A bit of an update… and an announcement

Well, it's been a busy few weeks since I last dropped by and no mistake. For a start, I'm very happy indeed to report that the new job is going extremely well. My to-do list went ballistic in week one and doesn't show any signs of letting up - quite possibly for the next couple of years or so - which is all to the good as far as I'm concerned. Life's too short to be bored, especially at work.

Out on the road: Jo and I Had a great weekend in Derby at Alt.Fiction. I managed not to make a complete arse of myself on the 'Writing and the Internet' panel (I hope) and the two of us caught up with a whole load of good friends and causal acquaintances who we don't get to see much more than once or twice a year, which is always the highlight of any convention or genre-related social event.

And speaking of which, I went on down to London for the Arthur C. Clarke Awards last week as well; another chance to catch up with folks, drink a couple of free beers and talk shop. After the Clarkes I followed the crowd to a bar up the road and ended up chatting to Dean Haglund (one of the Lone Gunmen, the geek-trio from the X-Files) for about an hour, about comics, movies, television, comedy, books, you name it. Top bloke.

Anyhow, big congratulations to (ex-client) Richard Morgan on the Arthur C. Clarke win for Black Man. Thoroughly deserved, although officially I was rooting for (Orbit author) Ken MacLeod, of course... :)

Reading-wise: I've been catching up with a few PS Publishing novellas: The Mermaids by Robert Edric, The Lees of Laughter's End by Steven Erikson and No Traveller Returns by Paul Park. My favourite of those was the Erikson: another of his tales of the sinister Bauchelain and Korbal Broach; this time loaded with dark humour as well as his trademark high-action fantasy. I've also read issues twelve and thirteen of PS's Postscripts magazine; the stand-out tale from the two volumes was most definitely Hal Duncan's camp-as-tits buccaneer romp 'The Island of the Pirate Gods', which I wish I'd read before I sent in my recommendations for this year's British Fantasy Awards last week. Never mind. Surely someone else will have nominated it.

I've also read Alan Campbell's Subterranean Press novella Lye Street, which is set before the events of his debut novel Scar Night and had a very Erikson-esque feel to it, now I come to think of it. I finally found time to read a Jonathan Carroll novel that's been on the to-be-read shelf for years: Kissing the Beehive, a pretty intense psychological murder mystery. I've read a couple of Orbit titles that I thoroughly enjoyed: Charlie Huston's latest Joe Pitt novel, Half the Blood of Brooklyn and Marie Brennan's Midnight Never Come; a highly-enjoyable mix of Elizabethan and faerie politics and intrigue.

And I've indulged in a few graphic novels recently as well: David Petersen's Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 is beautifully drawn and tells a simple but compelling tale of warrior mice dealing with a threat to their homeland from a shadowy traitor. Re-visiting the first three collected volumes of Garth Ennis and co.'s Hitman tales was a whole heap of fun; as was the first volume of new indie publisher Ablaze Media's Peckerwood which turned out to be a lot more amusing than I have to confess I was expecting from a gratuitous 24 spoof. And I made a start on all 11 volumes of Mike Carey's Lucifer series, having filled the gaps on the shelf with the help of FPI and a birthday cash donation from the missus (ta, love!)

But the best thing I read recently has to be the Humdrumming volume I bought at Alt.Fiction: PS head-honcho Pete Crowther's collection of four short stories entitled The Land at the End of the Working Day. Now, I happen to count Pete among my very good friends and I worked with him on the website and marketing for PS Publishing for the past few years (until very recently), so you can take the following with as large a pinch of salt as you like... but this really was a rather wonderful collection of stories.

They're set in a New York walk-down bar, the sort of locale that will be familiar to fans of Spider Robinson's Callahan's yarns - and with good reason, as Pete's a huge fan of the series - and these four tales speak to the reader of some of the most essential elements of life: love, loss, pain, pleasure, friendship, good company and good beer, all of which is exactly my pint of stout. As a result, I expect I'll be picking up Arthur C. Clarke's contribution to the bar-story oeuvre, PS Publishing's Tales From the White Hart, before too long. I might even re-visit Callahan's Crosstime Saloon all over again. And Pete tells me that there are two more TLATEOTWD stories in the works; I'll be buying copies of whichever mag puts those out, without fail, or a second Humdrumming volume if that's how they appear. Great stuff.

All of which pretty much brings me bang up to date, I reckon. Oh, apart from that announcement...

I'm going to be moth-balling UK SF Book News in the very near future. It's something I've been thinking about on and off for about six months now. The recent re-design was my attempt to re-ignite my enthusiasm for the project, but alas, whilst tinkering in the belly of the Wordpress beast is always interesting, I'm afraid I didn't manage to over-come the essential problem that's been weighing most heavily on my mid for a while. Which is that spending however many hours per week updating the site just isn't fun any more...

Plus, it's been somewhat superseded in the past couple of years: firstly by a whole number of rather excellent new blogs (run by bloggers with much more free time and enthusiasm for their calling than I can muster these days) and secondly (but perhaps more importantly) by RSS feed aggregators such as Google Reader, Bloglines and co. And what's the point of attempting to gather and present the most current and relevant UK SF Book News when anyone who's interested in the subject matter can subscribe to any number of feeds - by their favourite authors or from the aforementioned super-bloggers - and get a much wider range of news items, discussion topics and humorous Star Wars Fan Videos, delivered straight to their desktop or browser-of-choice?

So, there you go. Time to call time on a ten-year (eleven-year? twelve-year?) hobby, if you include the old fanzine days of 'The Alien Has Landed' back at Waterstone's. Time to get in touch with all the hugely supportive publishers who have been sending in books and news items in for all those years and let them know that the site is going on hiatus. And then it will be time to look around at what else is out there, try my hand at something new. I've already discovered the joys of gardening (if you can believe that) and I'm thinking of finally learning to play the guitar. I might even get me one of those new-fangled games console thingies that the kids today seem to spend so much time on. I'll definitely be reading a few more of the many, many books on the to-be-read shelves. And hey, I might even try my hand at this fiction-writing lark. A bit unlikely, if my track-record in that department is anything to go by, but you never know...

Big, big news

As announced on the Orbit Books website yesterday, I am utterly thrilled to have been hired as Orbit's new (online) marketing exec!

I officially start on April 7th, although as you can imagine there are plenty of emails flying back and forth already. And I'm not exactly a stranger to the Orbit offices, having worked on a few projects for George and the team already, including websites for Brian Ruckley, Philip Palmer and, of course, Iain [M] Banks.

It's an incredibly exciting opportunity and one that I know I'll enjoy getting stuck in to immensely: Orbit are one of the UK's largest and most forward-looking sf / f imprints and I'll be given the chance to work on a very wide range of online projects and promotions, with a bewildering array of global genre fiction talent, including some of the very best UK authors; established names and rising stars alike. Calling it the opportunity of a lifetime really wouldn't be a case of hyperbole on my part...

Of course, this does mean that I'm going to have to give up my freelance status and the work I've been doing with my non-Orbit clients. Letting everyone know has been a bit of a wrench, but every single one of the folks I spent a total of about five hours on the phone to yesterday were nothing short of delighted for me, and everyone has wished me nothing less than huge success in the future.

I've also been talking to someone who I think would make an ideal replacement webguy and all the clients I've mentioned the possibility to so far have been very keen on the idea. So, all being well, a successful handover will hopefully happen smoothly and quite soon.

Blogging-wise... let's just say that I'm reviewing the situation on an ongoing basis. I think The Genre Files may end up going into some sort of hibernation. Personally, I think it would be very difficult for me to post regular book reviews across a wide range of publishers' and authors' work. I suspect the implied bias of my position at Orbit will impinge on the perceived neutrality of my opinion to the point of rendering the exercise largely meaningless.

UK SF Book News will continue for the foreseeable future. Sandy and I were already working on plans to re-vamp the site again, putting an even stronger emphasis on news aggregation, link posting and original interview material. Our aim is to spread as much of the word as we can get our hands on as far and wide as we possibly can whilst providing as much original interview content as we have time for. The site will also become ad-free and affiliate-free, but then that's no bad thing as the time saved by not having to add affiliate info to items will mean more content posted in the long run.

Beyond that, who knows? I'm always coming up with ideas for new blog-based projects. I'll just have to see how much time is available once I've settled into my new role.

Wish me luck! :D

Joe Abercrombie on 'The Steel Remains'

Someone else has been granted an early sneak-peek at Richard Morgan's The Steel Remains. And it just so happens to be one of the authors of the sort of dark, intriguing, fantasy fiction that I was talking about in my own review, Joe Abercrombie, who concludes:

"I hesitate to say, 'if you like the works of x, y, or z, then give The Steel Remains a try,' because really it's pretty much unlike anything else, and that's why you should give it a try. You might love it, you might loathe it, but you'll certainly find it difficult to ignore..."

Read the full review over at Joe's blog.

Highly Recommended Reading - 'The Steel Remains' by Richard Morgan

Since the publication of his debut novel Altered Carbon in 2002, Richard Morgan has steadily been building a reputation for producing rather excellent, high-octane, action-fuelled sf-noir with a very hard edge and plenty of grit.

Yet for all the blood, guts and hi-tech über-violence, his books have always been driven by superb characterisation and a very eloquent writing style, two characteristics that have ensured his novels are held in the high regard - by both critics and fans alike - that they so richly deserve.

I for one have been a fan of Richard Morgan's work from day one and I most definitely sat up and paid attention when, back in September 2006, Morgan announced that he was planning a change of direction; that his next book wouldn't constitute hi-tech science fiction of any kind; that he was, in fact, going to write an epic fantasy novel (or three). Speaking as a lifelong reader of fantasy fiction and one with a distinct preference for the darker end of the epic / heroic / low-fantasy spectrum, this was a prospect that I found... tantalising, to say the least.

And so when Gollancz's Simon Spanton asked me, a couple of weeks ago, if I wanted to read a manuscript copy of Richard Morgan's first foray into the fantasy genre, I didn't so much bite his hand off as rip his arm away at the shoulder.*

I will confess that it was a slightly trepidatious prospect - seeing what sort of a fist one of my very favourite non-fantasy authors would make of one of my very favourite fantasy sub-genres - but I'm very glad to say that I really needn't have worried in the slighest: The Steel Remains is absolutely superb.

I won't go into too much plot or character detail here, because I'd hate to ruin that same sense of anticipation for anyone else by dropping spoilers, but for the sake of making this review a worthwhile exercise I will try to convey a sense of the over-arcing elements that made it so satisfying a read.

For a start, it's written with all the flair and aplomb that you'll find in any and all of Morgan's other novels; it has the same flowing, readable prose style, the same tightness of dialogue and succinctness of description. It's also possessed of an incredibly dark atmosphere - both in terms of its setting and its overall tone - and as you'd expect from Richard Morgan, the action sequences tend to be violent to the point of viciousness... brutality, even.

In fact, I'll pause there and attempt to coin the term 'brutalist fantasy' (not actually a Googlewhack, but thankfully not for the reasons you might suspect...) to describe the overall feel of of pain- and anger-drenched atmosphere that Morgan conjures up amidst the sucking swamps, stark wilderness badlands and slum-infested city-scapes of his world.

The setting for The Steel Remains is a post-war society and several of the main characters are veterans of that titanic struggle to save humanity from the invading hordes. As I mentioned in my recommended reading piece on Joe Abercrombie's Last Argument of Kings, this isn't something you get to see all that often; it's more often the banner-waving, marching off to battle, heroic standing against overwhelming odds and subsequent last-gasp Saving of Everything by the Forces of Righteousness that gets all the attention. The aftermath to such a conflict often amounts to little more than a chorus of fanfares and a medal-bestowing ceremony, or simply becomes the jumping-off point for the next great quest or battle.

The Steel Remains, on the other hand, devotes a great deal of thematic attention to the concept of aftermath, and is all the more fascinating for it. Some of the major themes of the novel include: loyalty (and its obverse, betrayal), courage, camraderie, honour, and the struggles of war veterans to come to terms with the psychological scars of the conflict.

