ZNAK SAGITE — više od fantastike — edicija, časopis, knjižara...

... sad pa Chuck Wendig?
Svako malo naletim na njega - to uglavnom zbog vickaste i vrckaste mu blogerske profanosti...
Ima par objavljenih naslova:





... i opicen je, stvarno, u eks-gejmer, transmedija gik smislu:

Quote

Q: What excites you most about transmedia storytelling?


A: Honestly, the philosophical lawlessness of it all is fascinating. You can
take one story and hit it with a hammer and see where all the pieces fall — this
piece is an app, that piece is a Twitter account, these other pieces are
episodic video, etc. It brings together all the storytelling disciplines into
some madcap media super-Kung-Fu.

a evo i ceo intervju na  http://silverstringmedia.com/
I? jel' ko citao ista njegovo?

Nikad čula za njega (ova naslovna strana dušu dala za Angel). Ali zaboga, Libe, potpis! Jadan moj Končar!

Nisam ni ja čula za njega, ali sa ovakvom naslovnicom, potražiću. 

Potpisujem sve sem komentara na potpis, a ni naslovnicu necu traziti 

Pa dobro, ali Chuck redovito uspeva da me oraspolozi, i prosto me odusevljava koliko je opicen. U Aprilu mu izlazi novi naslov, i to cu obavezno da nabavim, nema tu zbora, ali sam se nadala da je neko od vas overio Chuckove starije stvari.



"Trailer-park tension, horrified hilarity, and sheer terror mixed with deft characterization and razor plotting. I literally could not put it down."

Quote from: Jevtropijevićka on 05-12-2011, 11:17:04
Ali zaboga, Libe, potpis! Jadan moj Končar!

  Draga moja, potpis je krajnje inspirativan makar zato sto ti lepo dokazuje da sekularni ekstremisti nisu ni pod nokat Njegovim pravovernima, a Cisterciti mu tu dodju ko udzbenicki primer radikalne efikasnosti.   

Inace, ovo mu je danasnji blog, tek da steknete ideju.... 

Quote




Right now, I have the barest little sparrow of a hangover fluttering its
wings against the inside of my forehead, against the backs of my eyes. Went out
last night, had a trio of drinks at Bolete in Bethlehem — a bourbon cocktail
called "The Remedy," a "Not-Your-Grandmother's Greyhound," and two fingers of
Laphroaig 10-year. I never really had much of a buzz, which made this hangover —
manifesting itself around 2AM last night — all the more disappointing and
undeserved. (Though the drinking remained delicious. Bolete creates impeccable
cocktails, and anybody in the area would be a wool-headed window-licker not go
to partake of their alcoholic and culinary delights.)


This hangover will be easy to defeat. Water and Advil — with some early
morning bacon — form a powerful hammer to beat back even the snarkiest of
hangovers, and this one just can't compete.


But, I remember the worst hangover I've ever had.


Friend showed up at college with a bottle of Yukon Jack. We drank less of the
bottle than you'd think, but got bombed just the same. Ended up laying outside
the dorm babbling at people.


Come morning, the hangover I suffered was as such where I felt like a room
full of balloons with a floor made of nails — I dared not move for fear
of expiring right then and there. Every ounce of my body hurt. My brain felt
like a caged rat gnawing through rusty hinges in order to escape. I knew if I
did anything but sit on my bed and stare at the wall I would cry out, vomit, pee
myself, and possibly explode inside my skin.


Seriously. I felt like hammered dogshit.


To this day if I catch a whiff of Yukon Jack, it all comes charging back, a
freight train of bodily memory.


Thing is, I know even that hangover just isn't that impressive.

Pratim mu sajt i twiter, bleskast je lik, ali još nisam dospeo da mu overim *pisanje*

Elem, overili smo Chuckov Totally Free Shit na blogu i fer je priznati, baja ima wordsmith dara.
moj favorit je weird "This Guy"... 

... Hillary Jordan? Njena nova knjiga je izašla početkom oktobra skoro da je instant hit i budući klasik, ako je za verovati rivjuima:







