N.K. Jemisin’s debut novel THE HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS has won this year’s Locus award for Best First Novel! And congratulations are also in order for Paolo Bacigalupi who took Best YA Novel for SHIP BREAKER.
I am absolutely delighted to report that Helen Lowe won New Zealand’s premier genre award for Best Novel over the 
weekend, with her wonderful epic fantasy adventure The Heir of Night. The award was actually shared this year, as Lyn McConchie’s The Questing Road also took the top spot, showing the strength of the shortlist. The Sir Julius Vogel awards were announced at the ConText convention and Helen talks more about the award on her blog — and we couldn’t be more excited for her.
Robin Hobb called this wonderful epic fantasy adventure ‘a richly told tale of strange magic, dark treachery and conflicting loyalties, set in a well realized world’. I can’t recommend it highly enough myself and suggest that you get right out and discover all the dark treachery-ness of it for yourselves! Happy reading.
We are very happy to have not just one, but several pieces of good news on the awards front, in no particular order:
First of all, Helen Lowe’s The Heir of Night has been nominated in two categories for the prestigious Sir Julius Vogel New Zealand genre awards. She’s up for Best Novel for the book itself and Peter Fitzpatrick has been nominated for Best Professional Artwork for his wonderful map. We’ll be crossing our fingers in the lead up to the awards, to be announced at New Zealand’s ConText convention on 3rd – 6th June in just a few weeks.
Congratulations also go to Marianne de Pierres who has won the award for best Science Fiction Novel at the Aurealis Awards for her novel Transformation Space.
Finally, don’t forget to vote for your favourite book for this year’s Gemmell Awards. We’re strongly represented across all three categories, firstly with three titles in the running for the Legend Award for best fantasy novel: The War of the Dwarves by Markus Heitz, Towers of Midnight by Brandon Sanderson, and The Black Prism by Brent Weeks. We also have The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin nominated for the Morningstar award for best fantasy debut. And lastly, this book is nominated yet again in the Gemmell’s Ravenheart category for best fantasy book cover, with Cliff Neilson as illustrator and our Lauren Panepinto as designer.
Good luck to the shortlisted nominees and congratulations again to Marianne de Pierres!
Over the weekend at Eastercon, the Hugo Award nominees were announced. Both Mira Grant’s FEED and N.K. Jemisin’s THE HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS were nominated for best novel!
You can read the first three chapters of THE HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS here, and the first chapter of FEED here.
To see the full list of nominees, visit the Renovation website.
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.
We’re delighted to see Tricia Sullivan’s novel Lightborn make the shortlist for this year’s Arthur C. Clarke award – one of the UK’s most prestigious awards for SF literature. Everyone at Orbit extends their congratulations to Tricia, and to all of the other finalists.
It’s a finely balanced shortlist this year, with no publisher having more than one book on the list. There’s already been plenty of enthusiastic debate on twitter, with readers discussing the merits of the various novels. It seems the list sprung one or two surprises – needless to say, no one won the competition on the Torque Control blog for guessing the shortlist. That’s how hard it is to predict!
Here’s the shortlist in full:
Zoo City by Lauren Beukes (Angry Robot)
The Dervish House by Ian McDonald (Gollancz)
Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness (Walker Books)
Generosity by Richard Powers (Atlantic Books)
Declare by Tim Powers (Corvus)
Lightborn by Tricia Sullivan (Orbit)
The winner – picked by a panel of judges – will be announced at SciFi London on 27 April 2011. Naturally, the Orbit UK team will be in attendance and suitably glammed up for the occasion (though on our best behaviour, promise).
Huge congratulations to Orbit authors Paolo Bacigalupi, Tricia Sullivan and Ken MacLeod, who have all made the shortlist for the British Science Fiction Association’s award for best novel of 2010, for their novels THE WINDUP GIRL, LIGHTBORN and THE RESTORATION GAME.
The winner will be announced at Eastercon in April.
We are very excited to announce that the print edition of The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi hits retailers in the UK today, fabulously garbed in it’s wonderful cover as seen in this spiral of windup-ness here …
We released the book in ebook form prior to the print edition, so those of you teched up with e-devices might already have had the pleasure, but it was very exciting to see the print edition enter the office still cold from the warehouse. Not sure what kind of preservation method they use on them there. You can get a FREE EXTRACT here, and in case this multiple award-winning book needs further introduction, here are just some of the highlights below:
Time Magazine named The Windup Girl as one of its ten best novels of the year
The book has also won five of 2010’s major international SF awards: the Hugo (as covered in the Guardian here), Nebula, Locus, Compton Crook Award and John W. Campbell Memorial Award
‘Bacigalupi is a worthy successor to William Gibson: this is cyberpunk without computers’ Time Magazine
‘Not since William Gibson’s pioneering cyberpunk classic, Neuromancer (1984), has a first novel excited science fiction readers as much’ The Washington Post
‘Heart-thudding action sequences, sordid sex, and enough technical speculation for two lesser novels’ Cory Doctorow
‘One of the finest SF novels of the year’ Publishers Weekly
‘It’s ridiculous how good this book is’ Techland
Every year the blog All Things Urban Fantasy has Cover Art Awards and there’s a gaggle of Orbit Books nominated. Please go vote! It’s a simple survey form, and every cover is shown in the category, so it’s actually a fun review whether you want to cast your vote or not. Voting closes on December 29th.
BLAMELESS by Gail Carriger is up for “Best Paranormal Steampunk Cover”
THE MIDNIGHT MAYOR by Kate Griffin is up for “Best Male with Animal Cover”
And last but not least, my favorite category….
MARRIED WITH ZOMBIES by Jesse Petersen and TRACKING THE TEMPEST by Nicole Peeler are up for “Most Unique Cover”…tough choice!
So go vote already!
Note: There is not a “Best Title” category, but Saltwater Vampires would definitely win.
We’re very happy to announce that in a remarkable showing, three of the five books selected by Publishers Weekly as the best science fiction/fantasy titles of 2010 are published by Orbit — THE BONE PALACE by Amanda Downum, FEED by Mira Grant, and THE HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS/THE BROKEN KINGDOMS (a two-for-one deal!) by N.K. Jemisin.
Congratulations to our authors!! And if you haven’t yet gotten around to these books — happy reading!
