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

eh, ovo mi skroz propalo kroz pukotine, a bilo je na listi obaveznih debi romana pa se nekako zaturilo... 



Emma NewmanEmma lives in Somerset, England and drinks far too much tea. She writes dark short stories, post-apocalyptic and urban fantasy novels and records audiobooks in all genres. Her debut short-story collection From Dark Places was published in 2011 and 20 Years Later, her debut post-apocalyptic novel for young adults, was released early 2012. The first book of Emma's new Split Worlds urban fantasy series called Between Two Thorns will be published by Angry Robot Books in 2013. She is represented by Jennifer Udden at DMLA. Her hobbies include dressmaking and playing RPGs. She blogs at www.enewman.co.uk, rarely gets enough sleep and refuses to eat mushrooms.

New Short Fiction: THE PERIMETER by Will McIntosh




In 2010, Will McIntosh astonished us with his Hugo Award-winning short story, "Bridesicle," so we signed him up to write a couple novels for Orbit. But we never lost sight of the fact that McIntosh is a consummate short story writer, and we are thrilled to publish his new one on our Orbit Short Fiction program.

The Perimeter" is set in a human colony on a distant planet; beyond the colony's borders, strange fauna with sinister agendas lurk. All this creepy tale needs is Rod Serling standing in the foreground, saying "Picture if you will ..."


http://www.orbitbooks.net/2012/10/16/the-perimeter-will-mcintosh/

 


>Michaelbrent Collings has written numerous bestselling novels and is a produced screenwriter and member of the Writers Guild of America, Horror Writers of America, and a couple of other fancy-sounding things. His wife and mommy think he is a can that is chock-full of awesome sauce. Check him out at www.facebook.com/MichaelbrentCollings or michaelbrentcollings.com.
Horror: The Last Bivouac of HopeI am a guy who writes scary stuff.  It's basically all I do.  I'm one of the bestselling horror writers on Amazon, and as of this writing one of the scary movies in Redboxes and video stores all over the world has my name after the "screenplay by" part.  I specialize in ghosts and goblins.  In things that go bump in the night, in demons that steal souls, in madmen whose greatest desire is to maim and to kill.  In my most recent bestselling horror novel, Apparition, I write extensively about filicide – about parents who kill their children.  And in my book, the parents who commit such atrocities do so with gusto, with relish, with lust.  It is, as many reviewers have said, not only scary, but a deeply disturbing book.
To reiterate: I am a guy who writes scary stuff.
Read the rest of this entry

 
E ovaj roman mi je sasvim promakao, svojevremeno sam ga tražila, nisam uspela da nađem, pa kasnije sasvim zaboravila. Ako neko od vas ima knjigu, udelite, ako možete. A ako je neko još i pročitao, posavetujte vredi li čitanja. 



  Duncan McNeil is staring mistrustfully at a photograph of his daughter, Amy. She appears to be at or near her present age of ten, but the studio's dated stamp on the back indicates that the photo was taken nearly a year before her birth. More alarming, however, is the beautiful woman standing beside Amy, a woman with whom he had an affair in the periphery of his new marriage, during the time when Amy was conceived. And the fact that this photograph has been in his wife's possession for more than a decade is perhaps the most disturbing element of all.

Duncan's wife Rachel doesn't know about his affair with this woman, but he will soon tell her. And upon that revelation they will begin a journey that will take them clear across the continent, from California to Massachusetts, then ultimately into the boundless, uncharted territory of the human collective. There, a devil is waiting; the penultimate personification of evil. And he goes by the name of Mr. Gamble.

Advance Praise for Seraphim

"Apocalyptic in the truest sense of the word, Jon Michael Kelley's Seraphim is a stunning thriller with the very fate of the world at stake. Beautifully written, with prose as lush as it is chilling, Kelley is part poet, part prophet, but a true master of fear, through and through. This is top notch stuff of highest caliber!"
            --Joe McKinney, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Flesh Eaters and Inheritance

"Seraphim is a beautifully wrought tale of angels and demons that starts out strong and just gets better and better. A thoroughly enjoyable read. Jon Michael Kelley proves to be a mature, intelligent new voice in horror right out of the gate."            --Craig Saunders, author of The Love of the Dead and A Stranger's Grave

"Written with the finesse of a pro, Seraphim is one hell of a frightening horror novel. With bits of dark fantasy and humor mixed in, this one has it all! Hard to believe this is Jon Michael Kelley's first novel."           --David Bernstein, author of Amongst the Dead and Tears of No Return   Show More  Show Less
Jon Michael Kelley (AKA Jon-Michael Emory) began his writing career twenty years ago as a lyricist for a small music company in New York City. On a whim, his producer called him one day and asked if he wrote anything "literary"; that since she was on "Publishers Row" she could shop a sample around for him. He told her that he had, in fact, just recently finished his first short story, and he sent it along. That story eventually won him featured author in a small press magazine called Heart Attack, and he's been writing ever since. His fiction has been nominated for such prizes as the Pushcart, and has appeared (or is scheduled to appear) in such magazines and anthologies as Night Terrors, Best of Millennium Sci Fi & Fantasy, New Genre II, Wired Hard III, Father Grim's Storybook, Chiral Mad, and Tales of Terror and Mayhem From Deep Within the Box from Evil Jester Press.

 Još jedan roman koji je malko skliznuo kroz pukotine je Husk, Corey Redekop. Husk deli poduža pauza nakon debi romana  Shelf Monkey, pa valjda zato hajpa nije ni bilo.

Malo predstavljanje od strane autora:

Corey Redekop:
I'm going to now reveal five things about the making of Husk never before revealed!

1.   I usually put on headphones and listen to random rock and/or roll while I write (unlike some authors, I find silence distracting). For Husk, however, I intentionally keep my iPod playlist on the weird, atonal, unusual music and soundtracks I've collected over the years to keep my mind jumping and nervous, more in-tune with the on-page havoc I was attempting to create. Howard Shore's jittery score to Naked Lunch (with invaluable sax work by Ornette Coleman) would segue into John Carpenter's dark syntho-jive that drives much of his work, giving way to John Lurie's brilliant experimental jazz ensemble The Lounge Lizards and Philip Glass' eerie Candyman soundtrack.

2.   In my original manuscript, I brought back Munroe Purvis, a character from my debut novel Shelf Monkey. I wanted to try and create a new universe that would link together all my books. Through trial, error, and a very smart editor, Munroe found himself shafted, and I ended up with the far more interesting character of Lambertus Dixon. I am probably most proud of coming up with that name, I love a great character name. People don't realize how hard it can be sometimes for an author to settle on monikers.

3.   I had toyed with the idea of never mentioning the word "zombie," as they've done with The Walking Dead series. I discarded the idea because I just couldn't buy a world that doesn't know the term. You see someone crawl from the grave, you think zombie, simple as that.

4.   There are some suggestions to specific zombie movies and creators in some of the place and character names, but so far, not one person has noted it. Maybe "Fulci Towers" is too obvious?

5.   While zombies can be terrifying, I am always gratified when someone fully embraces the humour inherent in the messy disintegration of the human body. A scene late in the book involving spools of intestine and a malfunctioning electric wheelchair is my indirect homage to the slapstick splatter comedy of Peter Jackson's Brain Dead.





    Outlandish and emotional, this humorous novel centers on Sheldon Funk, a struggling actor who dies in a bus restroom only to awaken during his autopsy and attack the coroner. Fleeing into the wintry streets of Toronto, Sheldon realizes he's now a zombie—as if he didn't have enough on his plate already. His last audition, reading for the reality television series House Bingo, had gone disastrously wrong. His mother is in the late stages of dementia, his savings are depleted, his agent couldn't care less, and his boyfriend is little more than a set of nice abs. All Sheldon has to his name is a house he can barely hold onto and a cat that is more pillow than mammal. Now he also has to contend with decomposition, the scent of the open grave, and an unending appetite for human flesh—and on top of it all, there's another audition in the morning. In order to survive his death without literally falling apart, Sheldon must find a way to combine his old life with his new addiction, which would be a lot easier if he could stop eating vagrants. A hysterical take on fame, love, religion, politics, and appetite, this is the story of the "everyzombie" people long to be.