Hannah Payne has been sentenced to 16 years as a Chrome. Her skin has been turned a rich, vibrant red in order to denote her crime of murder, for aborting her child. The scourge that killed many and made women infertile has been cured and the Sanctity of Life laws mark women like Hannah as outcasts. Her fundamentalist Christian upbringing did not prepare her for forbidden love with a married man or the horrors she would face as a Red. When She Woke is Hannah's story of endurance, enlightenment and ultimately self-empowerment.
As with many dystopian novels, When She Woke is terrifying because in may ways it's easy to see this future coming about. In the book, Roe v. Wade is overturned in order to help increase the population, an act some parties in the U.S. are already trying to do, removing women's rights to control their own bodies and their bodies' reproduction. The idea of tracking released criminals is also one close to being realized, with the jump to making such a database open to the public only a small step further.
While based on Nathanial Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, When She Woke is much darker. While she faces the reproach and repudiation of Christians, she also faces the lechery of those who would take advantage of the downtrodden, and a fundamentalist group the equivalent of the KKK, that targets and kills Chromes.
The book was therefore unsettling on a number of levels. It reads as though it will have an unpleasant and depressing ending, yet at some point Hannah stops letting others decide her path and takes control of her own life. It's amazing seeing her go from a cowed if outspoken Christian girl to a fully liberated woman who questions the truth and motivations of others; one who knows the consequences of her actions and is willing to face them instead of trying to please others and their notions of repentance. Her character changes so completely - yet so honestly - as the book progresses that when you reach the end it's hard to remember who she was at the beginning of the story.
Not for the faint of heart, this is a good thought-provoking read about personal rights, the justice system and being your own person.

Hiromi Goto is the author of Darkest Light, which asks young readers to tackle big ideas






.

Quote from: LiBeat on 30-01-2012, 21:02:21








Hiromi Goto is the author of Darkest Light, which asks young readers to tackle big ideas






.

Op, op, ovo izgleda zanimljivo!! 

Nabasala sam na WFR na jedan clanak u kom Nancy Hightower govori o Ray Caesaru i jednostavno ne mogu da se odlepim od njegovih radova, to je do te mere fascinantno. Evo samo nekih:

Intervju - Will McIntosh:


SF Signal: Hi Will, thanks again for talking with us. When we last spoke, we talked about your first book, Soft Apocalypse.  How has the response been for that?


Will McIntosh: It's been very encouraging. The first printing sold out, it was on Locus magazine's recommended reading list, there is both a French and German edition coming out, and most importantly, I've heard from a lot of readers who enjoyed it.

Theodora Goss was born in Hungary and spent her childhood in various European countries before her family moved to the United States. Although she grew up on the classics of English literature, her writing has been influenced by Eastern European literary traditions. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and Mythopoeic Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List, and has won the World Fantasy and Rhysling Awards. The following is the first web appearance of a column originally slated for Realms of Fantasy Magazine. Her latest book is Thorne & Blossom.


Theodora Goss - A Brief History of Monsters





A Brief History of Monsters

Norveski SF  , a DeNardo je odusevljen naslovnicom:




It's been decades since anyone set foot on the moon. Now three ordinary teenagers, the winners of NASA's unprecedented, worldwide lottery, are about to become the first young people in space–and change their lives forever.

Mia, from Norway, hopes this will be her punk band's ticket to fame and fortune.

Midori believes it's her way out of her restrained life in Japan.

Antoine, from France, just wants to get as far away from his ex-girlfriend as possible.

It's the opportunity of a lifetime, but little do the teenagers know that something sinister is waiting for them on the desolate surface of the moon. And in the black vacuum of space... no one is coming to save them.

In this chilling adventure set in the most brutal landscape known to man, highly acclaimed Norwegian novelist Johan Harstad creates a vivid and frightening world of possibilities we can only hope never come true.


172 HOURS ON THE MOON
[/url]

The Grotesque Menageries of Greg Simkins

LEAH BOBET:
I didn't exactly start writing Above intending to write a book about being marginalized, intersectionality, and cultural trauma.

