Cover Launch: THE HYDROGEN SONATA by Iain M. Banks

This October will bear witness to one of the biggest SF events of the year – the release of Iain M. Banks’s brilliant new Culture novel, THE HYDROGEN SONATA.

Here are the UK and US covers (click to enlarge), which subtly reflect both the new book’s title and the story within:

                                   

And here’s more on that story:

The Scavenger species are circling. It is, truly, the End Days for the Gzilt civilization.

An ancient people, organized on military principles and yet almost perversely peaceful, the Gzilt helped set up the Culture ten thousand years earlier and were very nearly one of its founding societies, deciding not to join only at the last moment. Now they’ve made the collective decision to follow the well-trodden path of millions of other civilizations; they are going to Sublime, elevating themselves to a new and almost infinitely more rich and complex existence.

Amid preparations though, the Regimental High Command is destroyed. Lieutenant Commander (reserve) Vyr Cossont appears to have been involved, and she is now wanted — dead, not alive. Aided only by an ancient, reconditioned android and a suspicious Culture avatar, Cossont must complete her last mission given to her by the High Command. She must find the oldest person in the Culture, a man over nine thousand years old, who might have some idea what really happened all that time ago. It seems that the final days of the Gzilt civilization are likely to prove its most perilous.

Orbit will be publishing THE HYDROGEN SONATA worldwide in print, ebook and audiobook editions this October.

James S. A. Corey’s CALIBAN’S WAR is out!

Please stand by for a tightbeam from Orbit Books:

For anyone who enjoyed last year’s Hugo-nominated barnburner LEVIATHAN WAKES  (US | UK | AUS) the next book in the Expanse series is a must-read.

Earth and Mars are rattling sabers following a grisly attack on the asteroid colony Ganymede, and heroes familiar and new are drawn into the fray. This reader would happily follow Captain James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante to the ends of the solar system, and may yet. But some new faces have joined the cast, including Bobbie Draper, gunnery sergeant in the Martian Marines (and her beyond-deadly combat suit), and Chrisjen Aravasala, an Earth politician as grandmotherly as she is shrewd, sharp-tongued, and determined to keep UN forces and Mars from all-out war.

CALIBAN’S WAR (US | UK | AUS) keeps up the faster-than-light pace set by LEVIATHAN WAKES, and raises the stakes, putting the fate of the entire solar system (and one missing little girl) in the balance. Says Kirkus Reviews: “Topnotch space opera … The characters, many familiar from before, grow as the story expands; tension mounts, action explodes and pages turn relentlessly.”

More Stories:

God Save the Queen, Tea & Duran Duran

God Save the Queen (US | UK | AUS) is about vampires, goblins, werewolves, humans and in-betweens. It’s about politics, power and loyalty, with a healthy dose of sex and blood tossed in for good measure. It’s set in a world where the Victorian Era never ended, and the Black Death ironically created an immortal aristocracy.

It also never would have been written without tea and Duran Duran.

When I was but a babe in the wilds of rural Nova Scotia, the first hot drink I remember having was not hot chocolate, but tea. Tea, it was understood, fixed everything, complimented all food groups, and had magical properties. We brewed it by the bag if we had to, but the norm was to toss a handful of leaves into a pot, add hot water and spend the rest of the day picking the bloody things out of your teeth. My mother read tea leaves. In fact, she was quite well known for it. She said the leaves in the bottom of my cup told her I was going to be a writer (she also told me they said I’d meet John Taylor, but more on him later). People came from all over to have her read their leaves. Some of them came back every freaking week, eager to hear what she saw in the bottom of their cup.

I wondered if perhaps she should buy stock in Red Rose.

My mum passed away a year and a half ago. She never did buy stock in Red Rose tea, but she passed on her knowledge of the leaves, and when I have a cuppa, I almost always think of her. I also think of her whenever I see Victorian clutter, pink Christmas tree ornaments, big hats and Grisly Adams (don’t ask). Anyway, tea remains an important part of my life and my career. I feel I must also acknowledge Mum’s love of the supernatural as well, because this apple certainly didn’t fall far when it comes to things that lurk in the shadows. My mother also made up bedtime stories for me, and sometimes we’d plot them together.

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Leaving the “beaten path” of SF: the ideas behind Tricia Sullivan’s novels

Recently I was one of the Guests of Honour at Eastercon alongside George R. R. Martin, Cory Doctorow, and Paul Cornell.  During the course of the weekend a number of people came up to me and said, ‘I’ve never heard of you before,’ or ‘I’m not familiar with your work,’ and I had to sadly admit that most of my novels are out of print, hard to find. 

Well, I’m delighted to announce that this situation has changed!  Orbit UK have just released Maul, Double Vision, Sound Mind and Lightborn as e-books.  I’d like to offer a few informal thoughts about the books to celebrate their e-release.