    Show more  Show less

... Anonymous-9?? 



  "HARD BITE is outlandish in every way -- a crazed noir excursion into an unprecedented heart of darkness. From the opening line on, it challenges and confronts, attacks and confounds. Violent and sometimes funny, always entertaining."
— T. Jefferson Parker, three-time Edgar Award winner, author of THE JAGUAR and THE BORDER LORDS

The hit-and-run driver took everything—his wife, child and legs. Now a paraplegic, Dean Drayhart unleashes payback on suspected hit-and-runners in Los Angeles with helper-monkey Sid as his deadly assistant.

Dean's gentle, doting nurse knows nothing about what he's up to and when Sid tears out the throat of a Mexican Mafia member, Marcie gets kidnapped in order to force Dean's surrender.

Armed with nothing but his wits, Sid, and a sympathetic streetwalker named Cinda, Dean manipulates drug-cartel carnales and the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department in a David-against-Goliath plot that twists and turns to a heart-pounding finale.

From The Author
"When a strong, self-determined man loses not only his ability to walk, but life as he knows it, a choice must be made: to lie down and fade away, or fight back. But with what? His body is broken, his wife is gone, his beloved daughter is dead.

"Although Dean Drayhart's situation could be desperate or maudlin, his spirits are buoyed with the use of black humour and an unsinkable attitude. Dean doesn't just throw off the shackles of victimhood, he repurposes them as weapons to go after his targets: hit-and-run drivers.

"HARD BITE is a crime novel with a very different kind of serial killer — a victim who refuses to be a victim, a killer with a moral code. Readers can't help liking Dean — at the same time knowing there's a downward spiral to his vigilantism and that somehow, somewhere this is all going to blow back. As T. Jefferson Parker points out: "From the first line on, [Hard Bite] challenges and confronts, attacks and confounds."

"Happy reading."

Praise For Hard Bite
"A carnival of nightmarish fun, HARD BITE had me gasping from one outlandishly terrifying act to the next, each scene involving The Grim Reaper in a wheelchair; a sharp-fanged, treacherous monkey; a SWAT-team posse of drugged Mexican killers; and/or more tough-but-lovable women with guns than a Mickey Spillane novel."
— Jack Getze, Fiction Editor, Spinetingler Magazine

"a hell of a book that will leave a mark."
— Brian Lindenmuth, editor, Snubnose Press

"By the end, your heart aches a little for the narrator. That's the true goal of fiction, or it ought to be – to shift you on your foundations in the reading, leaving you off in a slightly different place from where you started."
— Sophie Littlefield, A BAD DAY FOR SORRY, A BAD DAY FOR PRETTY

"The ride is electric...quality that other writers should aspire to achieve."
— Joseph Patchen for Lurid Lit

"Nasty, but a beating heart underneath ...very clever; lovely writing."
— Patti Abbott, Derringer Award winner

"Anonymous-9 is one of my favorite crime writers."
— Nick Mamatas, Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild awards nominee.

"If you like your genre on the gonzo side, then you need to get on board the Anonymous 9 train. She's a mysterious writer with an imagination way off there in the ether."
—-Anthony Neil Smith, author of ALL THE YOUNG WARRIORS

About The Author
Anonymous-9 is the pen name of Elaine Ash, a Los Angeles-based book editor. Contact Elaine/Anonymous-9 via her author page at www.blastedheath.com or visit her website at www.anonymous-9.com. She loves to hear from readers and she doesn't bite.   Show more 

... i kad smo vec kod Mamatasa i njegovih preporuka, evo 5 opskurnih naslova za koje tvrdi da su vredni citanja:

Five Obscure Books I Recommend You Read
For my "best of" list, I decided to go out of my way to highlight some titles that readers of Locus are unlikely to have already read. For fans, it seems that their favorite authors are always underrated. Ever hear of Asimov? Gaiman? Uh, yes. Here are some authors, and books, you may not have heard of yet.


The Holy Bile by Cameron Moloney
This is a great little novella about a plot to deprive the world of Coca-Cola. It also involves terrorist actions against McDonald's. Hilarious. It came out in the late 1990s in Australia, but I see that the author has recently Kindlefied it for the world. So go forth and consume! There's a bit when a young child writes a letter demanding Coca-Cola that still brings tears to my eyes.


Corn & Smoke: Stories, Performances, Things by "Blaster" Al Ackerman
Ackerman, a mail artist and underground SF writer heavily influenced by Theodore Sturgeon, is likely known to at least the aging hipster slice of Locus readers. This is a collection of stories and...well, things, just like the subtitle says. If pulp fiction were as good as pulp fiction magazine covers, the magazines never would have gone out of business, and Ackerman would own a pillowcase full of Hugos and Nebulas, and probably a National Book Award as well. Very strange, and a good introduction to this original figure. It's around.


The Consumer by M. Gira
If the previous two books had a baby, this would be the primitive unborn twin trapped within the flesh of its healthy-seeming brother, and squirming through every orifice at once in an attempt to get out. Short pieces, very dark and occasionally simply just gross, heavily Ballardian. Out of print, but easily torrentable, I suppose because of M. Gira's role as the leader of the band Swans. Note: I don't recommend torrenting books.


The Holiday House by Jennifer Callahan
Jennifer Callahan was a precocious self-published author of vampire fiction in the wrong decade. The Holiday House was published by Callahan's own Vanity Press (as in the name of her little company was literally "Vanity Press") back when angelfire.com was the queen of the web and Diaryland the apex of social media. You know, 1999. The Holiday House is a dreamy vampire novella, heavily influenced by the Goth scene of the last century and by plenty of teen angst. Not CW-ready teen angst, the real deal. Had Callahan self-published in the age of Kindle, she'd probably be a millionaire. As it stands, she seems to have vanished entirely. Are you out there Callie?


Mixtape for the Apocalypse by Jemiah Jefferson
At the risk of selling out, allow me to name a book currently in print. Jefferson is the author of several vampire novels that came out in mass-market paperback, so she probably doesn't belong on this list, but her self-published Mixtape for the Apocalypse is unjustly obscure. It's not a genre novel proper, but it is heavily influenced by genre, specifically end-of-the-world stories, secret histories, and the political paranoia of The X-Files or Fringe. A nerdy slacker believes—or realizes, is it?—that dark forces are at work. Published in 2011, this is also Jefferson's love letter to the 1990s. It's sort of like Jo Walton's Among Others, but the population Jefferson is waving the freak flag for don't vote for the Hugo Awards.

Nick Mamatas is the author of several novels, including the fantasy-noir Bullettime, and over eighty short stories. His work has appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, Weird Tales, Tor.com, and the anthologies Dark Faith: Invocations and Psychos.
http://www.locusmag.com/Roundtable/

Fade to Black (Rojan Dizon Novels) by Francis Knight (26 Feb 2013)








Before the Fall (Rojan Dizon Novels) by Francis Knight (18 Jun 2013)




Rojan Dizon zvuci obecavajuce, iako me sinopsis jednim delom malko asocira na Grad & Grad. 





Publication Date: 26 Feb 2013 | Series: Rojan Dizon Novels     FROM THE DEPTHS OF A VALLEY RISES THE CITY OF MAHALA

It's a city built upwards - where streets are built upon streets, buildings upon buildings. A city that the Ministry rules from the sunlit summit, and where the forsaken lurk in the darkness of Under.

Rojan Dizon doesn't mind staying in the shadows, because he's got things to hide. Things like being a pain-mage, with the forbidden power to draw magic from pain. But when the fate of Mahala depends on him using his magic, he can't hide for ever.

THE FIRST ADVENTURE OF ROJAN DIZON

A debut fantasy tale of corruption and dark magic set in a world that's
both vertigo-inducing and awe-inspiring.   Show More

   Mercury – closest planet to the Sun. In the permanent darkness of Chao Meng-fu crater lie vast fields of ice that that have never seen the Sun, and the ruins of Erebus Mine, abandoned and forgotten after a devastating explosion that claimed the lives of 257 people. After an eight-year legal battle, the relatives of the victims have finally succeeded in forcing the Space Accidents Board to reopen its investigation. Matt Crawford, a mine engineer who escaped the disaster, joins a team sent back to the mine to discover the true cause of the accident. The team is led by Clare Foster, a pilot in the U.S. Astronautics Corps, who has taken on the mission in the hope of rebuilding her career after a near-miss incident.

