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Greetings:
And welcome to the latest issue of the Pyr® newsletter. This month I am excited to bring you a very interesting new novel, tell you about an ebook sampler we've created, and round up news from some of our other authors. So...
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My Favorite Martian
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 I'm really, really, really excited by this book. Really. Excited. Me.
The Martian General's Daughter manages that very difficult task of being wonderfully funny, not in the "funny ha-ha" sort of way, but in the ironic narrative voice of the title character, and then, in unexpected moments, of being equally heart-breaking. Although the story teller, Justa, is relaying a history of her father in the last days of a dying (future) empire -- and thus the focus is on General Peter Black and a good deal of his military exploits -- the real tale is the tale of his daughter, and her complicated and poignant relationship with her father. Judson manages her voice so well that she emerges clean and clear in your mind as the remarkable woman she is intended to be. I laughed all the way to the end, whereupon I cried, whereupon I knew I had to have it for the Pyr list.
This book is doubly exciting as it also marks our first time working with illustrator Sparth, whose work will be familiar to anyone who has seen or played Assassin's Creed, the very popular new video game from Ubisoft. Sparth has done book covers before (most recently for Sean Williams' Cenotaxis, which is how he got on my radar), though I gather most of his cover work has been abroad. I think he's amazing, and you all have to rush out and buy The Martian General's Daughter right now if only so I can use Sparth on future books set in and around the Pan-Polarian Empire.
Meanwhile, as is my wont, I asked Sparth if he'd say a few words about illustrating this wonderful novel. And, lucky us, he would! Sparth says:
"Doing a cover for
a novel with such an unusual title is very fun. Not only because I enjoy depicting worlds falling into decay, but also because I always
have a great pleasure at painting epic scenes with colliding empires
and falling armies. The toughest part is how to instill nostalgia into
these types of images. For this matter, I certainly had in mind photos
of this abandoned airfield located in a desert area of the Southwest
with hundreds and maybe thousands of old aircrafts dying under the sun. Watching all these small and huge airp***s getting rusty is very
apocalyptic, and I thought it could really fit to the novel's atmosphere."
I would only add that I love the way that the General appears to be the focus of the cover upon first glance, but how his daughter, over his shoulder and near the margin, emerges the longer you look as a very "compelling" figure that obviously has a lot going on. And since the novel is her story in more ways than one, and one of these is her story of her father and her view of him, I thought this was a very appropriate illustration.
But since you can't really see all that at this thumbnail scale, well, you'll just have to rush right out and...well, you know. Buy. The. Book.
Of course, you can see a closer shot of her face on the wonderful banner add on this page, which also has a nice 58-page excerpt from the novel. In case, for some unfathomable reason, you don't want to just trust my opinion and think you need to sample the book yourself.
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The 2008 Pyr Sampler eBook
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We've just made a 326-page sample book we printed to give out at conventions
available as a free PDF-format ebook. It contains sizable excerpts from 7 of our
2008 titles and is online for download on both the catalog and forthcoming book pages of the Pyr website.
Excerpts are from
Joe Abercrombie's Before They Are
Hanged, Kay Kenyon's A World Too
Near, Theodore Judson's The Martian
General's Daughter, Robert Silverberg's Son of Man, David Louis Edelman's MultiReal, and Mike Resnick's Stalking the Unicorn and Stalking the Dragon. (Typos in Stalking the Unicorn won't be in the final edition, promise! That title's a long way off -- August -- and we were rushing the sampler to debut at a March convention. Please forgive us and don't let it put you off enjoying what I'm sure you'll agree is a very generous 326 pages of great storytelling.)
Happy Reading! |
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One by One, the Stars Are Going Out...
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I was very saddened by the death of Sir Arthur C. Clarke, as I know we all were. His presence as one of the most dignified. outwardly well-known, and honorable members of our field leaves a huge vacuum to be filled. My thoughts, as well as statements from John Meaney, Joel Shepherd, Kay Kenyon, David Louis Edelman and Ian McDonald, will appear in the June-July issue of Free Inquiry. But suffice to say that a giant has left us.
Meanwhile, in an article in The New York Times entitled "The
Fuzzier Crystal Ball," Dave Itzkoff uses the occasion of Sir Arthur C.
Clarke's passing to ask, "in a world where technology evolves so rapidly that
the present already feels like the future, will a modern-day author ever inherit
Mr. Clarke's aura of prescience?" He called me for the piece, and while my
comments don't make the cut, I'm happy to have pointed him to two of the four
authors whose comments he does incorporate. He talks to Charles Stross, Walter
Jon Williams, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Ian McDonald. All have good things to say. I
am particularly interested in Ian McDonald's remark that, "the fictions we're writing now will never come about... The future will always be different,
not just from what we imagine, but what we can imagine. By concentrating only
on what's likely, it's graying out that sense of wonder that scientists get from
doing science."
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Wicked Wiki Edelman
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 Infoquake and MultiReal author
David Louis Edelman has discovered he has a wikipedia page. This is wonderful, especially since his previous wikipedia page was taken down for inappropriately cribbing from his website. There's not too much there at present -- it could really use some cover art, hint, hint -- though the page does note that Dave has been nominated for both the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. (So no matter which Campbell you think Dave has been nominated for, you're correct!)
Meanwhile, Dave notes the page on his blog, where he gracious (and humorously) sounds a call for some enterprising person or persons to make pages for a few of his friends and fellow authors. And, natch, for himself: "Someone please beef it up to make me look more important and ensure
that the WikiVIPdeia don't take it down. I think I deserve an entry at
least as detailed as, say, Portugal's, don't you?" |
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That's it for this issue. As ever, be sure to see the coupon at the bottom of this newsletter, and please feel free to check out our entire catalog and drop by our blog.
Have a Happy New Year,
Lou Anders
Editorial Director, Pyr®
an imprint of Prometheus Books
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