Morgan also addresses a number of wider socio-political issues, among them: the mechanisms of political control, economic recession, forced repatriation, sexual repression, institutional bigotry and religious intolerance. Quite a number of the issues which we ourselves are made painfully aware of with every news bulletin, in fact; really not at all what you'd normally expect to find in a novel with the 'fantasy' label on the back cover.

In a recent blog post, Morgan describers the book as a "retro-dystopic vision" of a time when "people resolved their differences with bits of sharp steel ... probably not a very nice time to be alive". He also says:

"Look - it's like this: if you really, really love Tolkein with a firmly burning uncritical passion, then there's a good chance The Steel Remains is going to upset you. If you really, really love all those stories about simple, good-hearted farm-boys becoming princes or wizards, then there's a good chance The Steel Remains is going to upset you as well. And if you like your heroes masculine, muscular and morally upright, well, then you could be in serious trouble here."

I'd definitely echo that. If you pick up a copy of The Steel Remains expecting to read a traditional (which I feel is kinder than saying 'bog-standard') fantasy adventure story, then you're going to be in for a shock.

All of which raises the question: will the fantasy-fiction reading audience - a notoriously conservative one for many reasons, not least of which is the generally accepted desire of large sections of its readers and fans to escape from exactly those sort of issues - decide to embrace Morgan's almost unique take on the genre, as a bold attempt to help drag a sometimes overly cliché-ridden genre into more relevant thematic subject areas? Or will legions of avowed acolytes recoil from the lack of familiar, safe reference-points, picking on the one or two more obviously controversial elements of the novel as a convenient scapegoat to justify a rejection of the novel which masks their own lack of willingness to explore?

'Controversial elements'? Oh, aye. Just a couple. In fact, I'd go as far as to predict that The Steel Remains is a book that will split the fantasy reading audience right in two, straight down the middle: love it or hate it. Because it's also a very provocative novel: politically, socially, sexually and psychologically; a genuinely challenging read all round. And there are certain scenes in the book - I won't say what they are, but you'll definitely know them when you get to them - that will make more conservatively-inclined readers very uncomfortable indeed.

Which raises another question: how much of the more overtly provocative (in a genre-standard sense) material in The Steel Remains is there as a result of Morgan wondering just how far he could push the envelope; just how much he could get away with? It's tempting to imagine him sitting there, working out what you almost never see in fantasy fiction and then making sure he throws plenty of that in, along with a bit more of this on top for good measure.

As it turns out though, the question is possibly an unfair one. In a follow-up chat, Simon Spanton assured me that Morgan hasn't actually read all that much within the fantasy genre - a suggestion borne out by the reading lists and recommended books occasionally posted to the author's website - so it's hardly a case of Morgan working out what was missing from everything else, then lumping it together and chucking it all in for maximum effect.

Instead, I was assured that the author has set out to write 'a Richard Morgan novel in a fantasy setting', rather than 'a fantasy novel by Richard Morgan'. It's a subtle distinction, but an important one, and it's one that should help to explain why there's so much in The Steel Remains that you just wouldn't expect to find in a typical example of the genre, along with quite a lot of material that readers of Morgan's earlier work will find both enjoyable and intriguing, despite the change of milieu and the very definite rooting in the fantasy genre (albeit with some intriguing hints that the world, or even the universe, could potentially be a much larger and more complex place than initially assumed).

In conclusion, then: The Steel Remains is one of the darkest, most intense epic fantasy novels I've read to-date. I also think it's a fantasy novel that doesn't so much transcend as extend the genre, into the sort of thematic territory that the majority of fantasy writers wouldn't even consider going anywhere near. As a result, it could just turn out to be one of the most important fantasy novels, epic or otherwise, to have been written in the last ten or twenty years, if only because it could provide an additional impetus for the growing number of similarly-minded writers to think even harder about how far they can actually push their own ideas.

Anyone with a hankering for the sort of intensely interesting fantasy fiction that the likes of Steven Erikson, Joe Abercrombie, Glen Cook China Miéville, Scott Lynch, Alan Campbell and co. have been writing recently, or even a glimpse of what might have been if the likes of George R.R. Martin, Paul Kearney, Greg Keyes, or even David Gemmell had teamed up with Quentin Tarantino for a novel or two, then this is definitely a story you should seriously consider reading.

But on the other hand, if you already suspect that you don't like your fantasy in the slightest bit brutalist, then I'd simply suggest this: steer clear. You won't be doing yourself any favours by daring the beast in its lair... unless you think the time has come to leave the safe and well-worn paths behind and venture a little deeper into the swamp-muck...

Author Info: www.richardkmorgan.com
Publisher Info: Gollancz (UK)
Publication Date: August 2008
Ordering: Amazon.co.uk

Highly Recommended Reading: 'Black Ships' by Jo Graham

Black Ships, which will be published by Orbit Books in the US in March and in the UK in July, is author Jo Graham's debut novel; although this is something I found increasingly hard to believe the more I read of this stirring, gripping, excellently-written and thoroughly engrossing tale of the last Prince of Troy and the remnants of his once-proud people.

The story is told from the point of view of Pythia - once called Gull - a young priestess of the Goddess of Death. We first learn of her early life as daughter of a Trojan woman captured into slavery by the Achaeans and her initiation into the Dark Lady's Mysteries. The character then truly bursts into life when she becomes one of the pivotal points of the narrative as the Sybil and Oracle to Aeneas, the Trojan Prince who comes to the lands of her captors to seek a newly-enslaved group of his people, before setting sail for the mighty kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean.

The emphasis of the book is placed very firmly on three principle characters: Pythia herself, who is an extremely well-rounded individual and, as both narrator and narrative instrument, someone who is incredibly easy to empathise with, and the two great loves of her life - Aeneas and Xandros - who are equally human and three-dimensional in their presentation. The inter-relationship between these three is the framework on which the tapestry of the novel's events is woven, and is explored in a manner that's thoroughly accessible, yet feels equally well-rooted in the customs and traditions of the time.

I also found the setting and background detail particularly fascinating. Jo Graham must surely have read some of the same tomes of historical investigation that I was once almost completely hooked on. She presents a subtly altered version of accepted historical events; one that draws on some of the more intriguing alternative theories of Bronze Age history surrounding the 'Hyksos', or 'Sea-Peoples', that have been published over the last twenty years or so. Of course, her book is still a work of fiction - she's not attempting to re-write history herself - but it's interesting to see some of these twists on the accepted timeline given a context and detail that makes them seem tantalisingly feasible.

All in all, it's an incredibly well-told, incredibly compelling story, narrated in the sort of epic mode employed by the likes of Steven Pressfield, and (I assume, although I've not read as many as I'd have liked) other re-tellers of the sagas of the Bronze Age heroes. Jo Graham consistently maintains an appropriately archaic tone and cadence to her writing, but without making it sound pompously Epic to the point of being unreadable. She also takes pains to avoid jarring modernisms and the rhythm of her writing style is one that flows easily and naturally, making this an extremely pleasurable read, one I practically flew through. Cliché time: Black Ships is a definite page-turner, one I honestly was loathe to put down.

And as I said earlier, such was the strength of her writing that I found it extremely difficult to believe that this was genuinely the work of a debut author; surely some sneaky pseudonym instead? But the author's notes at the end of this proof copy of the book convinced me otherwise. In which case, I have no hesitation in declaring this to be a debut of rare quality and surely the first step on the road to a highly successful career. And based on Hollywood's seemingly insatiable demand for re-telling the epics, a movie deal can be only just around the corner?

Speaking of the author's notes, I also learned from them that Black Ships is actually a re-telling of Virgil's Aeneid, the National Epic of the Roman Empire. Those with a clearly superior Classical education to mine will no doubt have spotted that from my introductory papragraph (and may sneer at will...) but I wasn't aware of the fact until I'd read the author's notes at the back of the book.

I really don't think that knowing this ahead of time would have spoiled my enjoyment of this excellent novel, although it might have given me an irrational urge to read the source materail before I read the modern-day version. That, I think, would have been a major mistake, because knowing the state of my reading schedule I'd have never gotten round to it and then might have missed out on what must surely be an early contender for one of my novels of the year.

Highly recommended, to anyone who enjoys the epic sweep of the Bronze Age sagas and to fans of historical semi-fantasy everywhere; most definitely.

Recommended reading: 'Mister B. Gone' by Clive Barker

Bit of an odd one, this. Billed as a 'bone-chilling novel' I think it's fair to say that it's actually neither of those. At 248 pages of line-and-a-half print, I'd guess it's closer to novella or novelette in terms of word-count. And it's not particularly 'bone-chilling', either; if you're hoping for a return to the heady, intense, gore-soaked, genuinely scary early work of Barker's Books of Blood, then you'd be better off moving along... this isn't the book you're looking for.

But Mister B. Gone - despite the slight mis-marketing perpetrated by the blurb-writer - is an entertaining read. It's a whimsical fictional biography that tells the life story (or parts of it anyhow) of a demon from the ninth circle of hell who goes by the name of Jakabok Botch, or 'Mister B' to his one friend in the world: fellow demon Quitoon.

Barker employs a conceit throughout Mister B Gone in which the narrator, Mister B, begs you, the reader, to burn the book; employing all sorts of threats and blandishments to get you to destroy the papery vessel that apparently holds his demonic essence imprisoned. It gives a quirky, personal tone to the narrative voice, but I rather felt that it was over-done in places. I think I would have preferred a few more tales of demonic shennanigans and a little less of the chatting, in order to keep the narrative moving along.

The plot of the book is fairly simple one - demon spirit is imprisoned in book, read on to find out how - but of course the book is also a vehicle for Barker's philosophical musings on good and evil, the duality of human nature and so forth. Once again though, a quick blurb-based caveat: the "shocking truth of the battle between Good and Evil" promised on the inside flap really isn't all that shocking, and has already been done a time or two before.

Still, nit-picking aside, Mister B. Gone was, as I said, an entertaining read, and a light and easy one that I had no problem whizzing through. The Heaven vs Hell motif is one I've been intrigued by since reading some of the early Sandman and Hellblazer story-lines and I do enjoy re-visiting it every so often. Mister B Gone doesn't offer a blindingly original take on the theme, but it is an intriguing enough addition to the canon to make it worth picking up, if you're likewise that way inclined.

Mark C. Newton's Road to Publication, parts I to III

Mark Charan Newton works for Solaris Books by day, and writes novels by night; his debut, The Reef will be published by Pendragon Press in March, and his agent John Jarrold recently secured a two-book deal with Macmillan UK - details posted over on UKSFBN - for a dark epic fantasy set in a world on the brink of a looming ice age.

Mark and I tend to exchange emails quite regularly - we're both huge Springsteen / Americana fans, so there's a lot of link-swapping of YouTube vids etc. - and we've been known to converse over the board of an online chess game from time to time.

Not so long ago, I suggested to him that his perspective as both an author and a publisher might offer a pretty decent insight into the whole publishing process for those as want to know such things. Maybe he might see his way clear to blogging about it?

'Alright.' he said. 'I will.'

And he has:

• Road to Publication, part one - Developing ideas that will Sell
• Road to Publication, part two - Finding and Working with an Agent
• Road to Publication, part three - Writing a Good Synopsis

It's all very sane, sensible stuff (well, so far...) and well worth taking a look at if you're a newbie writer or wannabe published author.

Highly Recommended Reading: 'The Escapement' by K.J. Parker

I've been a huge fan of K.J. Parker's work since I read The Colours in the Steel, part one of the Fencer Trilogy, back in 1998.

At the time, the qualities that really stood out were the obvious intelligence and inventiveness of Parker's non-linear, non-predictable plotting and the way in which the author experimented not only with the conventions and tropes of the fantasy genre, but with my experience and expectations as a fantasy reader as well; something that's developed into a major theme for my reading preferences nowadays.

These qualities were developed further and displayed to quite marvellous effect in Parker's second series, the Scavenger Trilogy. In Shadow, Pattern and Memory the age-old missing-memory / mystery identity scenario was explored from every conceivable angle and in so convoluted and twisted - yet utterly coherent and delightfully entertaining - a manner that I was left absolutely flabbergasted by the literally unbelievable intricacy with which Parker had constructed the - apparently chaotic but ultimately quite superbly structured - narrative arc of the series. It remains one of the most fascinating pieces of writing that I've enjoyed to-date and I definitely intend to go back and re-read it one day, if only to spend more time examining how Parker pulled off quite such an impressive feat.

