Archive for Orbit UK

The Two Tolkiens

Epic fantasy is back.  Peter Jackson brought out an unprecedented work of filmmaking with the Lord of the Rings films.  HBO is rolling out Game of Thrones based on the books of George RR Martin, the man dubbed “the American Tolkien” by Time magazine.  The publishing industry is generating a huge number of similar titles by people like Pat Rothfuss, Joe Abercrombie, Brandon Sanderson, and – putting too fine a point on it – me, many of which are showing up on the bestseller’s lists.

The faux-Medieval world of dragons and knights seems like an odd genre to have caught our collective attention, but I think you can gauge a cultural moment by its guilty pleasures.  The same way that our huge romance industry tells us something about our fears about love, and urban fantasies like True Blood and Anita Blake tell us something about our discomfort with femininity and power, the knights and orcs that got us laughed at in middle school are attracting literally billions of dollars.  That means something interesting has happened.

We as a culture are anxious about something, and these particular stories comfort us.  They say something that we, the audience are willing to pay a lot of money to hear but from a distance that we can stand to hear it.

In particular, our two Tolkiens are telling us that we’re tired of war. (more…)

The Ascendant Stars cover art wow

There has been plenty of wow-ing (a technical term we use round these parts) about this glorious visual for Michael Cobley’s next book – The Ascendant Stars. Illustrator Steve Stone and designer Peter Cotton have done us proud with this one and the content is no less exciting I promise you!

This is the culmination of an SF trilogy packed with invention and adventure and you can check out extracts from Seeds of Earth (book 1, UK | ANZ) and The Orphaned Worlds (book 2, UK | ANZ) with more to come in due course on book 3, published in November. Can’t wait. If  you can’t wait either, keep an eye on Mike’s website too for hints, tips and updates.

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Cover Launch: KINGDOMS OF DUST by Amanda Downum

Behold the new artwork for the upcoming Kingdoms of Dust – Amanda Downum’s rich and exotic fantasy adventure featuring necromancer-spy Isyllt Iskaldur.  

Larry Rostant has done us proud yet again with his luxurious imagery, which we feel perfectly suits Amanda’s lush and atmospheric writing style. And the visual sums up the epic setting for this book: think fiery red deserts, swirling sandstorms and ruined cities . . .

It’s the perfect addition to the gorgeous artwork for the rest of the Necromancer Chronicles series (see all the covers together below). And the joy is that, since these books can be read as stand-alones, you can pick up whichever book most appeals to you first . . . A difficult choice indeed! Larry Rostant: we truly heart you. And tons of thanks must also go to our very talented UK designer Peter Cotton, who put all of these covers together.  (more…)

My Top Three: Historically-Influenced Fantasy Settings

Recently, I posted about the influence of history on fantasy and that got me thinking about some of my favourite, historically influenced fantasy periods. Guy Gavriel Kay’s Tigana would have to be right up there—in fact I think it was the authentic, Italian renaissance setting of the opening sequences that helped me fall in love with the story. And the basic premise of the story is straight from history—the divided peninsula of little kingdoms which fail to see the danger of encroaching empires until it is too late. Kay plays with this in Tigana, but basically France and the Holy Roman Empire—with the Turks a very real threat as well—were both encroaching on Italy during the Renaissance period.

I have always loved the stories of 5th century BC Greece—Thermopylae, Marathon and Salamis; the Peloponnesian war; and the Anabasis, the march of the 10,000 out of Asia Minor. I also love the older, more legendary stories such as the siege of Troy and Theseus and the Minotaur, which are both at least semi-historical. I particularly enjoy a fantastic twist on these tales, such as Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Firebrand and David Gemmell’s Macedonian duology, Lion of Macedon and Dark Prince. With Bradley, I liked the way she told the old tale of Troy from the perspective of the women, just as she did with the Arthurian legend in The Mists of Avalon. In the Lion of Macedon, I was fascinated by the way Gemmell focused, not directly on Alexander and his father Philip, but on the general Parmenion. Parmenion is relatively unknown by comparison, but there is some historical weight to the view that it was his military genius that brought about Philip’s victories, which effectively conquered all of Greece. (more…)

The Enterprise of Alchemy

Alchemy is a knot downright Gordian when it comes to finding an entry point for the young scribe trying to introduce his readers to the subject. One solution is to tackle the problem as Alexander would, but this in turn leaves us with a conundrum every bit as frustrating as the one we began with—instead of a compact but impenetrable knot of information, we now have countless loose, frayed ends that are just as likely to take us nowhere as they are to reveal how the intricately assembled whole came to be.

