Two Out of Two Anders Agree: Infoquake/MultiReal is Brilliant!

Over on the Pyr blog, Mark Chadbourn asks "Should Scientists Forget Space?", citing an article on the UK's former Chief Scientist, Sir David King, who says that we are in need of a "re-think of priorities in science and technology and a redrawing of our society's inner attitudes towards science and technology." Sir King wants us to forgo experiments in space and in CERN in favor of addressing more immediate concerns at him. I've already given my opinion in the comments of Mark's post, but it's interesting to me to contrast it here with Charlie Jane Anders' io9.com review of David Louis Edelman's Infoquakeand MultiReal(books one and two of his Jump 225 trilogy).

Charlie Jane beings the review, which is titled "MultiReal is your antidote to science-bashing scifi," by saying, "With so much mass-media science fiction featuring anti-science heroes who battle to stop science from "going too far," it's great to read a really smart novel about a hero who's fighting to save scientific progress from being suppressed." She characterizes the books as being "about the nature of technological progress" and says, "Where MultiReal really shines, however, is in the debates over the ethics of this reality-twisting software. There really is no right answer to the question of how society should deal with software that 'liberates you from cause and effect,' and the sequence where Natch's mentor debates the government's attorneys is easily my favorite part of both books. It's a complex issue, and Edelman draws it out enough that you can see how it applies to today's real-life challenges: should we try to suppress new technologies, should we regulate them heavily? Is it possible to suppress new knowledge after all? Does information really want to be free? It's a lot more nuanced than the 'science iz scary OMG' idea that seems to be popular in media SF right now.

Now, with the understanding that I am generalizing horribly, I think that traditionally a majority of filmic sci-fi is concerned with maintaining the status quo and getting the genies back in the bottles. Something is developed, approaching, on the loose - and its up to the protagonists to stop it. An asteroid is going to hit the earth, aliens are invading, a man has turned himself invisible and is running amok - how do we divert it, repel them, contain him... In other words, there is a threat to consensus reality and by the end of the film or television show, it's been dealt with and nicely put away. Go on with your lives. Nothing to worry about here.

By contrast, literary science fiction is often set after such an event has already happened, sometimes a good deal after, and throws us in medias res into a world in which part of the fun of the narrative is working out how the world in the tale differs from the world we know and part of the theme lies in examining how these changes act as a lens to illuminate some aspect of humanity that we take for granted. So, an asteroid hit the earth and killed everyone over 18, how do the survivors cope? Aliens invaded and are now our overlords - would you let one date your sister? 1/3 of the population is invisible, what new class of people do they form? The intrusion isn't repelled, it's part and parcel of the way things are now going forward. I find this the more honest approach, and underscores on of science fiction's strengths as the genre that embraces the reality and inevitability of change.

There are, of course, examples of both approaches in both mediums. In fact, one of the (many) failures of The Matrix trilogy is that it began from what I'm calling a more literary position of science fiction and transitioned to the filmic. At the end of the first movie, Neo promises to hang up the phone and, "then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world ... without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible." The goal of the protagonists isn't to preserve consensual reality, but to destroy it, by ushering in a world where anyone can do the things he can. But instead of this, the subsequent films shift the emphasis radically away from the Matrix (which is never anything more than a set for agents and rebels to play in henceforth) to saving Zion and restoring the status quo of balance between machine and rebel. We never actually deal with another person who still believes in/is imprisoned by the Matrix's view of reality - and the battle that is fought is all about getting things back to the way they were in the first film. I don't know why this is, though the best explanation I've heard is that 9/11 occurred between the first and second films, forcing Warner to rethink the wisdom of making two more movies staring a group of admitted terrorists out to destroy 1999. (In some ways, V for Vendetta - which was released as public opinion was beginning to change re: the current war and Bush's approval ratings were dipping, and questioning him was no longer being seen as being unpatriotic - is the film the Wachowski's should have made out of Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions and didn't/couldn't at the time). But I digress...

To bring this back to the Jump 225 trilogy: What I personally love about Edelman is that he sets his story not before (and up to the point) of the radical transformation, nor after (and at a comfortable distance from) the transformation, but that he is actually charting the course through the societal singularity, showing how all the institutions of government, business, and society rearrange, realign, and topple. To an extent, Charlie Stross did this with his brilliant and essential Accelerando (though he moves his action off-world for a good deal of it - which is no criticism, it's a different animal), but I've never personally encountered a work that did such a thorough job and concentrated so much of its focus in taking us through the shift point between paradigms. I think that's why so many readers say that the future Edelman presents is a "believable" one, and why I think, though he mixes and matches tropes we've seen before, his approach is so unique.

Prometheus Books Debuts New Website

The parent company has a brand new website. The long overdue overhaul of Prometheus Books' online home debuts today. What do you think?

(I should point out that the submission guidelines are for their books only, not Pyr. We have separate submission guidelines here.)

Peter Diamandis: Taking the Next Giant Leap into Space

Via TED: Ideas worth spreading. Peter Diamandis, who runs the X Prize Foundation, says it's our moral imperative to keep exploring space in this talk, "Taking the next giant leap into space."

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.

And speaking of Stargate...

