Sci Fi Songs musician John Anealio has just posted his “The Ballad of Wilson Cole,” inspired by the complete Starship series by Mike Resnick. You can here the song on his website from the link above (one verse per book), and the sheet music and lyrics are printed in the appendices of the latest and final, Starship: Flagship.
The Ballad of Wilson Cole Read More »
Having just completed his first military SF series (which concludes with Starship: Flagship
Mike Resnick has won an impressive five Hugos and been nominated for twenty-eight more. He has sold fifty-eight novels and more than two hundred short stories. He has edited fifty anthologies. His work ranges from satirical fair, such as his Lucifer Jones adventures, to weighty examinations of morality and culture, as evidenced by his brilliant tales of Kirinyaga. The series, with sixty-seven major and minor awards and nominations to date, is the most honored series of stories in the history of science fiction.
Go West, Not-So-Young Man! Read More »
M
ike Resnick’s Starship: Mutiny, the first book in his Starship series, has just appeared for the Kindle. This is good, given that books 2 and 4 have been up a while. Also, before you say it, other ebook formats are coming soon!
This is Mutiny, Mr Christian!! Read More »
Want another reason to feel good about the future?
Here’s a peak at our Spring/Summer 2009 Season:
March: 
Tom Lloyd, The Twilight Herald
Less than a year after being plucked from obscurity and poverty the charismatic new Lord of the Farlan finds himself unprepared to deal with the attempt on his life that now spells war, and the possibility of rebellion waiting for him at home.
Matthew Sturges, Midwinter
Mauritaine once heroic Captain in the Seelie Army, now accused of treason and sentenced to life without parole, is offered one last chance to redeem himself, an opportunity to regain his freedom and his honor in the secrete service of Queen Titania.
April:
Ian McDonald, Brasyl
Be seduced, amazed, and shocked by one of the world’s greatest and strangest nations. Past, present, and future Brazil, with all its color, passion, and shifting realities, come together in a novel that is part SF, part history, part mystery, and entirely enthralling.
James Enge, Blood of Ambrose
Behind the King’s life stands the menacing Protector, and beyond him lies the Protector’s Shadow… Against this evil, Morlock Ambrosius–stateless person, master of all magical makers, deadly swordsman, and hopeless drunk.
May:
Joel Shepherd, Crossover
The first novel in a series that follows the adventures of Cassandra Kresnov, an android created by the League, one side of an interstellar war against the more powerful, conservative Federation. The product of an experimental design and dangerously intelligent, Cassandra raises probing questions and experiences moral awakening. Soon she has deserted the League in search of a new life in the territory of the Federation.
Sean Williams, The Hanging Mountains
In this third installment of Williams’s Books of the Cataclysm, Sal and his companions seek the source of the flood in the legendary Hanging Mountains, hoping to head off a crisis that was put in motion a thousand years ago. They uncover uncomfortable truths about the world and how it relates to the one that came before — our world.
Mark Chadbourn, World’s End
A dragon firebombs a freeway. Shapeshifters stalk the commercial district. The deadly Wild Hunt wreaks havoc on the highway. The Age of Misrule has dawned. In times of trouble, heroes arise!
June:
Joel Shepherd, Breakaway
Cassandra Kresnov is a highly advanced hunter-killer android. She has escaped the League and fled to Callay, a member of the Federation. Breakaway is a great story with a cracking plot and strong characters. At its heart is the enigma of Cassandra: Is she more human than human, or is she totally untrustworthy?
Mark Chadbourn, Darkest Hour
The Eternal Conflict between the Light and Dark once again blackens the skies and blights the land. And in the middle are the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, determined to use the strange power that binds them to the land in a last, desperate attempt to save the human race.
July: 
Joel Shepherd, Killswitch
Two years after the unhatching of Callayan President Neiland’s plot to make the capital city of Tanusha the center of the Federation, Callay is under siege. So begins the third installment of this gripping trilogy from an exciting new sci-fi author. When Cassandra’s lover, Special Agent Ari Ruben, discovers a plot to kill her using a killswitch, which her old masters in the League built into her brainstem, Sandy is forced to go underground to stay alive.
Ian McDonald, Desolation Road
It all began 30 years ago on Mars, with a greenperson. But by the time it all finished, the town of Desolation Road had experienced every conceivable abnormality…
Mark Chadbourn, Always Forever
Mankind’s days appear numbered. Our only hope – the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons – are scattered and broken after a terrible defeat. Their last chance may lie in the great court of the old gods, reached by an otherworldly ship filled with fantastical and frightening creatures.