In the Engineer Trilogy, Parker takes things in a slightly different direction again. I'm no trained literary critic, so I can only explain it as I experienced it, but to my mind, it seemed as though the series was - in part, and on at least one level - an examination of the concepts of story-construction and the driving forces that work to influence narrative direction and flow. To undertake this examination, Parker develops a narrative machine; an intricate, precise mechanism for processing (telling) the raw elements (characters, ideas, setting) of story into an engineered output (a trilogy of novels): quite literally, Parker constructs a 'plot-device'.

And once set in motion, this literary word-mill proceeds to blend concepts such as freedom, choice, compulsion, destiny, good and evil, along with emotional motivators like love, hate, duty, fear, patriotism and self-interest, to produce a tale in which events, once set in motion by what turns out to be an incredibly simple trigger mechanism, then power forwards with all the inevitability of a clockwork fate that has no off-switch.

Yet at the same time, the series is by no means governed by a linear, predictable sequence of cause and effect. There is method throughout, certainly, but as you read you begin to discover just how intricate a mechanism Parker has constructed and how much of the motive power is generated from deep within; it's by no means obvious exactly what the overall shape of the thing will turn out to be, because this particular writer is highly adept at springing surprises on the reader - something else I most definitely relish - and showing you what you may think is the blueprint for the entire saga whilst keeping a crafty thumb over the box in the corner that reads 'sheet one of several...'

There is a central and fairly obvious drive-shaft that powers the plot: Engineer Ziani Vaatzes' quest for revenge (possibly) or at least restitution (well, maybe) is the most obvious element in the plot-mechanism's construction. But then there's also an incredibly complicated gearing system of sub-plots and minor arcs that act, quite unpredictably, to shift the balance of the story from one moment to the next. Added to that, the interplay between the book's principle and supporting characters (again, it's never quite or immediately obvious who, exactly, is driving this thing, although Vaatzes is usually the chief suspect) is just terrific to watch and almost impossible to predict.

The whole thing is then wrapped in layers and layers of engineering metaphor - both mechanical and social - as well as a good thick plating of a philosophical exploration of the human condition - very skilfully bolted-on, mind, no shoddy work here - that's then glossed with some superbly droll word-play; burnished just nicely in turn by a quite lovely ear for convincingly under-played dialogue which provides just enough of a patina of age and writerly experience to prevent it all from seeming too shiny and work-shy.

The series is a thoroughly intriguing read throughout. One quick caveat, though: Devices and Desires and The Escapement are perhaps just a little more readable than middle volume Evil for Evil. I'm afraid the second instalment in the series is rather... long. It's as if the machinery that Parker initially sets in motion, having built up an impressive head of steam, then bursts a secondary gasket, runs low on pressure as a result and has to go back to the shop for a while so its operator can adjust a few valves, add some more fuel to the boiler, top up the water and get everything ready for another run at the home stretch. Part II involves plenty of plot-building and character development, but most of it seems to be the sort of tinkering that - whilst assuredly necessary and all very essential in the great scheme of things as they eventually turn out - isn't necessarily quite as interesting as it could be to watch at great length.

But you really should stick with it, because in The Escapement (incidentally, and in relation to a clockwork mechanism: "the part of the movement which controls the release of the motive power") Parker really cranks the revs back up and gets everything moving along again at a fair old clip, sweeping smoothly towards what turns out to be an extremely satisfying and gratifyingly well-rounded denouement.

One side-product of the whole process that I experienced was yet another bout of gob-smacked marvelling on my part: not least at the sheer amount of mental effort that must have gone into conceptualising and designing all the many interlocking parts of this incredible narrative, as well as the very obvious skill with which the author actually assembled the tale: combining in a few hundred thousand words into a configuration of amazing artifice; one that then delivers as its end-product a feat of apparently effortless story-telling. Surely another masterpiece from a writer working at the very height of their powers.

In conclusion: if you consider yourself to be any kind of a connoisseur of well-written, intelligent, mind-stretching, trope-defying fiction (in all nine quite unashamedly fantastical novels to-date I'm pretty sure I haven't spotted so much as an iota of magic, nor a hint of supernatural forces at work, and not so much as a hair of an elf or a scale of a dragon) then you simply must give K.J. Parker's books a go.

And personally, I simply can't wait to see what this incredible wordsmith is going to come up with next.

Reading Update, early February 2008: Robert V.S. Redick, Justin Gustainis

I've recently read a couple of titles that, for one reason or another, I don't feel able to post under Recommended Reading, but I'll mention them here for completeness' sake (I'm determined to at least mention everything relevant that I manage to read in 2008. Everything...)

First up: The Red Wolf Conspiracy, by Robert V.S. Redick. I really, really wanted to like - no, thoroughly enjoy - this one, for all sorts of reasons; not least that I just love the Edward Miller cover art. And for a while it was looking like a definite recommendation prospect: Redick's writing was fluid and eminently readable, and the story started well, with intriguing characters, an exotic and vivid setting setting and early plot pointers that promised all sorts of interesting developments ahead...

But then, about half-way through, it all... shifted. I began to feel that I was no longer reading an intriguingly baroque, intricate low-fantasy saga: a tale of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary circumstances and just doing their best to prevail against the (much more powerful forces) of intriguing self-interest and coherent character motivation ranged against them. Instead, the whole thing morphed into a rather bog-standard high-fantasy kiddie-quest: plucky, likeable youngster discovers they're suddenly - and rather bizarrely - the Most Important Kid in the World and immediately sets out (with help from their Gang of Assorted Faithful Sidekicks) to Save Everything from the Frighteningly Powerful Bad Guy and cast of (suitably menacing, yet easily defeated) Supporting Minions, who somehow completely fails to spot the danger and kill the little bastard while they still have the chance.

You'll have to excuse the dripping sarcasm, but I was gutted - to say the least - when that one was sprung on me after a couple of hundred pages.

To be fair, I think the problem may have been that I set my initial expectations too high and that I felt those expectations were being met to begin with. Perhaps I should have spotted the early warning signs - notably that two of the central p.o.v. characters were teenagers - and expected more of a traditional coming-of-age quest slog, rather than assuming here was a chance to get my teeth into something more firmly rooted along the Miéville - Lynch - Abercrombie axis. Maybe then I wouldn't have been quite so disappointed when the anticipated low-fantasy literary treat failed to materialise. Or rather, when the narrative abandoned its deep, stormy start and set sail for much safer, shallower waters.

Look, don't get me wrong, it's not a bad book, not by any means. The writing itself holds up pretty well throughout, and if Redick had only stuck to the much darker tone and atmosphere of the earlier chapters, then I might have been proclaiming another classic round about now. I just didn't feel as if the second half of the book lived up to the standard of the first.

And of course this is just my personal opinion, entirely subjective, normal caveats apply, etcetera... other bloggers have reviewed it quite favourably and enthusiastically (although Mark Yon seems to have picked up on some of the same issues that troubled me in the second half) so if it sounds like your cup of tea, then go for it. It's still a much stronger fantasy brew than the weak and wishy-washy, cliché-diluted stuff that's usually on offer.

My second not-so-great recent reading experience was Black Magic Woman by Justin Gustainis. Again, I really hoped that I'd like this one, mainly because I'm a sucker for supernatural / detective cross-over stuff, and just love discovering a new author's milieu to get stuck into. And again, on the face of things, Black Magic Woman seemed at first as though it was going to push all the right buttons.

Alas, though, the book has a fatal stylistic flaw: it's written in the third person. Admittedly it's not compulsory that a supernatural / detective story be written in the first person, but it rather seems as though just about all my favourite examples of the oeuvre are: Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, Charlie Huston's Joe Pitt novels, Mike Carey's Felix Castor books, the early Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter titles by Laurell K. Hamilton and - pushing the boundaries of the oeuvre a little further - Michael Marshall's Straw Men series and John Connolly's Charlie Parker books.

And I think there are a number of very good reasons why first person works so well for this sort of story. Not only does the use of the single-narrator p.o.v. allow for a more immediate association of the reader with the main character; it also limits the reader's field-of-view: the reader only knows what the main character knows, which allows the writer to heighten the sense of anticipation as they build towards the story's revelatory climax. That makes it much easier for the writer to lay down false trails for the reader to follow as they inevitably try to puzzle out the mystery for themselves, leading to a much greater chance that the reader will be surprised by the denouement. And personally speaking, I just love a book - especially a mystery / crime novel - that's rich with the element of surprise.

But Gustainis' use of the third person narrative meant that he'd laid all his plot elements out within a couple of chapters of the start. We knew who all the main players were, what they were up to, what their motivations were. So it's a fairly simple job, from a very early stage, to work out the pattern of the plot and guess how everything is going to fit together. And I'm afraid that meant the bulk of the book was pretty much an exercise in wishing they'd all get the heck on with it so I could see if I was right or not, whilst hoping that there was one really subtle clue that I'd missed that would bite me at the end...

It wasn't to be. Everything panned out pretty much as predicted and I'm sorry to say that I was able skim-read the last 100 pages or so without spotting anything that made me want to go back and read in detail. A shame, but there you go.

I've also read K.J. Parker's The Escapement. But I will be recommending that one, just as soon as I find the time to gather my thoughts and put fingers-to-keyboard.

Highly Recommended Reading: 'White Night' by Jim Butcher

A new instalment of The Dresden Files? Gimme!

White Night went straight to the top of the 'to be read' pile as soon as I opened the packet from Orbit and I ended up leaving barely a few hours between finishing the rather superb Last Argument of Kings and plunging headlong into the latest rip-roaring adventures of gumshoe-wizard-detective turned magical-guardian-of-Chicago, Harry Dresden.

And in this, the eight book in what's rapidly turning into my favourite long-running series of all time, I found author Jim Butcher to be in rather excellent form, and no mistake.

I'm not going to summarise the narrative, because there's a lot of back-story and sub-plot in White Night that has been carefully lain down in earlier parts of the series that I'd pretty much have to re-cap the whole lot to-date. Instead, I recommend that you nip out and buy, beg or borrow all eight books, then settle down for a good, long read. You should be able to get through them all in a weekend if you really put your mind to it, eh?

I will say, though, that I'm really very pleased indeed with the way the series as a whole is still growing and changing; accreting new layers of meaning and detail with each new book. There can be a risk, with these multi-episodic narrative ventures, that the author's initial enthusiasm will wane, or a particular element of the storyline will come to dominate the narrative; I'm thinking of the way the soft porn aspect of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series came to dominate and drown out most other facets of the series at round about the same stage in its development.

Not so with our man Jim Butcher and our demi-hero Harry Dresden. In White Night, there's enough in the way of ongoing continuity to provide a warm glow of familiarity for regular readers, without any of the major themes or incidents feeling too repetitious or worn-thin. In particular, this tale is blessed with the return of several favourite minor characters, some of whom haven't been seen for at least a couple of the preceding volumes.

At the same time, though, Jim Butcher has continued to expand upon his milieu, for instance with some fairly significant revelations about the state of the global situation vis-a-vis the power struggles ongoing in the supernatural spheres. He's also continuing to develop - in subtle, but significantly ways - the character of protagonist and first-person narrator Harry Dresden; ensuring that the guy remains interesting and edgy, despite eight volumes' worth of growing reader familiarity.

All of which bodes well for the twelve volumes of The Dresden Files that Jim Butcher tells us he still plans to write. He's put down plenty of potential plot-seeds and possibilities in White Night and I look forward to seeing how they blossom and bloom (bless Orbit, they're bringing out the next volume in March, in hardback... only a two-month wait!) If he can keep up the same mix of high-octane action, suspenseful intrigue, strong characterisation and effective character development, then I'll definitely remain a fan to the very end. At which point I'll hopefully find time to sit down and re-read all twenty through again. At least a couple of times...

Great stuff! Go forth! Acquire! Read!

Highly Recommended Reading: 'Last Argument of Kings' by Joe Abercrombie

A couple of days ago I finished Last Argument of Kings, the third and final part of Joe Abercrombie's debut series, The First Law. And I reckon that all in all it has been one of the most incredible, twisted, inventive and above all utterly enjoyable fantasy reading experiences I've had in a very, very long time.

