

Thursday, June 27
Kate Elliott (with Katherine Kerr) @ Borderlands, San Francisco, CA, 7 PM

Saturday, June 29
Kate Elliott (with Andy Duncan) @ Mysterious Galaxy, San Diego, CA, 2 PM

Check back next month for more of Kate Elliott’s events for COLD STEEL!

Advice for the Travel-savvy Monster: NYC Edition

The Shambling Guide to New York CityIn writing THE SHAMBLING GUIDE TO NEW YORK CITY (US | UK | AUS), a book about a travel book for monsters, there was, sadly, a lot I had to leave out. Originally I wanted to write a full travel guide to go with the novel, but ambition beat me down with a club. Or is that hubris? Anyway, there was a painful encounter with a metaphorical club, and I had to settle for writing little excerpts from the book to put at the end of each chapter.

But there is so much more to think about for the travel-savvy monster (“coterie” please, let’s not be rude.) So I thought I would take this opportunity to provide a bit more advice on traveling in New York City. (Please note that we may not be able to cover all coterie here, and if you find yourself left out, please send an email to our webmaster to add to the errata on the website.)

Vampires: You already know the most important things, your own coffin, your hometown soil (if you’re from Eastern Europe), and plenty of sunscreen. The City that Never Sleeps is very friendly to vampires, considering very little shuts down by the time you wake up, and often it’s so bright that you can get a fleeting feeling of daylight. But you must make sure your thrall has everything he or she needs, especially credit cards, cash, and possibly weapons. They will need to hire a car that specializes in coffin-transport (unless you like to live on the edge and arrive at night and hope you find a hotel room – your chances are good, but there’s always a risk!) Also remember hell notes and blood tokens, they’re the best way to barter with the Red Cross.

Zombies: You know what they say; travel to Arizona, carry a humidifier, travel to NYC, carry a dehumidifier! Well, if they don’t say that, they should. The problem, of course, with forgetting your dehumidifier is you get rather rotten in the time you forgot you brought yours. New York summers are murder on zombie skin. They are drier in the winter, so bring lotion. You’ll want to carry our convenient map to the coterie-friendly morgues to do some shopping, but sometimes hitting the restaurants is actually cheaper than the morgues! You will want hats for camouflage  but you already have the bonus of the fact that no one meets your eye in the city, so no one will look at your directly to notice your dead gaze (although we’re sure your eyes are lovely.)

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“I Don’t Mind Being Punched in the Face” – by Matthew Stover

Heroes Die, book 1 in the the Acts of Cain gritty heroic fantasy series Acts of Caine, by Matthew Stover, in a piece on martial arts called "I don't mind being punched in the face"The Good Folk at Orbit invited me to write another post for the site here, and my editor suggested I might touch on my experience as a student – and occasional instructor – of martial arts, and how that study has influenced my work, especially in the Acts of Caine.

People who enjoy my work often speak of how much they like the way my books depict personal combat – one prominent blogger memorably commented that “All of Stover’s heroic fantasies offer fight scenes of such crippling power that they risk hospitalizing incautious readers” – and many fans and reviewers attribute this to my (presumed) martial arts expertise. Which is true to a degree, though somewhat misleading. It does help – but perhaps not in the way you might expect.

For example, the arrow of causation points mostly in the other direction. I don’t do fight scenes because I love martial arts, I do martial arts because I love fight scenes.

And let’s be clear: what makes a fight scene good has very little to do with choreography. A good fight scene does everything a good scene of any type does: engages imagination, reveals character, advances plot and illuminates theme. There are, in my novels, a lot of fight scenes (‘cuz like I said, I love ‘em) and many of them do not involve characters most readers would recognize as highly-trained martial artists. Caine is one, yes, as are Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Mace Windu . . . but most of the rest involve characters with varying degrees of experience and natural aptitude trying like hell to get out of dire situations without getting killed.

Look:

I like hitting people. I also like kicking people, kneeing them, doing (potentially) crippling things to their joints as well as occasionally throwing them across a room, not to mention stabbing them with (rubber) knives and slashing them with (rattan stick) swords. This is not, it should be noted, actual combat. It’s recreation. All in good fun, and when it’s done properly, no serious injuries occur.