In science fiction it’s conventional to set the action in the future, but I set all of these books apart from Maul in the near past.  (Maul is set in the crack between things, neither here nor there.)  I chose the past deliberately because I wanted to make it clear that the books aren’t about the future, but about a specifically skewed version of the more-or-less present.  I use imaginary technology as a means of illuminating or extending some aspect of human nature—which is itself seen as a work in progress.

The first two of these novels were written in the spirit of a particle-collider; I shot disparate things into a tube, forcing them to smash together and reveal their internal workings. In Maul, I test-crashed the classic ‘world without men’ narrative with a more contemporary story centring on armed teenaged girls shopping a New Jersey mall. In Double Vision I forced an extra-planetary war into a head-on collision with contemporary call-centre marketing in 1984—the age of Zork. The Big Brother of Double Vision is actually a big sister who is confronted by her own power to watch TV and make it real.

Sound Mind is the sequel to Double Vision, but I started writing it first, as a personal response to what I’d seen on TV a few months prior, on September 11th 2001.  I was interested in the symbolism of the attacks on the twin towers, both in their collapse and the national response to that collapse, and also in the thought processes that had led to the event. I started exploring the idea of symbols and ideas acquiring a life and mind independent of their creators, choosing as the centre of the apocalyptic action the smallest and most intimate laboratory I could think of: my alma mater, BardCollege. Music is at the centre of the book. (more…)

Hawthorn Moon Sneak Peek Event with Gail Z. Martin

Gail Z. Martin, author of The Fallen Kings Cycle series (THE SWORN and THE DREAD), unveils her sneak peek of ICE FORGED  Book One in The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga, coming from Orbit Books in 2013.

Gail’s giving everyone a first look at the cover art for ICE FORGED, as well as book excerpts, author Q&As and more as part of her Hawthorn Moon Online Sneak Peek Event.  She’s got exclusive goodies spread out across more than a dozen partner sites, and you can find out about it all on Gail’s site, www.AscendantKingdoms.com.

Here is the cover. Gail also answers some questions about ICE FORGED and about her writing life.

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Q:  Tell us a little about  how you came to write ICE FORGED.

A: I’d been playing with the idea of what if magic broke (as it nearly did in the Chronicles books), and what if we had a post-apocalyptic medieval world, and what if a world sent its convicts to the northern rim (instead of, in our world, Georgia or Australia)….and I had an idea of where I wanted to go.

I like stories that test the mettle of a character and reveal what he/she is made of.  In Ice Forged, the main characters have lost everything when they were disgraced and sentenced to a harsh prison colony.  When the magic dies and the Continent is destroyed in the war and the resulting apocalypse, the life they’ve made for themselves as colonists is jeopardized.  The discovery that Blaine is the only one who can restore the magic set him and his friends on a dangerous journey that will pit them against powerful immortal enemies.  The fate of their world rests in the hands of a group of convicts.  Succeed, and they win not only their freedom, but the ability to shape the future of the world.  Fail, and face the wrath of the gods knowing you have condemned your world to darkness.

Q:  What is your Hawthorn Moon Sneak Peek Event?

A:  I started doing the Hawthorn Moon Sneak Peek Event back in 2008, and it’s become something my readers have come to expect.  The solstice (aka the Hawthorn Moon) was an important event in my first book, The Summoner, and the name and timing just stuck.  It’s my online unveiling of the cover art for the new book, along with excerpts, interviews, all-new guest blog posts and lots of fun stuff spread out over a dozen or so sites.  To find out all the goodies and all the partner sites, please visit www.AscendantKingdoms.com.

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Trailer for EXISTENCE by David Brin

Released today is EXISTENCE (UK | ANZ) – the phenomenal new science fiction novel from the multi-award winning David Brin. A book that io9 said will “make you think about the future in a whole new way.”

Truly a tour-de-force of storytelling, it’s his first novel to be released in ten years, and in the words of the Guardian: ‘It’s been well worth the wait’.

To mark this fantastic event we have released a first edition of the book with a limited-edition 3D cover. Watch the trailer below to see what lies ahead . . .

 

Behind the Cover Video: THE SPIRIT WAR by Rachel Aaron

Here in the Art Department, we work over a year in advance on our book covers, so it’s a thrill to finally be able to go back and share these process posts with you. Today we have a special treat, because last year when the fabulous illustrator Sam Weber was working on the Eli Monpress series for us, he invited us into his studio in Brooklyn to take a peek at THE SPIRIT WAR in progress.
I have really enjoyed working with Sam on this series because not only does he paint such gorgeous covers for us, he’s also a gigantic geek and loves to read the books as well. It really makes a difference in a cover when your artist really gets into the story and characters…especially in the case of Eli, master thief and scoundrel extraordinaire.