But powerful forces are determined that what lies hidden in the mine will never be uncovered, and have taken steps to ensure that the mission team will never return. Stranded on Mercury, the team are divided by internal conflict, and a growing realisation of what really happened in the mine. Soon Matt and Clare are thrown together in a desperate race for survival against an implacable enemy that will not rest until it has killed them all ...

Featuring line drawings and maps, a highly detailed background story, and magnificent visions of the Sun's innermost planet, BELOW MERCURY sets new standards for the science fiction thriller.     Show more  Show less

 Na sve strane jako puno oduševljenja ovim debi romanom, pa to vredi (pr)overiti:



Release date: February 26, 2013     He came back to kill a tyrant. He found the Devil instead. An amazing historical novel with a supernatural twist set after the English Civil War. This is the stunning debut from Clifford Beal. He came back to kill a tyrant. He found the Devil instead. 1653: The long and bloody English Civil War is at an end. King Charles is dead and Oliver Cromwell rules the land as king in all but name. Richard Treadwell, an exiled royalist officer and soldier-for-hire to the King of France and his all-powerful advisor, the wily Cardinal Mazarin, burns with revenge for those who deprived him of his family and fortune. He decides upon a self-appointed mission to return to England in secret and assassinate the new Lord Protector. Once back on English soil however, he learns that his is not the only plot in motion. A secret army run by a deluded Puritan is bent on the same quest, guided by the Devil's hand. When demonic entities are summoned, Treadwell finds himself in a desperate turnaround: he must save Cromwell to save England from a literal descent into Hell. But first he has to contend with a wife he left in Devon who believes she's a widow, and a furious Paris mistress who has trailed him to England, jeopardising everything. Treadwell needs allies fast. Can he convince the man sent to forcibly drag him back to Cardinal Mazarin? A young king's musketeer named d'Artagnan. Black dogs and demons; religion and magic; Freemasons and Ranters. It's a dangerous new Republic for an old cavalier coming home again.   Show more  Show less

Još jedan prilično zapažen roman:



















Release date: March 19, 2013




Deep beneath the Ural Mountains, in an underground city carved out by slave labor during the darkest hours of the Cold War, ancient caverns hold exotic and dangerous life-forms that have evolved in isolation for countless millennia. Cut off from the surface world, an entire ecosystem of bizarre subterranean species has survived undetected—until now.

Biologists Nell and Geoffrey Binswanger barely survived their last encounter with terrifying, invasive creatures that threatened to engulf the planet. They think the danger is over until a ruthless Russian tycoon lures them to his underground metropolis, where they find themselves confronted by a vicious menagerie of biological horrors from their past—and by entirely new breeds of voracious predators. Now they're rising up from the bowels of the Earth to consume the world as we know it.

USA Today praised Warren Fahy's debut novel, Fragment, as "a rollicking tale [that] will enthrall readers of Jurassic Park and The Ruins." Now Fahy sets off an even more thrilling stampede of action and suspense, bursting forth from the hellish depths of...Pandemonium.


Show more

a posle Lauren Beukes evo se i Charlie Human probija na svetsku SF binu  : 


Baxter Zevcenko is your average 16-year-old-boy. If by average you mean kingpin of a smut-peddling schoolyard syndicate, and a possible serial killer who suffers from weird historical dreams. He's the first to admit that he's not a nice guy, but then, in high school, where's the percentage in being nice?
That is until his girlfriend, Esme, is kidnapped and all the clues point toward strange forces at work. Faced with navigating the increasingly bizarre landscape of Cape Town's supernatural underworld to get her back, Baxter turns to the only person drunk enough to help: bearded, booze-soaked, supernatural bounty hunter, Jackson "Jackie" Ronin.
I've been a fan of Charlie Human's bizarro-poignant (new word!) sense of humour since we first laid eyes on his work. His debut novel, Apocalypse Now Now, was picked up by Random House last May and I've been impatiently awaiting this novel for aaaaages. August can't come a day too soon...
As if Charlie's writing weren't already exciting enough, Apocalypse Now Now boasts not one, but two Joey Hi-Fi covers - one for the UK edition, one for South Africa. We caught up with the man himself to ask very serious questions about what goes into two extraordinarily apocodelicious covers... (another new word! I'm on a roll!)
Pornokitsch: So - the contents of Apocalypse Now Now are a (frustratingly) closely guarded secret. As one of the few that have read it - what's the book like?!
Joey Hi-Fi: It's insane. The good insane tough. Although it did make me worry about Charlie Human's mental state. Lauren Beukes did a great shout for the book -"Mad, dark, irreverent and wonderfully twisted in all the right ways". I think that sums it up quite well.
Continue reading "Cover Reveal and Interview: Charlie Human's Apocalypse Now Now & Joey Hi-Fi" »

    The most exciting new voice in sceince fiction has written a novel with enormous cross-over appeal. In an L.A. where Fictional characters are cloned into living beings, the author Niles Golan is on the verge of hitting the big-time - if he can just stay on top of reality long enough to make it. In Hollywood, where last year's stars are this year's busboys, Fictionals are everywhere. Niles Golan's therapist is a Fictional. So is his best friend. So (maybe) is the woman in the bar he can't stop staring at. Fictionals – characters 'translated' into living beings for movies and TV using cloning technology – are a part of daily life in LA now. Sometimes the problem is knowing who's real and who's not. Divorced, alcoholic and hanging on by a thread, Niles – author of Death By Degrees: A Kurt Power Novel and many others – has been hired to write a big-budget reboot of a classic movie. If he does this right, the studio might bring one of Niles' own characters to life. Somewhere beneath the movie – beneath the TV show it was inspired by, the children's book behind that and the story behind that – is the kernel of something important. If he can just hold it together long enough...   Show more  Show less

Something I see now when I look at the stories in "Conservation of Shadows" is how difficult I used to find writing about settings that weren't more or less Western. The stories in the collection are not organized by date, and most of the earliest stories aren't included, so I suspect this is a little harder for other folks to see. But "Counting the Shapes," which is the oldest story included, has a standard medievaloid fantasy setting with some fractals and topology tacked on. "The Black Abacus," which was the one after that, has people with Western names running around a mostly bog-standard Western sf setting.

Part of this was because of the science fiction and fantasy I grew up reading. Most of the fantasy came in the medieval European flavor. On the rare occasion I saw Asian anything, it was based on Japan or, as a distant second, China. The science fiction tended to be centered on Western societies and superpowers. Of course there were exceptions, sometimes in YA or works aimed toward children. One of my favorite YA series, Geraldine Harris's Seven Citadels, features thoughtfully described and unusual cultures. I don't know if they're based on real-world examples, but the range of societies riveted me. Back then I was learning to write by imitation, however, and as a child, or a teenager, I only knew to imitate what was in front of me. I simply didn't run across enough Geraldine Harrises to envision other possibilities, and I didn't have the imagination to get there on my own.
The other reason was because I spent high school in South Korea, and more specifically, I spent high school in South Korea wanting desperately to *leave* South Korea. My parents moved a fair bit; I had just been getting comfortable in Houston (again) when we were picked up and deposited back in Seoul. I find it touching when people in the USA feel the need to explain Thanksgiving to me--I learned about Thanksgiving in a Department of Defense school, as a point of fact--but really, I get on better in the States. More banally, I missed my friends.
I couldn't have written stories touching on Korea, or being Asian, when I was in high school, or for some years after that. There are many beautiful things about Korea. I still miss the barley tea, and the profusion of forsythias in the spring, and the sound of the Korean language; the perennial mountains and the gingkos in the autumn and the rattling cries of the magpies. But I was too unhappy there to want to go back even in fiction.