Also look:

I often write about people who like these things I like, except many of these people are missing an essential circuit-breaker in their brains. These are people who are bored by the merely recreational. Who only take it seriously if someone’s life is on the line. Who have made violence not only their profession, but their lifestyle. Some are mercenaries, some are jihadists, some are psychopaths. At least one is a performance artist. None of these categories are, you will note, mutually exclusive. (more…)

ABADDON’S GATE: a literary blockbuster of epic proportions

abaddons-mockup “Abaddon’s Gate is literary space opera at its absolute best…” io9 

Things started simply enough: a ship is found mysteriously abandoned by its crew, but we’ve all watched and read enough space adventures to know that nothing is ever quite so simple. With each twist and page-turning sequence, the Expanse series has grown to become an absolute gem of the subgenre and today, the latest novel ABADDON’S GATE (US | UK | AUS), begins hitting bookshelves. Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, the writing team behind James S.A. Corey,  knocked it out of the park once again as you’ll see in the terrific reviews the novel has already gotten.

Check out the James S.A. Corey Facebook page to read the first few chapters and whet your appetite until you get a hold of your own copy. If you haven’t taken the leap yet, here’s an excerpt from LEVIATHAN WAKES ( US | UK | AUS).

As an extra treat, we made a set of wallpapers from the stunning cover illustration by Daniel Dociu. Enjoy!

 1024 x 768 | 1280 x 800 | 1440 x 900 | 1680 x 1050 | 1920 x 1200 | iPhone | iPad | Facebook

Praise for ABADDON’S GATE

“High adventure equaling the best space opera has to offer, cutting-edge technology, and a group of unforgettable characters bring the third installment of Corey’s epic space drama (after Caliban’s War and Leviathan Wakes) to an action-filled close while leaving room for more stories to unfold. Perhaps one of the best tales the genre has yet to produce…” Library Journal (Starred Review)

“Corey (a shared pseudonym for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) delivers a politically complex and pulse-pounding page-turner to continue the Expanse space opera series.” – Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“Courageous and audacious, with short chapters, smart characters, and a snappy narrative, it’s leaps and bounds bigger and better than the vast majority of space opera. And the fun is undoubtedly far from done.” – The Speculative Scotsman

On co-authoring a novel set in the world of ENDER’S GAME . . .

EARTH UNAWARE, book one of the First Formic War, by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston, set 100 years before Ender's Game, which will be released as a major motion picture in October 2013 starring Harrison FordToday sees the release of EARTH UNAWARE (UK|ANZ) and EARTH AFIRE (UK|ANZ), books 1 and 2 of The First Formic War, set 100 years before ENDER’S GAME.

Orson Scott Card co-authored these novels with Aaron Johnston – a bestselling author and associate producer on the upcoming Ender’s Game movie. To celebrate the release, we asked Aaron what it’s like to write within such a well-known and much loved world . . .

When Orson Scott Card asked me to coauthor the prequel novels to his science-fiction classic Ender’s Game, my first two thoughts were: (1) Wow, what an incredible honor, and (2) You better not screw this up, Johnston, or fans will hunt you down and toilet paper your house.

We fans can be a prickly lot. Especially when it comes to stories that hold special significance to us, as Ender’s Game does to millions of readers. I’ve read Ender’s Game more times than any other work of fiction, and whenever anyone asks me for a book recommendation, the first words out of my mouth are always, “Have you read Ender’s Game?”

For me, Ender’s Game was the first book I ever read wherein the characters didn’t feel like characters at all but rather like friends and kindred spirits. Bean, Dink, Shen, Valentine, Ender. They were all so believable and honest and distinct that when I stepped into their world, my own world melted away.

Earth Afire, book two of the First Formic War, by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston, set 100 years before Ender's Game, which will be released as a major motion picture in October 2013 starring Harrison FordI don’t presume to suggest that our books will have the same effect on readers as Ender’s Game does. Only Ender’s Game can produce the experience it provides. But I do hope that our novels will feel like they belong in the Ender universe. That was my goal from the beginning. “If we do this,” I told Scott, “I want it to feel like an Orson Scott Card novel.” And by that I mean: when fans read the book, I didn’t want them to distinguish between the parts I had written from the parts Scott had written. I wanted it to feel seamless.

That’s a lofty goal, I know. Only OSC can write like OSC, after all. But I felt as if we owed it to fans to provide a new and exciting adventure story that also felt like a member of the Ender universe.

In fact, it was so important to me that the books sounded and felt like other OSC novels that before I started writing each day, I would usually pick up an OSC book and read a chapter or two just to get my mind in a place that spoke in the voice and rhythm of Orson Scott Card. Scott has a gift for writing in third-person, limited point-of-view that allows for deep characterization without abandoning the pace. I’m not conceited enough to suggest that I do it as well as he does, but I certainly tried. The biggest compliment I have received thus far is when one fan called the series “classic Orson Scott Card.”

