Joseph Mallozzi

James Enge @ Joe Mallozzi’s blog

James Enge, author of Blood of Ambrose,is the latest writer to guest-blog at Stargate writer/producer Joseph Mallozzi’s wonderful book club blog. Last night, Mallozzi posted the results of his readers Q&A with Enge. The answers (and the questions) are well worth checking out, as always.

Here’s a sample:

Q: I liked the fact that you chose to reveal back-story for these characters and their world throughout the book rather than write a prologue to explain these things at the beginning. What went into this decision?”

A: About prologues… the more of them I read, the less I like them. I think some writers confuse the process they go through (in creating the world, the characters, the backstory) with the process the reader goes through. If the reader feels like he or she is reading “Report on Planet X” or “Fodor’s Guide to Middle Earth” then the writer has blown it somehow. A successful beginning is more like introducing two people. If you want Bob to meet Shlomo, you don’t start by reciting Shlomo’s educational background, vocational aptitudes and credit history. You say, “Bob: meet Shlomo. Which one of you is buying the next round?” (Or something like that. I’m still working on that whole social skills thing.)

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Blood of Ambrose @ Joe Mallozzi’s Book Club Discussion

This week kicks of a discussion of James Enge’s Blood of Ambroseat Joseph Mallozzi’s Weblog.Joe kicks it off with his thoughts on the book.

“Enge’s prose is tight and efficient, devoid of the rambling, oft-unendurable meandering descriptive passages that typify the high-fantasy genre. The setting is rich in detail, a masterful creation of world building, while the magic system that runs through the narrative proves ferociously imaginative yet impressive in its consistency. The characters are interesting – particularly Ambrosia and Morlock – yet miss the depth that would have made them truly memorable….Still, a unique and entertaining read with plenty to recommend it in terms of the myriad of inspired elements on hand to facilitate and complicate: flesh golems, mechanical spiders, the living dead, inelegant leaping horses, sorcerers, and mazelike castle passageways to make Mervyn Peake envious. An impressive fantasy debut.”

Joe ends the post by soliciting questions for the forthcoming Q&A with James.

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Blood of Ambrose is Joe Mallozzi’s Book of the Month for July

Stargate writer/producer, avid reader, and all around great guy Joe Mallozzi has announced his June and July selections for his Book Club reads. For those who don’t know, Joe picks one or more titles a month, invites his many fans to read them along with him, and then invites the authors in for a lengthy Q&A. I had the honor to be the first such guest, but he’s gone on to have scores of authors on, including our own Justina Robson, David Louis Edelman, and Joe Abercrombie, as well as our friend & frequent cover artist John Picacio. Now, he’s chosen James Enge’s Blood of Ambrosefor his July selection, and before that, our friend Michael Moorcock’s Elric: The Stealer of Souls,(the new Del Rey edition with the fabulous interior artwork by John Picacio). Both great choices and I’m excited to see the interviews with both authors. Meanwhile, Enge himself is over the moon to be in the same post with Moorcock. Who wouldn’t be?

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Joe Mallozzi on Fast Forward 2

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.

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Look Who’s Talking Up Pyr

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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