The Early Days of a Better Nation

Wednesday, March 06, 2013



Intrusion out in paperback

My 2012 novel Intrusion is now available in paperback. As you can see from my friend George Berger's photo of a display in the Uppsala English Bookshop, copies are already out in the wild and have made it as far as Sweden.

I'm delighted, and honoured, that the book is on the Best Novel shortlist for the British Science Fiction Association's BSFA Awards:  

Dark Eden by Chris Beckett (Corvus)
Empty Space: a Haunting by M. John Harrison (Gollancz)
Intrusion by Ken Macleod (Orbit)
Jack Glass by Adam Roberts (Gollancz)  
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)

In such company, it's an honour just to be nominated.

The novel is also on the Locus 2012 Recommended Reading List.

I'll finish with a quote from David Hebblethwaite's recent review:
[I]t is in MacLeod’s portrait of his future society that the novel shines most brightly. Several times, we see how the authorities cross-reference online traces and other seemingly-unremarkable points of data, and infer that someone might be a security risk – and the first they know of it is when the police come for them. This mirrors the novel’s sense that isolated bits of rhetoric have cohered invisibly to form the framework of government ideology; which can also be a net to trap the unwary, as Hope and other characters discover. The ending of Intrusion is also built on the idea of isolated details coming together unexpectedly, which is a satisfying touch.

Perhaps what’s most chilling about Intrusion is its quietness. As terrible as the society and events of MacLeod’s novel can be, its prose treats them largely as banal, which is quite fitting for the insidious way they’ve come about. Intrusion is likewise a book that creeps up on you – and stays there, just out of sight, waiting.

7 Comments:

Hurrah! I've been waiting for the paperback -- I'll get down to Transreal this week and pick up a copy. Congrats on the BSFA shortlisting. See you at Eastercon?

I wish! I don't think I can go this year, but have a good time anyway! And thanks for supporting our local SF bookshop, and me :-)

Great, but when do we in the U.S. get to read it?

Not soon, unless I can persuade a US editor that there's enough interest to make them reconsider.

$20.87 gets me the book plus US delivery from Amazon UK.

I had our local library order in the hard cover some time ago. Too bad the public lending right payments do not travel internationally (yet), as it seems quite popular with the patrons over here (in Canada)
Rob.

Intrusion not circulating in the US yet is so dissapointing considering I discovered your work through my local library here.Dark Light and The Fall Revolution series was available as well and some time later even Learning The World showed up on the shelf. I think I'll just order the UK edition as I did for your last three releases.The US needs more exposure to your amazing and thought provoking ideas.

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