Archive for All posts

Jaz Parks Shorts

I was deeply saddened when Jennifer Rardin passed away in the fall of 2010. She was the author of the amazing Jaz Parks novels that started with Once Bitten, Twice Shy and I had the honor of publishing her over the past six years.  Over that time, she also wrote a number of short stories that carried her trademark humor, action and attitude.  When her agent approached Orbit with these stories that Jennifer had written – some that were published on her website – others that had never seen the light of day, we were assured that her family wanted to see these stories published and that the fans would enjoy reading them.

So, we published the first of these stories, Scouting Jasmine on the launch list of our new digital short fiction program and over the next few months we’ll continue to publish the rest of these stories. This month, we’ve just released The Golem Hunt. The story takes place between Biting the Bullet (Book 3) and Bitten to Death (Book 4) of the Jaz Parks Series. In it a rabbi raises a terrifying ancient creature  – the golem  – to protect his congregation, but the results are far bloodier than he could ever have imagined.  Now, Jaz and Vayl, the CIA’s top assassins, must hunt down the golem and end its reign of terror.

Next month, we’ll be releasing, An Evening for Vayl and Jaz. A romantic evening told from both their perspectives. We also have two stories outside of the Jaz Parks universe.  In July, we’ll have the Minion Chronicles, a short stories about two college students who get involved with a voodoo queen. And in August, we have the upcoming Zombie Jamboree about a reality TV host who is unprepared for zomibies to take over her TV show.

RULE 34 by Charles Stross – the cover!

I’ve been looking forward to unveiling our cover visual for Rule 34, the latest brilliant near-future novel by Charles Stross. This one is set in Edinburgh in a future that’s just round the corner and takes us at a cracking pace though a complex series of bizarre interlinked crimes. We loved it and advance praise has been amazing too. But here’s the cover and some early quotes:

Cracking near-future crime laced with humour that’s exquisitely wrong’ Chris Brookmyre

‘A savvy, funny, viciously inventive science fiction novel that combines police procedure with the dark side of nerd culture to produce a grotesque and gripping page-turner’ Cory Doctorow

‘Charles Stross is a grandmaster of that most difficult science-fictional era, the near future. His novel, Rule 34, is a seamlessly transformation of our near-term everyday world into serious strangeness’
Vernor Vinge

‘Dazzling, chilling and brilliant’ Kirkus

Does size REALLY matter?

We thought we were more opened-minded than this, but lately here at Orbit when we’ve asked ourselves the timeless question– does size really matter? – we’ve found ourselves answering with a shocking ‘yes’.

We didn’t want to be swayed by the spine width of any given book. ‘Why should it matter how wide the spine is?’ we’d say. ‘All books should be treated equally, regardless of spine width’ had always been our mantra.  But we’ve recently found ourselves paying a bit more attention to these chunky titles and omnibuses.  We even went so far as to measure them:


(For those of you keeping score, it’s Pamela Freeman’s The Casting Trilogy for the win!)

Now that we’ve acknowledged our bias we’re hoping we can move past it, though we do wonder if readers are swayed by book width as well.

So what do you think? When it comes to buying books, does size matter?

THEORIES OF FLIGHT: Prepare . . .

Theories of Flight, Book 2 in Simon Morden’s explosive Metrozone series is now at large worldwide.

Prepare for more explosions. Prepare for more smart-ass foul-mouthing from Petrovitch. And prepare for more from the New Machine Jihad.

And just in case you’ve been wondering what people have been saying about the series . . .

‘A fast-paced thriller . . . an absorbing read’ TELEGRAPH

‘Speeds along with energetic panache’ THE TIMES

‘Morden keeps up a breathless breakneck pace that doesn’t sacrifice character depth or intelligence . . . promises to be a fast-paced thrill ride for the cynical urban space cowboy in all of us’ i09

‘Petrovitch is one of those characters you can’t help but warm to, and readers will be eager to experience more of his adventures and his relentless Russian swearing’ FINANCIAL TIMES

‘The action is relentless and Morden has a natural talent for a plot that keeps the reader guessing’ GUARDIAN

‘A fantastic piece of work – a roller-coaster ride through a post-plague hit London that made me think of Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon colliding head on with Gibson’s Neuromancer, whilst side-swiping Stephenson’s Snowcrash. I absolutely loved it!’ SFREVU

‘A heart-stopping onslaught of science and action for much of its perfectly judged duration, paced like a runaway train, and Morden handles the fireworks with a steady hand . . . truly exhilarating stuff’ THE SPECULATIVE SCOTSMAN

(more…)

GRAVE PERIL by Jim Butcher: a Dresden Files reread

Mark Yon has been a reviewer and web administrator at SFFWorld, one of the world’s biggest genre forum sites, for nearly ten years. He has also been on the David Gemmell Awards organisation committee for the last two years. In this series of rereads, Mark will guide us below through the whole of Jim Butcher’s fabulous Dresden Files series as we count down to the new hardback at the end of July.
*************************************************************************************

In Grave Peril Harry now has a girlfriend, the sexy Susan Rodriguez of earlier novels, and this adds another level to the story. However, this does not mean that Harry is resting on his laurels in some sort of a love-fugue.

