Posted
8:19 pm
by Ken
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. . .
Labels: coming attractions, self-promotion, skiffy, writing
Posted
2:05 pm
by Ken
Known manifestations
My engagements so far for 2012:
Thursday 2 to Sunday 5 February: with
many other authors, as well as noted SF/F
fans and artists at
SFX Weekender 3, Pontin's Holiday Park, Prestatyn Sands, North Wales. It's hoped (but not promised) that pre-publication copies of my new novel,
Intrusion (Orbit, 1 March 2012), will be available for signing in
the dealers' room.
Intrusion is, of course, already available for pre-order in
hardcover and
Kindle editions. Cory Doctorow, who has kindly allowed me to quote from his forthcoming review, describes it as
a new kind of dystopian novel: a vision of a near future "benevolent dictatorship" run by Tony Blair-style technocrats who believe freedom isn't the right to choose, it's the right to have the government decide what you would choose, if only you knew what they knew. ... a haunting, gripping story of resistance, terror, and an all-consuming state that commits its atrocities with the best of intentions.
Iain M. Banks calls it a
twistedly clever, frighteningly plausible dystopian glimpse.
Friday 13 April, evening: a panel on transhumanism/posthumanism with, among others, Justina Robson and Steve Fuller at the
Edinburgh International Science Festival.
Saturday 14 (evening) to Sunday 15 April: Guest of Honour at the lively and highly commendable annual 'fantastic weekend for readers and writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror', now in its sixth year,
Alt.Fiction, Phoenix Digital Arts Centre, Leicester.
Labels: coming attractions, self-promotion, writing
Posted
7:07 pm
by Ken
2012 - year of fell portent
According to half-baked myth and Hollywood (but I repeat myself) 2012 is the year the Mayan calendar reaches the end of its Long Count and the old gods come from the sky and eat our brains, or whatever.
My brain, at the moment, would welcome being devoured by a feather-coated obsidian-toothed deity with a name that reads like it came from a Polish dictionary falling downstairs, but the grisly repast would probably send said deity on a hasty visit to the privy, so I'll just have to sweat this one out.
Happy New Year!