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...)

November 21, 2007 | Filed Under Books | 4 Comments

New client website re-vamp: AdamRoberts.com

Adam Roberts is one of the brightest stars in the UK science fiction firmament. His novels, novellas and short stories are always ideas-driven, usually highly challenging and often misunderstood, but you can rely on them being packed to the rafters with intelligent writing: literary allusion, metaphorical and metaphysical extrapolation, and some truly stunning visions of alternate worlds, alternate futures, alternate realities.

Adam has been a client of mine for going on six years now and his website has been through three different incarnations in that time. The third version of www.adamroberts.com went live yesterday, and I'm sure all will agree (if memory serves) that it's a big improvement on the first two:

This time out it's a Wordpress site, and I've been exploring the options that WP offers to use it as a site-wide content management system rather than just as a single blog page. Hence the bibliography section is self-contained within the WP setup, which means that if Adam wants to add to them, or tinker with them, he can do so to his heart's content, without waiting for me to have a few minutes free in my schedule to make the changes for him.

He can also drive his own news section as a full blog now, complete with RSS-feed for all you feed-grazers out there who don't even bother to visit the lovely websites that some of us have spent so many hours slaving over... (James, I'm looking at you...)

Adam also runs three other blogs (Europrogocontestovision, punkadiddle and Rambling Ad Rumpo) and I'm working on persuading him to bring those three within the main blog as well - there's some great content on them, and having it all in one place would really strengthen the main site. Between you and me I reckon that once he's seen just how far superior Wordpress is to clunky old blogspot he'll be looking to at least move those over to WP sub-domains of their own, but I think that bringing them within the main site on a by-Category basis would work even better...

May 26, 2007 | Filed Under Work | Leave a Comment

One day in Chester - Eastercon Highlights

Jo and I thoroughly enjoyed our day at Eastercon on Saturday. The sun was shining down on Chester when we arrived, and we were very nearly diverted by the Chester Food & Drink Festival, which was going on in a large marquee next to the car park where we dropped off the motor. But instead we girded our loins, tightened our belts and plunged bravely into the gloom of the Chester Crowne Plaza, handing over our brace of one-day membership fees on the door.

At this point, we were both handed name-badges emblazoned with the word 'Saturday'; laminated to within an inch of their lives and - in the absence of permanent marker pens - with no chance to say anything else. Possibly the least-useful con-badge in history (there were a lot of anonymous "Saturdays" - I am not a day of the week! I am a free fan! - around), but you can see the appeal to the organisers of the mass-printing, and hey, if we'd bothered to register in advance, we could have had our moniker-of-choice included as well (as we later discovered). No matter.

The dealer's room was healthily populated, and I finally got a chance to say hello to Niall Harrison (pron. Neil, btw, in case like me you had no idea) who was manning a friend's bookstall. Niall is one of those unfortunate people who is even taller than I am (I'm 6'2" and trying to get a comfortable bus / theatre / 'plane seat is murder, so for Niall it must be pure hell) and alas, I was so stunned by this relative rarity that I made an inadvertent, knee-jerk, tall-joke gaff (with the emphasis on 'jerk'). Niall, I apologise, you must be heartily sick of hearing that sort of thing... and after he'd said I looked a lot younger than he expected, as well. For shame. And then he gave us a whole pile of the BSFA's Vector and Focus magazines (Niall is the editor of the former) to peruse as well. Gaah! Another classy foot+mouth combo from Ariel there...

Our trip to the dealer's room also resulted in a canny purchase of a hardback copy of Adam Roberts' collection of 'stories that never were and might never be', Swiftly (published by Night Shade Books), for a very reasonable tenner (from Niall's friend's stall, as it happened). Bargain!

Mind you, I was later trumped by John 'smug shopper' Berlyne, who found a pristine proof copy of Joe Abercrombie's debut The Blade Itself for a paltry three quid! Gaaaah! If you're interested, it'll probably be on eBay shortly, although you can expect the asking price to be a fair bit steeper...

On the way to the bar I made a point of saying hello to Paul Raven - better known as 'Armchair Anarchist' of Velcro City fame - who was looking none the worse for wear after an apparently quite titanic session the night (and most of the morning) before. Last to leave the bar on the first night of the Con: kudos. Also said hi to Andy Sawyer, of Liverpool University's Science Fiction Collection and repeated my oft-stated intention to get my arse over there one day for a visit. Honestly, I will. One day, just as soon as I'm not quite so darned busy...