In fact, chapter one drops the reader straight into the action, with page one showing Harry and his colleague Michael having a rapid car drive through Chicago, off to deal with a ghost nanny who is taking the lives of babies in the Cook County Hospital.

You see, things have been hotting up recently in Chicago. Ghosts have been appearing with much more regularity than they should and have been keeping Harry very busy. This becomes even more worrying when it becomes noticeable that they have some sort of connection with Harry. As you might expect, as a result, Harry’s soon back to being thrown around, and dealing with his dark moods and his exaggerated sense of chivalry. But his main goal must be to figure out why Chicago’s ghosts have suddenly gone crazy, sometimes with deadly consequences, and put a stop to it – if he can. (more…)

Fiction to Film

Film adaptations – love ‘em, hate ‘em, the truth of the matter is, they’re loud, they’re big, they’re successful and they’re probably coming to a screen near you.  The advent of CGI in the last few years has led to an explosion of science fiction and fantasy movies, spearheaded to a large degree by Lord of the Rings and the Marvel Comics lot deciding to cash in on a good thing… now when you think of summer blockbuster, you can fairly reliably count on not just running, jumping, chasing, but you can probably also hold out for the destruction of New York by alien ship or the fall of civilizations.

I’m not going to re-tread the old arguments of book vs. film here.  There are pros and cons either way and frankly the two mediums are so different in so many respects that it seems like a rather futile bit of ground to wander over.   For my part, I should declare that I actually prefer the film of Lord of the Rings to the book, love comic book adaptations… when they’re done well, that is… and am delighted to discover that the occasional CGI fuelled bit of science fiction movie making is in fact, slipping through the net and coming up on screen with the odd bit of an idea behind it. (more…)

2011 Locus Award Nominees!

The Locus Science Fiction Foundation have put up their list of nominees for the 2011 Locus Awards. Iain M. Banks (US/UK) has been nominated for Best SF Novel. Charles Stross (UK) has been nominated for Best Fantasy Novel. And N.K. Jemisin (US/UK) seems hellbent on getting on every major award list with a nod for Best First Novel. Congrats as well to Joe Abercrombie (US) for his nomination in the Novelette category.

 

And, finally, congrats to us for being nominated for Best Publisher!

Check out the whole list here!

USE OF WEAPONS voted The Best Sci-Fi Film Never Made

Tech news site The Register recently held a poll to ask readers which SF book most deserves to make it to the big screen, but has up until now been shamefully overlooked by the Hollywood bigwigs. An impressive 27,088 people voted, and the winner – with a stunning 10,032 votes – was Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks.

It seems Iain is a popular choice, with Consider Phlebas, Excession, The Player of Games and The Algebraist all also making it into the top 50. But Use of Weapons was the clear favourite.

So what more evidence does Hollywood need? It’ll be a sure fire hit – get it into production straight away!

You can see the results of ‘The Best Sci-Fi Film Never Made’ poll right here. But the question is: who should play the leading man Zakalwe…?

Doomed

Powerlessness is the foundation of most horror stories.  Whether they’re about monsters or madmen or even worse, the notion that we are not in charge of our own destiny is what makes most horror work.  It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about purely fantastic dangers like Freddy Krueger and vampires or if we’re staying in more realistic territory with murderers and natural disasters.  If a character must confront their own powerlessness, you’ve got yourself a horror story.

This is why Alien is a horror story, and Aliens is an action adventure film.  In one, a crew of poorly armed, non-combat astronauts are slaughtered by a sneaky predator.  In the other, a squad of soldiers blasts scores of aliens.  It’s true that the soldiers in Aliens are facing some long odds, but though they are in desperate straits, they can still fight back.  They might all die, but they are sure as hell going to take a lot of the enemy with them.  And in the end, it all boils down to Sigourney Weaver in a power suit grappling with the alien queen.  Certainly, not an easy victory, but a victory nonetheless, through guts, determination, and a handy dandy airlock. (more…)

FOOL MOON by Jim Butcher: a Dresden Files reread

Mark Yon has been a reviewer and web administrator at SFFWorld, one of the world’s biggest genre forum sites, for nearly ten years. He has also been on the David Gemmell Awards organisation committee for the last two years. In this series of rereads, Mark will guide us below through the whole of Jim Butcher’s fabulous Dresden Files series as we count down to the new hardback at the end of July.
*************************************************************************************

Fool Moon takes place six months after the events of Storm Front.

Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden is Chicago’s only professional ‘wizard for hire.’ But he’s not been employed by the Chicago Police Department’s Special Investigations Squad since the events of Storm Front, the previous novel. His friend, police chief Karrin Murphy, has been giving him the cold shoulder because of these events – and because it’s down to him that she’s now under the suspicious watch of Chicago Police’s Internal Affairs.

Then one October night, he gets a visit from Lieutenant Murphy about a murder – one that has been very, very messy and seems to be the latest in a series of gruesome events, which coincidentally happen at full moon. And there are more moonlit nights on the way…   (more…)