Throughout The First Law Abercrombie has taken a perverse delight in herding the cherished conventions of the fantasy genre into a dank, darkened cell before gleefully waving the instruments of their interrogation before their frightened faces. The chief implements in Abercrombie's literary armoury are narrative surprise, a very dark streak of humour, an earthy and authentic use of language and dialect, a superb feel for the natural rhythms of dialogue, and an absolute focus on the individuality and humanity of his characters. No mere trope or allotted plot-coupon can stand up to such an onslaught for long. Gradual crumbling and inevitable collapse are all they have to look forward to under his tender ministrations.

And how I've loved watching him at his work.

In the first two books in the series, Abercrombie took a smattering of staple fantasy stereotypes - the wizard mentor, the ultimate barbarian warrior, the feckless nobleman, and the quest to the far corners of the world for an object of ancient object of great power and mysticism - and dragged them kicking and screaming down from their lofty perches in order to give them a bloody good going over. Without wishing to commit an act of gross spolierage, the reveal at the end of book two was such a simple yet brilliant slap in the face for bog-standard fantasy that it had me punching the air in sheer delight.

The overall result has been a series steeped in subtle yet biting satire; one that - disguised as a traditional Campbellian quest-myth fantasy - undermines the whole tired, mangy old edifice and gives it a thoroughly modern overhaul. Sadly, a few reviewers - guilty perhaps of not reading much further than the surface layers - didn't seem to quite grasp that this was what he was about; mistaking his tongue-in-cheekery for yet another stock-in-trade fantasy quest trilogy. I fear they've rather missed the point.

Volume three continues in the same quietly anarchic vein, with more over-tired tropes battered to the canvas by Abercrombie's ascerbic wit and utter disregard for the assumed sanctity of well-worn genre conventions. I could list a half dozen off the top of my head, but again, I wouldn't want to ruin the fun for anyone else.

But before you draw the conclusion that spoof and mockery are all that Abercrombie is about, I'd also like to stress a few of the many strengths that this author brings to the writing table. His descriptive prose is succinct yet vivid, his pacing is excellent, and for a writer who claims nothing but disdain for the whole world-building process, he displays a wonderful eye for establishing consistently authentic politics and social organisation within his milieu, without boring the reader to tears with info-dumping in the process. Not for him the bog-standard three-kingdom fantasy world, with completely distinct cultures, a history of intense emnity and no economic interdependence whatsover. At least you get the sense that Abercrombie's world would actually work, however little time he's spent on building it.

And to cap it all off, I'd like to highlight the great inventiveness and originality he brings to his characterisation. For evidence of that you need look no further than one particularly superb character: the Inquisitor, Sand Dan Glotka.

First introduced to us as a tortured-cripple-turned-torturer, Glotka a man seemingly without scruples, morals, mercy or much more than a shred of decency in his whole twisted frame. Yet as the series has developed so has he, into one of the most engaging, intriguing and (somewhat bizarrely) sympathetic villains that you're likely to encounter in any form of literature, within the fantasy genre or without.

In Last Argument of Kings, for me at least, Glotka is the sublime star who steals the show. And any writer who can create a character who is as repulsively, shockingly and utterly human as Glotka, then make them live so convincingly and completely in the reader's imagination... well, that writer really does have a pretty bloody special talent at their command.

Say one thing for Joe Abercrombie, say he knows how to tell a bloody good tale.

Complete 2007 Reading List

In 2007 I managed to read 41 full-length books: 34 novels or novellas and 7 short fiction collections or anthologies.

I made myself a promise at the start of the year that, knowing full well how little reading time I have available these days, I was going to try to steer myself towards titles that I thought I'd have a very good to excellent chance of enjoying as much as possible. As a result I probably didn't read quite as many new authors (or authors that were new to me, at any rate) as I could have done. I think I kept to my promise rather well, although there were two additional titles that I started but was unable to finish.

As for 2007 being my year of the short story - as I'd mused back in December 2006 - well, seven anthologies and/or collections might not be much by some folks' standards, but it's more than I've managed to read in earlier years, and it's a trend I hope to continue into this year as well. I do love a good short story well told.

I also read (or, mainly, re-read) 36 graphic novels during the course of the year, which I might or might not list separately, depending on how the whole time / inclination pans out.

But here's the full list of all 43 prose titles, in the approximate order that I read them, or attempted to read them. In a subsequent post I plan to list my actual Books of the Year selection for 2007 (better late than never), and at the same time I'll let you know which two I didn't manage to finish. Although please do feel free to amuse yourselves by guessing which two they were via the comments section, should you feel the urge... :)

Click the book titles for buying info from Amazon.co.uk (all referral fees gratefully received...) although a couple of them will go to PS Publishing and two more to Earthling Books (where applicable).

• Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie (Gollancz)
• Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill (Gollancz)
• Solaris Book of New Science Fiction ed. by George Mann (Solaris)
• The Intruders by Michael Marshall (Harper Collins)
• Black Man by Richard Morgan (Gollancz)
• The Steep Approach to Garbadale by Iain Banks (Little, Brown)
• Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton (Arrow)
• Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch (Gollancz)
• Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher (Orbit)
• The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (Gollancz)
• Spook Country by William Gibson (Penguin)
• This is Now by Michael Marshall Smith (Earthling)
• Unbecoming by Mike O'Driscoll (Elastic Press)
• Debatable Space by Philip Palmer (Orbit)
• Hunter's Moon by David Devereux (Gollancz)
• From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury (Earthlight)
• Scar Night by Alan Campbell (Tor UK)
• Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman (Headline Review)
• The Music of Razors by Cameron Rogers (Del Rey)
• Bitterwood by James Maxey (Solaris)
• No Dominion by Charlie Huston (Orbit)
• Dark Hollow by John Connolly (Coronet)
• Evil for Evil by K.J. Parker (Orbit)
• The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes (Gollancz)
• Looking For Jake by China Miéville (Macmillan)
• White Time by Margo Lanagan (Eos)
• Jigsaw Men by Gary Greenwood (PS Publishing)
• Land of the Headless by Adam Roberts (Gollancz)
• Postscripts #10 by Ed. Pete Crowther (PS Publishing)
• Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman (Penguin)
• Halting State by Charles Stross (Orbit)
• Cowboy Angels by Paul McAuley (Gollancz)
• The Servants by Michael Marshall Smith (Earthling)
• The Modern World by Steph Swainston (Gollancz)
• The Killing Kind by John Connolly (Headline)
• The Religion by Tim Willocks (Arrow)
• Dead Men's Boots by Mike Carey (Orbit)
• I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (Gollancz)
• Dusk by Tim Lebbon (Del Rey)
• Dawn by Tim Lebbon (Del Rey)
• Making Money by Terry Pratchett (Doubleday)
• The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury (Earthlight)
• Matter by Iain M Banks (Orbit)

This year I'm hoping to set aside an extra 30 minutes a day for reading, at lunchtime (to get away from the monitor if nothing else) and so I'm aiming to hit about 60 full-length books this year.

As usual I'll post Recommended Reading entries to TGF, along with occasional Reading Updates, just to help me keep track of where I'm up to, if nothing else. New Arrivals posts will likewise continue, and I'll keep an eye on things with Schedule Watch posts as and when. Just so you know... :)

Cover Artistry / Recommended Reading: 'Halting State' by Charles Stross

Via the Orbit Books website, I've just caught my first glance of the cover for the new Charles Stross novel Halting State [Amazon], which Orbit will publish later this month.

And here it is:

I read Halting State towards the end of last year and, although I didn't manage to find time to talk about it at the time (much to my annoyance), I'm jumping in late to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it and can recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good crime-solving caper that's simultaneously a bit of a laugh.

It's set in a near-ish-future Glasgow Edinburgh (and bits of Glasgow) in which Web 2.0 Wizardry - of the sort that we're all just about getting used to at the moment, and then some - has become commonplace and largely mainstream and more widely applied. So for instance: your glasses-shaped personal heads-up display will show you a) exactly where the next bus is and how far that would be from the stop you're currently standing at, and b) which of the hoodie-clad teenagers on the top-deck are red-tagged with ASBO warning flags. Very useful, if you ask me.

It's also a near-ish-future in which virtual gaming is big, big mega-business. So when a virtual robbery that takes place within one of the leading commercial game worlds it turns out to have ramifications far, far beyond the theft of a smattering of electronic loot, especially once it's linked to an actual, real, meatspace-murder.

Enter one recently-unemployed coder, one career-ladder climbing e-insurance investigator and the hapless local constabulary, un-aided, obstructed and generally made to feel unwelcome by everyone, from the M.D. of the gaming co that's been robbed, to a passing EU cybercrime special forces unit...

All in all, it's a tightly-plotted whodunnit that rattles along, and is thoroughly steeped in geek culture to boot (Paul R, James B, Ed A and definitely Joe G, you guys should definitely be reading this one if you haven't already). And there are lots of delightfully nerdy in-jokes throughout, although I have to stress that it's far from being a humour novel per se, in the sense that, say, a Tom Holt or Robert Rankin book would be. Rather, it's got the same sort of dry, chuckle-provoking wit that you get from Iain Banks at his best, or from Michael Marshall Smith's early sf novels. Think 'sarcastic semi-sentient domestic appliances', rather than 'demonically-possessed video game controllers' and you won't be far off the general tone.

The thing is, though, do you really get that impression from the cover? Don't get me wrong, having read the book I think it fits the story quite well. But then I've read the book, so I have the benefit of hindsight, and the cover isn't having to work to sell the book to me as a potential reader. I also think I know exactly which potential readers Orbit are hoping to hook with this approach to jacketing Halting State; readers of the likes of Douglas Coupland...

...which is a pretty shrewd marketing move if you ask me and one that will hopefully help to flip the book over into mainstream consciousness, with the higher sales potential that's thereby implied and that the book definitely deserves.

Although - and here's what worries me - given that Charles Stross is a well-established SF author, and that bookstores do tend to be fairly anal about the whole categorisation / shelving thing... isn't there a danger that Halting State will just be dumped into the sf section as a matter of course? And that once there, the colourful, cartoonish sprites will give it the sort of Holt / Rankin air that could put off even some readers of Stross's hardcore sf novels? What does everyone else think?

Personally, I hope that the strength of Stross's ever-growing reputation will help carry it forward regardless of placement, and that plenty of general sf readers will read good reviews (like the ones flagged by Orbit), see past the cover - if indeed they do have a problem with it at all - and give the book a go. It's certainly recommended by me, for what that's worth...

And (equally, for what it's worth) if I was in the marketing department at Orbit, I'd be sending a pack of 10 copies to the editorial departments of Wired, T3, PC Gamer and every other gadget / computer game / geek magazine in the UK (and the US* Australia as well, assuming an international launch) just to get those guys talking about it on their own message boards and blogs. Because I reckon that's where the pay-off for Halting State is going to be. But then, knowing Orbit, they'll have thought of that one already...

* My bad: the US edition is published by Ace Books, not Orbit...

Schedule Watch: Orbit, through to November 2008

The latest copy of the Orbit Books publication schedule came through from Sam Smith earlier in the week, with new titles through to November 2008. Seems like a good opportunity to pick up where I left off last time...

Glancing down the new listing, I see that Orbit are putting out a couple of new series. Well, new to the UK, anyway. The first is the Castings Trilogy by Australian author Pamela Freeman. Orbit have had great success in recent years by importing ready-published series from Down Under and releasing them in quick succession in the UK, which is a great business model for building a fan-base as it keeps the enthusiasm-levels fresh. Look for the first two of those, Blood Ties [Amazon] and Deep Water [Amazon] in June and October '08, with the third part to follow around about September '09 (according to the schedule on Pamela's website).

The second is a feisty-heroine supernatural romance type series that's already established in the US: the 'Mercedes Thompson' ("VW Mechanic and Shapechanger") books by Patricia Briggs. Moon Called [Amazon] will be first up, in June, followed by Blood Bound [Amazon] in July and Iron Kissed [Amazon] in August. Much more Jo's sort of thing that mine, I have to admit, but she does tend to throw anything really good at my head and demand that I read it, so you never know.

