Heads Up! | The Three of The Two of Swords

K. J. Parker is to my mind one of the best writers writing right now, so I was all sorts of excited when Subterranean Press announced Savages, the author's first novel proper since Sharps three long years ago. I still am; I dare say I'm delighted. But—be still my beating heart—Orbit has gone and beaten Savages to market with a serial novel project called The Two of Swords.

"Why are we fighting this war? Because evil must be resisted, and sooner or later there comes a time when men of principle have to make a stand. Because war is good for business and it's better to die on our feet than live on our knees. Because they started it. But at this stage in the proceedings," he added, with a slightly lop-sided grin, "mostly from force of habit." 

A soldier with a gift for archery. A woman who kills without care. Two brothers, both unbeatable generals, now fighting for opposing armies. No-one in the vast and once glorious United Empire remains untouched by the rift between East and West, and the war has been fought for as long as anyone can remember. Some still survive who know how it was started, but no-one knows how it will end.

Initially, The Two of Swords will only be available as eight ebook "episodes" released between now—as in RIGHT NOW, readers—and September, but collected print and digital editions are of course on the cards for some undisclosed date after the fact.

To tell the truth, I'd really rather have the whole novel in hand before I begin... but hey, you won't catch me waiting for new K. J. Parker if I can help it. And I can! And at 99 pence a pop, or less than a dollar across the pond—the perfect impulse purchase price—I've already bought a copy of the first installment of The Two of Swords, and I plan to crack open my Kindle just as soon as I've put the finishing touches to this post.

P. S. Done... and done! :)

Meme, Myself and I | Regarding Reading Habits

Memes of the old mold seem in recent years to have gone the way of the dearly departed dodo, and although I thought them at best a guilty pleasure then, now, much to my surprise, I find myself missing them. To wit, it was with happiness in my heart that I saw a fifteen question genre fiction book meme, mostly focused on reading and buying habits, featured on Pornokitsch a wee while back. I gather those guys got it from Gail Carriger, who traced the thing back to SF Signal.

Fast forward a fortnight—and the fact that it's taken me a fortnight to answer fifteen quick questions should tell you something about how bloody busy I've been recently—and I'm finally finished!

***

1. What was the last sf/f/h book you finished reading?

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro: a genre novel by all accounts, although one at its best when its fantastical trappings are left in the background. I called it "a minor work by a modern master" in my review for Tor.com—a statement I feel safe standing by despite the unadulterated praise that's been heaped on it this week.

2. What was the last sf/f/h book you did not finish reading and why?

I finish almost everything! But that's because almost everything I read, I read with a view to review, and my feeling is that to review a book fairly, you have to see it through to its conclusion.

3. What was the last sf/f/h book you read
that you liked but most people didn’t?

Hmm. Maybe Something Coming Through by Paul McAuley? I wouldn't go so far as to say most people disliked it, but I certainly liked it more than most.

4. What was the last sf/f/h book you read
that you disliked but most people did?

As above, so below. Though I didn't quite dislike it—as I put it at the time, The Death House by Sarah Pinborough is never less than "completely competent"—I certainly didn't love it, and I dare say a fair few folks did. Each to their own, of course.

5. How long do your single-sitting
reading sessions usually last?

If I have less than an hour to spend reading, it isn't often worth my while, because the longer I spend reading, the faster the speed I read at. In an hour, for instance, I might make it through fifty pages; in four, I'll defeat four hundred. It's funny. 

Also frustrating, because four free hours are increasingly hard to find.

6. What are you currently reading?

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers: a formerly self-published science fiction novel which the fine folks at Hodder are hoping to bring to a bigger audience when they re-release it as an ebook in a few weeks.

7. Do you like it so far?

I'll be reviewing it soon—don't anyone act surprised or anything—so I don't want to give the game away, but do I like it so far? Hell yes.

That said, I still have half of the whole to go. It's all to play for!

8. How long ago did you buy the book you are
currently reading (or the last book you read)?

I, uh... didn't. I'm reading a review copy. But I do at least have the decency to feel bad about that, such that I'll probably buy a final physical edition of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet if it continues to kick ass.

9. What was the last physical sf/f/h book you bought?

The Bees by Laline Paull. My mum doesn't read much, and rarely could what she reads be considered speculative, so when she does recommend something along those lines, I pay attention.

She was well into this one. Not sure I am so far, but my progress through The Bees has been slow; I'll let you know how it goes.

10. What is the sf/f/h sub-genre you like the most and why?

Weird stuff really does it for me. In part because there's just not a lot of it, so it seems special in a way other sub-genres don't.