I started it because I was pissed off at a TV show.  An old one.  From 1987.
(Yeah, let's think about that for a second.)
–
I'm an engineer's kid; it means I'm a bit of a know-it-all sometimes. There's always a part of my brain that sees the underpinnings of some genre trope or assumption and hollers But that's not how it would really work!  And Ron Perlman and his friends below the sewers of New York in Beauty and the Beast, using nothing but dramatic black capes to pass on the streets?  Not notably worrying about the state of their plumbing or, well, scurvy?  That was not how it would really work.
So I started playing around.  With how it might really work.
Some of the answers to those questions were pure logistics: things like ventilation; how you'd pirate off the power grid; the social organization that'd emerge in a community where food was constantly rationed.  But the bigger ones quickly became about who would live there: What would have to be going on in your life to plausibly look at the choice between living in a cave underground or gritting your teeth and bearing it for one more day to make the cave the better option?  Well, you wouldn't be people with cool superpowers, forced to flee because your claws were just too cool and kept distracting motorists.  You'd be people who potentially have enough threat and marginalization and barriers to flee; the people our society's not so good at being built for.  The people we actively let down enough that they might just say, Screw this.  I'll live in the dark if it means I don't have to deal with that.
–and before I knew it, the underground community of Safe was populated by people with psychiatric diagnoses from schizophrenia to psychosis; people with physical disabilities that were either invisible enough to be scoffed at, or visible enough that nobody took them seriously when they said no, this is what I need; survivors of child abuse and institutional neglect.  People ostracized for how their bodies were put together, whether that was something fantastical like your arms growing back as crab claws or something fairly common, like intersex.
It also said something about the minds inside those bodies: The kinds of personalities who would make that choice instead of working within the system or becoming advocates; instead of just putting their energy into whole other parts of their lives and becoming musicians or tax accountants.  People who would have chosen to go down, below the subways and sewers, and live in a place that's a secret.
That meant trauma.  A whole community living with, and built around, and creating their mythologies out of trauma.
The stories they'd tell about the world they left would be terrible.
–
Two things occurred to that wiseguy insisting on realism in her fantasy at this point:
First, it couldn't last.  There's only so long you can keep people united with the threat of an outside enemy, and even secret underground societies are made up of people.  They'd be back to drawing battle lines sooner or later: I'd end up with a whole group of marginalized people, marginalizing each other even more because of that hierarchy-beast inside our heads.
Second: Now, what would it be like to grow up there?
–
I have some experience with cultural trauma.  My grandfather on one side was a concentration camp survivor; my grandmother on the other was evacuated, as a child, from London during the Blitz.  There are little habits in how I was raised and educated that overstepped the bounds of normal familial concern: a sneaking, violent distrust of formal institutions; a whole family that was convinced that unless we were in sight — or telephone reach — at all times, something terrible was going to happen; a tendency to hoard food.  I was never a hungry kid, and I still feel obscurely less anxious when I have a full fridge.
This is ridiculous and does not make sense in the context of my own life.
But when your parents are brought up by people for whom yeah, children can and did go around the corner and just disappear, and enforced famine was a reality?  The idea of normal shifts.  All those reaction behaviours built up to keep you alive when things are bad twine around everything else, and they become the new normal, and your own kids treat that as the way to raise a child and pass the whole thing on.
After enough time goes by, and enough changes?  Some of those behaviours get downright weird and maladaptive.
–
That is what it'd be like to grow up in Safe: It would mean having a toolset to deal with the wider world that just didn't apply when you got up there and had your first real look around.  It would mean being afraid of things that weren't there anymore.  Being not afraid enough, maybe, of some of the things living right in your own pocket.  Having to get over the idea of Us vs. Them if you wanted to get anywhere at all with anything.
Having to, somehow, go back among the people who raised you and love you, and recognize their mistakes.  And not repeat them.  Without becoming a traitor.
–and that is how I wrote a book about cultural trauma, and having compassion and respect for the things your parents lived through without having to agree about how the world is, and the terrible balance between redress for having been victimized and starting to victimize other people too.  About complicated, tangled, late-stage Growing Up.
And people with crab claws.  And living shadow-creatures.  And a girl who turns into a honeybee, and a boy who grew up underground.
Because Beauty and the Beast was getting it wrong.
...go figure.

Matt Forbeck's Dracula-Titanic mash-up Carpathia was reviewed by James Floyd Kelly for Wired.com's Geek Dad blog, who drew the following conclusion: "Very dark. Seriously twisted. I enjoyed every bit of it."

a tek ovo.... 


Next month (May) we're also publishing Evil Dark by Justin Gustainis and by way of a refresher, we've seen a new review of series-opener Hard Spell from Paul Simpson at Sci-Fi Bulletin, who said: "If you enjoy hard-boiled cop stories, of the LA Confidential kind, you'll get a kick out of the various ways in which the genre is subverted during this story."

 
Stina Leicht, one of this year's finalists for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer! Her first novel, Of Blood and Honey, was released last year. And Blue Skies from Pain, the second book of the Fey and the Fallen, just became available last month.

... Gord Zajac??


Njegov Major Carnage mi glanc promakao, mada se sad sećam nekoliko pominjanja tog romana.





da li je ko čitao, ili ovaj roman ili bilo šta njegovo?

... Catherine Lundoff?










http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/24/the-big-idea-catherine-lundoff/

 The Crash is coming: Solaris announces second novel from breakthrough author, Guy Haley     

Unalloyed greed, markets dictating the will of humanity – when The Crash comes, nothing will be left standing.
   In a topical science-fiction take on the world's current economic woes, breakthrough author Guy Haley envisages a society in utter thrall to commerce, which must constantly expand to sustain itself. When a mission to the stars begins to go wrong, the fragility of human society and progress is exposed.

