io9, one of the coolest, mandatory-read sites in sf, spotlights my work with a cover illustration gallery — and I love that they chose to lead with the art for Pyr’s Robert Silverberg release, SON OF MAN! Big thanks to io9’s Charlie Jane Anders! Great title for the piece — “Revenge of the Giant Space Tentacle”. Awesome!
From io9 With Love Read More »
Stargate: Atlantis executive producer/writer and all around good guy Joseph Mallozzi has some nice things to say about my latest anthology, Fast Forward 2:
Long-time visitors to this blog are no doubt familiar with editor Lou Anders through his (all-too) infrequent visits here, and his previous SF collection, Fast Forward: Future Fiction From the Cutting Edge, which was a past book of the month club selection. Well, in Fast Forward 2, Lou has assembled a nice group of stories form the likes of Jack McDevitt, Nancy Kress, and Dr. Who’s Paul Cornell. As is the case with most anthologies, I didn’t like everything. But most of what I did like, I liked a lot. Stand-outs for me included Paolo Bacigalupi’s powerfully dead-on commentary on the challenges of maintaining journalistic integrity in a market increasingly driven by hits and eyeballs (“The Gambler”), Ian McDonald’s delightful tale of a young man in future India who relies on an Hindu A.I. to give him game (“An Eligible Boy“), Mike Resnick and Pat Cadigan’s trippy account of a world in which the borders between dream and reality blur (“Not Quite Alone in the Dream Quarter“), and Jack McDevitt’s amusing and ultimately heartfelt tale of a reluctant A.I. named George. Special mention should also be made of the book’s cover compliments of our pal John Picacio.
Joe Mallozzi on Fast Forward 2 Read More »
The New Scientist is devoting an entire issue to the Future of Science Fiction. They write:
With the death earlier this year of Arthur C Clarke, the last of science fiction’s Golden Age giants, and with mainstream literature becoming increasingly speculative and futuristic, is science fiction as a genre dying out?
We plan to explore this question in a special edition of New Scientist out on 15 November – as well as reviewing the best new science fiction books and talking to some of the world’s leading writers.
They have a page where you can vote for your favorite science fiction book. Naturally, I might have a few suggestions of folks who should be on their radar.
New Scientist: The Future of Science Fiction Read More »
Tom Lloyd’s The Stormcaller is now shipping from Amazon
The Stormcaller is In Read More »
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 2, 2008
CONTACT: Jill Maxick at 800-853-7545
jmaxick@prometheusbooks.com
Look Who’s Talking Up Pyr
A Variety of Notable Fans Brand It Well Worth Reading
Amherst, NY — The conventional wisdom holds that publishers don’t have dedicated readerships, authors and subgenres do. Those few publishers that do cultivate a single brand identity tend to concentrate their focus on a particular subgenre, such as military science fiction.
Yet over the last few years, we have begun to hear from readers, critics, chain bookstore buyers, distributors, bloggers and independent bookstores, that Pyr is becoming an exception to this notion. It seems a Pyr brand is taking hold—based not on any one niche within the genre, but on the expectation of a general level of extremely high quality.
Every press likes to identify their readership. Whether for epic fantasy, hard science fiction, sci-fantasy blends, space opera or something else, just who thinks of Pyr as a line worth reading?
Junot Díaz, winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, says “Pyr books has in a few short years become the imprint to beat in the science fiction and fantasy fields.”
Díaz explains, “[With The First Law series, Joe] Abercrombie has written the finest epic fantasy trilogy in recent memory. He’s one writer that no one should miss. Ian McDonald’s Brasyl is beyond superb. This novel should have beaten all comers for all the main awards. And who is writing space opera as sharp as Kay Kenyon in her The Entire And The Rose series?”
Barbara Ehrenreich—author of This Land Is Their Land and Nickel and Dimed (Metropolitan Books)—was asked by Time Magazine to name a guilty pleasure, something she reads when she doesn’t want to work. She named River of Gods by Ian McDonald. Ehrenreich said, “There aren’t many literary sci-fi thrillers that deliver a mind-expanding metaphysical punch, and this one ended all too soon. But in the afterglow of McDonald’s lushly blooming imagination, even the real world is looking better.”
Joseph Mallozzi writes and produces one of television’s hottest science fiction shows, Stargate: Atlantis. During production in Vancouver, Canada, he regularly communicates with the show’s fans through online forums and blogs. Somehow, he also finds time to read for pleasure—and some of his recent favorites come from Pyr.
Mallozzi says, “Pyr continues to impress with its growing line-up of premiere genre fiction. From Justina Robson’s mind-bending Quantum Gravity series to Kay Kenyon’s thoughtful and provocative Entire and the Rose saga, it’s an imprint marked for offering up some of the best Fantasy and SF being written today.”
Apparently, even Stargate: Atlantis characters read Pyr books. In recent episodes, both Chuck the technician and Dusty were seen reading Theodore Judson’s The Martian General’s Daughter.
Lou Anders, Pyr Editorial Director, notes, “Pyr’s goal from day one was to provide books of a consistently high quality, so it is extremely gratifying to hear that readers—famous, fictional, or otherwise—feel that is what they are getting.”
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Look Who’s Talking Up Pyr Read More »
In support of Fast Forward 2,
“Catherine Drewe” by two-time Hugo nominee Paul Cornell is a tale of a Bond-like character in an alternate history where the Great Game never ended and the British Empire – along with the other 
world powers – extends its reach throughout the solar system.
Paul says of the character:
“I like to think I’m writing in the tradition of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels (not the movies) but I’m trying to stay away from pastiche, and instead hope to explore the same debates about masculinity and Britishness he did, while perhaps coming to different conclusions.”
Paul Cornell’s Short Story From FF2 Free Online! Read More »
Theodore Judson’s The Martian General’s Daughter
The Stargate: Atlantis Book Club Read More »
Oh. It appears this guy has it.
A Swiss man has become the first person to fly solo across the English Channel using a single jet-propelled wing.
Yves Rossy landed safely after the 22-mile (35.4 km) flight from Calais to Dover, which had been twice postponed this week because of bad weather.
The former military pilot took less than 10 minutes to complete the crossing and parachute to the ground.
The 49-year-old flew on a plane to more than 8,200ft (2,500m), ignited jets on a wing on his back, and jumped out.
Hello, future. So glad you could join us.
Where’s my jetpack? Read More »
Over on Tor.com, art director Irene Gallo has just posted “Todd Lockwood’s Stormcaller, from Sketch to Finish” a very in-depth breakdown of the evolution of the cover for our forthcoming title, The Stormcaller: Book One of the Twilight Reign,
Todd Lockwood’s The Stormcaller, From Sketch to Finish Read More »
As I reported earlier, writer/co-executive producer of Stargate: Atlantis Joseph Mallozzi featured Justina Robson’s Keeping It Real
The demons and devils were really refreshing to work on for me. I’ve been a Christian fundamentalist of a kind in my youth, and an occult student, and a devotee of all things theological and then I discarded formal approaches and religions altogether for a kind of atheism and went on a more personal kind of spiritual quest, which I am still on. But I used to have very fixed ideas and literal notions of all kinds of things and being able to finally sift through all that and find my version of what the truth is was just tremendously exciting and liberating. Of course it’s just my version and although I’m passionate about writing this stuff and feeling it’s true I know it’s only a way of seeing things. Hence the book’s title.
And, of course, the third book in the Quantum Gravity series, Going Under,
Justina Robson on Keeping It Real Read More »