Nevertheless, it's impossible to run away from your own bones. Eventually I was drawn back to Korean stories: Admiral Yi Sun-Shin and his remarkable military skill coupled with the inability to stay out of political trouble. The Japanese occupation and the Korean War and the divided peninsula. Ancestral worship. I remember vividly the time we we went to a grave, I can't remember whose, and I refused to go through the ritual of bowing. I had a reason then, and I wasn't forced to do it, but I wonder sometimes what I lost.
The story I wrote specifically for this collection, "Iseul's Lexicon," ended up being a story that drew on my memories of Korea, although as you might expect, there's a lot of invention. The imaginary not-Korea is named Chindalla, which is roughly similar to the Korean word for "azalea." (It was named something else until I remembered that my state governor is Bobby Jindal. Then I had to adjust the name a bit!) South Korea's national flower is the mugunghwa, or Rose of Sharon, but there's a famous poem by Kim Seoweol called "Jindallae," or "Azaleas," and I have loved it ever since my mother read it to me.
"Iseul's Lexicon" is also about magic, and genocide, and threats to language. My parents did not force me to take Korean lessons, and I was insufficiently motivated as a child to take up the study myself. I regret this sometimes. Right now I'm sitting on a two-volume Korean novel, "Seonggyungwan Yusaengdeul-eui Nanal" by Kim Tae-hee, and the odds that I will get to the end of the first chapter, let alone with any comprehension, are dim. Korean is not a language that's in danger of dying out, but I am constantly reminded of all the histories and stories of my own people that I can't access because of the language barrier; of the fact that I pick my way through my mother's letters slowly and painfully, and even so get confused by whole paragraphs.
I'll be honest, I don't know if I am doing this right, or well, this business of telling stories, especially stories that draw directly on an existing people's history rather than something made-up. But it seems worse not to try. Maybe someday I'll figure it out.

---

Yoon Ha Lee
Official Website
Order Conservation of Shadows
Amazon US | Amazon UK

Quote from: LiBeat on 09-05-2013, 09:57:04

Al Ewing talks about THE FICTIONAL MAN!

... A. C. Wise?


A.C. Wise is the author of numerous short stories appearing in print and online in publications such as Clarkesworld, Apex, Lightspeed, and the Best Horror of the Year Vol. 4. In addition to her fiction, she co-edits The Journal of Unlikely Entomology, an online magazine devoted to fiction and art about bugs. Follow her on twitter as @ac_wise.


Aliens Among Us: Speculative Fiction and Bugsby A.C. Wise
It should come as no surprise that bugs – whether you stick to the scientific definition of "true bugs" or go with the broader, popular definition of all things creepy and crawly – are the perfect source of inspiration for speculative fiction. Bugs are weird. They have too many eyes and too many legs. Most can walk on walls, some can walk underwater, and others on top of it. Ants can carry 10 to 50 times their body weight. Fruit flies, flour beetles, and waterbears can withstand massive doses of radiation (even more than cockroaches) and keep right on going.
Compared to humans, bugs essentially have super powers. They also have radically different social structures, life cycles, methods of reproduction, and means of communicating. When you look at close-up macro photographs of bugs, they barely look like they belong on the same planet as humans. Why wouldn't an author drawn on their characteristics when building an alien race, or an entire alien world?

Let's take a classic example – the xenomorph from the Alien franchise. Xenomorphs are eusocial, like most species of bees, ants, and termites, meaning they have a single fertile queen. Like parasitoid wasps, xenomorphs forcibly implant their larva in other species. They go through several distinct stages during their lifecycles – egg, face hugger, chestburster, and full-blown adult alien. (We won't discuss the weird alien wiener snake from Prometheus.) While parasitoid wasps are slightly less dramatic than chestbursters, simply feeding on their host body from the inside until they're ready to pupate (which they occasionally do while continuing to wear the dead skin of their hosts), the parallels are clear.
Like terrestrial insects, xenomorphs are the ultimate Other. There's no common ground for humans to reason or negotiate with them. They don't want anything, other than to live their lives and reproduce. At best, humans provide convenient host bodies to facilitate xenomorph breeding; at worst, they're an infestation to be eradicated.
In their role as the ultimate Other, xenomorphs can be used to illuminate aspects of humanity. Parallels can be drawn between the Alien's behavior and some of the darkest behavior of humanity – rape, enforced pregnancy, or even the way the Company in the franchise views it employees as entirely disposable, a means only to achieve their own growth and continued existence.
Even terrestrial bugs are Other enough they can be seen as a blank slate; their behaviors and motives can be anthropomorphized to show us ourselves. Humans have developed an entire insect-mythology or shorthand, which when done well can be used to tell a very effective story, and when used poorly can substitute for plot, character development, and motivation. Bees stand-in for a highly militarized societies, or rigid caste-systems where everyone has a rank, orders are not to be questioned, and the status quo is to be maintained. Praying mantises represent sexually predatory females. Spiders are clever tricksters. Ants are industrious. Grasshoppers are lazy. And so on.
In many cases, the way we use insects to tell stories can reveal uncomfortable truths about humanity outside the text. Other-ing a character, human or inhuman, strips away their agency, takes away the voice they would use to tell their own story. Behavior and motivation are ascribed from the outside, defined by a narrator who has no experience of what the Other is actually thinking or feeling.
When faced with the Other, humans often fall back on received 'wisdom', stereotypes, and prejudices. A relatively innocuous example of this as it relates to insects is the term "social butterfly". Butterflies are primarily solitary and not social at all. It is the 'flighty' aspect of butterflies, flitting from one flower to the next that brings about the association – butterflies have a surface relationship with bright, pretty flowers, but no lasting interactions. They are shallow and vapid, much like the outward appearance of a person described as a social butterfly. There are obviously less innocent ways to draw insect and human parallels. Used deliberately, they can illuminate a profound truth within the text; used unquestioningly, they may reveal an uncomfortable truth about the author's prejudices.
But I digress.
Coming back to character building and worldbuilding, there are several insect behaviors (and insect-related human behaviors) that rarely make it to the page, any one of which would make a fantastic jumping-off point for building an alien race and world. Why not create an alien race that tastes with its feet, the way butterflies do, or communicates through chemical traces in the earth? Why not have a society that expresses itself through something like a bee's waggle-dance, or the male peacock spider's elaborate mating dance? What would the technology of an insect-based alien race look like? Human scientists are working on building cameras that see the way a fly does, with fractal vision. They've built a robot that can be driven by the movement of a silk moth. There's even an app that lets farmers gauge the health of their crops based on insect activity in their fields.
The beneficial nature of insects often gets neglected in fiction, as bugs so readily conjure up images of horror or invading alien species. There's a worldbuilding goldmine in the complex ecosystem surrounding the symbiotic relationship between fig wasps and fig trees in Africa. The female of the species sheds her wings and antennae while burrowing into the immature fruit, while simultaneously depositing pollen gathered from outside and thus pollinating the female flowers found on the inside of the fig. Once inside the fig, the female lays her eggs and dies, and a new generation is born from inside the fig. As if that weren't enough, there are also ants farming aphids for the nectar they get from the figs, whose tough mandibles facilitate the wasps getting into the figs in the first place.
There's no shortage of examples of alien bugs, bug-like aliens, and bugs in general in speculative fiction: the Buggers of Ender's Game, the hive-minded Borg of Star Trek, and the buggalos of Futurama, which act as both a food source and a mode of transportation in a pinch. Last year, E. Lily Yu's "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" was nominated for just about every major genre award, including the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards. This year, Kij Johnson's "Mantis Wives" is nominated for a Hugo and a Locus Award. As you can see, when it comes down to it, bugs and speculative fiction fit together perfectly, and they make for a winning combination.

... Michael Logan?



     If you think you've seen it all -- WORLD WAR Z, THE WALKING DEAD-- you haven't seen anything like this. From the twisted brain of Michael Logan comes Apocalypse Cow, a story about three unlikely heroes who must save Britain . . . from a rampaging horde of ZOMBIE COWS!   
Forget the cud. They want blood.   