   The Crash is due for release in July 2013, it is Haley's second book for Solaris. 

  His first, Champion of Mars, was released in May this year and was described by SF legend Stephen Baxter as "a novel with an ambition on the scale of Olympus Mons itself, and it delivers. Recommended." 
  "Guy Haley's SF invokes in me the same excitement I had when reading Ray Bradbury, Robert Silverberg and Arthur C. Clarke's works for the first time," said Jonathan Oliver, editor-in-chief of Solaris. "His fiction is packed full of ideas while maintaining a very human voice. Haley's work is complex, exciting and vastly entertaining and I'm delighted to welcome him back to the Solaris fold." 
  The Market rules all, plotting the rise and fall of fortunes without human intervention. Mankind, trapped by a rigid hierarchy of wealth, bends to its every whim. To function, the Market must expand without end. The Earth is finite, and cannot hold it, and so a bold venture to the stars is begun, offering a rare chance at freedom to a select few people.
   But when the colony fleet is sabotaged, a small group finds itself marooned upon the tidally locked world of Nychthemeron, a world where one hemisphere is bathed in perpetual daylight, the other hidden by eternal night. Isolated and beset, the stricken colony members must fight for survival on the hostile planet, while secrets about both the nature of their shipwreck and Nychthemeron itself threaten to tear their fragile society apart.

Chuck Wendig preporucuje:

Prvi put čujem za ovog pisca - Christopher Farnsworth, sa tri njegova romana u tri podžanra fantastike.

• Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth (Jove)
• The President's Vampire by Christopher Farnsworth (Putnam)
• Red, White, and Blood by Christopher Farnsworth (Putnam)

Da nije neki pra-pra-pra-nešto profesoru Farnsworth-u?

 

Tri knjige iz istog serijala su pisane u tri različita podžanra?

Quote from: angel011 on 22-07-2012, 13:17:42
Tri knjige iz istog serijala su pisane u tri različita podžanra?

Tako je najavljen. Ako klikneš na link, videćeš i sama:




New Author Spotlight is a series designed to introduce authors with up to 3 books in the different SF/F subgenres.




http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/07/new-author-spotlight-christopher-farnsworth/#more-58717

Pogledala. Ta rečenica ne mora da se shvati kao da jedan isti autor piše u različitim podžanrovima, nego NAS pokriva različite podžanrove pa predstavlja autore (sa do 3 knjige) koji pišu u nekom od njih. Bar meni tako izgleda. 


(uopšte pokrećem pitanje jer sam kliknula na sve tri knjige i izgleda mi kao jedno te isto, u opisima nema nikakvih naznaka različitih podžanrova)

Jos jedan od zanrovskih pisaca sa kojima sam se mimoisla je Tobias Buckell, a to planiram da ispravim na najnovijem romanu Arctic Rising, i pored blage averzije koju proizvodi ovo Amazonovo predstavljanje romana u simplificiranom i pomalo bleskastom maniru:


  Global warming has transformed the Earth, and it's about to get even hotter. The Arctic Ice Cap has all but melted, and the international community is racing desperately to claim the massive amounts of oil beneath the newly accessible ocean.

Enter the Gaia Corporation. Its two founders have come up with a plan to roll back global warming. Thousands of tiny mirrors floating in the air can create a giant sunshade, capable of redirecting heat and cooling the earth's surface. They plan to terraform Earth to save it from itself—but in doing so, they have created a superweapon the likes of which the world has never seen.

Anika Duncan is an airship pilot for the underfunded United Nations Polar Guard. She's intent on capturing a smuggled nuclear weapon that has made it into the Polar Circle and bringing the smugglers to justice.

Anika finds herself caught up in a plot by a cabal of military agencies and corporations who want Gaia Corporation stopped. But when Gaia Corp loses control of their superweapon, it will be Anika who has to decide the future of the world. The nuclear weapon she has risked her life to find is the only thing that can stop the floating sunshade after it falls into the wrong hands.






A evo sto kaze sam Buckell: Is potable water really that huge of a threat, I wonder? I think my background actually plays into my answer here. I spent my high school years in exactly the sort of dystopia that people posit when talking about 'peak water' or 'water wars.' In St. Thomas, USVI, the sole spring doesn't produce much in the way of potable water for the 150,000 or so people on the island at any given time (residents plus tourists). As a result, water is made using reverse osmosis from the ocean. There's a lot of ocean in the world, well over some 1 billion cubic kilometers. What happens is price. The reverse osmosis system requires energy (in St. Thomas it's diesel power, so the whole edifice of being able to drink there requires fossil fuels) to be created, and the cost of water I grew up using was $65 per 1,000 gallons, versus $1.50 in Ohio for the very same amount. I grew up with water costing 50 times what it does in the US. What does it do? Well, it changes your conservation behavior, for one. I remember reading in the papers that Californians were in a drought, and being told to limit their showers to 'fifteen minutes' and laughing. Who the hell took fifteen minute showers? That shit was expensive.

