When Gravity Fails

The Four Authors of the Apocalypse: James Lovegrove

2009-12-01T16:26:00.004Z

Michael Crichton’s State Of Fear, an anti-environmentalist diatribe fashioned roughly in the shape of a thriller, concludes with an “Author’s Message”. In part, this asserts:

I suspect the people of 2100 will be much richer than we are, consume more energy, have a smaller global population, and enjoy more wilderness than we have today. I don’t think we have to worry about them.

The late – and admirable – Crichton was a far smarter man than I will ever be. His intellectual superiority, especially in matters scientific, means his opinions on climate change and global warming carry considerably greater weight and authority than mine ever will. I’d like to believe his prophecies to be accurate.

I just can’t.

Something in my gut tells me his optimistic outlook is wrong. More than that, any optimistic outlook is wrong. If you ask me, humankind is doomed to a future of rising sea levels, extreme weather events, mass starvation, resource wars, unsustainable mass-migrations from poorer to wealthier nations, animal extinctions, power shortages, and markedly reduced life quality and life expectancy. A hundred years from now I see a global population reduced by two or three billion, almost everyone sheltering from rampant flood waters in quasi-feudal enclaves, surrounded by husks of redundant technology and fighting off invaders with a mix of modern and medieval weaponry. A little bit Mad Max, in other words, and a little bit A Canticle For Liebowitz.

The stars? Intergalactic colonisation? The outward urge? Sowing the seed of humanity across the cosmos? Not a chance. Such grand visions never come to pass. No one is prepared to pony up the trillions necessary to fund that kind of dream-scale project. No one has the vision. Governments are irredeemably short-termist. They plan five years ahead, if that. This is why I don’t write space opera. To me it isn’t SF, it’s pure fantasy.

Things to come are things to dread. My two sons will grow up in a world where the best is past and where our present era will seem like a golden age – unlimited travel, plentiful food, material affluence, technological superabundance. They will look back on my generation with envious amazement, wondering how we could have been so reckless, so lacking in foresight, so wilfully vandalistic, so damn lucky. And all I’ll be able to do, if I’m still around, is apologise and say we couldn’t help ourselves. We tried but we just couldn’t break the habits of greed and squandering. We recycled our bottles and newspapers, but we knew it was a drop in the ocean. We installed low-energy lightbulbs, but our immense flatscreen TVs made up the difference in electricity consumption. We wanted to go veggie, but the lure of a fat juicy steak was too great.

I was in the dentist’s chair the other day, having a checkup. The dentist enquired about an article I’d written in the paper, prognosticating dire times ahead for planet earth. She told me, with a grim chuckle, that I was about to have a very uncomfortable experience at her hands if I genuinely believed everything was as dark as I’d stated in that piece. She would show her disagreement as only a dentist knows how.

With scenes from Marathon Man playing in my head, I desperately racked my brains to recall whether anything I’d submitted to the FT lately matched what she was describing. Maybe some book review where I’d blithely let slip that I reckoned civilisation was screwed? Then, light dawned. There’d been a case of mistaken identity.

“Oh, you mean James Lovelock,” I said. “The great prophet of eco-catastrophe. That’s not me. Definitely not. You can put away your rather enormous drill now. I disagree with everything the man says.”

I don’t, though.

James Lovegrove has published more than 30 books, including novels, novellas, short-story collections and books for teenagers. Having unleashed The Age Of Ra for Solaris, (reviewed here by Andy Remic) he’s about to follow it up with The Age Of Zeus in April next year.

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James Lovegrove's 'The Age of Ra' reviewed by Andy Remic

2009-11-30T10:23:00.006Z

Andy Remic, author of Solaris's hugely successful Combat-K series, has reviewed James Lovegrove's The Age of Ra.