A few more feisty-heroine supernatural romance type titles in the offing as well, with new books from Jennifer Rardin, Lilith Saintcrow and Kelley Armstrong, so between these and the entire Gollancz Romancz list, Jo should be anticipating a full reading schedule herself next year.

But these are the titles that I'm personally looking forward to trying to shoe-horn into my reading schedule:

• Charlie Huston's new 'Joe Pitt' novel, Half the Blood of Brooklyn [Amazon] will be published in February. Good old supernatural investigation, without the excessive snogging and all the rest of that girly stuff. Much more my shot of bourbon... ;)
• The Execution Channel [Amazon] by Ken MacLeod appears in paperback in February as well. I've had the hardback on my 'godsdammit, you have got to make time for these...' shelf since publication. The paperback has to be read...
• A new Dresden Files title, Small Favour [Amazon] is out in April, the first time Orbit will have published Jim Butcher in hardback. So that's a double-dose of Harry Dresden early next year, then, what with the paperback of White Night [Amazon] appearing in January...
• Black Ships [Amazon] by debutant Jo Graham sounds like an intriguing historical fantasy: a girl with the power of oracle journeys the ancient Middle East in the company of an exiled Trojan prince... could be interesting.

That's pretty much the cream of the crop, personally speaking. And a good crop it looks like being, too, especially with the rest of the titles on the schedule - lots of new series fantasy and a few re-issues sprinkled in for good measure - weighing in as well.

Incidentally, any other publishers who happen to glance this way, by all means feel free to send me your schedules and I'll do my best to give 'em a similar once-over...

Recommended Reading: 'Dusk' and 'Dawn' by Tim Lebbon

Tim Lebbon's fantasy duology gets a definite recommendation from yours-truly: if you're a fan of dark, menacing, refreshingly cliché-free fantasy that puts an original twist on the classic tropes and has some fascinating characterisation along the way, then these are two titles that you should seriously consider.

Lebbon is primarily a horror writer - with over 20 published novel or novella-length titles to his name to-date - and in Dusk and Dawn he brings his horror writer's perspective and sensibilities to bear on the classic fantasy quest scenario. The result is a work of fantasy fiction that's midnight-dark, rock-salt gritty and bleaker than the Pennine Moors in mid-winter (I mentioned this to the author in an email. "They don't call me 'Grim Tim' for nothing!", he cheerily quipped in reply...)

His world - focusing in these two volumes on the continent of Noreela, but with hints that far distant lands lie beyond - is a pretty grim place, for a start. Three hundred years ago two psychotic, power-hungry Mages tried to take possessession of the natural magic of the land and twist it to their own ends. The land responded by withdrawing magic from the populace and as a result the natural order has been slowly decaying and dying for three centuries, until it's finally reached the crisis point that sparks the narrative.

Now, one young man might just hold the seed of magic within him; he might just be able to restore the power to the world and halt the worldwide rot, but the Mages have other ideas. After 300 years of exile in the frozen northern wastes they're intent on returning to Noreela to wreak bloody vengeance on the foes that exiled them so long ago. Because they've sensed that magic might be on the verge of return as well, and this time they want to make sure they take it for themselves, keep it, and use it to destroy everything they find in their path.

It sounds like a pretty standard fantasy scenario in many respects, but Lebbon has gone to a great deal of effort to make sure that his world is anything but fantasy-standard. There are no elves, dwarves, goblins or dragons here, nor any of the miriad cast of Tolkienesque stock stereotypes that litter so many fantasy novels.

Instead we're introduced to an assortment of weird and wonderful creatures and beasties: organic-mineral machinery, narcotic fledge demons, giant sentient tumble-weeds (which are a lot more unpleasant than they sound), sand-dwelling swarmiform nasties; a whole menagerie of twisted things that are symptomatic of a land whose spirit is dying and slowly going insane.

Through this blighted world, the main characters - for the main part as screwed-up a bunch of misfits and misanthropists as ever you're likely to find in fantasy fiction - stumble onwards towards their dimly-perceived, largely instinctive goals; lacking the bog-standard mentor-guidance that so many fantasy heroes are so conveniently provided with; lacking any incredible powers of survival above and beyond their own wits and skills.

And they need to draw on all those wits and skills to survive, beset as they are by implacable, genuinely deadly enemies on all sides: not only do they have to contend with the Mages and their Krote armies, but they also have to evade the fatal attentions of the Red Monks; an order of quasi-religious, sociopathic killers bent on eradicating all traces of magic from Noreela in order to ensure that the Mages can never be victorious.

The plot itself is tight, tense and genuinely suspenseful; right up to the denouement you really have no definite idea which way things are going to go. And that, in itself, is something of an achievement given how familiar so many readers are with the Campbellian uber-hero plot mechanism that lies at the core of so many fantasy sagas, whatever their external window-dressing.

The one thing that the first two Noreela books don't come equipped with though, is laughs. As I've said already, this is dark, grim stuff; reading both volumes in one sitting might actually be too much, however tempted you might be. And by page 300 of volume two I guarantee your psyche will be crying out for something, anything to lighten the tone, but Lebbon is relentless; once again demonstrating his horror writers' skills by driving you to the edge of despair along with the characters in the book.

So, to conclude: yes, I'd recommend Dusk and Dawn if you like your fantasy dark and egdy, but do have a Terry Pratchett - or a Robert Rankin, or a Tom Holt, or something - on hand for light relief afterwards. You might just need it...

Author Info: www.timlebbon.net / www.noreela.com
Ordering Info: Amazon.co.uk - Dusk / Dawn
Publication Info: Dusk - Bantam US, Jan 2006 / Dawn - Bantam US, March 2007

Disclosure: Tim Lebbon is a website client of mine, yes. But I only ever call 'em the way I find 'em.

New Arrivals - mid December '07

Another trip to the post office at the weekend, and another personal selection of titles of note from those in the the P.O. Box this time around:

Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie

The third and final part of Mr Abercrombie's The First Law, one of the most refreshingly lo-fi fantasy series I've read for years; a wonderful blend of down-and-dirty action, skullduggery, treachery, intrigue and a very dark, witty humour throughout.

I can honestly say that I've enjoyed every word of the saga so far, and can't wait to get stuck into the denouement, which I know has already garnered very positive mentions from some of my genre-blogging compadres.

Just the small Matter of the new Iain M. Banks to finish first, and then I'll be on with this one over the Yuletide break. Will report back anon, and I'll be gutted if this one doesn't make my Books of the Year for 2007 (but hey, no pressure..!)

The Escapement by K.J. Parker

Another trilogy-concluder and another prime example of exactly the sort of character-driven, plot-rich, trope-twisting, wit-infused, magic-free fantasy writing that I find myself enjoying more and more as time goes by; from another of my very favourite authors, too.

I do have to admit though, that on reading the second part of the Engineer saga, Evil for Evil, earlier in the year, I did experience a momentary worry that Parker may have gone off the boil, just a little. Evil for Evil was very long (600+ pages, iirc) and although it was intriguingly convoluted, many of the twists and turns seemed to lead in circles around one or two developmental loci; as a result I didn't feel that the characters or plot developed quite as much as they could have over the course of so large a book.

But The Escapement is reassuringly shorter, weighing in at 407 pages, and I'm hoping that it will be much pithier, and sharper, than its predecessor; everything is now set up for the trigger to be sprung, the fully-formed mechanism to leap into life and the final twist-action to be engaged. Hopefully I'll find time for this one shortly after finishing Last Argument of Kings (although I'll probably try to read a couple of issues of Postscripts in-between, as a palate-refresher...)

Classical Comics: Henry V (Original Text) adapted from William Shakespeare

The folks at Classical Comics very kindly sent me a copy of the full-text version of their debut publication: a graphic adaptation of Bill Shakespeare's Henry V.

If you're not familiar with the Classical Comics project, check out this item on UKSFBN, which explains how they're working to bring classic works of literature to a wider audience by means of publishing two - or in Shakespeare's case, three - editions of a particular title; the idea being that reluctant readers, or those uncomfortable with tackling no-modern English from a standing start - can begin with a simplified, 'Plain Text' edition and then work their way up to the 'Full Text' at their own pace.

And I do love a bit of Shakespeare, me, having studied Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet at school and found it surprisingly accessible, once you get your head around the archaic - yet in places utterly enchanting - linguistic gymnastics required for full appreciation. So I'm looking forward to tucking into Agincourt etc. next time I have a bit of free head-space...

Honourable Mentions:

I'd absolutely love to find the time to read the latest issues of Interzone, Black Static and Murky Depths - all of which have turned up this month - but alas, I'm still working my way through the latest issue of Uncut (I'm a subscriber, so I have to read that one...) so they'll just have to wait a bit longer, I'm afraid.

Hey, I know, I'll sneak 'em into the suitcase for the trip to the in-laws' over Xmas, see what can be done... I'm sure nobody will mind if I read a bit at the dinner table next Tuesday, eh? :)

Recommended Reading: 'The Ticking' by Renee French

File this one under 'odd... very odd'. The Ticking is a hardback graphic novel (in the sense of it being an illustrated story with panels and short captions) by cartoonist and illustrator Renée French.

It's a very sweet, sad, and somewhat disquieting story about a lad called Edison Steelhead, who is born with a hereditary facial deformity and whose father, as a result, takes him away to be raised on a remote island, far from what he assumes will be the mockery and laughter of a cruel and intolerant society.

The rest of the story tells of how Edison grows up, becomes an illustrator, becomes brother to a chimpanzee, and eventually runs away from home to avoid the same plastic surgery that his father had in order to be normalised. Which isn't so much of a spoiler as it might sound, because the plot really isn't the point of this simply told yet complex tale, which is much more an invitation to further thought than a mere comic narrative.

Full marks also to publisher Top Shelf, who really know how to grab a potential reviewer's attention. The book was packaged rather intriguingly for a start (excuse the ropey photography, I'm hoping to improve after a quick impromptu lighting lesson the other week):

...and inside the wrapping I found two further Renée French pocket books: a short tale about a gang of bizarre little rodents called Micrographica (a print version of the online comic featuring the same fuzzy characters), as well as Edison Steelhead's Lost Portfolio: Exploratory Studies of Girls and Rabbits which is, if anything, even stranger than The Ticking itself.

Definitely one for fans of indie comics, pencil illustrations and weird little stories that you somehow can't seem to get out of your head for quite some time after you've read them...

Happy Cthulumas!

My guaranteed-best-of-the-year seasonal greetings card arrived early this year, and it's another corker from Les Edwards (in his Edward Miller guise), which manages to skillfully combine his love of Lovecraftian horror with the seasonal tradition of pantomine...

All together now: "It's behiiiind yoooouuuu!"

Cover Artistry: 'The Ten Thousand' by Paul Kearney (Solaris, UK)

A couple of weeks ago, Solaris Books unveiled the cover of the forthcoming (September 2008) Paul Kearney novel The Ten Thousand [Amazon] over on the Solaris blog.

Here's the cover art, with illustration by Chris McGrath:

I love the overall atmosphere that Chris has created here: the colour, tone and texture of the piece is just terrific, as is the depth of the image; with several layers of action and interaction, giving the impression of an ongoing action sequence. I like the overall design as well: the composition and layout adds to and enhances the aesthetic of the cover; typography is suitably strong and stark, not fussy or over-fancy.

Paul Kearney writes very gritty, often dark epic / heroic fantasy, with very strong military content and I think this whole package reflects that general approach very well; certainly much better than any the earlier covers for his Monarchies of God series, which played up the fantasy elements much more, or his Sea Beggars books, which I think maybe tried too hard to play down the fantasy elements and disguise themselves as nautical fiction.

I will admit that when I first saw this cover - I run Paul's website, and he sent me the cover a few weeks back to have a look at - I was rather dubious about pretty-boy on the right-hand side there. But I'm sure there are all sorts of perfectly valid, marketing-driven reasons why a cover ought to include a jolly good-looking chap like that. Maybe there are particular market segments that the publisher wants to appeal to, or maybe the cover is also intended for use in the US market, where character portraits are much more commonly used.

