The Early Days of a Better Nation

Wednesday, January 11, 2012



Coming soon: US paperback of The Night Sessions


Via i09, I see that the forthcoming Pyr edition of The Night Sessions is now available for pre-order. The cover, by Stephan Martiniere, is just ace - I've seen it before, of course, as editor Lou Anders took me through various stages of the design process, but this happens to be the first time I've seen it walking the mean streets by itself.

The book itself is a near-future police procedural, featuring atheist detectives, presbyterian terrorists, creationist science-park animatronic hominids, a gothic lolita secret policeman, and Calvinist robots in space.

Or, as the publisher more soberly puts it:
A bishop is dead. As Detective Inspector Adam Ferguson picks through the rubble of the tiny church, he discovers that it was deliberately bombed. That it’s a terrorist act is soon beyond doubt. It’s been a long time since anyone saw anything like this. Terrorism is history.

After the Middle East wars and the rising sea levels, after Armageddon and the Flood, came the Great Rejection. The first Enlightenment separated church from state. The Second Enlightenment has separated religion from politics. In this enlightened age there’s no persecution, but the millions who still believe and worship are a marginal and mistrusted minority. Now someone is killing them.

At first, suspicion falls on atheists more militant than the secular authorities. But when the target list expands to include the godless, it becomes evident that something very old has risen from the ashes. Old and very, very dangerous. . .

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11 Comments:

Now I'm going to have to buy another copy just for the brilliant cover art.

This is my favorite of your stand-alone novels.

Very glad that it'll be even more accessible in these parts. My loaner copy is getting a little tired. Now I can tell would be borrowers to go buy their own. ',:^D

One of your best novels and perhaps my favourite of them all. I hope it gets the recognition and promotion it deserves.

That's a gorgeous cover.

Yes. Another example of Stephan Martiniere seeing more vividly than I do what I imagine. In fact that's a better Ferguson and Skulk than I imagined. Very cool hint of the space elevator, too.

Yay! We'll finally get to read it over here.
Just got the Pyr edition of "The Restoration Game", looking forward to reading it soon.

Martiniere has become one of my favorites, since seeing his cover for "Cosmonaut Keep" (and the rest of the series). His work is fantastic.

Not the usual kind of Martiniere cover...but that is no bad thing.

JamesPadraicR - geat to hear from you, and thanks for buying the book. Great cover on that one, too.

Martiniere has always done a superb job on my covers. The cover of Engine City (Tor) in particular is a real work of art in its own right.

...is that Steve McQueen there?

Great cover - I'd say better than the UK version I've got (which I suspect may have been designed not to look too offputtingly skiffy).

Just thought to check availability at Barnes & Noble, they say not till the end of April, though can pre-order. Since I prefer buying in-store, I'll wait and give myself a late birthday present (assuming it shows up).

Fantastic news! As noted by others already, I'm looking forward to being able to point people at the bookstore to buy it; most folks don't seem to make it over the activation threshold to buy from overseas.

This is a 2008 book. I've just found out that the Freefall cartoon got onto the topic of the danger of humans talking religion to robots in 2006!

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