It began with a cow that just wouldn't die. It would become an epidemic that transformed Britain's livestock into sneezing, slavering, flesh-craving four-legged zombies.   And if that wasn't bad enough, the fate of the nation seems to rest on the shoulders of three unlikely heroes: an abattoir worker whose love life is non-existent thanks to the stench of death that clings to him, a teenage vegan with eczema and a weird crush on his maths teacher, and an inept journalist who wouldn't recognize a scoop if she tripped over one.   As the nation descends into chaos, can they pool their resources, unlock a cure, and save the world?   Three losers. Overwhelming odds. One outcome . . .   Yup, we're screwed.   Show more 

Kaze Logan:

In all my years of writing, I never once imagined my breakthrough would come in the shape of a hulking zombie cow with a penchant for reverse bestiality. If I had, I probably would have doubted my sanity.
It may sound strange coming from somebody whose absurdist debut novel is built upon such a ridiculous premise, but I used to be a rather serious writer—both in terms of what I produced and what I chose to read. For 15 years I focused (if this word could be applied to my occasional dabbling) on short stories that were literary in style and theme. These works were largely vignettes based around chance encounters between strangers who opened up new windows on the world for each other: lit-wank, in other words.
Clearly, a book in which a loose collective of directionless losers are dropped into a world where sex-crazed zombie animals run amok is very different proposition. This transition in style came about when I was looking to begin working in the novel form. At that time, in 2006, I was juggling two journalism jobs in Budapest and found it near impossible to squeeze out enough time and focus to do justice to the serious novel I had chosen to write. So, I decided to set my sights on something more light-hearted that I could work on and enjoy after a day spent writing about weighty subjects.
And so, zombie cows. I had loved zombies since I first saw Romero's Dawn of the Dead and knew that if I was going to write something in that area, it would have to be a little different. Zombie animals (for I also venture into the territory of dogs, cats, sheep, squirrels and other small rodents) gave plenty of opportunity for silliness and satire of the government response to mad cow disease, foot and mouth disease and the general unrealized fear of deadly global pandemics. In many respects, I considered it a writing exercise. Even though I intended to concentrate on comedy, I saw the book as way to flex my writing muscles and figure out how to structure a novel with all the attendant concerns of character development, pacing, world building, theme and so on.
I quickly found out my expectations of an easier life were misplaced, as effectively mixing comedy and horror proved to be bloody difficult. After a lot of despairing and hair-pulling, which I blame for my ever-advancing tea biscuit (a rather unsightly bald patch on the crown, for those not familiar with the slang), I decided to restrict the comedy to the dialogue and social satire. When somebody died and characters got upset, I played it straight. Fundamentally, I took the approach of "it's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye". This means that the tone of the book fluctuates, but I consider that an accurate reflection of life. Moods can change from hour-to-hour, never mind day-to-day or week-to-week, and I always find it odd when a book remains relentlessly grim or sports a cheesy grin throughout horrendous situations where humour would normally falter.
Now, two years on from winning the Terry Pratchett First Novel award, a turn of events that surprised me more than anybody, my odd little book is undergoing serious public scrutiny. My tonally erratic approach doesn't work for everybody and a sense of humour is always a very specific thing. As a result, I expected some people to hate it. So it has proven. While the majority seems to love it, there are those who think it is the biggest pile of bullshit ever written. Happily for me, if not for the people who wasted money on a book they would gleefully ignite and fling from a very high building, I think this is a good thing. I didn't want to create a work bland enough to be considered just okay. If you provoke an intense reaction in readers you are doing your job—unless of course, everybody thinks it is dreadful.
All the same, criticism is a hard thing to take. After a long period of obsessively reading every review and checking every rating on Goodreads and Amazon, I have now realized the best way to cope is to ignore all opinions, good and bad. Worrying about how your work is being received, and constantly monitoring this process, is utterly debilitating and takes you away from the most-important task for an author: writing. Of course, checking on how your book is doing is an addiction like any other, and I have my relapses. They are growing less frequent, however.
There are other challenges. There is no doubt that having a book published is a great achievement, but the world of publishing is a tough place for a new author. If plankton actually ate anything instead of relying on photosynthesis, I would be that tiny meal. Publishing your debut novel is only the beginning of a long process; without gazillions of sales there is no guarantee that writing one well-received book will automatically lead to another deal.
This means I have to concentrate damn hard on getting better, and like most first-time novelists—geniuses aside—I have a lot of work to do on improving. Fortunately, I tend to think everything I produce is utter drivel, so this drives me to put in the necessary work on the craft—although now I must juggle this with a full-time job (which currently finds me in Mongolia working 16-hour days) that is complicated by two young children who, alas, don't seem to be content with being left locked in a darkened room for hours on end with a bowl of water and some hay. Writing comedy is difficult when you are exhausted and, to quote Frank N. Furter from The Rocky Horror Show, sometimes "even smiling makes my face ache".
I guess the point of this ramble is that no matter the style or subject matter, writing is a difficult and complex task and you have to be ridiculously dedicated to make it. It's too early to say if I am going to be a success or not, but one thing I can promise: if I fail, it won't be because I didn't try my utmost. And that is all any of us can do.

---

Michael Logan
Official Website
Order "Apocalypse Cow"
Amazon US | Amazon UK

A zasto, pobogu, to tebe zanima???

   Zato što sam mišljenja da je horor podžanr o zombijima napravljen na tvrdoj i ne odveć elastičnoj premisi koja se brzo dodatno kalcifikovala u ekstremno prepoznatljiv kliše i šablon usled čega je sam podžanr brzo postao predvidiv a time i dosadan što dalje znači da mu je neophodno razbijanje rečenog šablona i otklon od pomenutog klišea ne bi li tako makar i za kratko postigao ono čitaocu tako neophodno stanje nepredvidivosti i neočekivanosti a to se najlakše postiže upravo preko apsurda, što svakako ne bi trebalo unapred osuđivati (ili bar ne previše), pošto je u ovom slučaju očigledno reč o prozi sa ironičnim otklonom. Jelte.   

Ironicni otklon ili ne, i dalje hoce da se ocese o trend. Mada, sta znam, pricam napamet. Imam predrasude a, u stvari, nisam procitao nijedan zombi roman

eeeee, a trebalo je.    i to pogotovo one sa ironičnim otklonom, mene su jako zabavili. 

Mrzim humoristične romane...   

Quote from: Mica Milovanovic on 23-06-2013, 13:56:20
Mrzim humoristične romane...   

ma ne mrziš, nego te desenzitizovala silna komičnost u kojekakvim "ozbiljnim" ti romanima... 

Ta me tematika ic ne zanima, toliko je ispod mog praga zanimanja da cak ni Gregoryja jos nisam procitao... Zivot je previse kratak da bi citali romane o zombijima 


(ne da osudjujem ikoga, moj guilty pleasure su razne fantasy bljuzge)

Edit. A i ovo sto Mica kaze, humor bas ne funkcionise u fantastici (s retkim ali veoma poznatim izuzecima)

Tjah, znate kako kažu mudri i stari ljudi - sto ljudi, sto... koječega. 


Ali šta da radim, godine su izgleda učinile svoje i danas je moj omiljeni film o Frankenštajnu ovaj, a omiljeni o Drakuli ovaj. 

   In its 4.5 billion–year history, life on Earth has been almost erased at least half a dozen times: shattered by asteroid impacts, entombed in ice, smothered by methane, and torn apart by unfathomably powerful megavolcanoes. And we know that another global disaster is eventually headed our way. Can we survive it? How?

As a species, Homo sapiens is at a crossroads. Study of our planet's turbulent past suggests that we are overdue for a catastrophic disaster, whether caused by nature or by human interference.
It's a frightening prospect, as each of the Earth's past major disasters—from meteor strikes to bombardment by cosmic radiation—resulted in a mass extinction, where more than 75 percent of the planet's species died out. But in Scatter, Adapt, and Remember, Annalee Newitz, science journalist and editor of the science Web site io9.com explains that although global disaster is all but inevitable, our chances of long-term species survival are better than ever. Life on Earth has come close to annihilation—humans have, more than once, narrowly avoided extinction just
during the last million years—but every single time a few creatures survived, evolving to adapt to the harshest of conditions.

     This brilliantly speculative work of popular science focuses on humanity's long history of dodging the bullet, as well as on new threats that we may face in years to come. Most important, it explores how scientific breakthroughs today will help us avoid disasters tomorrow. From simulating tsunamis to studying central Turkey's ancient underground cities; from cultivating cyanobacteria for "living cities" to designing space elevators to make space colonies cost-effective; from using math to stop pandemics to studying the remarkable survival strategies of gray whales, scientists and researchers the world over are discovering the keys to long-term resilience and learning how humans can choose life over death.