I found myself tuned in (and turned on) to Lovegrove’s writing, his action, his characters and his humour. Lovegrove’s prose is as slick as his author photograph, and this man should have been picked as James Bond. If I wasn’t married, I’d woo him with chocolates, if only so I could get my hands on an early copy of the next book...

Aaaw. It's so nice to see our authors getting on, isn't it? Although sorry Andy, but I'm pretty sure James is a married man...

The full review can be found here.

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And now, a message from Andy Remic...

2009-11-27T09:48:00.007Z

HARDCORE, the new Combat K novel, is officially out 4th January 2010. However, those nice folks at Solaris Books and Forbidden Planet have teamed up to let me do a “pre-publication” signing event at Forbidden Planet in Liverpool. Why Liverpool you ask? Well, my mother’s side of the family originate from Liverpool, so I have blood there, and family there—– should be fun!!

So, if you want your hands on a copy of HARDCORE nearly a month earlier than official publication, or just fancy a coffee and a chat, please drop in!

- Andy Remic

Solaris Books is pleased to announce a signing by our best-selling, hard-hitting military SF author, Andy Remic.

He will be signing Hardcore at Forbidden Planet, 92 Bold Street, Liverpool, L1 4HY, on Saturday 12th December from 1 – 2pm

In a far future where a Junk alien scourge multiplies across Quad-Gal, Combat K are charged with finding the Junk’s homeland and annihilating the enemy. Mission: a quick SLAM drop to Sick World, a long-abandoned hospital planet once dedicated to curing the deformed, the insane, the dying and the dead. As daylight fades, so hibernation ends. The Medical Staff of Sick World, the doctors, nurses, patients and deviants, abandoned with extreme prejudice, a thousand-year gestation of hardcore medical mutation and accelerated healthcare technology; they can smell fresh meat. And Keenan, Pippa and Franco face their toughest battle yet.

You’ll never look at a nurse the same way again.

Andy Remic is a British writer and teacher with an unhealthy love of martial arts, kick-arse bikes, mountain climbing and computer hacking. The new master of violent, high-octane science fiction, Hardcore is his seventh novel and follows the characters from the massively successful Combat-K series. he has been hailed as ‘the new David Gemmell’, and was recently nominated for the David Gemmell award.

The Four Authors of the Apocalypse: Eric Brown

2009-11-25T17:07:00.007Z

I am now, according to my publisher, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse… or should that be authors of the apocalypse? For one of such a normally cheery disposition, I might find this hard. I'm of the view that whatever mess we make of things, life on Earth in some form will survive, and prosper. A critic once said my fiction was imbued with logical positivism, and I won't disagree.

This blog came about when junior editor Jenni Hill suggested we four get together to write about the end of the world, and James Lovegrove, being the optimistic soul he is, came up with the title you see above.

By a stroke of coincidental luck, my next-but-one novel from Solaris will be a post-catastrophe tale set sixty years after the fall of civilisation on Earth. The story came about when Mike Ashley invited me to submit a story to his forthcoming Apocalyptic SF anthology, and I wrote a long piece entitled "Guardians of the Phoenix". During the writing I realised that there was far more story than I was telling; it extended both ways: that is, before the story opened, and after it closed.

The story begins:
It was dawn when we set off from beneath the twisted skeleton of the Eiffel Tower and crossed the desert to Tangiers. We travelled by day through a blasted landscape devoid of life, and at night we stopped and tried to sleep. I'd lie in my berth and stare through the canopy at the magnetic storms lacerating the troposphere. The heat was insufferable, even in the marginally cooler early hours…

The band of survivors trek across the desert that was France, towards the dried-up Mediterranean, in search of water. They travel in a truck encrusted with solar panels, drilling for water wherever they can, and scavenging – along with competing survivors, some more feral than others – for dwindling supplies of food. On the way they meet another troupe of desperadoes, this one from what was Egypt, led by a woman called Samara. She is in possession of a secret that might mean the survival of human race. Times might be desperate, resources almost exhausted, plant and animal life very nearly extinct, and the ozone layer shot to pieces – but there is always hope. The novel follows these self-appointed guardians of the phoenix towards what they hope will be eventual redemption...

