8 More Pyr Titles Arrive on the Kindle

A batch of eight more Pyr books has been Kindle-ized (though one is only listed as pre-order. Didn't know they'd do that with ebooks.)

They are:

Justina Robson's Chasing the Dragon (Quantum Gravity, Book 4)(Preorder)

Sean Williams' The Crooked Letter: Books of the Cataclysm: One

Chris Roberson's End of the Century

Gardner Dozois' Galileo's Children: Tales Of Science VS. Superstition

Sean Williams' The Hanging Mountains

Alexis Glynn Latner's Hurricane Moon

Theodore Judson's The Martian General's Daughter

Matthew Sturges' Midwinter

Again, no control of the order in which Amazon puts these things up. It is apparently based at least partially on demand, as logged by their "I'd like to read this book on Kindle" button. Click often.

The Stargate: Atlantis Book Club

Theodore Judson's The Martian General's Daughtermade its second appearance on Stargate: Atlantis last night, in the episode "First Contact." This one is a much better cover-shot than in the previous episode. Thanks to John-Mark for the screenshot, who has several more posted on his blog. Thanks also to Joe Mallozzi and the rest of the Stargate team for arranging this.

Pick a book... any book!

That's what We Read Science Fiction did.

After reading endless positive things about Pyr’s books, I acquired six of their titles. With statements like “Pyr only publishes Gems” and “Pyr can do no wrong!” I wanted to see it for myself. I read through their list of available books, looked for a few themes that fit my tastes (and a few that didn’t) and when the pile arrived I randomly picked one. Assuming they only publish awesome stuff, it should be a good book right?

They picked Theodore Judson's The Martian General's Daughter.And was it a good book?

It was. I loved [it]... The characters are awesome, the story is as compelling as it is bloody and the history-is-repeating theme all make for a memorable read. ...a great choice for anyone who likes alternative history, historical fiction and military conquest."

Stargate: Atlantis "First Contact" & Pyr

So, remember to watch Stargate: Atlantis' episode "First Contact" tonight for another (and much better) shot of Theodore Judson's The Martian General's Daughter.

Dusty was reading the book last time. I wonder who will read it tonight.

Stargate: Atlantis "Whispers" & Pyr

For those who watched Stargate: Atlantis' episode "Whispers," about mid-way through the episode, you may have noticed the character of Dusty reading The Martian General's Daughter.The cover wasn't 100 % visible in the frame, but you'll be seeing a full, clear cover shot in a forthcoming episode. Theodore Judson's book is reportedly part of the Atlantis book club!


A big thanks to John-Mark for the freeze frame image above.

Science Fiction Belongs to the World

Singapore-based Chuang Shyue Chou, in his blog, The Garden of Forking Paths (great title!), gives an enthusiastic thumbs up to Theodore Judson's The Martian General's Daughter.Now, I'm not taking issue with Chuang's review, and I'm thrilled he enjoyed the book, but one comment struck me as food for further thought: "A final note on The Martian General's Daughter, strangely enough, the novel is marred by a few lines of unnecessary Christian propaganda near the end. I wonder why."

It struck me as similar to the way that some readers and critics felt that China Miéville's Iron Council(my personal favorite of the Bas Lag books) was "marred" by the inclusion of overt Marxism.

Now, I am neither a Marxist nor a Christian, and I'm no fan of propaganda in fiction whether I'm a fan of it's object or not, but there's a difference between propaganda and an author writing from out of his/her own perspective. I don't have to share an author's belief system to enjoy their craft, any more than I have to endorse human sacrifice to admire the construction of the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacán (and that would be an extreme example.)

So, not taking issue with Chuang, and very glad he's reading Pyr books all the way in Singapore (awesome! keep it up!), but do people feel they have to agree with an author to enjoy them? I've always loved science fiction for its extreme wealth of ideas of every size and stripe, and don't feel the genre - which is ultimately a set of tools, not a school of thought - should be limited only to a liberal/socialist world view, even if I happened to share that world view. I love that Heinlein can write a book in 1959 that gets him accused of fascism and two years later in 1961, write a manifesto of the free love movement. That's the kind of, oh, let's call it infinite diversity in infinite combination, that I've always loved about our genre.

More of that please.

The Martian General's Daughter: "Could Not Put It Down"

Liviu C. Suciu, for Fantasy Book Critic, on Theodore Judson's The Martian General's Daughter:

"I just could not put it down when I got it."

AND

"The book has quite a few surprises. The ending is excellent and fulfilling, but not in any simple or expected way."

AND

"Full of vivid descriptions of cruelty, buffoonery, murders, battles, and a message of hope despite its bleakness, The Martian General's Daughter is an unforgettable book from Mr. Judson. The father/daughter relationship between Peter and Justa is as moving and well-realized as any in modern fiction…"

Cool.

The Martian General's Daughter: SF of the Very Highest Quality

Now, this is a nice way to end the day.

Chris Moriarty has reviewed Theodore Judson's The Martian General's Daughterin the pages of the August 2008 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. And she calls it, "A rare beast ... one of those books so astonishingly good that it made me run out and buy everything else its author ever wrote."

She goes on to say, "The story is familiar to anyone who's read the Augustan Histories or seen the film Gladiator. But Judson's retelling of the old tale is quietly riveting, and his image of a decaying post-galactic aristocracy lamenting the loss of email and central air conditioning is priceless."

And then she proclaims that The Martian General's Daughter is "sf of the very highest quality."

Nite, everybody.

Who Would Play the General?

So, Paul Di Filippo gives a really glowing review over on SciFiWire to Theodore Judson's The Martian General's Daughter,and this really brightens my day, because I'm really excited by this book, and I want everyone else to be too. But rather than just repeat what he says here, as is my norm, I'll just ask that you read it for yourself, and I'll cut to this tangent, from his postscript at the very end:

Alas, the perfect actor to play Gen. Black in the film version of this book is dead: I can see David Niven bestriding the ruins of the Pan-Polaric empire as clearly as I see Beyonce as Justa!

Which resulted in a half-dozen emails back and forth between Paul and I, and an entirely separate half-dozen emails between Judson's agent Richard Curtis and I, in which names like Sean Connery and Christopher Plummer were thrown out, until it hit me that there one and only best possible choice for Gen. Peter Black is John Neville.

Don't you agree?