August: 
Mike Resnick, Stalking the Dragon
It’s Valentine’s Day and private detective John Justin Mallory must undertake a nocturnal hunt for the miniature dragon that takes him to some of the stranger sections of his magical Manhattan.
Justina Robson’s Chasing the Dragon
Returning to the life of a guns-blazing secret agent, cyborg Lila Black finds herself having inherited all of her former boss’s old offices and whatever mysteries they contain… But there are more immediate concerns. Like resurrecting her lover, Zal. And her husband, the demon Teazle, is embroiled in a fatal plot in Demonia, and her magic sword is making itself happy as a pen whose writing has the power to affect other worlds. The world is off its rocker and most everyone is terrified of faeries.
I’ll say more about these individual titles as we get closer to 2009, debuting more cover art as it comes in, and profiling some of the new authors and introducing them to you. Meanwhile, you can download a PDF of the whole Spring/Summer 2009 catalog here. But for now, what do you think?
Spring/Summer 2009: A Look at the Future Read More »
Okay, playing mad catch-up:
A podcast with Joe Abercrombie on the Dragon Page. Their description: “This week, Mike, Summer and Mike talk with Joe Abercrombie about Last Argument of Kings,
Meanwhile, Patrick Rothfus, he of The Name of the Wind,
Discover Magazine on Fast Forward 2:
Over at Adventures in Reading, Joe Sherry reviews Mike Resnick’s Starship: Mercenary.
Also a positive review of Stalking the Vampire
And here Intercontinental Ballistic Discourse discusses a host of Mike Resnick works, including the extant Starship series: “I’ve got to say: wow! The characters are engaging, the story is fast and entertaining, and the plots are believable. My favorite form of science fiction is loosly described as military science fiction, or sci-fi that takes place around a starcraft or some form of governmental space navy and this series started off that way and branched out to something even more.”
Whew!
A Host of Pyr Reviews & a Podcast! Read More »
Hot on the heels of our Stalking the Vampire jacket, here is the full cover for Mike Resnick’s Stalking the Unicorn: A Fable of Tonight.
Stalking the Cover Art Read More »
The folks at SFSignal have another brilliant Mind Meld discussion up. This one asks, “What do you feel is the primary purpose of a book cover: To accurately reflect the story or to visually ‘sell’ the book? How do you balance these two ideas when creating a cover?” Answers come from such noted artists as Bob Eggleton, Bruce Jensen, Irene Gallo, John Picacio, Boris Vallejo, Dave Seeley, Todd Lockwood, Dan Dos Santos and Glen Orbik. All the responses well worth reading, though I’m struck by this line from Picacio: “The most invigorating stuff rises to the challenge and still explores that fertile place where the signs of the times and the signals of the story converge.”
And on the subject of cover art, here’s the full jacket to the forthcoming Stalking the Vampire: A Fable of Tonight.
What do you think?
Big Cover Art Roundup Read More »
SFSignal runs an interview with Mike Resnick, of which my favorite bit is:
Science fiction is often accused of being The Great Predictor. Which predictions did Golden Age science fiction get right? Which ones were way off the mark?
MR: In terms of essentially trivial things, it predicted plastics, night baseball, waldoes, and half a hundred other things early fans used to point to with pride. I think it missed most of our major breakthroughs: the fall of the Soviet Empire, the cure for polio, the huge influx of Hispanics into the USA, the fact that cancer is less of a killer these days and more of a chronic disease, the near-extinction of the passenger trains that made it possible for us to populate the continent, the emergence of HIV, even the proliferation of computers. The most important off-the-mark was the fact that almost no one predicted that once we got into space, reached the Moon, landed on Mars, the public would be totally uninterested and apathetic.
Midnight Baseball and the Waldo Read More »
Now this is interesting. Graeme of Graeme’s Fantasy Book Reviews, admits to “not really being into science-fiction” and also & therefore to having never heard of multiple Hugo-winning author Mike Resnick. And to picking up Starship: Mercenary
Why, the book is “just the kind of sci-fi that I can see myself reading more of… it’s fun and it doesn’t take itself too seriously. A clever blend of ‘military sci-fi’ and ‘space opera’ that is just the job for a trip into work or a lazy weekend. Seven and a Half out of Ten.”
Now, if that’s not an endorsement, I don’t know what is.
Starship: Mercenary Scores a Hit Read More »