I take the long view, which I think for the sake of my sanity is a wise way of looking at things. Perhaps it's a result of being a science fiction writer – or perhaps I became a SF writer because I tried to look past the here and now, the mess we're in, and envisage a more rosy future. Perhaps I'm just a head-in-the-sands, rose-tinted spectacled optimist writing fantasies of wish-fulfilment because the alternative would be despair.

Anyway, the way I look at it is even in a worse case scenario, where the human race fouls up and destroys itself, then something will survive – be it bands of stone-age people who scratch a living in the wreckage, evolving over the millennia into something unrecognisable to us today; or other forms of life, animal or insect, who over the course of time might evolve intelligence... and perhaps use it more wisely than poor, hapless, self-destructive Homo saps...

But it would be nice to look into the far future and learn that humankind has overcome its difficulties, its differences, and evolved into a peace-loving, tolerant species which celebrates difference and diversity and has learned to treat the Earth with the respect it needs… and perhaps even, equipped with these qualities, headed for the stars and the many adventures awaiting us out there.

But that's another blog.

~Eric Brown

Eric Brown has won the British Science Fiction Award twice for his short stories and has published over twenty books: SF novels, collections, books for teenagers and younger children, as well as radio plays, articles and reviews. His newest book for Solaris, the Bengal Station novel, Cosmopath will hit the stands in January.

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Solaris Santa

2009-11-25T13:40:00.003Z

Just a quick note to say that those great people at Forbidden Planet have got a whole load of signed stash up for sale on their website, including books by Solaris authors Andy Remic and Juliet McKenna.

Signed copies of Andy Remic's Combat-K novel Biohell are still available here, and signed copies of Juliet McKenna's Irons in the Fire, the first volume in her epic series, the Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution, are for sale over here.

A good idea for a Christmas present, eh?

-Jenni (moonlighting as one of Santa's elves)

The Four Authors of the Apocalypse

2009-11-23T14:06:00.003Z

Watch out for The Four Authors of the Apocalypse, a guest-blogging event taking place at the Solaris Books blog very soon!

Four of our best-selling authors, Tim Akers, Eric Brown, James Lovegrove and Ian Whates, have agreed to go head-to-head in a prognosticating, doom-laden blog-off, and they'll all be treating you to their particular visions of the future of the human race right here at When Gravity Fails over the coming fortnight.

Until then, I'll be stocking up my fallout shelter...

x

Cosmopath back from the printers

2009-11-17T16:32:00.002Z

...and I'm holding a copy in my hot little hands.

Won't be long now...

Eric Brown's Ten Tips for Aspiring Writers

2009-11-11T09:03:00.008Z

Eric Brown, the author of several Solaris Books including the Bengal Station series, has been kind enough to send us his top ten tips for aspiring writers:-

1. Write. Write as often as possible. Write even if you think you haven't an idea in your head. Write until the subconscious kicks in and ideas and words begin to flow. Remember, fiction is modular. You can always go back and lift out entire sections, rewrite them and put them back, improved.

2. Trust in the subconscious. Beginning writers are beset by fear. I was. I overcame the fear - i.e., the doubt that I had anything to say, the tools to say anything - by writing and writing and trusting in the subconscious. Write long enough and the old SC kicks in. Try it.

3. Read. Read everything. Read what you like to read, and what you don't like to read. Admire and attempt to emulate what you like to read. Despise and shy away from what you don't like. Work out how certain effects are achieved, and learn from good effects.

4. Write what you know about. Also, write what you don't know about. You'll find that if you do the latter, the subconscious will kick in and soon enough you'll be writing about something you don't know about as if you did. (Crazy, I know; but it works.)