But even at over 50 times the cost, we didn't don our Mad Max American Football-inspired leather uniforms and head out to do battle. There were water trucks, more conservation, more awareness of water use, and lots of clever human hacks around the situation (roofs that collected rain, cisterns, etc). People are clever.

Prekjuce sam zavrsio njegov Crystal Rain i poceo Ragamuffin. Jeste to simplificirano i pomalo bleskasto, ali i veoma citljivo. Malo promisljeniji Scalzi, dvaes`prvovekovni PC pulpic

Od njega sam čitala samo The Executioness, definitivno simplificirano. 

 



Songs of the Earth by Elspeth Cooper was one of the best fantasy debuts published last year so it's no wonder that we are exceptionally excited about it's follow up, Trinity Moon! It turn our that second part of Wild Hunt Trilogy is all it promises to be - a great fantasy novel so it is more than deservedly our Book Of The Week!

Here's the synopsis:Gair's battle has only just begun, and yet his heart has already been lost. As he struggles with a crippling grief, still outwardly functional but inwardly torn into pieces, he sleepwalks into a situation that's greater and more deadly than he or Alderan ever anticipated. A storm of unrest is spreading across the land and they are going to be caught up in it - at a moment when Gair's hold on his magic, his greatest defence and most valuable tool, is starting to slip ...He is not alone in noticing the growing unrest and sensing something darker looming behind it. Beyond the mountains, in the bitterly cold north, Teia has seen the signs as well. After hundreds of years of peace her people are talking of a risky invasion to reclaim their ancestral lands ...her Speaker claims the gods are on their side, but Teia fears another, hidden hand of stirring her people up. Whatever the truth, all she can see in her future is blood, battle and death. If she could only see a way to avert that fate. But how can men be convinced to fight, when they have no idea they are part of a war ...?

Elspeth Cooper: Trinity Rising

Četvrto poglavlje:

http://www.gollancz.co.uk/2012/07/trinity-rising-chapter-four/


Peto poglavlje:

http://www.gollancz.co.uk/2012/07/trinity-rising-chapter-five/

Rob Ziegler sa svojim debi romanom SEED...


     It's the dawn of the 22nd century, and the world has fallen apart. The United States has become a nation of migrants — starving masses of nomads who seek out a living in encampments outside government seed-distribution warehouses. In this new world, there is a new power. Satori is more than just a corporation; she is an intelligent, living city that grew out of the ruins of Denver. Satori bioengineers both the climate resistant seed that feeds a hungry nation and her own post-human genetic Designers, Advocates, and Laborers. What remains of the United States government now exists solely to distribute Satori seed; a defeated American military doles out bar-coded, single-use Satori seed to the nation's starving citizens. When one of Satori's Designers goes rogue, Agent Sienna Doss is tasked with bringing her in: the government wants to use the Designer to break Satori's stranglehold on seed production and reassert themselves as the center of power. As events spin out of control, Sienna finds herself at the heart of Satori, where an explosive climax promises to reshape the future of the world.
   Show More  Show Less   

---

 







kaze za njega Bacigalupi:

"A hungry beast of a book, rippling with slaughter and sex, powerhouse action, surreal post-human horrors and bigger-than-life heroes...Seed pulses with life." -Paolo Bacigalupi, author, The Windup Girl

Geek Syndicate interviews Danie Ware.

... i malko upoznavanja sa genijalnim izdavacem ChiZine Publications:

Small Press Spotlight: ChiZine Publications                  By Justin Landon |                   Friday, September 21st, 2012                  at                  12:25 am                   




I've taken to frequenting brick and mortar book stores more often since beginning this column. I find myself needing to peruse the stacks, to see what catches my eye and what's being stocked. It should come as no surprise that few of the presses I'll be covering find themselves en masse on the shelves at Barnes & Noble, but some do. ChiZine Publications is one of them.

When I first came across ChiZine, two years ago or so, I wrote them off to some degree. I've never been one for weird for its own sake and covers like David Nickle's Monstrous Affections coded that way for me. Many of their early titles also seemed to trend closer to horror than fantasy or science fiction and, of the three, horror has long been my least favorite. More accurately, I don't really like pissing myself while reading. ChiZine claims they want "Horror that isn't just gross or going for a cheap scare, but fundamentally disturbing, instilling a sense of true dread." To put it another way, be warned, you may piss yourself.