In the video below, Sam walks us through his process from thumbnails to final art. Even seeing him work up close, I still can’t believe he gets the amazing textures and luminosity he creates out of the watercolors. Let me tell you, if you are not an artist or have never tried painting in any medium, never mind watercolors, you have no idea how unforgiving a medium it can be.

I know the sketches and stages he shows go by pretty quickly in the video, so I’ll post a bunch of the cover stages so you can see what he’s describing up close. Enjoy! And look forward to part two, when we move past the process of physically creating the cover, and reveal how big of a geek Mr. Weber really is.

After the jump, see the process images up close and personal…
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BITTER SEEDS: Blood magic, sociopaths and “good people doing bad things”

The World War II alternate history fantasy novel Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregellis, where the Nazis have superhumans and the British use dark magicsIan Tregillis’s debut fantasy novel BITTER SEEDS (UK | ANZ) is a sinister reimagining of World War II events. In this supernatural alternate history, British forces use dark magics to hold back an invading army of Nazi superhumans. Orbit’s James Long put some questions to Ian on where he got his ideas from . . .

The premise of Bitter Seeds – Nazi super soldiers versus occult powers conjured up by British Warlocks – is unusual, to say the least! What was the original inspiration behind the story?

A number of years ago, around 2002 or 2003, I read a magazine article about a little-known Allied secret project during the Second World War called Project Habakkuk. Habakkuk was conceived during the height of the Battle of the Atlantic, when German wolf packs were destroying Allied shipping convoys. The idea – and this is one of those wonderful places where truth is so much stranger than fiction – was to build ships out of ice. It sounds mad but it’s actually a rather clever idea! Alas, for various reasons the project never made it past the prototype stage (Maybe because it is just a little bit mad.)

But I couldn’t get that image out of my head, of vast bergships plying the North Atlantic and changing the course of the war. So I began to wonder how the Axis might have responded if Habakkuk had been a success. A few days later, as I was driving to work, the answer hit me out of the blue: obviously, Ian, the Germans would have sent a pyrokinetic spy to sabotage the shipyards . . .

The ice ship never made it into Bitter Seeds, but the pyrokinetic SS agent did. (more…)

Tempests have never been hotter!

TEMPEST’S FURY (US | UK | AUS) is the perfect name for this awesome new novel by Nicole Peeler. Jane True comes into her own as the champion and it has the trademark quirkiness, humor and the zaniness that only Nicole can bring to urban fantasy. People have been comparing her for years to Charlaine Harris and with her newest covers, I think she’s too fabulous to miss.

Jane’s not happy. She’s been packed off to England to fight in a war when she’d much rather be snogging Anyan. Unfortunately, Jane’s enemies have been busy stirring up some major trouble — the kind that attracts a lot of attention. In other words, they’re not making it easy for Jane to get any alone time with the barghest, or to indulge in her penchant for stinky cheese.

Praying she can pull off a Joan of Arc without the whole martyrdom thing, Jane must lead Alfar and halflings alike in a desperate battle to combat an ancient evil. Catapulted into the role of Most Unlikely Hero Ever, Jane also has to fight her own insecurities as well as the doubts of those who don’t think she can live up to her new role as Champion.

Along the way, Jane learns that some heroes are born. Some are made. And some are bribed with promises of food and sex.

THE HEIR OF NIGHT wins the David Gemmell Morningstar Award!

The first book in the Wall of Night epic fantasy seriesWe’re all absolutely thrilled to announce that Helen Lowe has won the David Gemmell Morningstar Award for her brilliant debut fantasy THE HEIR OF NIGHT! (UK | ANZ)

Biggest congratulations go to Helen – we can’t think of anyone who deserves this more. We’re constantly amazed by her hard work and her skillfully plotted fantasy writing, (we just can’t wait for her third novel, DAUGHTER OF BLOOD) and we’re delighted that she’s been recognised in this way.

The win was announced on Friday evening, in a glamorous ceremony held at the Magic Circle Headquarters in London – some photos of the awards ceremony below. Congratulations also go to the other winners on the night: Patrick Rothfuss, who won the Legend Award, and Raymond Swanland, who took home the Ravenheart Award for best cover art.

The Morningstar is awarded to the Best Fantasy Newcomer of the year. Here’s Helen’s announcement on her website, and the acceptance speech that was read out on the night.

Helen Lowe's trophy for Best Fantasy Debut
The award itself! To be posted very carefully to New Zealand today.
Orbit Commissioning Editor Anna Gregson and Editorial Assistant James Long
Orbit’s James Long and Anna Gregson chatting to agent John Berlyne at the awards ceremony
Orbit Commissioning Editor Jenni Hill collects the Morningstar award on behalf of fantasy author Helen Lowe
The award is collected by Orbit on behalf of Helen Lowe. Credit to Stan Nicholls and Sandy Auden for their photos of the ceremony.