5. Rewrite. Never rest on your laurels. Never think that what you've written, because it was so difficult to produce, is good enough. It can always be improved. Put the piece aside for a week, two weeks, a month, and then come back to it with fresh eyes.

6. Find one or two, or even three, people whose judgement you trust, show them your work and ask for criticism. It's hard, at first, to have your precious MS ripped apart before your eyes, but it's necessary. The process of finding those few critics might take time - as you discard those critics who offer nothing - but persevere.

7. Remember that conventional education, or intelligence, has no bearing on whether you'll make it as a writer of commercial fiction. You don't have to be a college graduate to write good stories.

8. Write about emotions. Keep a jotter just for the explication of emotions, of how you feel. Remember, every piece of fiction is about characters; those characters are human beings. They not only think, but feel.

9. Remember that the majority of readers read fiction not to learn, but to feel. We want to identify with characters, and we can only do that if the characters' emotions are described with sufficient fidelity and verity. If the reader believes in your characters, feels for them, wants to know what will happen to them, then you've won over that reader.

10. Keep description to a minimum, no matter how wonderful the world is you're describing. The reader isn't interested in your world as a world; they're interested in how your world affects your characters. Have your characters respond to the landscape, as seen through their eyes.

10a. Try to make your dialogue as naturalistic as possible. Use apostrophes. Don't say: "I will now go to Mars," but, "I'll go to Mars." Use 'said' rather than the million and one synonyms for said. Keep your stories pacey, unless you're imitating Proust or Thackeray. Short scenes, preferably. Keep the reader guessing. End on cliff-hangers. (And remember that there are always exceptions to the above.)

10b. Send out your MS and keep sending the damned thing out. Don't be discouraged by rejections. (I had twenty novels rejected before I sold my first.) And, when you are published, don't take bad reviews to heart. Remember: they're just one person's opinion. Every book out there will have readers who hate it, readers who will feel neither love nor hate for it, and readers who will love it and think it the best thing they've ever read.

Never stop writing. The only people who have failed at writing are those who have stopped.

Good luck!

- Eric Brown

Eric's newest Bengal Station novel, Cosmopath will hit the stands in January. In the meantime, watch out for more guest blogging from Solaris authors, here at When Gravity Fails!

Linkspam: Nov 10th

2009-11-10T12:52:00.007Z

Solaris author James Lovegrove, of Age of Ra fame, muses eloquently on Writing about Gods and Guns.
There's an interview with Solaris's Natasha Rhodes over here, On Vampires, Werewolves, and what would happen if Kayla Steele and Twilight's Bella Swan got into a fight...
SciFi Latino - a new blog celebrating the contribution of Latinos and Latinas to Science Fiction, can be found here.
The Martian Landscape or Alien Art? Wired Magazine has some haunting photographs of the surface of Mars.

Shine update and competition!

2009-11-10T12:45:00.004Z

Hi all,

We've already blogged about Jetse de Vries' upcoming Shine anthology, and about the fantastic Daybreak Magazine blog in support of the book, which will publish an optimistic short story every two weeks until the book's release next year.

So far, the magazine has published "The Very Difficult Diwali of Sub-Inspector Gurushankar Rajaram" by Jeff Soesbe on October 16th, and "Horrorhouse" by David D. Levine on October 30th; we're waiting with bated breath for this weekend's third instalment.

In case you missed it, the @Outshine project on Twitter is publishing 140-letter prose poems on the subject of the future (along with quotations, soundbytes, and similar stuff for those who are interested); you can submit your poem by emailing shineanthology@gmail.com, or go here for submission guidelines.

Finally, Jetse informs us that he will be running a competition on the Shine website, starting on November 20th this year. He will be posting an excerpt from each of the sixteen stories in the anthology and challenging readers to guess which of four alternative endings is the correct one, and who wrote which excerpt. So jump on there and take a look, next Friday.

