Ken MacLeod's comments.
The title comes from two quotes:
“Work as if you lived in the early days of a better nation.”—Alasdair Gray.
“If these are the early days of a better nation, there must be hope, and a hope of peace is as good as any, and far better than a hollow hoarding greed or the dry lies of an aweless god.”—Graydon Saunders
The Restoration Game is a smart cyber-thriller that runs an interesting course of alternate history. Part of what makes the story a true gem is not where it’s going plot wise, but how it gets there. Its world is as timely as the latest I-Phone release, and Krasnia, while fictional could be a page right out of Soviet 20th century history. Will Lucy and crew come back for a sequel? There’s certainly lots of room in the quantum universe of alternate histories out there waiting!
The US edition is (AFAIK) identical to the UK hardback edition. The UK paperback corrects a handful of minor errors that hardly any readers would have noticed anyway.
Stone Canal being a Prequel and sequel all in one book, gotcha. By the way, Ken, it was the Stone Canal that first introduced me to your work. The old saw "You can't judge a book by it's cover" didn't ring true here. I liked the artwork, and I bought it.
Thanks, Anon. The story about the cover artwork on the original and most subsequent editions is that after every attempt I and my then editor, John Jarrold, made to convey a visual image of Ship City resulted in sketches of shellfish, an artist turned up with a portfolio that included the wonderful image you (and I) liked so much.
I do like the newer Orbit paperback artwork for the Fall Revolution books, but I was well lucky with all the first-edition covers.
But where is the e-book?
By
Ian McWilliam, at
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 3:18:00 AM