Perhaps the best approach, then, is to do as I have done and open with an overly convoluted and essentially imperfect metaphor for the problem—the encryption of meaning in complex symbolism that references the historical, the mythological, or the biblical is, after all, an essential part of the European alchemical tradition. How else to accurately pass along your wisdom without it being exploited by the unworthy? (more…)

Here’s to you, Mr Harrison…

When I was young, and I mean really young, my mother caught me reading the newspaper. That I could was just one of those things, like having brown hair and sticky-out teeth. I’m reliably informed it was something to do with the Rhodesia crisis (something you kids will have to look up for yourselves) – what it was isn’t important, but the fact of reading early, and apparently spontaneously, is. Fast forward a few years, and we’d moved towns and schools. So while most of my classmates were ploughing through their graded Ladybird books, I was pretty much left to my own devices. I have no recollection of what I read then. All sorts of stuff probably. But I do remember this: at some point (I must have been about nine) I was shown a rack of books and told to choose one, it didn’t matter which.

(c) Puffin BooksOne in particular caught my eye. It had a man in a spacesuit on the cover which, as a child fascinated by the Apollo missions, was a big draw. And that was pretty much it for the next thirty-odd years. That book (and I’ve finally tracked it down – the 1976 Puffin edition of Spaceship Medic, by Harry Harrison) quite literally changed my life. Soon I was on the hard stuff: Clarke, Asimov, the Heinlein juveniles. Anderson. Pohl. Herbert. Aldiss. Anything with a spaceship on the front, and these were the days when Bob Foss was king – those spaceships were huge.

What fed my peculiar addiction was that my mum used to help run the village WI jumble sales. Before the doors had opened, the book stall had been scoured and any likely candidates picked off and paid for. Now – my mum’s not exactly a speculative fiction fan: she was going on the look of the book. (more…)

Aunt Teagan and the Iceberg Factor

When you write a book, you’re only ever showing the important bits. Seems obvious, right? The boring stuff, the stuff that isn’t intimately bound in the narrative, the stuff that doesn’t just leap off the page, or drive home some essential truth about your characters or the world they live in, you leave out*. But it’s still there, in a way.

What you see on the page is a result of winnowing out a hell of a lot of material. Some of it great, some of it exciting to write, but they’re ultimately scenes*, and situations that didn’t serve the story. The thing is, even though they’re gone, they still sit beneath the story, submerged, they’re the nine-tenths of the iceberg – the research, the history, the backstory – that give the bit the reader sees the extra weight.

Like Aunt Teagan in my Death Works books. (more…)

The Allure of The Neon Court

The UK’s premier fantasy and science-fiction magazine, SFX, has recently launched its 2011 Blog Awards. Rubbing shoulders with other nominees for ‘Best Celebrity Blog’ – a list that includes such luminaries as Neil Gaiman – is none other than Orbit’s very own Kate Griffin, author of the much-acclaimed Matthew Swift novels A MADNESS OF ANGELS, THE MIDNIGHT MAYOR and THE NEON COURT.

Be sure to check out Kate’s blog, which is a fascinating mix of writing anecdotes, tales of her experiences working in theatre and ruminations on how it feels to be up against Sir Terry Pratchett in the ‘best novel’ category at the SFX Awards . . . and if you enjoy what you see, feel free to vote for Kate in the ‘Best Celebrity Blog’ category!

Speaking of THE NEON COURT, its publication last month was met with widespread acclaim:

‘Few can claim to share the same level of creativity and individual style as Griffin, who at her young age, and expressing this level of assured skill, is almost certainly set to become a leading voice in the genre.’ SCIFI NOW

‘Overall the book reads like a hybrid of Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden stories and early Christopher Fowler: there’s a wisecracking, beaten-up, powerful hero, but also a real love of London, down to its grimiest corners and most dimly-remembered  legends.’ SFX

‘Great pace alongside a plot outline to keep you going to the last line . . . this series really has got a lot more potential to evolve into something entirely unique. A real joy to read and I really can’t wait for the next instalment.’ FALCATA TIMES

And if you’ve not yet delved into Kate Griffin’s magical, murky London – why not? – then perhaps this article by Orbit author N. K. Jemisin will convince you.