So it came as some surprise when combing the stacks during a work trip, I found myself picking up ChiZine titles again and again. From David Nickle's newest work, Rasputin's Bastards, to Nick Mamatas's Bullettime, to Carolyn Ives Gilman's Ison of the Isles, I was interested. I shouldn't have been surprised. Their mission statement seems to echo much of my own feelings about the direction of New York publishing.

Larger presses are sometimes forced to play it safe: plots and stories we've seen before, because that's what the public seems to crave. . .Sometimes it can feel like we're all just reading the same stories, over and over, just in slightly different settings.

It goes on to say that they aspire to be better.

Fantasy that doesn't necessarily need spells or wizards to create a world far removed from ours, but that imbues the story with an otherworldly sense by knocking tropes on their heads. Science fiction that isn't just about space travel and gadgets, but about what it means to be human—or what it means not to be.

Are they succeeding? I was compelled to find out. I began with Nick Mamatas's Bullettime. Truth be told I've long had a fascination for him as an artist. He has a strong reputation in the field, and writers I've come to respect hold him in high esteem. It's a novel about a school shooter (sort of) following David Holbrook's life as a disturbed teenager, bullied and ostracized with no support at home. The narrative itself is all over the place, jumping through time and space. Not unlike the Peter Howitt film Sliding Doors, taking the reader to different decision points, Mamatas shows the branches that could take David anywhere, except where they can't.

The jumping around, and a narrator who's often tripping on a cough syrup cocktail, could have led to a mess of a narrative. Mamatas often moves from first person to third within a paragraph, and David himself, although ostensibly a single person, often becomes someone new entirely depending on his point of reference. Instead, Mamatas's strong voice shines, and he never seems out of control of his material.

I don't know how many prototypical genre readers would pick Bullettime up. There's far more Don DeLillo in it than Gene Wolfe. Perhaps the closest approximation to another genre writer might be Kurt Vonnegut who did so well in blending fantastic elements with satire. And yet, despite Mamatas's history of satire in Under My Roof (2007) and Sensation (2011), Bullettime is not.

ostatak na:  http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/09/small-press-spotlight-chizine-publications/#more-62132

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/09/small-press-spotlight-chizine-publications/#more-62132

Atomic Fez is over-​​joyed to announce details of a title for publication in the spring of 2013: Sleepless Knights by Mark H. Williams, with cover art by DC Comics and Vertigo artist Jimmy Broxton!

While Sleepless Knights is Mr. Williams's first novel, his writing has already been commissioned in the past by entities as diverse as BBC Cymru Wales TV and Radio, as well as Welsh National Opera, and the Courtyard Theatre, Hereford for whom he is also working on a future main stage adaptation.

Jimmy Broxton, whose work has graced the pages of Knight & Squire, Saucer Country and The Unwritten, will be providing his prodigious gifts to the outsides of Sleepless Knights, with a 'concept sketch' of the cover art already in hand.

Mr. Broxton's contribution brings 'the final piece of the puzzle' for a project that has been quietly bubbling away at Atomic Fez Publishing for nearly a year.


About the Book: Sleepless Knights!

It's not easy being the man behind the myth.

Sir Lucas is butler to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, the person who managed every epic legend behind the scenes. He's the one who made sure each quest happened in the right place at the right time, and that everyone involved had comfortable accommodation for the weekend. The man whose average working day involved fighting dragons, defeating witches, banishing demons, and ensuring the Royal pot of tea never crossed the thin line separating 'brewed' from 'stewed'. What's more, 1,500 years after that golden age, he's still doing it: here in modern Britain, right under our noses...

Through ten working days in the life of Sir Lucas the Butler, discover what really went on at Camelot. The story behind Lancelot's affair with Guinevere. The truth about the quest for the Grail. And find out what happens one fateful day in June, when King Arthur and six of his knights are revealed as living among us. A revelation that brings about the return of Merlin and the end of the world, uncovering secrets from the past that King Arthur would rather stay buried, and forcing Lucas to confront the truth about his own unique and peculiar destiny. A destiny he will do anything to avoid, even if it means sacrificing the love of his life in the service of his master.

In short, the kind of crisis only the ultimate butler can resolve.


About the Author: Mark H. Williams!

Mr. Williams is a screenwriter, playwright and novelist. He's written two UK-​​touring stage adaptations for The Birmingham Stage Company – Horrible Histories: The Frightful First World War (nominated for a Manchester Evening News Award, "Best Family Show") and Horrible Science.