Lunch followed, in the quite delightful company of Simon Spanton and Gillian Redfearn of Gollancz Books, plus the equally charming Stéphane Marsan, of France's top genre publisher Bragelonne, as well as the aforementioned Berlyne, and the inestimably wonderful Sandy Auden, my regular TAO / UKSFBN partner in crime.

Simon steered us to a very nice little Thai place he'd discovered / heard of / passed on the way into Chester, and a very good time was had by all. Pre-lunch, Gillian committed a wanton act of reading-list sabotage by thrusting a proof copy of Gollancz's Next Big Thing - the UK edition of The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, which a lot of people are getting very excited about - into my convention bag. Which was most excellent of her (thank you, Gillian!) although now I have another 896 pages of must-read fantasy fiction to cram into my over-loaded queuing system. Woe is me... ;)

And on the way to the restaurant, an odd thing happened. We were wandering along one of Chester's main streets and I heard the sound of an electric violin. It was just starting to sweep into what sounded a whole lot like the opening bars of Ed Alleyne Johnson's 'Purple Electric Violin Concerto'. And sure enough, there he was, busking (and not for the first time) just a few feet from where I was standing...

I'm a big EA-J fan, ever since his work with New Model Army back in their Thunder and Consolation and Impurity days, and I've got a couple of his early CD's. I didn't realise that he had a new album out - a collection of cover versions of some of his favourite classic rock tracks from the '70s - so that was another tenner well-spent... and there are another couple of albums I haven't got yet, by the looks of things.

After lunch, the rest of the afternoon was spent back at the hotel, engaged in pleasant and entertaining conversation with John 'I'm a raconteur extraordinaire, me, luvvie' Berlyne, Sandy, and the occasional passer-by who sought rest at our table: shouts out to Paul Cornell, John Jarrold and Geoff Ryman, all of whom stopped by at some point, for varying lengths of time (some having the good sense to escape sooner than others...)

All in all, a damn fine day out. Looking forward immensely to Alt-Fiction in Derby at the end of the month, when we can do it all over again.

April 11, 2007 | Filed Under Books, Cons & Events, Music | 9 Comments

New Arrivals - late November '06

Collected a consignment of new books for UKSFBookNews last night from the post office. Everything will be listed in the next Books Received article on the site, but I just wanted to highlight a few choice items here that will henceforth be contributing to my own personal what-to-read-next dilemma:

Gradisil by Adam Roberts

Adam is a client of mine, and I do try to make a point of reading as many of my clients' books as I can, but I have to confess that I'm a Roberts behind at the moment; I still haven't sat down to read The Snow [Amazon].

But then Adam is one of those authors who writes individual novels at a time, exploring the possibilities of whatever idea has most captured his mind's eye and then moving on to the next, so I ought to be able to skip ahead to Gradisil and then go back to The Snow when I've unpacked it (so many of our books are still in boxes after last year's house extension...)

Ilario, The Lion's Eye by Mary Gentle

There's nothing I'd like more than to sit down and lose myself in the new Mary Gentle novel for a few days, but alas, there's work and chores to be done, so I may have to restrain myself. I made the mistake of trying to read Ash [Amazon] in fits and starts and I really don't think I got anywhere near as much out of it as I should have, so Ilario [Amazon] may have to take pride of place on my 'priority holiday reading' list for next year, by which time a more portable paperback should be out.

It's a real shame, because Ilario sounds like a wonderfully inventive alternate history, as most of Gentle's novels are, and I really do enjoy that particular sub-genre.

Evil for Evil by K.J. Parker

The second part of the Engineer Trilogy, by one of my very favourite authors. Parker writes complex, multi-layered fantasy with a dry, biting with throughout and an absolutely superb observational eye. Her Scavenger trilogy is one of the most intriguing and enjoyable fantasies I've read, this series started out just as well in Devices and Desires, although there does seem to be some small risk that she's covering a bit of the same ground that she explored in her first, Fencer trilogy.

Anyway, this is a potential 'drop everything' title, although I think I'll finish the short Christopher Priest novel I've just started before I treat myself to 599 pages of Parker.

Endymion and The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons

I now have all four books of Simmons' Hyperion sequence waiting for me on the shelf. All I need now is the time to sit down and appreciate them fully. Again, I think I tried to read Ilium too piece-meal and ended up not fully appreciating its complexity, and I've heard so many good things about this series that I'm determined to find the time to do it justice. Another two for the holiday shelf, perhaps...

November 28, 2006 | Filed Under Books | 5 Comments