But still... surely that guy is just too darned pretty to have fought in and survived the sort of conflicts that the hardened mercenary warriors in The Ten Thousand will have been involved in? Then again, I haven't read the book yet, so maybe he looks exactly right. We'll see.

Although, with reference to my previous post, I do think that putting the main character in a full-face helm, like the ones the figures in the background are all wearing, would have been better. That would have allowed the reader to associate more strongly with the imagery; imagining themselves inside that helm, marching into battle on some far-flung field... rather than wondering who the male model is, and how he managed to wander into the middle of a battle without getting his stubble-jawed head lopped off...

So, to summarise: a very good cover indeed, with terrific artwork and great atmospheric effect. Well-designed and nicely laid out; only slightly let down by the portrait effect and the male-model subject matter. But I'm sure I'll get over it, because I've read the first few chapters of The Ten Thousand, courtesy of Mr K, and the story so far is shaping up very, very nicely indeed...

Cover Theory: Putting a Face to it.

Here's a question for you: do you think it's a good idea, or a bad idea, to have character portraits - specifically clear, distinct faces - on book covers?

My current theory, which I'd welcome your thoughts on, is this:

I think I'm right in saying that readers tend (however consciously or subconsciously) to identify with the main character of the novel they're reading. In doing so - by picturing themselves in that lead role and mentally role-playing their way through the narrative - they increase their sense of identification and association with the book. Which is a Good Thing, yes?

But a face is a very strong indicator of personality and individuality. So if you put a face on a book cover, won't that create the sense of entity and persona for that character that's distinct and removed from that of the reader? And wouldn't that be a psychological obstacle to the identification of the reader with the character, and result in the lessening of the reader's involvement in the novel?

In which case, surely publishers should avoid portraying characters on the covers of their books? Particularly if it's one of the principle p.o.v. characters, and definitely if it's the main, first-person narrator of the story. Otherwise there's a risk that readers won't immerse themselves fully in the narrative, and won't form such a strong associative bond with the series, or with the author's ongoing body of work. Not such a Good Thing.

Or am I reading too much into the idea of automatic reader-as-character association?

I do know it's something that I tend to do. One of the (many) reasons I'm such a big fan of The Dresden Files (covers by Orbit, example to the right reflected throughout the series: no characters in evidence whatsoever) used to be that I just knew I'd look damn good in that duster coat... but when I read the last installment, I just saw the guy from the TV series (which creates an even bigger dissociation problem than a character on a book jacket, for obvious reasons) in my mind's eye. I was no longer reading the adventures of me-as-Harry-Dresden; I was watching a new TV episode in my head, instead.

Then again, not everyone will have the same subjective experience when reading a book as I do, obviously. And anyway, isn't the quality of the prose, the degree to which the descriptive writing evokes the sense of character, far more likely to generate a sense of deep involvement than any image on the cover?

I have to admit that it's been a personal bugbear of mine for years; one I do keep coming back to. And for now I'm still on the side of 'faces on covers = bad'.

But what do you think?

Daniel Abraham reports on the 'Epic fantasy Symposium'

Ed Ashby points me in the direction of some particularly interesting reading from the blog of fantasy novelist Daniel Abraham, whose debut Shadow and Betrayal [Amazon], the first part of The Long Price Quartet has recently been published in the UK by Orbit Books and is currently sitting on my to-be-read shelf, demanding my attention.

He's currently presenting the conclusions of a recent meeting-of-minds, dubbed the 'Epic Fantasy Symposium', that featured four and a half hours of conversation between George R.R. Martin, S.M. Stirling, Melinda Snodgrass, Walter Jon Williams, Ian Tregillis, Ty Franck and himself.

Plenty of deep thought (and food for more) on the foundations, tropes, characteristics, strengths and weaknesses of epic fantasy (note: epic fantasy specifically, as opposed to 'fantasy' as wider genre umbrella).

New Arrivals - early November '07

I'm showing no respect for chronological continuity, I know, but as I was compiling the list of the last couple of weeks' worth of incoming books for the next UKSFBN Books Received item (during the England match on Wednesday, and my musings on that utter bloody fiasco are here, if anyone's even remotely interested...) I re-spotted a few titles that first caught my eye when they came in a couple of weeks ago:

The Family Trade by Charles Stross

Years ago I had an idea for a fantasy saga about a clan of merchant adventurers, which - what with me being a somewhat feckless lad and possessing little actual skill at prose-crafting - I never actually got around to writing. Still, the whole merchant adventurers concept has continued to intrigue me and I think there's some definite mileage in it. Having said that, Raymond E. Feist rather fouled it up in Rise of a Merchant Prince, but I'm hoping that Charles Stross will have made a better fist of it...

This is part one of the Merchant Princes series, and it's taken a while to come out in the UK, as Orbit have preferred to focus on Stross' science fiction, but Tor UK have finally taken the plunge. And so, on to the 'to-be-read' shelves it goes.

Black Magic Woman by Justin Gustainis

Okay, this one's got an intriguingly neo-noir cover by Chris McGrath, for starters. The chap in the shadows is presumably Quincey Morris, supernatural investigator, and I'm guessing that the lass in femme fatale mode is Libby Chastain, white witch, and - in the first of what will presumably grow into an ongoing series - they're trying to free a family from the curse of a practitioner of the dark arts.

Sounds familiar? Well, it probably does, because there is a lot of this stuff about at the moment, obviously. But I am partial to a bit of the old supernatural detectivery à la Jim Butcher, so if this one turns out to be anywhere near as well-written and entertaining as The Dresden Files then I'll be happy to add another to my growing list of authors to watch out for. All depends on how soon I get the chance to give it a proper perusal...

Martin Martin's On the Other Side (UK Proof) by Mark Wernham

Okay, this one has come right out of left-field. Ignoring the fact that the book is dis-graced with what has to be one the worst book covers I've seen in many a long year (I don't know what effect the designers at Jonathan Cape were aiming for, but they seem to have hit 'self-published crap' smack, bang on the head...) the premise sounds like it might have a bit of entertainment potential.

The story is set in an anarchic and dystopian near-future, a government spy is ordered to infiltrate a sinister cult. What ensues is apparently "an astonishing and crazed debut" that "breathes new life into the dystopian tradition ... a skewed and frightening vision of the not-too distant future, but also an unforgettably funny one." The prologue (just read it, only a page and a half) is suitably mysterious as well.

Okay, I'll bite. No idea when, but I'll give this one a go at some point, see what happens. Why not?

New Arrivals - mid November '07

Here's the pick of the crop from my latest trip to the P.O. Box:

Swiftly by Adam Roberts (UK Proof)

A rather intriguing alternate history-meets-literature premise this time out from Adam R: following Gulliver's return from his well-publicised Travels, the British Empire has grown rich on the slave labour of Lilliputians; but France has enlisted the aid of the Brobdingnagians and launched an invasion of the British Isles.

I'm still waiting on confirmation from Adam, but I think the novel is an extended riff on the 'Swiftly' tale first published on SciFiction.com in 2002, which would certainly explain why the new novel has the same title as Adam's Night Shade Books anthology, in which 'Swiftly' (the story) also appears. Confused? You might be...

Shooting War by Anthony Lappé and Dan Goldman

I've been looking forward to seeing this graphic novel adaptation of the original webcomic ever since Joe Gordon heralded it a year ago and I was fortunate enough to be sent a copy by UK publisher Weidenfeld & Nicholson.

It's a vicious satire on America's war in the Middle East, set in 2011 and told from the point of view of a video-blogger who becomes caught up in the ongoing media frenzy after he captures the terrorist bombing of his apartment block on his blog and is catapulted to stardom as a result.

I read a couple of the early webcomic installments and thoroughly enjoyed them. Roll on a bit of free time.

Matter by Iain M. Banks (UK Proof)

Yes, I too have been blessed with a copy of the proof that everyone's been bragging about receiving, and which I'm jolly and properly grateful for my copy of.

Matter is the new Culture novel and I didn't realise that it's the first for seven years, so no wonder it's being billed as the 'science fiction publishing event of 2008'.

All I have to do now is find a slot in the old reading schedule for 593 pages of brand new Banks. Shouldn't be too much of a chore... :)

The Red Wolf Conspiracy by Robert V.S. Redick (UK Proof)

I was first told about this one a while back by Robert's agent, John Jarrold, who very klindly sent me over a couple of proof chapters by email, which I thought were very promising indeed. Gollancz's Simon Spanton has subsequently bought the trilogy for UK publication and now the UK proofs are out...

Judging by my earlier first impressions, this weird-ish (although it could of course get much weirder) fantasy, set on a legendary, 600-year-old sailing ship, should appeal to fans of Scott Lynch, China Miéville, Alan Campbell and co. This one's heading towards the top of the 'to-be-read' list and I'll let you know when I've had a crack.

Gorgeous cover art by Edward Miller as well, which is always a bonus.

Plus:

Black Man by Richard Morgan

The UK paperback of Richard Morgan's Black Man is definitely worth picking up if you haven't already got a copy of the hardback. Highly recommended.

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Good Omens is one of my very favourite comic novels, which I must have read four or five times already. Very nice indeed to see it republished in a handsome hardback edition (and a bargain at only £9.99 - less on Amazon.co.uk, of course...)

Nearly back on an even keel…

The last few weeks have been a bit intense, both work-wise and otherwise. Following the recent launch of the all-new PS Publishing webstore, as well as the Wordpress-enabled re-launch of John Berylne's Works of Tim Powers fan-site and the re-vamped version of Richard Morgan's homepage, Jo and I promptly jetted off on holiday for a week, to the quite fantastic Mediterranean island of Malta.

We had a fantastic time, but alas, we also received some sad news on our last day there; suffice to say that a family funeral ensued, which we both attended this week just gone. All of which has resulted in something of a backlog - as you'd imagine - although I think I'm pretty much back on top of things now. So much so that I managed to make time today to put together my new, personal blog site at www.darrenturpin.me.uk.

So from now on, that's where I'll be posting all my music, humour, movie and life etc. related posts, leaving The Genre Files free for more bookish material; like the pile of recommended reading that I want to post at some point. I'm also looking at my work schedule in order to free up more time to work on UKSFBN each day, which should result in more regular posts, or at least fewer content gaps. And of course, any work-related material will be posted to www.darrenturpin.co.uk.

Oh, and the eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that I've started signing posts as 'Darren' rather than 'Ariel', both here and over at UKSFBN. The reason? Well, 'Ariel' is an old nick-name from high school that stuck through University and my early days in bookselling. I always liked it, because it was quirky and memorable for folks on the other end of a phone; especially when I rang up busy publicists to blag review copies and author interviews for 'The Alien Has Landed'. But now I'm working freelance I think that using my given name is more professional. And something else happened recently to convince me that 'quirky' isn't always best.

My post on the Long Tail economics of genre fiction got a bit of blogosphere coverage; it was even picked up on by Lou Anders, a US-based editor whose work I have an enormous amount of respect for, which was naturally most gratifying... until Lou made the (not entirely unreasonable) assumption that I was a lady.

Not a problem, easily remedied, and indeed, Paul Cornell actually point out the gender-switch in the comment thread to Lou's post and Lou made the correction. But along the way, he replied to Paul's comment, saying: "next you'll be telling me Ariel doesn't have a tail and live under da sea..."

Ba-dum, tish!

You know what? When someone you respect - and whose opinion of you could potentially be quite important from a work-related point-of-view - makes 'Little Mermaid' jokes about your current nom-de-nick then that's probably a signal that it's time to stop being quite so quirky and focus on the professional instead.

So, 'Ariel' is being phased out, at least on anything that carries a public profile that could reflect on me professionally. Although of course I will still answer to my nick-name when talking to anyone that knows me (Jo won't call me anything else...), and I'll probably still sign emails as 'Ariel' from force of habit. But there you go. A lesson learned.

Genre fiction marketing follow-up - Lou Anders and Mark Chadbourn

Sorry folks, another long, train-of-thought essay of exactly the sort I promised myself I wasn't going to get overly involved in any more. But then, there have been a couple of very interesting follow-up posts to my last post on George Mann's original thoughts about the apparently essential dilemma of marketing genre fiction to either the masses or the hardcore fans, which I felt I had to add to.

