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April 17, 2012
Greetings:
Ken MacLeod's The Night Sessions comes to the US this month. Near future science fiction meets police procedural in this British Science Fiction Award-winner for Best Novel. We also have a round up of interviews and a look at what's ahead.
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 | Future Terror
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 "A pleasingly spicy mashup of wise politics and smartass ethics, The Night Sessions is both hard to resist and hard to put down."-io9
"As ever, MacLeod's depiction of the near future is achieved through solid characterisation and brilliant detail. His forte is the depiction of how belief systems can corrupt, and The Night Sessions is a stunning indictment of fundamentalism of all kinds." -The Guardian
"In Hollywood terms, it's high concept: in a world where religion is banned, what happens when robots find God? ...The Night Sessions is a fast, entertaining read with some challenging ideas behind it. ... if The Night Sessions' conclusion is not quite as audacious as that of the previous novel, it is nevertheless strikingly brutal and brave, a welcome sign of a novelist willing to follow through the implications of his set-up." -Strange Horizons
In Ken MacLeod's The Night Sessions, 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...
Congratulations are also due to Ken MacLeod for the nomination of The Restoration Game for a Prometheus Award! (No connection to our parent company.)
The award will be presented during the 70th World Science Fiction Convention over Labor Day weekend in Chicago.
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| Pyr Around the Web
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 SF Signal interviews Mark Chadbourn about writing genre (or not,) immersion in long-form stories, and his Kingdom of the Serpent trilogy. (See our coupon below for a chance to get started on the Age of Misrule trilogy for half-off!)
Only the Best Scifi interviews Jon Sprunk (Shadow's Master) to discuss the Shadow Saga trilogy, which characters were hard to write, and dispense some advice on writing.
Editorial Director Lou Anders joins the Chiseled in Rock blog to talk about how he became an editor, his favorite books and films, and SFF recommendations for the new genre reader.
James Enge (A Guile of Dragons, forthcoming) takes part in a  roundtable at Clarkesworld on the relationship between speculative fiction and academia, with seven other authors who also teach at colleges and universities.
Tim Akers (The Horns of Ruin) talks about the power of tropes to communicate at Black Gate in hisIn Defense of Elves.
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| Coming Soon
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 "If you like hard-hitting fantasy adventure with a lot of magic, this is your series."
- Piers Anthony
In the sequel to Sword of Fire and Sea, Vidarian Rulorat faces the consequences of opening the gate between worlds. Called into service by the desperate young emperor of Alorea, Vidarian must lead sky ships in a war against the neighboring southern empire, train the demoralized imperial Sky Knights to ride beasts that now shapeshift, master his own amplified elemental magic, and win back Ariadel--all without losing his mind.
 "As one expects, the Nebula Awards Showcase is a volume of splendid stories covering the gamut of genres.... there are several fine examples of genre poetry; there are excerpts from two delightful novels..." -Booklist
"From the cover by Nebula-winning artist Michael Whelan to the very last page, this remarkable anthology is filled with the very best of the SF and fantasy published in 2010.... [A]ll the inclusions are outstanding works of fiction." -Publishers Weekly (starred review) The Nebula Awards Showcase volumes have been published annually since 1966, reprinting the winning and nominated stories in the Nebula Awards, voted on by the members of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America® . The editors selected by SFWA's anthology committee (chaired by Mike Resnick) are John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly, both highly acclaimed not only for their own award-winning fiction but also as co-editors of three anthologies.
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That's it for this issue. As always, please check out our entire catalog and drop by our blog.
Happy Reading,
Rene Sears
Editorial Assistant, Pyr®
an imprint of Prometheus Books |
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