Relatedly, roll on the next China Mieville collection, Three Moments of an Explosion: Stories.

11. What is the sf/f/h sub-genre you dislike the most and why?

Epic fantasy can be simply brilliant—see Guy Gavriel Kay, another of my favourite fictionists—but all too often, it's forgettable and repetitive.

But on balance, I'm going to have to say steampunk. Nine times out of ten, I find, steampunk stories favours style over substance, and I've long since tired of trying to find exceptions to the rule.

12. What is your favorite electronic reading device?

The second generation Kindle Paperwhite I gifted myself last summer. I don't use it all that often while I'm at home, where of late I've had the luxury of a library, but it's been a proper godsend on holidays. Come the end of the month it'll be coming to Gdansk with me.

I'm already wondering what to load it up with...

13. What was the last sf/f/h eBook you bought?

Actually, I bought twenty, some of which I already owned in physical format, by way of the Humble Subterranean Press Book Bundle. I can't resist a sweet deal, and at fifteen squids these were a real steal.

14. Do you read books exclusively
in one format (physical/electronic)?

I used to do. Reading ebooks was an age-old practice before I finally gave it a go, and old man that I am, I still favour physical editions—for the feel, the physical impression of progress and the notion of the novel as an object of artistic value—but I'm markedly more open to ebooks these days.

15. Do you read ebooks exclusively on a single device,
ie. an eBook reader, a smartphone or a tablet?

When I read ebooks, I read them almost exclusively on the Paperwhite. Occasionally I have to work with a PDF file, however, and allow me to close out this post by echoing the frustrations of the Pornokitsch kids: PDF files are a living nightmare. For those, I have my tablet: a 10.1 inch Samsung Galaxy Tab S.

Bargain Books | Five Years of Speculative Fiction, Free

In case you hadn't heard, Tor.com's fifth birthday is this week. This Saturday, in fact.

And what is Tor.com doing to celebrate its coming of age?

Why, it's having a party... and everyone's invited!

Yes, you too. Assuming you can make it to the Housing Works Bookstore and Café in New York City next Wednesday, you can look forward to free booze and free books. Plus, attendees can expect to rub shoulders with the likes of Ellen Datlow, Lev Grossman, Genevieve Valentine and Michael Swanwick—not to mention Stubby and the staff.

Not that I wasn't desperately tempted, but 24 hours of travel is a touch too much for yours truly, so I won't be able to make it.... but if you can, then indubitably, you should.

That isn't all Tor.com is doing to celebrate the big week either. Which brings me to the reason this is a Bargain Books post. You see, they've "assembled the entire last five years of [their] award-winning original fiction into one handy, and possibly physics-defying, ebook." That's not hyperbole either: the PDF is 500 MB. I made do with a MOBI file at only 153 MB.

You need to register for a free account to download The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com, but that's the only requirement. Otherwise, this incredible compendium is completely gratis.

Well what are you waiting for? Go on and download it!

In short, happy birthday, Tor.com! And thanks for making the big day such a pleasure for the rest of us.

Bargain Books | The Humble Bundle

You've heard of the Humble Bundles, haven't you?

The first bundle was made available in May 2010, and it featured six indie video games, including Aquaria, World of Goo and Samorost 2. You could pay whatever you could afford in exchange for download codes for the whole lot. It was a tremendous success, raising more than $1m — of which a large part was donated to charity.

In the years since (both of them!) there have been countless other bundles - so very many that I admit I had rather lost track - including a Humble Music Bundle, and as of yesterday, the first Humble eBook Bundle. Thus this post's existence.

It features an astonishing array of novels and short story collections:

• Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
• Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link
• Invasion by Mercedes Lackey
• Pump Six & Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi
• Magic For Beginners by Kelly Link
• Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow

And all of these eBooks could be yours for the grand price of... whatever you have sitting in your PayPal account! Or less!

Or, of course, more. In fact, as an added incentive, if you donate more than the average amount - which is hovering right around $12 as of 2PM today - your bundle will come complete with two other eBooks, namely Old Man's War by John Scalzi and Signal to Noise, the graphic novel by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean.

Considering how much a copy of that last alone would set you back, the Humble eBook Bundle represents such bang for your buck that this immediately qualifies as the bestest Bargain Books post ever. I've bought the lot for the cost of a new hardcover here in the UK: £20.

Seemed like the least I could do, really.