Cheers and stay hopeful,

David

Novacon 39

2009-11-06T14:51:00.002Z

Hi all,

Just to let you know, Ian Whates, whose book The Noise Within we will be proud to publish in May 2010, is due to make an appearance at Novacon 39 in Nottingham next weekend, 13th - 15th November. So by all means drop by and ask him about his stuff.

While you're at it, here's an interview he gave Gareth Jones of The Science of Fiction this July.

Have a good weekend!

David

Tinythulhu!

2009-11-05T11:03:00.005Z

My amigurumi Cthulhu, "Tinythulhu", has just seen the cover of Haggopian and Other Stories. He's a little bewildered by what he sees...

Cthulhu Bingo - Rules

2009-11-05T10:30:00.004Z

Right, we're in the office right now with reference copies of Brian Lumley's new Mythos anthology, Haggopian and Other Stories, and we've come up with an awesome game: #CthulhuBingo!

It's dead simple. Pick up a Mythos book. We're using Haggopian, but you can use whatever comes to hand. Flip it open to random pages until you hit on an awesome adjective. Something HP would have been proud to write himself. Shout it out loud!

Everyone present agrees a score out of ten for your adjective. Play until bored. Highest scoring word wins. Basic rules:

1. It's gotta come out of the book in front of you. We all know awesome Mythos adjectives; the trick is to find them.
2. You gotta find it by flicking randomly through; no manner of methodical search is acceptable. Randomness is how Azathoth expresses himself in our subconscious minds...
3. Points based on three guidelines: length, obscurity, and what I like to call sheer Lovecrafteosity. Loathsome is six points; cyclopean is eight. If you've awarded ten points for any word other than squamous, I want to hear about it.

Comment here, or twitter us @solarisbooks, to share your words and score. We'd love to hear from you.

Cheers,

David

2009-11-02T10:34:00.005Z

So Andy Remic has just shown me his "teaser trailer for the film of the book of the film." Don't expect me to think about that too hard this early on a Monday morning.

Said book is Remic's Hardcore, which Solaris Books will be releasing next January. The full film will be released at Andy's website in January, to coincide with the launch of the book.

Cosmopath at the Printers!

2009-10-30T15:30:00.003Z

Hi all,

We sent off Eric Brown's Cosmopath, third book in the acclaimed Bengal Station trilogy, to the printers this week, so it'll hit the shelves soon.

In the meantime, get a load of Mark Chitty's reviews of Necropath and Xenopath.

David

Gail Z. Martin's Days of the Dead Tour - 2009

2009-10-28T11:27:00.005Z

Gail Z. Martin, author of the Chronicles of the Necromancer, kicks off her annual Days of the Dead International Blog Tour during the week leading up to Halloween.

Today on the tour, she stops in at the Solaris blog to tell us all about her newest novel, Dark Lady’s Chosen, which we will release on December 29, 2009.

Q: You’ve taken your readers progressively deeper into the world of the Winter Kingdoms in your Chronicles of the Necromancer series. Do you have a particular process for writing?

A: I have a good idea of the beginning and ending for each story before I start to write, and a pretty good idea of the key turning points. Obviously, I have to also turn in a fairly detailed outline beforehand, but even with all of that, there are surprises along the way. I’ll start writing a scene knowing where it begins and where it has to end, but the details in the middle may not be clear to me until I see the words appearing on the page. It’s nice at the end of the day to read over what I’ve written and be pleasantly surprised.

Q: Can you talk about the world building that goes into a series like your Chronicles of the Necromancer?

A: I spend a lot of mental time in the world of my books, thinking about how they would think about certain things or celebrate a holiday or life event, or how the society would work around specific issues given the reality of magic and the presence of the undead. Often, that kind of random musing will get me started on a whole new plot twist, or something that I write into the book.

I was a history major, so I was taught to look for all the different elements that affect society: culture, geography, history, religion, economics, etc. I try to write those same elements into my world of the Winter Kingdoms so that it feels realistic and textured.

