Archive for Orbit US

Orbit Author on Radio 4

Philip Palmer is the author of the fabulous debut Debatable Space, to be published by Orbit in January. He is also a dramatist of some note, and his short play Gaza is being recorded today to be broadcast on Radio 4 tomorrow at 7pm. Philip imagines what it’s like for ordinary people caught up in the violence and in-fighting in Gaza City, as well as portraying the reactions of British nationals working in the region.

The play will be repeated on Sunday, and you can catch it for a further week on the Listen Again section of the BBC website.

Do have a listen if you get the chance!

Orbit in Australia

The launch of Orbit in the US is only a few months away, but it was off to Australia last week, with Orbit UK Editorial Director Darren Nash, for Convergence — the 46th Australian National SF Convention in Melbourne — and a week with our sister company Hachette Livre Australia in Sydney.

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Orbit at BEA

orbit_team
Alex Lencicki, Jennifer Flax, Tim Holman, and Devi Pillai at BEA

Orbit launched in the US at Book Expo America in New York. Thanks to everyone who stopped by to say hello. We still have ten messenger bags left, so we’re giving one to the first ten people to email us at orbit at hbgusa.com with the words “gimme one of those bags!” in the subject line. (This offer is only available to US residents.)

Jae Lee’s covers for The Electric Church

I’m Devi and I’m an Editor at Orbit and I’ll be chatting about the upcoming books, authors, reviews, etc.

I’ve just gotten early sketches for THE DIGITAL PLAGUE by Jeff Somers! That is his second book starring Avery Cates, criminal-for-hire.

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Terra Incognita for Kevin J. Anderson

We’re extremely excited to announce that Orbit has bought a new series by New York Times bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson, for publication in 2009. The Terra Incognita trilogy, based on the great sea voyages of the Age of Discovery, is a departure for the author, who is best known for his SF works, such as the Dune novels (co-written with Brian Herbert) and his Saga of Seven Suns. Orbit will publish in the US and the UK, and it will be a flagship series in both territories.

Kevin J. Anderson comments: “For at least a decade I have been developing and pondering a fantasy epic about sailing ships and sea monsters and undiscovered territories. I’ve always been intrigued to stare at amazing old maps with great swatches of territory marked “Here Be Monsters” or “Terra Incognita” — when brave captains dared to go out into the unexplored vastness where, for all they knew, they could sail directly off the edge of the world. I’ve read about the exploratory voyages of Balboa, da Gama, and Magellan, coupled with the religious and political inspirations for such desperate journeys. The concepts and the imagination simply grew too large to be contained within a strict historical framework, and so I have taken the basic ideas and recast them into a brand new, and yet excitingly familiar, pattern.”

Orbit Publishing Director Tim Holman adds: “Kevin is a masterly storyteller and this is a wonderful idea for a fantasy series. With its imaginative roots in a fascinating period of history, it promises to be a series that will appeal to both genre and mainstream readers, and this makes it a particularly exciting publishing prospect for us.”

Welcome!

Why an Orbit blog? The truth is that we’ve got a general idea of why we’re doing this, but we haven’t progressed very far beyond the general idea stage. The general idea is this:

  1. The posts you’ll read here will be written by anybody and everybody who works for Orbit, in our London and New York offices — so we’re expecting there to be a wide variety of posts, both in terms of content and style. Very few mainstream publishers have followed this route, but we think it’s right for the SF & Fantasy field, which is increasingly a global conversation.
  2. Our posts will give you an insight into what goes on at an SF publisher’s office. Not just what we do, but what we talk about and what we think about — sometimes small things, and sometimes the bigger issues that affect the entire community.
  3. Our posts should also help you to keep in touch with what’s going on in our corner of the SF world — what our authors are getting up to, news, events, reviews, articles and so on.
  4. Finally, our posts should be fun for us to write and for you to read.

So, without further ado, let’s get on with it!