     Newitz's remarkable and fascinating journey through the science of mass extinctions is a powerful argument about human ingenuity and our ability to change. In a world populated by doomsday preppers and media commentators obsessively forecasting our demise, Scatter, Adapt, and Remember is a compelling voice of hope. It leads us away from apocalyptic thinking into a future where we live to build a better world—on this planet and perhaps on others. Readers of this book will be equipped scientifically, intellectually, and emotionally to face whatever the future holds.   Show more

... Tom Vater?








Tom Vater is a writer and publisher working predominantly in Asia. He is the co-owner of Crime Wave Press, a Hong Kong based English language crime fiction imprint.
He has published two novels, The Devil's Road to Kathmandu, currently available in English and Spanish, and The Cambodian Book of the Dead, released by Crime Wave Press in Asia and  world wide in July 1013 by Exhibit A.
His third novel, The Man with the Golden Mind, will be out with Exhibit A in 2014.
Tom has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The South China Morning Post, Marie Claire, Geographical, Penthouse and countless other publications.
He has published several non-fiction books, including the highly acclaimed Sacred Skin (with his wife, photographer Aroon Thaewchatturat) and the more recent Burmese Light with photographer Hans Kemp.
Tom is the co-author of several documentary... Read more

... Patrick Lee.

Za njegov roman The Breach, DeNardo kaze ovo: I don't envy the job of book marketer.  Part of their job is categorizing books so that the greatest number of target readers find them. This is all well and good when the novel sits comfortably entrenched within the confines of a particular genre, but much harder as the genre lines become blurred.  The danger is that a particular book may not find the right audience if the marketing doesn't steer it that way.
This is all a roundabout way of explaining why I overlooked Patrick Lee's The Breach when it came out late last year.  The decidedly non-sf cover and synopsis is aimed squarely at the mainstream thriller fiction market. Travis Chase, an ex-cop (and a dirty one at that), stumbles upon a plane wreck in the Alaskan wilderness where he finds the First Lady of the United States holding a mysterious note in her dead hand.  The note pleads for someone to rescue the surviving hostages...a compelling request that entangles Travis in the mysterious operations of a secret group known as Tangent.
There's nothing science fictional at all in that description, a publicity decision that led this science fiction fan to assume that the book was meant for a mainstream thriller audience.  The only reason The Breach was given a second look is because of the undeniably-sf synopsis of the just-received sequel, Ghost Country.  I'm glad I took that second look, because The Breach is a fantastic read from start to finish.
It's only mildly spoilery to say how the book is science fiction since that becomes evident within the first sixty pages.  The Breach of the title is a doorway to another universe from which powerful and dangerous artifacts emerge.  The Tangent organization is tasked with examining these artifacts and studying the Breach in the remote location of Border Town, a facility set up for that very purpose.  It's a super-secret operation that's been in existence for decades, but now it's under attack by someone bent on world domination.  And considering the amazing abilities of the artifacts, it just might happen.
The Breach is everything a thriller should be: fast-moving, filled with several scenes of well-described action and genuine suspense, and peppered with (mostly) unexpected plot twists. It also has qualities that mark a good science fiction book: technological sense of wonder, a few well-trodden tropes that are nevertheless expertly deployed, and thought-provoking situations.  And like any good novel, it has memorable, well-drawn characters.  Chase's dark past haunts him throughout the story.  Paige Campbell's determination and strength are to be lauded.  Other characters, well, they don't really matter all that much and so are stereotypically drawn. All things considered, you wouldn't think this is Lee's first novel by the looks of it because it defies any reasonable interpretation of the so-called First Novel Syndrome.  The worst that could be said about the novel is that the science behind the artifacts remains unexplained – a point that can easily be overlooked because you're turning pages too fast to let it dampen the thrill.
I do wonder if the apparently-targeted mainstream audience would be put off by the science fictional elements of The Breach.  At the same time, I suspect science fiction fans will easily enjoy the sf thrill ride.


Njegov novi roman izlazi pocetkom iduce godine:

Release date: February 18, 2014 | Series: A Sam Dryden Novel (Book 1)      Sam Dryden, retired special forces, lives a quiet life in a small town on the coast of Southern California. While out on a run in the middle of the night, a young girl runs into him on the seaside boardwalk. Barefoot and terrified, she's running from a group of heavily armed men with one clear goal—to kill the fleeing child. After Dryden helps her evade her pursuers, he learns that the eleven year old, for as long as she can remember, has been kept in a secret prison by forces within the government. But she doesn't know much beyond her own name, Rachel. She only remembers the past two months of her life—and that she has a skill that makes her very dangerous to these men and the hidden men in charge.

Dryden, who lost his wife and young daughter in an accident five years ago, agrees to help her try to unravel her own past and make sense of it, to protect her from the people who are moving heaven and earth to find them both. Although Dryden is only one man, he's a man with the extraordinary skills and experience—as a Ranger, a Delta, and five years doing off-the-book black ops with an elite team. But, as he slowly begins to discover, the highly trained paramilitary forces on their heels is the only part of the danger they must face. Will Rachel's own unremembered past be the most deadly of them all?   Show more  Show less

... Joan Frances Turner?





One insomniac Saturday night in 2003, as there was little else on television, I sat down to watch the original Carnival of Souls.  More cheap black and white, shot on a shoestring in the middle of nowhere, and when Mary Henry's hand emerged from the depths of a lake long after she should have drowned, the movie had me.  She wasn't a zombie in the classic sense, but she was definitely undead; the living characters shied away from her as if they could smell her internal decay.  That and the movie's titular carnival, with the undead ghouls waltzing to eerie calliope music that came from nowhere, fascinated me.
In the wider imagination, however, zombies seemed to be nothing but a joke.  They were ugly, they stank, they talked and walked strangely, they ate filth, they spread disease, they were physically and mentally inferior, they multiplied at a horrifying rate, and it was a moral imperative for humanity to destroy them like the vermin they were.  This was so similar to so many classic racist and xenophobic stereotypes that it startled me, and also made me start to consider the matter from the other side.  Since zombies are, at the root, nothing but dead human beings—some of whom are our own departed loved ones—what if humanity only thinks they're monsters?  What if they still have working minds, can laugh, fight, form friendships, love each other, grieve—and kill, as humans do, not just from hunger but in self-defense, anger, malice?  What if what sounds like meaningless groans, to us, is an actual language?  What if the creature in your rifle crosshairs still remembers you, loves you, can't plead for mercy before you pull the trigger?  What if zombies aren't an "epidemic," but have always been with us, in one form or another?
questions became the basis of an alternate zombie mythology that very slowly, from a half-page of barely coherent scribbled notes, became a book (and then its sequel, and then a third).  Other influences included the Greek myth of Erysichthon, punished by the gods with a hunger so overpowering he devours his own flesh; Michael Lesy's Wisconsin Death Trip, an unsettling collection of photographs and newspaper clippings from a murderous rural American Midwest; the cult horror film The Last Broadcast, especially its haunting end-credits banjo music; the songs "Dambala" and "Mama Loi, Papa Loi" by the musician Exuma; and Luc Sante's prose poem "The Unknown Soldier," where the dead speak for themselves one final time.
Dust was my chance, through zombie lore traditional and newly invented, to play with all sorts of notions of life and death:  ordinary mortal existence, conscious life trapped in dead decaying bodies, seemingly "live" flesh rotting and dying from the inside out, invulnerable immortality through the back door.  It was also a chance to let a literal angel of death loose in my own backyard—the postindustrial Chicago outskirts of northern Indiana—and destroy and rebuild it in ways best serving characters who never quite know if they're living, dead or in a very strange, fragile afterlife.  Life and death, and the living and undead, grapple eternally, fighting as only an unwilling family can.  Who wins, in the end?  Even now, I'm not entirely sure.

... Tom King?