By the way, for the not-yet-published writers out there, I am actually teaching a four-part teleclass on World Building for WriteWellU.com this spring and we’ll go into the how-tos in detail.

Q: You have a way of talking about your characters as if they’re real, and you’ve even interviewed some of your characters. How do you develop your characters?

A: This may sound kind of weird, but I don’t really “develop” the characters as much as they present themselves and demand to be written into the story. They usually show up fully formed, and if I don’t know something about them, it’s more a question of picturing them in my mind and asking them questions than it is making stuff up about them. And if I try to take them in a direction they don’t want to go, they let me know and it just doesn’t work out.

Q: What’s behind your Days of the Dead Blog Tour?

A: I love Halloween. Next to Christmas, it’s my favorite holiday and always has been. And the week leading up to Halloween is special. You’ve got Samhain, All Hallow’s Eve and Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). So it’s a time of year that has evoked a feeling in people across time and cultures—the feeling that the threshold between the world of the living and the place of the dead is a little thinner than usual. So it made perfect sense to me to do a blog tour during such a great week when my books, after all, are about ghosts, necromancers, restless spirits, the undead—you get the picture.

The Tour premise is simple: I partner with a number of sites and provide unique content to each one during the week of the tour. We all have a lot of fun. New readers get introduced to my books, and existing readers get some tasty tidbits as we count down to the release of Dark Lady’s Chosen on Dec. 29. And my readers may also find some great web sites they hadn’t seen before. Everyone wins.

Of course, I’ll also be in stores and at conventions for the new book, so there will be a “live” tour also!

Q: You’ve got audio and excerpts from Dark Lady’s Chosen online, plus there are other sites participating in your Days of the Dead blog tour. Where can we find all the goodies?

A: Check out my site at www.ChroniclesOfTheNecromancer.com, for all the downloads and more Days of the Dead stuff. Also, please find me on Twitter.com as @GailZMartin and on Facebook and MySpace as well.

Outshining the competition

2009-10-22T14:42:00.003+01:00

Although Shine (our anthology of optimistic SF) is planned for release by Solaris Books in April 2010, readers can whet their appetites until then over at DayBreak Magazine, where a 'positive, forward-looking SF story' will be featured every second Friday until the Shine anthology is released. Daybreak magazine was launched last Friday.

You can find out more about the Shine project here, and follow them on twitter, too, @outshine.

Review of Decay Inevitable

2009-10-20T15:13:00.002+01:00

Hi all,

Graeme Flory of Graeme's Fantasy Book Review has offered these words on Conrad Williams' Decay Inevitable. Eight and three quarters out of ten.

Cheers,

David

Update Time!

2009-10-20T11:24:00.003+01:00

Hi all,

Quick update on where we are with releases in the next few months. Buckle yourselves in...

Eric Brown's Cosmopath, the highly-anticipated sequel to Necropath and Xenopath, sees telepathic investigator Jeff Vaughan's return to the shelves next month. Gritty, dark hard-SF at its best.

Blood in the Water, the second in Juliet E. McKenna's epic new political fantasy series The Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution following Irons in the Fire, is on track for a December release, as is Haggopian and Other Stories, a Lovecraftian anthology by Solaris newcomer Brian Lumley.

January sees the release of Dark Lady's Chosen, fourth book in Gail Z. Martin's immensely popular dark fantasy series The Chronicles of the Necromancer. We're also releasing the A-Format reprint of Justin Gustainis' second Morris and Chastain investigative horror, Evil Ways, and the third instalment in Andy Remic's Combat-K series, Hardcore, which will reach in through your eyes and kick your brain's ass.

Coming up, we have another Nightside collection, Ed Greenwood's third Falconfar book, pirates, gods, and Jets de Vries' brilliant anthology Shine. Watch this space...