But of course this is a collaboration. And since Orson Scott Card rarely collaborates with other authors, fans naturally have a lot of questions. What follows are my answers to the questions I most often hear. (more…)

How to Build a Fantasy World: The Greatest Fantasy Cities

There’s something about cities in science fiction and fantasy. I mean I love the countryside myself, born a country girl, but anyone can write it – there’s only so much you can do without it coming across as odd or unbelievable (unless you’re a genius, obviously).

But where people, or aliens, get involved, anything can and does happen. In real life, and in fantasy. So, I love fantasy cities, towns, places that people have made, because they reflect the people who live there and, crucially, how they think.

So, a few favourites . . .

The Fellowship of The Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien, in a piece on fantasy worldbuilding by Francis Knight, author of Fade to Black Tolkien has his flaws but being unable to build believable yet fantastical cities is not one of them. I’d would love, I mean give an arm or something, to walk the ways of Rivendell, to see the Mallorn in Lothlorien, behold the golden hall of Meduseld in Edoras, wind the twisting streets of Minas Tirith. They are clearly fantasy posing as historical (okay, except the elves) but they feel so . . . real. Like they really do exist somewhere, I just haven’t found them yet.

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch, in a piece on fantasy worldbuilding by Francis Knight, author of Fade to BlackOther cities come near to that status in my mind (hey, you never forget your first love). Camorr, from Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora – with its waterways, its dark and grubby underbelly, its Renaissance feel. A city that works, even though I know its fictional.

London Below, of Gaiman’s Neverwhere, a London that feels almost, just not quite, the real one. As though if I scratched the surface on say Bakers Street, I’d find the Marquis, and all the rest, just waiting for me.Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, in a piece on fantasy worldbuilding by Francis Knight, author of Fade to Black

Discworld’s Ankh-Morpork, which is so real to me I can smell the river when I open the pages of the book. Or maybe it just stinks that much! The little nooks and crannies that are a hallmark of an old, old city, the weird ways that seem normal to inhabitants but make outsiders wonder what drugs they must be on.

The thing that, I think, connects all these cities is their internal consistency. They work, such as they do, because thought has gone into working out how they work and why, factoring in how odd people tend to be. And each little factor just adds to the realness of the city.  Of course Ankh-Morpork has a thieves guild. Because it’s a city of moneymakers, and that’s a perfect example of taking what is there and squeezing it till gold coins fall out. The Elder Glass of Camorr shows us a city where things are not always as they seem, that even the city itself has two faces.

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien, in a piece on fantasy worldbuilding by Francis Knight, author of Fade to Black Minas Tirith and Edoras reflect the men and women who live there – on constant guard, where skill at arms isn’t just posturing, it’s necessary, and so are the defences and the oaths and honour the people who live there take so very seriously, and for good reason – oaths and honour are perhaps all that have kept them alive all this time against what lies to the East. Hobbiton, by contrast, reflects the hobbits – laid back, little thought to anything much except is it pleasing, to eye or stomach?

Fade to Black, book one of the Rojan Dizon fantasy book series by Francis Knight - in a post talking abotu the worldbuilding of Tolkien, Scott Lynch and Terry PratchettSo when I started ‘building’ Mahala for Fade to Black, I tried to make sure the city informed the people, and the other way around. My main character Rojan Dizon is who he is – a sardonic, womanising bounty hunter – at least in part, because of where he lives. I doubt he’d be such a cynic if he lived in Hobbiton. The very fact of the way the city is run, the geography of it, the politics of it, and how that affects him, has helped turn him into who he is. Anywhere else, Rojan’s brother Perak might have just been some amateur daydreamer who likes playing with things (and would have probably long ago blown himself up!), but due to Mahala’s reliance on alchemy, he’s given everything he needs and is told to go and invent things. Which he duly does, and then changes the city forever when he invents the gun.

That’s what makes a fictional city work or fail for me – it works, in context, with the people who inhabit it, they showcase each other. They just fit.

 

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Francis Knight’s debut novel FADE TO BLACK (UK | US | ANZ), book one of the Rojan Dizon novels, is out now. Book two, BEFORE THE FALL (UK | US | ANZ), releases on 18th June this year. The third and final novel, LAST TO RISE, releases in November 2013.

Fade to Black, book one of the Rojan Dizon fantasy book series by Francis Knight - in a post talking abotu the worldbuilding of Tolkien, Scott Lynch and Terry PratchettBefore the Fall, book two of the Rojan Dizon fantasy book series, following Fade to Black, by Francis Knight - in a post talking about the worldbuilding of Tolkien, Scott Lynch and Terry PratchettLast to Rise, the third and Final Rojan Dizon fantasy novel by Francis Knight, following FADE TO BLACK and BEFORE THE FALL