Firstly, 'The Big Book Cover Post: Wizards and Spaceships' from Lou Anders of Pyr Books; another specialist genre imprint that I have a huge amount of respect for.

Lou makes a number of good points, a couple of which I'd particularly like to comment on:

"Personally, I do not like the move away from illustration to design that I see coming out from a lot of houses (though it has its place for individual books - I'm talking about a general trend). I think to forgo illustration is to sacrifice one of the core strengths of SF&F and one of its unique selling points."

Generally, I prefer well-illustrated genre fiction book covers to ones that are produced with a strictly 'graphic design' aesthetic in mind. But that's just a personal preference, and doesn't hold true 100% of the time; I've seen some striking and well-designed 'graphic' covers as well. And as fantasy author Joe Abercrombie points out in the comments section of Lou's post: "I don't know that the wider audience ... are necessarily put off by genre covers, but they certainly are put off by REALLY BAD covers."

Absolutely right. It applies to hardcore genre fans and probably tenfold to the general reader. Genre fiction book covers ought to be a demonstration of self-confidence and celebration, yes. They should unashamedly wear their genre hearts on their sleeves, absolutely. If you're selling a book about dragons and want to attract the attention dragon-fans, then a dragon on the cover is a good idea? Just make sure it's a stylish, well-illustrated dragon that has a measure of genuine artistic merit in its own right, not some cartoonish, lumpen sketch, or even the dragon-fans might say no.

And what if the book has some genre elements, but has the potential to appeal to a wider audience - through the exceptional quality of the prose, or the range of themes, concepts and sub-texts the author explores, or the incredible catharsis inherent in the principle character's life story or situation, etc. - what if it's a whole lot more than a simple scion quest / space war adventure story? How do you strike the balance; ensure you don't cross that oh, so tricky invisible line? Lou Anders has an answer:

"...you do so neither by hiding / omitting your genre elements nor presenting them in an off-putting, garish manor, but by presenting them in a mature, intriguing, attractive, inclusive, compelling 21st century light."

Which, by the way, I think applies equally to everything from the cover blurb to the author photo on the inside sleeve to the content of the accompanying press release that's sent out with review copies, as much as it does to the cover art itself.

Returning to cover art, specifically, Lou also quotes from an off-thread conversation with illustrator / artist / designer John Picacio who sums up the reason why the genre really does need to give itself a shot in the arm when it comes to self-confidence and belief:

"The field must visually celebrate itself, rather than run away from itself ... When sf/fantasy publishing shows an insecurity about its visual strengths, that insecurity rubs off negatively not only on our audiences, but in the broader media, and we push ourselves backwards every time we do that."

If we, as genre readers and genre fans, stopped worrying so much about what the wider mainstream media thought about our books - taking it to the extreme: ignoring the mainstream media completely and focusing almost entirely on the specialist genre presses, blogs, webzines, print 'zines - then the mainstream media will soon get bored and leave us the hell alone to enjoy ourselves in peace, right?

Well, fantasy / horror author Mark Chadbourn thinks this could be a dangerous road to go down, and says so in 'Selling Fantasy by the Pound' on his JackofRavens.com blog.

Mark was a journalist for many years before he became a full-time fiction writer and also writes for TV here in the UK, so he's seen the impact of the aforementioned Long Tail economics on three media channels: music, print and television.

Mark's main argument against a policy of appealing to the core genre fiction fans centres on his experience of the music industry:

"...if it [the fan-focused approach] was applied to the whole industry I would have real problems. In the music industry, where I worked for a while, the marketeers have struggled. By focusing on the tribalist music fan that has emerged over the last twenty years, they have had trouble gaining breakout hits from genres. Attention shifted to marketing bland fare that would appeal to all tastes to gain those mainstream hits, and sales have fallen dramatically (yes, I know there are many other factors, but this is a core concern)."

Which brings in an earlier discussion on 'quality fantasy', which was actually sparked by another Chadbourn post, 'Are RPGs killing fantasy?', in which he called for fantasy writers to embrace their weird side and distance themselves from the clichés and standardised fantasy tropes made overly familiar by a plethora of fantasy-themed computer games.

Can you achieve all those aims at once? Can you write high-quality, literary genre fiction that's successfully marketed to a core audience of fans, yet still has enough break-out potential to escape the genre-ghetto and achieve mass-market sales?

Mark thinks you can:

"I love fantasy, science fiction and horror. I believe these three genres are appealing to mainstream tastes, if some way can be found to communicate their values to the casual browser. I'm afraid that an across-the-board retreat to the 'core fan model' will ghettoize them even further and lead to a long-term decline. The best way for the industry, I think is - to use music industry analogy - hardcore labels for the purist, and general labels to attract new users."

Well, surely this model already exists within the publishing industry, and has for years? If you'll excuse the lengthy aside and apologies to anyone not specifically mentioned by name:

At one extreme you have the very definite 'hardcore' independent presses - such as the UK's Tartarus Press, who cater for very specialist niches. Moving up the scale you find successful niche-indies like Pendragon (horror fiction in all its guises), Telos (TV guides and genre novellas) and Elastic (genre short fiction collections and anthologies). Then there are larger indies - PS Publishing in the UK, Subterranean Press, Cemetery Dance et. al. in the US - who produce a wider range of authors and formats across the whole spectrum of genres, and also larger specialists such as Titan (UK graphic novels).

Crossing to the 'corporate' ladder we start with smaller imprints, whose publication range may actually be narrower than the larger indies, but whose financial backing means they can usually spend more on advertising, marketing and online promotion and so reach a wider audience. Solaris are one such: self-declared as a midlist imprint, still relatively small but growing strongly and with the financial muscle of Games Workshop and the Black Library publishing operation behind them, backing up their online know-how.

Around about the same level are the genre titles that are published by major corporates who don't have a specific genre imprint - Penguin, Transworld, Hodder, Headline and co. all put out titles with varying degrees of blatant genre-ness as part of their overall fiction lists.

Finally, we get to the larger, longer-established, specific genre imprints of major corporate publishing houses, including HarperCollins' Voyager, Orion's Gollancz Books and Little Brown's Orbit. The latter, with the recent launch of Orbit US and Orbit Australia, now serves the three major English-speaking markets (four, including Canada via the US), giving it immense reach and influence. And they all bring a highly effective mix of established bestsellers and innovative new talent to the market.

Thanks to Gollancz and Orbit in particular, a number of new genre authors have been published for the first time in the past couple of years, and others who have established themselves in their local markets (Australian author Margo Lanagan) or via the independent presses (Joe Hill with his debut collection 20th Century Ghosts from PS, now a Gollancz author) have subsequently been introduced to a much wider audience; some of those authors even making national bestseller lists in the process (Trudi Canavan, for instance).

So surely, with that sort of established mix of 'hardcore' and 'general' labels, it's just a question of the writer deciding which audience their work is most likely to appeal to and then approaching a publisher who is geared towards publishing for that audience?

Well, of course it's nowhere near as simple as that, and Mark Chadbourn has a few further words of warning for the genre writer:

"But that is a fiendish and crippling trap for the writer. Once you establish yourself in one pool or the other it will be very hard to crossover and gain, on the one hand, the new readers and wider sales that sustain your career, and, on the other, credibility that is just as valuable a commodity in the internet-empowered world."

So it sounds like you can either - as a genre author - choose to write specialised, credibility-rich, literary fiction, knowing full well that you'll probably end up appealing to a much smaller pool of potential readers (writing for the Long Tail audience), or narrow your horizons; dumbing-down in the process, in order to appeal to the RPG-influenced, bland-fare consuming mass market and (hopefully) laugh all the way to the bank (moving your work away from the 'long tail' and into the 'short head', where the bestsellers feed).

Of course, you could try do both at the same time. Many authors do, either openly or - I'm sure - pseudonymously.

Or you could try to find another way: by helping the readership to raise its standards; to expect, to want, to demand much more from their genre fiction, and thereby move the mainstream audience closer to the credible, literary end of the spectrum. In other words, expanding the middle ground between 'long tail' and 'short head' (it would help if I had time to draw the graph, I'll try to add one at a later date) and creating greater potential for higher quality fiction to thrive.

If the readership demands richer, better quality genre fiction, and the readership then votes with its credit cards and buys more of it, then the publishers of the world will respond by publishing more of it. And I know for a fact that this would make a lot of genre fiction publishers immensely happy.

Anyhow, I'm going to go away and ruminate some more, see if I can pull a few thoughts together into something resembling a reasonably coherent framework. Or a polemic. Or another rambling essay (most likely). Won't happen for a while yet though... far too much interesting work happening right now, and an imminent and much-needed holiday to enjoy as well.

Feel free to comment away if the urge takes you. I'll try to keep track, but can't promise anything like a coherent response for a couple of weeks or so...

Essential reading: George Mann on packaging the SF & Fantasy genres

George Mann of Solaris Books has posted an insightful piece on the Solaris approach towards the design, packaging and presentation of their genre fiction book covers, in a feature called 'Marrying Authors to their Market: a Genre Perspective', over on the Solaris Books main website.

He opens with a couple of paragraphs that neatly explain the two principle strategies that are open to genre publishers when it comes to choosing a cover design, along with the primary risks associated with each:

1) Attempt to reach as wide an audience as theoretically possible - primarily by 'neutralising' the cover in order to avoid scaring away potential mainstream book-buyers - which runs the risk that the book might get lost in a no-mans'-land somewhere between the two.

2) Target the 'core' genre fiction audience - by making it blatantly obvious through the design of the book cover that this is a genre title with little or no pretensions to mainstream appeal whatsoever - which runs the risk of limiting the sales potential to a relatively small segment of the overall market.

Solaris Books, since their inception and launch earlier this year, have stuck determinedly to option 2) and it's an approach which has paid handsome dividends, as George tells us:

"For Solaris, this approach has so far served us proud. The list is defiantly midlist, aimed at a core readership, and as both individuals and publishers we revel in the genre, in all its aspects and forms – novels, movies, manga, comics. We celebrate our inner geeks. Although we recognise there are other successful ways to package books and appeal to readers, we've chosen to go in this direction. Our books look like science fiction and fantasy novels, with all the stereotypical trappings, and we've received a great deal of praise from both critics and readers for our celebration and support of the genre. Our lists – both Solaris and The Black Library – go from strength-to-strength, and for now, our strategy remains steadfast: we publish books for SF/F fans, for the SF/F section of the bookshop."

Of course, just sticking any old space ship or dragon on a book cover won't guarantee success. You still have to come up with a design that's striking, appeals to the right audience, and yet isn't so crushingly, embarrassingly awful that even the most die-hard genre fiction fan will be too embarrassed to be seen reading the book on public transport. Which is something else that Solaris have managed quite brilliantly to-date, with a selection of (imho) extremely good covers, like these:

I think this is absolutely the right approach to take, and the roaring success of Solaris is something that every genre publisher should be paying attention to. But the 'packaging and cover design' riff only tells half the story.

We live in an age of increasingly influential Long Tail economics (see Wikipedia for a useful summary: "products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough"), and genre fiction is a product area that's massively impacted by the principles of the theory.

As students of the Long Tail know and as Chris Anderson makes clear in his book of the same title (which, incidentally, every publisher and author working in genre fiction needs to read): in this Internet-enabled information age, data on the variety and wide availability of a range of products in a given product area is - for practical purposes - both limitless and free.

From the point of view of the Long Tail audience for a particular product, the most pressing task is therefore to filter that vast flood of data in order to select the products that offer the best fit for the customer's needs. In short: they need to boost the signal-to-noise ratio to the point where they can reach an informed purchasing decision. Similarly, from the point of view of the producer, the trick is to somehow rise above the vast sea of info-noise; to make their product stand out and be noticed, yet to do so in a manner that emphasises its authentic appeal to the potential customer.

One of the best ways to accomplish both these tasks is via the medium of key, relevant information aggregators; those processes and processors who cut through the noise, pick out the best products on offer and then tell other people about them. Customers need to find trusted aggregators whose taste coincides with their own and who can be relied upon to tell it to them straight. Producers need to develop strong relationships with those same aggregators, in order to keep their products in focus and secure as much quality, targeted coverage as possible.