I can honestly say that Tom King's debut novel is quite unlike anything else I've ever seen. Imagine talking Watchmen, Promethea, The Amazing Adventure of Kavalier and Clay and taking it one step further. Before writing A Once Crowded Sky, King had an illustrious career working as a CIA counter-terrorism officer but even before that, he worked for DC Comics and Marvel. As mad as it sounds, in A Once Crowded Sky, King combined both experiences but in book form. While someone with a little less imagination would write a graphic novel, King created an experiment where the experience of reading a book feels like reading an expansive comics book series. The titles of each chapter are depicted as single issues of imaginary comic series and some of chapters are even made to look as proper comic books. Honestly impressive. However, the obvious question at this point is: "Is the story any good or is it all just gimmicks?"

Well, we're happy to report that the story is quite good as well. A Once Crowded Sky is set in the Arcadia City where heroes are always saving the day. However, when, to solve the latest challenge, heroes must sacrifice their greatest hero, Ultimate as well as their powers, everything suddenly becomes rather ordinary. When new danger threatens Arcadia City, our heroes find themselves in the situation where, without their powers, they can't do much. However, one hero still has the powers. His name is PenUltimate and these days, he's the most powerful man in the world.

Reading about names such Ultimate and PenUltimate , you'd be excused to think that King has played one trick to many but when you think about it, most of the superheroes in comics DO have such silly names and this is the crowd that King is probably aiming at. King perfectly captures the atmosphere and frankly speaking, I had more fun reading this than 99 percent of such comics. As such, I don't think this is the book that will convert to many people to reading superhero comics. There are simply to many ingrained convention and carefully crafted references for general readership. However, while A Once Crowded Sky won't be everyone's cup of tea and might not win Pulitzer like The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay did, Tom King has created a truly innovative and unique concept which, I expect, will have pretty hard core following once the word gets around. Until then, as with all good superheroes comics, it's time for sequel.

Quote from: LiBeat on 09-07-2013, 09:21:24
... Patrick Lee.

Meni je ovo idealno leglo za citanje na plazi. Zavrsio sam prvu (The Breach) i drugu (Ghost Country), i zapoceo trecu knjigu trilogije (Deep Sky). Kao sto covek rece: " ... fast-moving, filled with several scenes of well-described action and genuine suspense, and peppered with (mostly) unexpected plot twists".

Hvala za skretanje paznje na ovog coveka.

Hm, u kakvoj su vezi The Breach i Ghost Country? Ne vidim iz ovih tekstova ništa što ih direktno povezuje. Isti univezum?

Quote from: dejann on 08-08-2013, 23:49:41

Quote from: LiBeat on 09-07-2013, 09:21:24
... Patrick Lee.

Meni je ovo idealno leglo za citanje na plazi. Zavrsio sam prvu (The Breach) i drugu (Ghost Country), i zapoceo trecu knjigu trilogije (Deep Sky). Kao sto covek rece: " ... fast-moving, filled with several scenes of well-described action and genuine suspense, and peppered with (mostly) unexpected plot twists".

Hvala za skretanje paznje na ovog coveka.

e, kul što je takav Lee, ja sam se malko femkala (kao i uvek sa novim serijalima), pa mi je svaki dodatni info baš dobrodošao. (ti beše onaj baja kom se dopao i Kosmatka onomad, jelde? mi kanda imamo poprilično blizak žanrovski ukus... )

a kad sam već na topiku, evo još malko kurioziteta:











a evo kako to najavljuje Jeff VanerMeer:

Quote from: zakk on 09-08-2013, 10:31:41
Hm, u kakvoj su vezi The Breach i Ghost Country? Ne vidim iz ovih tekstova ništa što ih direktno povezuje. Isti univezum?

Isti junaci, isti univerzum, kontinuirani timeline (sa skokovima od godinu-dve izmedju knjiga)... Mozes da stanes nakon prve ili nakon druge, ali ne vidim razlog za to ako ti se ono procitas svidi.

Quote from: LiBeat on 09-08-2013, 13:11:43
e, kul što je takav Lee, ja sam se malko femkala (kao i uvek sa novim serijalima), pa mi je svaki dodatni info baš dobrodošao. (ti beše onaj baja kom se dopao i Kosmatka onomad, jelde? mi kanda imamo poprilično blizak žanrovski ukus... )

Zbog Kosmatke i obracam posebnu paznju na knjige koje pomenes Jako malo citam poslednih par godina (kako su divna bila ona davna studentska vremena kada sam mogao da procitam unabridged verziju The Stand za jedan vikend), pa mi dobro dodje kad neko napravi predselekciju

BTW, da li si citala Kosmatkin Prophet of Bones? Nikako da mi dodje na red. A trebalo bi.

Eh, Kosmatka...    kako je to prijatno otkriće bilo, nemam reči. A kad još k tomu dodam kako su mi u zadnjih 5-6 godina upravo debi romani bili najprijatnija otkrića, uvek pri vrhu izbora za naj-knjigu godine, sve se nekako raspilavim. Zato mi i bude smešno kad tamo neki čiča ustvrdi da je žanr u nekakvoj krizi ili nešto gore od toga, samo sklopim oči i zapitam se kakve to kvarne gljive čovek konzumira.  Zdravi smo i pravi, hvala vam na pitanju, a bogami smo i lepši no ikada, jer stvarno je vrh vrhova kad ti se potrefi da te upravo debi romani oduševljavaju, to ujedno znači i da je trend postojan i da si ti (još uvek) u sinku sa trendom, pa kud ćeš lepše. Ali naravno, nominacije i nagrade to prate slabije nego što bi čovek od njih očekivao, pa nisu više ni toliko pouzdane kao reper za predselekciju, nego treba zasukati rukave i tražiti sam, a Kosmatka i Zeigler su mi najbolji dokaz za tu tvrdnju. Prophet of Bones ima žešće ambiciozan sinopsis pa čeka red na neka smirenija vremena, sa malko više letnje dokolice na raspolaganju, a to je kod mene tek tamo u decembru.


Inače, The Breach startuje stvarno ludačkim tempom, a i karakterizacija je baš po mom ukusu, overila sam ga premijerno tamo do Karla i odela, i  šta da ti kažem, to jeste upravo ona vrst SFa kojeg sumanuto i ovisnički obožavam. Ali još uvek zazirem od serijala, to je moj nekako bazični hendikep koji vučem od pamtiveka, patološki čak, sve duž linija da se ne treba vezati, da treba ostati slobodan jer je važno samo dobro se zezati sa vikendaškim once-off stand alone romanima.    Bačelor po karakteru, šta ćeš, serijali mi i dandanas izgledaju ko mračne bračne obaveze, nikad se ne zna u šta će se to mundano na kraju izroditi...    No dobro, The Breach je sad definitivno na tapetu.

Ja debitantske knjige dozivljavam kao nesto prilicno odvojeno od ostatka covekove karijere (ako je bude/ima). To je najcesce prica koju je covek u sebi nosio godinama, i ta neka strast i zelja da se to izbaci iz sebe lako nadjaca eventualne zanatske nedostatke. A onda dodje druga knjiga i to je meni prelomna tacka - da li ce od coveka nesto biti ili je ta jedna prica koju je ispricao jedina koju je imao u sebi. Zato me i kopka Prophet. Mislim da cu se baciti na to cim zavrsim Deep Sky.

Tempo u The Breach ostaje takav do kraja. Kao sto rekoh zakk-u, mozes da stanes posle prve knjige... Ali mislim da neces

Quote from: dejann on 10-08-2013, 15:13:56
[size=78%] Kao sto rekoh zakk-u, mozes da stanes posle prve knjige... Ali mislim da neces[/size]

Ne znam ko bi stao. To papirče iz epiloga... holomoli, to je triput žešća udica od one koja otvara roman, sad kad već znamo donekle kud sve to može da odvede, a da pritom tehnički nije čak ni totalni klifhanger, pošto makar u teoriji ne remeti zaokruženu celinu. Ali u praksi... ne znam ko bi tu stao, zaista. Strava je Lee, nema zbora, a od februara se šuška i o ekranizaciji romana - Justin Lin, O.o, pa sve vibriram od nade i strepnje ujedno. eto, tvoja knjiga za plažu meni ispala perfektna knjiga za hladne zimske noći...


Mali kuriozitet: kindle ima gotivnu "popular highlights" opciju, i divota jedna što je sve na vrhu liste - pored i povrh maestralnog "appointment in Samarra" momenta koji ovde strava fituje - pa bih rekla da se itekako Lee ceni kao stilista.  A ja se ne sećam da sam ga videla ni u bitnijim žanrovskim nominacijama... 