Cheers,

David

Signing in Bristol

2009-10-19T16:23:00.006+01:00

Juliet E. McKenna informs me that she will be in Forbidden Planet, Bristol, on Saturday 24th October from 1 pm, along with Stan Nicholls, Chaz Brenchley and Kari Sperring. They'll be happy to sign books and to talk about reading and writing SF&F.

She says she's looking forward to meeting 'the fine readers of Solaris Books' so be on your best behaviour, ya hear? Wouldn't want to disappoint the lady.

It's an event organised by The Write Fantastic; a group of fantasy authors who work together to promote the genre - more info here - and more on Juliet here.

The funeral of Edgar Allen Poe

2009-10-14T10:03:00.002+01:00

Okay, yes, I do realise that the father of the mystery and science-fiction story has been dead quite a while, but Ellen Datlow (editor of the stunning anthology Poe) has been involved in a memorial service to arguably one of the finest and most important genre writers to have walked this earth.

You can see the coverage at Ellen's blog.

Jon

Paul Kearney to write two novels for Solaris

2009-10-01T15:25:00.003+01:00

Hi All

Well, the wheels are starting to turn again on this particular bus, so news of our latest commissions courtesy of John Jarrold:

PRESS RELEASE – TWO-BOOK DEAL FOR FANTASY NOVELIST PAUL KEARNEY

Jonathan Oliver, commissioning editor of Solaris Books since the imprint’s acquisition from Games Workshop by Rebellion earlier this month, has acquired two new novels by Paul Kearney, set on the same world as his successful Solaris novel THE TEN THOUSAND. The agent was John Jarrold, and the deal was for UK/US rights.

These novels, entitled CORVUS and KINGS OF MORNING, are due for delivery in 2010 and early 2011 respectively.

“The immediacy of Paul’s prose and characterisation always puts me in mind of David Gemmell, who I was lucky enough to publish in the mid-1990s,” said John Jarrold. “With THE TEN THOUSAND he has created a world ripe for re-visiting. Can’t wait to read these books! And I’m very pleased to have concluded my first deal with Jon Oliver and the ‘new’ Solaris.”

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In other news Gail Z. Martin, author of the excellent fantasy series The Chronicles of The Necromancer has posted some reports of her time at Fantasycon in Nottingham:

That is all for now. More news soon.

Happy Reading

Jonathan Oliver

Solaris will be back

2009-09-24T14:25:00.001+01:00

Hi Folks

Sorry for all the radio silence. Just a quicky to say that the Solaris website will be back up and running very soon.

All The Best

Jon

(Editor)

Roberson Wins The Sidewise

2009-08-10T08:33:00.002+01:00

It was Solaris goodness this weekend.

Congratulations to Chris Roberson who won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History for The Dragon's Nine Sons! Also to Mary Rosenblum, for “Sacrifice”, from Lou Anders' anthology Sideways in Crime, which was the short form winner.

James Maxey Cancer Awareness Post

2009-07-06T09:46:00.001+01:00

James Maxey dropped us a line about a cancer awarness initiative on his blog.

I'd like to invite you to increase the fraction going to breast cancer research, both due to my personal connection to the cause, and because I think that this is the right moment in history to truly make a difference. I firmly believe this is a disease than can be cured within our lifetime. I don't know if one day we will simply swallow a magic pill and be healed, but I do know that the day will come when we will be able to profile any cancer cell and match it with the appropriate drug to wipe it out.

To help bring this day closer, if only by a minute or two, I'd like to announce my "Books for Breasts" promotion. Anyone who contributes to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation through the "Team Dragon" fundraising page will get a free signed copy of Dragonseed.

You can contribute to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer foundation by clicking here. This will take you to my personal fundraising page; just click the button that says "support James." Then, to get your signed copy of Dragonseed, just email me your mailing address to nobodynovelwriter@yahoo.com. I've set aside 50 copies for this cause; if I give them all away by the end of July, I'm pretty sure I can get my hands on another 50.

Read the rest of the post.