In the case of genre fiction, the aggregators take the shape of genre news websites, regular bloggers, knowledgeable booksellers, reputable critics and reviewers. Publishers and authors who understand the theories and forces involved are already tapping the ability of these aggregators to filter, disseminate and broadcast their knowledge-backed recommendations to a targeted, relevant, interested audience, and as a result they are driving forward sales of their titles.

George and the Solaris crew understand the Long Tail principle (along with a whole bunch of others to do with permission-based marketing, inherent remarkability and concepts like the ideavirus) which is why you'll always see them at genre conventions and gatherings of fans, why they maintain a regularly-updated and interesting blog (When Gravity Fails) and why if you're a reviewer, or a blogger, or a web 'zine editor, and you drop them a line, there's a good chance - if your site is professionally presented, or well enough regarded in terms of its Technorati authority, or if your enthusiasm is just incredibly obvious and obviously genuine - that they'll get right back to you with whatever information you need, perhaps a review copy of the book you're interested in, maybe even a promise to pass on your questions to one of their authors for an email interview.

All this is because at Solaris they know that by reaching out to those key aggregators they're potentially talking to many more (two, or three, or a dozen, or a few thousand) interested, enthusiastic, switched-on potential book-buyers. As a result, you'll find reviews and general coverage of Solaris titles all over the blogosphere and wider genre-flavoured corners of the Internet: 40,600+ hits on Google for "Solaris Books", and counting...

The Solaris crew aren't alone out there, either: there are publishers and business managers and publicists at many other independent presses - and even some of the larger genre imprints - who have an equal eye for and appreciation of the possibilities on offer. But alas, some of those guys are hamstrung by the corporate rule-book; locked into dictated, old-school ways of doing business which haven't changed much since Amazon appeared on the scene; which is why they might not seem quite so active (although dammit, they're doing their best).

And then there are those guys who, for whatever reason - sheer disinterest, the corporate grind, a genuine lack of time to read and re-train, higher-ups who don't give a shit about genre fiction and don't care who knows it, whatever - just don't seem to get it. If you're a genre author who's stuck with one of those guys as your publisher / editor / publicist, then all is not lost; but you probably are going to have to roll your sleeves up and get stuck in yourself. But then, that's no bad thing either, providing you do it well and do it with enthusiasm and genuine interest.

Anyhow, to return (at last) to the original topic of cover-design and offer a quick summary:

As a matter of policy, Solaris Books have declared that they're very firmly targeted at the 'core' genre market, and the 'core' genre market has responsed well, by buying Solaris titles. But I think the essential 'genre-ness' - and high quality - of their cover design is just one key ingredient of their overall recipe for success; their aesthetic excellence is backed up by the whole gestalt attitude of everyone at Solaris Books, one that says: "We're genre fiction fans, and we're publishing for genre fiction fans, which is why we want to talk to them and find out about the sort of books they want to read; so we can make sure that those are the books we publish..."

I think it's a great policy, indeed quite possibly the only one that really makes any sort of Long Tail sense. After all, why waste money, effort and a book's increasingly limited and precious exposure-time (one senior genre fiction editor revealed at a panel at this year's Fantasycon that most UK bookstores now only give titles a six week lead-time before they insist on returning them to the publisher for full credit) on a scatter-shot approach that you hope will result in increased sales and market-share, when instead you could focus all your energy on a key segment of the overall audience; one that's that's already receptive and ready to hear what you have to say?

In short: until you know you've talked to as many fans and regular readers of a given book's relevant genre(s) as you can possibly reach - as many interested, excited, purchase-pre-disposed, potential book-buyers as you can find - then why on Earth would you want to take the gamble of trying to talk to just anyone? Especially when it ought to be painfully obvious by now that most non genre-fiction readers and fans just aren't listening...

So, yes, I look forward to seeing many more fine and very definite genre fiction titles with well-designed, eye-catching genre-fiction artwork on their covers, from Solaris and all the other publishers with a similarly switched-on outlook. I hope those same books will continue to fly off the bookstore shelves and online catalogues. And, speaking as one of those aforementioned information aggregators, I hope to continue to play my own small part in that process...

A short pause to reflect and reorganise

With the launch of the long-awaited PS Publishing webstore this week I ought to be able to find a bit more room in my head for other things (although there's still plenty of work to be done for PS and I certainly won't be slacking). As a result, I think the time has come for me to put a long-pondered blog reorganisation into effect.

Here's the plan:

The Genre Files from now on will be all about the books [resists the urge to add 'baby!'] and the graphic novels, and the authors, and anything interesting that that's going on in the world of genre publishing and book marketing that particularly grabs my attention. I might even hold forth on the subject of effective book marketing from time to time and, who knows, maybe even post a link round-up or two... oh, and what do you think of the new decor? Stylish, no?

www.DarrenTurpin.co.uk is my recently set-up (but not yet fully functional) work-related blogfolio (if I can get away with that) and that's where I'll be talking about the work I'm doing with all my clients: authors, publishers, SMEs, the lot. I'll be adding a number of short case studies as I go along as well.

UK SF Book News is just over a year old and is ticking over nicely at the moment, with what seems to be a pretty good mix of shorter news-bite length announcement / press release / what's on items interspersed with longer mini-interview and featurette pieces, and I hope the situation will be able to continue pretty much indefinitely.

And finally... at some point I'll be setting up a new blog at www.darrenturpin.me.uk (unless I can think of a more interesting - and available - domain name in the meantime; one that isn't quite so narcissistic and navel-gazey, perhaps). But anyhow, that's where I'll be talking about all the other stuff I find interesting: music, food & drink, football, photography, art, gardening, nature... ah, hell, whatever I feel like. I'll be thinking of it more as an aide-memoire and extended memo-to-self than any sort of broadcast piece and if nobody else ends up reading it then I really won't mind.

So that's the plan. Still very busy at the moment though, and with a week's holiday coming up fast, so it might be a month or so before all the pieces are in place. But so be it.

More follow-ups and reaction to the current 'quality fantasy' debate

UK fantasy author Joe Abercrombie has added his own thoughts on the topic, highlighting George R.R. Martin's ongoing Song of Ice and Fire series as a good example of how a concentrated, focused dose of innovation within a narrative that's structured on familiar fantasy themes and tropes can produce impressive results. As Joe says: "Epic fantasy is, in book terms, extremely successful and so it tends also to be conservative. But that doesn't mean you can't offer something new while still working within the form," and adds a few pithy thoughts on the non-desirability of too much innovation, which will do nothing to diminish his burgeoning reputation as a notorious potty-mouth...

Meanwhile, in the comments on my previous post, Mark Newton - of the UK's Solaris Books - points out the hard commercial realities afflicting the publishing industry at the moment, due to the mergers of various conglomerates into even larger super-conglomerates and the internal pressures that this generates, which he hopes will allow mid-list publishers - like, say, the UK's Solaris Books - to step in and offer a wider range of material to exactly those readers who are crying out for more than just the same-old, same-old.

And in the same thread, David Hebblethwaite wonders: "...how many writers of unchallenging fantasy actually do make a comfortable living from their writing? Are there any writers of good quality material who make a living; and, if so, what differentiates them from writers of similar stuff who do not?" Good questions. Any writers out there care to comment?

Also, SF Diplomat, pondering the issue further, asks whether the problem only applies to fantasy and why, indeed, that should be the case: "...why is it fantasy's job to be weird and different? Isn't the problem, from Harrison's perspective, that there aren't enough genre publications in general that are all that interested in The Other?" And he's rewarded in the comments on that piece with a visit from the man himself, who elucidates further on his original polemic: "To me, the very word 'fantasy' is what's at issue here, & my rant really asks the question, 'How do we bring the fantastic back to fantasy?' ... It's my contention that, by normalising and rationalising 'myth' and 'magic' the sub-genre you call 'non-weird populist' fantasy has become actually anti-fantastic. As a result, the appetite for the genuinely fantastic is less well served."

And finally, a certain Mr GBH Hornswoggler, Gent. is terribly, terribly bored by yet another debate on the death of quality genre fiction. Well dammit Mr Hornswoggler, but if we all spent as much time reading and writing blogs as you do then we'd all be just as well-informed and just as adroitly cynical about the whole jejune mess, I'm sure. But until that happy day, you'll just have to excuse some of us for being shallow... ;)

Mind you, our Mr H also makes a rather important point, opening with: "Insert my standard rant about the world primarily needing books that real readers will want to spend their own money on." Yes, this is exactly what we do need. As I posted in the comments thread back on Mr Chadbourn's original piece this morning: 'Without a receptive audience, any brave pioneers leaving the beaten track will run the risk of ending up in the literary wilderness - legends in their own literary lifetime, perhaps, but more than likely unable to sustain a decent income.'

So what we need to do is prime the readers to be more receptive to the sort of quality work that we're all pretty much in agreement here about wanting to see.

Again, more on that later in the week. Hopefully.

M. John Harrison on his preferred flavours of fantasy

Just spotted - via Mark Newton of Solaris Books, writing on When Gravity Fails - that M. John Harrison has also been expressing his views on fantasy fiction recently. He's very clear on the subject of why he reads fantasy fiction, and what he wants - and definitely doesn't want - to experience when he does:

"When I read fantasy, I read for the bizarre, the wrenched, the undertone of difference & weirdness that defamiliarises the world I know. I want the taste of the writer’s mind, I want to feel I'm walking about in the edges of the individual personality."

I agree wholeheartedly; in fact, the article as a whole neatly sums up the thoughts I was groping my way towards a while back (albeit far more eloquently, naturally).

Of course, being an immensely skilled wordsmith in his own right, M. John Harrison also writes for that same effect and as a result his work is incredibly intricate, and beautiful, and disquieting, and very weird, and sometimes just a little impenetrable and I'd heartily recommend it to anyone looking to push those aforementioned boundaries of their reading experience.

And yet - if I remember correctly from my bookselling days - I'm afraid his books just don't sell particularly well... which is a crying shame and exactly the sort of situation that needs to be turned on its head. But it does rather neatly illustrate SF Diplomat Jonathan McCalmont's point about the inherent problems with Mark Chadbourn's call to action.

Yes, if more writers moved towards writing the sort of fantasy that M. John Harrison both produces and appreciates, then we'd have a much richer and much more interesting literary landscape to explore, and this is altogether a good thing.

But given the currently prevailing business model in publishing, we'd also have a great many more writers who weren't able to earn an independent living from their work (that isn't meant as an inference or speculation on the state of M. John Harrison's finances or situation, I hasten to point out) or whose only outlet was the independent presses.

There would then be a great many more gaps in the mainstream market being filled by even more supermarket-fodder pap and the mainstream readers would still be sticking to what they know and still reading the same-old, same-old because that's all they have access to. After all, those big publishers aren't going to stop putting something out there, are they?

So, while I wholeheartedly agree with both Chadbourn and Harrison, I think McCalmont's argument is currently carrying the day: audience education is the key. More on that subject in a future post (time permitting).

SF Diplomat responds to Mark Chadbourn

SF Diplomat Jonathan McCalmont posits an interesting twist on the point raised by Mark Chadbourn yesterday, by pointing out that the rot goes both ways: the tropes and stock characters of the fantasy genre are actually poisoning the well of wider-interest RPGs. It's difficult, he argues by way of example, to find a historical RPG that doesn't have some element of fantasy thrown in for good measure.

And in direct response to Mark's suggestion that fantasy authors need to innovate, Jonathan points out that there's an economic danger inherent in adopting too radical a stance: it's usually the readers themselves who demand stock fantasy and vote for it by way of their purchasing decision, so moving away from providing content for this market could prove financially damaging for the author:

"The problem here is that the vast majority of fantasy fans simply have no interest in innovation. If fantasy authors were to hear Chadbourn's rallying cry I suspect that the result would be a decrease in sales across the genre. The problem is not with the world of RPGs or lazy authors, it is the audience and until someone finds a way of evolving the tastes of that audience, the market will reward the writers who are able to pleasingly re-arrange old ideas and not those who present us with new ones."

Very good point, well made. Interesting to see how this one is developing. And I do have the inkling of an answer to his second point about how best to evolve the taste of the audience, but I'll need to work on it some more, I think...

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