He's written for BBC Cymru Wales TV and Radio, as well as Welsh National Opera; the Courtyard Theatre, Hereford; Sherman Theatre /​ Sherman Cymru; Cwmni Theatr 3D; The Desperate Men Theatre Company; and Dirty Protest. Mark is under commission to Theatr Iolo for a new play for a family audience, touring Wales in the summer of 2013. He's also currently working on a main stage adaptation for the Courtyard Theatre Hereford, and research & development with Cartoon De Salvo and National Theatre Wales.

About the Artist: Jimmy Broxton!

Mr. Broxton is a UK based graphic artist, illustrator and designer. He is best known for his work on DC/Vertigo's "The Unwritten" with Mike Carey; Paul Cornell's "Knight and Squire" six issue mini series also for DC comics (collected in Batman: Knight and Squire), and most recently a run of short stories for Dark Horse Comics Presents, working with writer by Martin Conaghan. His hobbies include: cooking, cycling, boxing, and pretending to be somebody else.

Jeff Carlson is the author of Plague Year, Plague War (a finalist for the 2008 Philip K. Dick Award), and Plague Zone. To date, his work has been translated into fourteen languages. His short stories and nonfiction have appeared in a number of top venues such as Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Boys' Life, Strange Horizons and the Fast Forward 2 anthology. His latest book, The Frozen Sky, is available as an eBook.



Aliens, Spaceships and The Frozen Sky I'm fourth generation sf/f.  My great-grandmother built her library around Frank L. Baum's Oz series, the original fantasy epic.  She passed those beautiful hardcovers to her son, my grandfather, who kept them alongside "Doc" E.E. Smith novels  such as Triplanetary and Galactic Patrol, which were the cutting edge in his time.

Later, when I was a boy, my grandfather introduced me to the world's first media tie-ins like Han Solo's Revenge and Splinter Of The Mind's Eye.  This was not a man who sneered at popular good fun.  He entranced me with Star Wars books, then fed my new addiction with the classics.

At the same time, my father was bringing home doorstoppers like The Hobbit and Clan Of The Cave Bear, which reads very much like alt history with strange people in a strange world.

My point is I know a good piece of science fiction when I see it.  Tell me this doesn't fit the bill:

Read the rest of this entry

Jel neko čitao Hannu Rajaniemi's The Quantum Thief (2010)???

Mislim da je Lidija čitala, možda i Mića.

A jel bi mogo neko da kaže vredi li to čemu?
Ovo apropo onog teksta http://ruthlessculture.com/2012/10/03/cowardice-laziness-and-irony-how-science-fiction-lost-the-future/
u kojem nije baš jasno da li je ovo primer zamumuljivanja SF-a ili je primer dobrog SF-a u sadašnjoj produkciji.

Ja sam skinuo sa torenta, ali bih voleo da čujem utiske od nekog ko je čitao.

Meni vredi. Pisac bar ne kalkuliše, već piči nekim svojim tempom, ne obazirući se da li je usput pogubio glupe i površne čitaoce.
Neke spektakularnih noviteta tu nema, ali ima pomalo dilejnijevske atmosfere i nekog dekadentnog šmeka u oblandi posthumanizma...
Mada, mnogima se ovo nipošto neće svideti.


Kad sam pisao o tome o čemu bi trebalo raspravljati u čitaonici, između ostalog imao sam na umu i ovaj roman...
Da li je ovo smer u kome bi trebalo da ide savremeni SF?
Ili je to Mjevilov Embassytown?
Ili Gibsonova trilogija?
Ili libeatin Watts, koga nikako da počnem da čitam?
2312?
Zoo City?


Kakav crni The Difference Engine?

E, dobro, ajde, videćemo 
Malo ću da čitam.

Quote from: Mica Milovanovic on 04-10-2012, 19:33:43
Kad sam pisao o tome o čemu bi trebalo raspravljati u čitaonici, između ostalog imao sam na umu i ovaj roman...
Da li je ovo smer u kome bi trebalo da ide savremeni SF?
Ili je to Mjevilov Embassytown?
Ili Gibsonova trilogija?
Ili libeatin Watts, koga nikako da počnem da čitam?
2312?
Zoo City?


Kakav crni The Difference Engine?