Zavrsio sam preksinoc Deep Sky. Gomila sjajnih elemenata je tu, ali mi je knjiga nekako najmanje legla od sve tri.


A mozda je problem i u okruzenju za citanje - lezaljka pod suncobranom na obali okeana vs. malo ukradnog vremena izmedju dve ture klijentskih mail-ova u paklenom Beogradu 

Pročitala sam i Ghost Country... uhuh, kako je ova trilogija impresivno debi štivo. Sve na svom mestu, sve perfektno funkcioniše, ništa nije ornamentalno, svaka kockica ima svoju važnu ulogu u mozaiku, to je čista perfekcija kako on to silno obilje tako lepo i sa lakoćom žonglira. (Plus, zaista sam iznenađena kako dobro podnosim to njegovo povremeno ali detaljno i vrlovrlo grafički prikazano eksplicitno nasilje...     )

Da, meni je druga knjiga bila jos bolja od prve. Sa sve tim nonsalantnim nasiljem. Bas me zanima tvoje misljenje o trecoj.


In the meantime, ja sam krenuo Prophet of Bones 

John Farrell is about to get "The Cure."
Old age can never kill him now.
The only problem is, everything else still can . . .
Imagine a near future where a cure for aging is discovered and-after  much political and moral debate-made available to people worldwide.  Immortality, however, comes with its own unique problems-including evil  green people, government euthanasia programs, a disturbing new  religious cult, and other horrors. Witty, eerie, and full of humanity,  The Postmortal is an unforgettable thriller that envisions a  pre-apocalyptic world so real that it is completely terrifying.

(ako neko ima vruci link za ovu knjigu, nek bude ortak i podeli ga...  )

libeat, imas PM

 




Publication Date:September 24, 2013    Late in the twenty-first century, big business is booming and state institutions are thriving thanks to advances in genetic engineering, which have produced a compliant population free of addictions. Violent crime is a rarity. Hyper-intelligent Jayna is a star performer at top predictive agency Mayhew McCline, where she forecasts economic and social trends. A brilliant mathematical modeler, she far outshines her co-workers, often correcting their work on the quiet. Her latest coup: finding a link between northeasterly winds and violent crime. When a string of events contradicts her forecasts, Jayna suspects she needs more data and better intuition. She needs direct interactions with the rest of society. Bravely—and naively—she sets out to disrupt her strict routine and stumbles unwittingly into a world where her IQ is increasingly irrelevant...a place where human relationships and the complexity of life are difficult for her to decode. And as she experiments with taking risks, she crosses the line into corporate intrigue and disloyalty. Can Jayna confront the question of what it means to live a "normal" life? Or has the possibility of a "normal" life already been eclipsed for everyone?   Show more

Quote from: dejann on 29-08-2013, 22:03:52
libeat, imas PM

The Postmortal ima da te patosira. nacisto!     gaddem odlicno stivo!

ne mi to raditi    u poslu sam do guse ovih dana 

K. Ceres Wright?






The Ryder family is at the top of the corporate elite. Father Geren Ryder heads up a global wireless hologram company with his son, Wills Ryder, a capable second, while daughter, Nicholle, is curator at an art museum. But when a dark stranger shows up, it sets off a chain reaction that puts Geren into a mysterious coma while Wills disappears with $50 billion from the family business. Worse, Geren's will specifies that he be taken off life support after five days. Just as Nicholle is trying to pick up the pieces, she becomes the target of an assassin and has to go on the run. With only a few days to save her father and keep the company from going under, Nicholle reaches back into the darkest part of her history, to the only person who could possibly help her. But the price is steep. Once she goes back, can she escape her past a second time?

Isa-Lee Wolf?







A quirky collection of seven short short stories, each about 1000 words or so. All strange with a light dusting of sci-fi, these quick reads offer a brief escape into imaginary worlds with fun, excitement, and possibly a laugh. Or two. Three might be a stretch.

Warning: If a woman calling herself "Aunty Ida" approaches you and offers a solution to your problem, doctors recommend running. Quickly. Whatever direction she's not in.

Caution: Don't try any of the proposed solutions at home, as they've been found to be scientifically absurd.

Note: Imaginary animals may or may not exist. How should we know?


(a ovako je sve to pocelo, 2011:)




  Publication Date:April 19, 2011   You know that case on LawTV? The one where the judge lost it on national television?

Yes, that was Margaret.

But Ida – who insists you call her "Aunty Ida," if you want to (no one ever seems to want to) – is there to help. That Margaret doesn't want her help doesn't dampen Ida's delight in playing with her mind-altering toys and calling it therapy.

Besides, the courtroom thing was only a big deal because of the cameras. OK, so it was Margaret's courtroom, and yes, she was hearing the biggest case of her career, and yes, the LawTV commentators were all over it, but these things always get sensationalized. The restraining order her husband got against her was only temporary.

So she's suspended. It's nothing she can't fix.

Sure, Margaret has no idea who this Ida person is, but if she can get her to sign a form, she'll be back on the bench in no time. Unfortunately for Margaret, Aunty Ida knows exactly who Margaret is. And Margaret isn't going anywhere.

With relentless optimism, Ida dives into curing Margaret of her problems, one odd treatment at a time. But Margaret knows there's nothing wrong with her.

She was set up, and she's determined to prove it.   Show more

Max Barry:


Posted on September 5, 2013 in Sci Fi, Suspense with 0 Comments                     
Lexicon by Max Barry (Penguin, June 2013)-There's something intriguing yet downright terrifying about a group of people that can employ mind control just with the use of a few nonsense words, but that's the basis of the superb Lexicon.
When the book opens, Wil Parke is being held down by two men and having a needle driven through his eye at an airport bathroom. He has no idea why, only that he needs to get away. The snippets of their conversation that he can grasp make no sense, and when he finally gets a chance to run, what he witnesses is mind numbing. Soon, he realizes that his life has taken on a whole new meaning, and his captor may actually be his protector.
We then jump back in time a bit to the life of 16 year old Emily Ruff, a runaway who is barely scraping by as a card hustler in San Francisco. She has a knack for persuasion, however, and this is what puts her on the radar of the "poets", which is what this clandestine group of mind bending folks call themselves. They present an offer she really can't refuse, since she doesn't really have other attractive life choices at her fingertips, and so begins her journey. The author takes us through her schooling with the poets and she begins to show a talent that both intrigues and terrifies the establishment, especially the shadowy man that heads it up. He sees a tool in Emily, and possibly even a weapon.
Emily and Wil's futures eventually entwine in the tiny town of Broken Hill, Australia, which has been completely devastated by a horrific incident that Emily may be involved in. Perhaps most importantly, Will is an "outlier", who is immune to the powers of the poets, and it may be what saves his life, but what about Emily, and why has he been drawn into a battle that he wants nothing to do with?
I had absolutely no expectations when I began reading Lexicon, but let me tell you, it took about 10 seconds for me to be completely hooked on this unusual and absorbing story. Emily is a strong willed, yet very vulnerable girl whose future falls into the hands of a group that doesn't have her best interests at heart. She's very powerful and it's her struggle with her terrifying power and also with herself that makes her so tragic, and ultimately, so easy to identify with. Honestly, where Emily was concerned, I couldn't help but make comparisons to Firestarter, which is a good thing. Wil is a bit of a mystery to begin with, but as the narrative unfolds, you'll figure things out, and if you weren't already hopelessly hooked, just wait. You'll need to pay attention, because when the author changes timelines, he expects you to use your context clues to figure out where you are in the course of the story, and if you are indeed paying attention, it's not hard. I kind of liked this, because it really made me focus on the who and where and kept me in the moment. The scenes in the ruined Broken Hill are very, very creepy, and Emily's time at the poet's school will certainly bring to mind X-Men. Those are just comparison's to give you a bit of an idea of what you're getting into, though. Max Barry has certainly created something all his very own, and he'll have his hooks in you in no time. Lexicon is a scary, intelligent, and poignant thriller that defies categorization and more than deserves a look from readers looking for something a bit different, a little beyond the norm, satirically sharp, and just damn good.