But you can choose how much you want to pay! You can choose, too, how your money gets divvied up between the authors, the organisers and the three charities the Humble eBook Bundle is supporting: that is to say Child's Play, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the SFWA. You can even gift a bundle to a loved one. Given such a good cause, I'm sorely tempted to do just that.

In 24 hours, the first Humble eBook Bundle has already raised around a quarter of a million dollars, and that's awesome. But I bet we can do better! Do the world a good turn, why don't you — and get some awesome ePUBs for your trouble.

What's not to like?

Press Release Your Luck | Gollancz's Gateway to SF

When just a few weeks ago Gollancz announced that a significantly updated edition of ye olde print reference tome The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction would be made available to all comers on the internets at no charge, I'll admit: excited as I was about the prospect of One Resource To Rule Them All - which is exactly what I imagine this definitive third edition of the encyclopedia will represent - I did wonder where their margins were.

Were Gollancz undertaking this behemothic endeavour just to curry favour with the genre community? Or would it be monetised, somehow?

Well, now we know. This press release just arrived in my inbox:

Gollancz, the SF and Fantasy imprint of the Orion Publishing Group, announces the launch of the world’s largest digital SFF library, the SF Gateway, which will make thousands of out-of-print titles by classic genre authors available as eBooks.

Building on the remarkable success of Gollancz’s Masterworks series, the SF Gateway will launch this Autumn with more than a thousand titles by close to a hundred authors. It will build to 3,000 titles by the end of 2012, and 5,000 or more by 2014. Gollancz’s Digital Publisher Darren Nash, who joined the company in September 2010 to spearhead the project said, “The Masterworks series has been extraordinarily successful in republishing one or two key titles by a wide range of authors, but most of those authors had long careers in which they wrote dozens of novels which had fallen out of print. It seemed to us that eBooks would offer the ideal way to make them available again. This realization was the starting point for the SF Gateway.” Wherever possible, the SFGateway will offer the complete backlist of the authors included.

The SF Gateway will be closely integrated with the recently announced new online edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, which provides an independent and definitive reference source of information on the authors and books included. Direct links between the Encyclopedia and the Gateway will provide easy access to eBook editions, for sale through all major online retailers.

The Gateway site will also act as a major community hub and social network for SF readers across the world, allowing them to interact with each other and recommend titles and authors. The site is planned to include forums, blogs, regular promotions, and is envisaged to become the natural home on the net for anyone with an interest in classic SFF.

Authors featured in the launch include such names as Marion Zimmer Bradley, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Frank Herbert, Alice B. Sheldon (James Tiptree, Jr), Robert Silverberg, Kate Wilhelm and Connie Willis. A full list of authors so far under contract is appended to this announcement; negotiations are in anadvanced state for many more. 

The announcement in its entirety can be found here.

In short, then, when it arrives, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction will come hand-in-hand with a second site, SF Gateway, which looks to have its hooks deep in the encyclopedia: where possible, articles in the latter will include links to related eBooks made available through the budding marketplace of the former. Which roundly answers my earlier question.

Nor, by the sounds of it, is SF Gateway merely some genre-oriented shopfront. It also has designs on providing this community we're all a part of in one way or another with a social network tailor-made to our needs: a gathering place along the lines of Suduvu and Tor.com and of course the Westeros forums.

And I'm all for that. Come to that, I'm all for all of this... depending on a couple of little things.

Which is to say: depending of course on the still-TBD implementation of these two prongs - depending, in other words, on how passive or invasive this interlinking proves to be when the time comes, and furthermore whether or not the content of the enclyclopedia is in any way, shape or form governed by those eBooks the SF Gateway will sell - taken together, these two bold new ventures sketch the outline of what could come in time to be a single indispensable resource. And if any one publisher in the UK is better positioned to make a go of such a thing than Gollancz, I haven't heard of it.

So it's good news, everybody!

Are we all agreed?

***

Update Posted by Niall Alexander at 18:00

Quick as that, our man in Gollancz - that is to say deputy publishing director Simon Spanton - got back to me to allay whatever concerns I may have had about how the relationship between the encyclopedia and SF Gateway might jeopardise the form and/or content of either endeavour, or both. He's what Simon had to say:

A condition of the SFEncy accepting our support in going online was the absolute maintenance of their editorial independence. Nor have any considerations about inclusion of titles on SFGateway been influenced by the content of the SFEncy. Linked and integrated they may be but the independence of the projects is too key to their value for there to be any consideration of moving away from that independence.

So let's keep this quick: fly away, my fears! :)

Couldn't be happier to see 'em off, either.