Ovako kako si naveo autore i dela, rekla bih da imaju zajednički nazivnik samo u najširem smislu te reči, i to uglavnom zato što su u pitanju novija dela. I ne govorim sad samo o razlici koja bi podrazumevala njihovo (pod)žanrovsko svrstavanje, nego govorim o bazičnoj razlici u percepcijama samih autora. Meni tu jedino Watts i KSR dele zajedničku percepciju, a ta podrazumeva vrlo racionalno razmišljanje (i pretpostavljanje) o budućnosti čoveka kao vrste, i to kroz najdirektnije moguće suočavanje specifičnih fenomena koje omogućavaju savremene tehnologije - recimo AI i genetski inžinjering. I sad ćeš verovatno reći da time povlačim granicu između današnjeg "tvrdog SFa" i svega ostalog u žanru, ali tu zapravo uopšte nije reč o toj konkretno razlici, pošto percepciju prepoznajem kao maltene direktnog naslednika feminističkog i ekološkog SFa novog talasa, i to u meri daleko većoj i očiglednijoj nego što je to pošlo za rukom hardSF struji iz istog razdoblja. Što ujedno znači da toj percepciji vidim korene u ondašnjem mekom, društvenjačkom esefu, a to mi  i objašnjava otkud toliko racionalizovanih tehnofobskih tonova u najnovijoj SF produkciji.


Problem je što ove nijanse teško opstaju van teorijskog domena, jer kad ih se laici dočepaju, to ispadne tuga i jad proizvoljnosti i suštinskog nerazumevanja ne samo terminologije, nego i koncepata koje bi trebalo da predstavljaju. Najgore tu prolaze transhumanizam i posthumanizam, a da stvar bude gora, upravo oni i jesu kamen temeljac ove percepcije. Da ne govorim sad koliko je i sama terminologija nesrećno odabrana u svojoj dvosmislenosti, pošto i "post" i "trans" neukima impliciraju isključivo aktivnosti prevazilaženja ili savladavanja i tako dalje u tom smeru, a pošto su upravo neuki ujedno i najgrlatiji, već se na tom ranom stepenu neshvatanja satre svaka šansa za razumnu konverzaciju. Recimo da je problem tu uvelike sličan onom tragičnom problemu koji laici imaju sa Suvinovim konceptom novuma.


Ali kad već imamo navedena imena,Watts tu svakako dođe kao najstariji autor koji se eksplicitno bavio upravo tim fenomenima, i to više u Blindsightu nego u samoj Rifters trilogiji. KRS se time više bavi kroz ekspanzionističku vizuru, ali, u biti, na istim su frekvencijama, tu nema zbora. 

Upravo sam to što si navela i hteo da istaknem...


Ako se izuzmu brojne budalaštine koje se lako mogu svrstati u pojedine "niše", ostaju autori koji su tako različiti da ih je nemoguće svrstati u "pokrete" kako je to bilo povremeno moguće u prošlosti (naučno) fantastične proze. Mislio sam da je vredno u "čitaonici" razmotriti pristup svakoga od njih i možda sagledati ko od njih uspeva da oslika trenutak u kome se nalazimo i kuda idemo... Da to možda pomogne nekome ko danas kreće u spisateske vode... Možda...


The Difference Engine je možda u svoje vreme nešto značio, ali moram da se složim sa kuferom (ponovo, avaj) da je besmisleno danas razmatrati ovaj roman...

Kud se ne izjasnište o DiffEngine onda kad ga je Bata predložio, nego sad kad smo ga izabrali za čitanje.

 Razumem Mićinu frustraciju, ali ne vidim kako se to moglo bolje, kad smo morali da odaberemo knjige unapred za tri meseca meseca, i to iz liste naslova predloženih striktno za prvi krug, uz svega 3-4 svežija dodatka. U takvom škripcu, DiffEngine je svakako imala velike šanse da upadne u svaki promišljeniji izbor, jer, budimo iskreni, koliko kod Mića mislio da je ta knjiga sad nerelevantna zbog starosti, toliko ja mislim da bi svi stimpank/paralelna istorija naslovi bili podjednako nerelevantni za ono što Mića ovde izlaže da ga zapravo zanima, a da o bilo kakvoj iracionalnoj fantastici sad i ne drvim. To kao prvo. A kao drugo, ne vidim što bi ikome za čitanje bila neophodna bilo kakva infantilna igrarija poput Čitaonice, ovakva kakva je sad: čitajte slobodno, braćo i drugovi, i čitajte šta god vam duša ište, pa otvorite topik za pročitani naslov i udrite po utiscima, a onaj koga to iole zanima će vam se već pridruži, jer nije valjda da vam je sad i za čitanje neophodan sagitin večernjoškolski plan & program.

Meni zapravo treba. Malo sam se odvikao od čitanja, i ova gungula je dobra prilika da se podsetim kako mi je nekad bilo, kad sam čitao knjige umesto da učim za ispit.