Unrelated to my previous post, here's Stargate: Atlantis Executive Producer/writer Joseph Mallozzi on Sideways In Crime:

"Editor Lou Anders assembles a little over a dozen contributions on the theme of alternative history and crime in this interesting mix of stories. As is the case with most anthologies, some of the selections resonate more than others. Stand-outs for me were Mary Rosenblum’s “Sacrifice”, Paul Di Filippo’s “Murder in Geektopia”, and John Counrtenay Grimwood’s “Chicago”. Although I preferred the more wide-open possibilities found in Anders' Fast Forward anthologies(I was struck by how many of the stories in this collection touched on contemporized Aztec culture, Sherlock Holmes, and French-controlled Louisiana), Sideways in Crime proved an entertaining read in its own right."

Watch Stargate: Atlantis Tomorrow

Check out Stargate: Atlantis'  episode  "Whispers" tomorrow, Sept 5th, the 7th episode of their 5th season. Look for a special Pyr plug. I'll come back here and explain it after it's aired. 

MIND MELD: How Do Media Tie-In Novels Affect SF/F?

SF Signal is back with another great Mind Meld, this one asking, "How do you think media tie-in novels affect the genre of sf/f?"

It's a subject that I've had a change of heart on in recent years, going from borderline hostile to casually tolerant, bolstered largely by observations on the difference between 20th and 21st century fandom. But looking over the SF Signal posts, the arguments in favor go something like this:

1. Media tie-in novels are a gateway drug for (young) readers to discover "real" sf&f.
2. Even media tie-in novels get people thinking about important SFnal concepts.
3. The sales numbers associated with media tie-in novels brings its own kind of respect to our section of the bookstore and makes more non media tie-in works possible.

The arguments against go something like this:

1. Media tie-ins are eating the shelf space.
2. Work for hire isn't a good thing for a writer to be doing, career-wise.
3. Media tie-ins encourage people to want "same book, different cover" and not stretch.
4. Media tie-ins present the "poorest face" to the general public and hurt the perception of SF&F in the general public.

(A lot of these cons come from Alan Beatts, a very smart and articulate man, whose bookstore, Borderlands Books, is one of the best genre stores in America. The fourth point, which Alan makes, is probably the best argument against in my book.)

Now, as I said, I myself started out with a bias against media tie-ins that I've dropped when I realized it was a bias. As Rob H. Bedford points out when he says, "The funny thing is that the perception of non-genre readers towards 'us' is not too different than how genre readers look down upon media tie-ins." I don't ever want to take the position of "grumpy old man" and that alone might be enough to sway me.

Then I happen to have a lot of my friends writing them - from Paul Cornell (arguable the best of the Doctor Who novelists, though he's moved past it now), to Chris Roberson (X-Men, Star Trek, Warhammer 40k), to Sean Williams (who just hit the #1 spot on the NYTimes Bestseller list with The Force Unleashed.) Now, these guys are all great writers. I know this from their non-media tie-in work, but I can't imagine that they give any less when they do their tie-ins. And, in fact, I see reviewers calling out their work as being the best in their respective franchises.

And I've met enough people for whom the media tie-in was a gateway drug to know that it happens. As Kevin J. Anderson says, "A large percentage of the readers of my Dune novels with Brian Herbert have also followed my Saga of Seven Suns (enough that those books are now hitting general fiction bestseller lists). Anybody who claims that tie-in readers don't read other novels is simply misinformed..."

The Dune books are tie-in novels?!? (With the Dune films, maybe?) Still, the man does know media tie-ins, so if he says they follow him home, I am betting they do.

That being said, anytime you are trying to convert one type of behavior into another, you are dealing with very small percentage. So whether you are trying to get someone to respond to a direct mail campaign, or click through a banner ad on a website, or read a newsletter and buy a book, you are dealing with something like a 1 or 2% adaption rate. So while I don't doubt that the readership for the highest profile authors -- hugely-successful writers like Kevin J. Anderson, Michael Stackpole, Timothy Zahn, etc... -- are following them home to their non media tie-in material in significant numbers (because 2% of a million is significant), I'm not sure that the average media tie-in author is pulling a significant percentage of readers back to his/her creator-owned work. I'll be curious to see what Sean Williams' NYT Bestseller does to his Books of the Cataclysm, for instance, as the first is still on shelves in paperback and the second comes out in paperback in November. I certainly hope we get a bounce - but it might take two or three bestselling Star Wars novels in succession before we do. What Chris Roberson is doing - working his way through a succession of different franchises - might be smart, since if it's true that he's only going to pull off only a few percentages of a given fan base, then by writing for a different fan base each time he should be able to begin to aggregate these percentages into some measurable numbers.

On the other end of it, I'm not sure that media tie-ins are taking eyeballs away from the "real" stuff. My own experience penning over 500 articles for the pages of magazines like Star Trek Monthly, Babylon 5 Magazine, etc... is that the vast majority of the readers (that 97-99%) don't care about the byline, only the subject. As David Gerrold says, "Tie-ins are merchandising. They are marketing. They are also a particular kind of advertising, using the bookstores as additional channels to raise consciousness of the primary product." Walter Jon Williams reverses this when he says, "Trek reruns became nothing less than hour-long advertisements for Trek fiction- and the commercial advantages of having hour-long ads for your fiction soon became apparent." But the point is, I don't think the readers that are gobbling down Star Wars would pick up Brasyl if only George Lucas wasn't in the way. I think those readers wouldn't be in the SF&F section in the first place, they would be out watching more Star Wars and playing with Star Wars toys and games, and Brasyl's numbers would remain unchanged. As Andrew Wheeler says, "Avid tie-in readers are, again, fans of the property rather than of the genre as a whole, and expecting them to suddenly jump to books that aren't about that property is unlikely."

I also know from my time on Star Trek that media SF can get you thinking "in SFnal ways," as witness the large number of inventions, from the compact disk to the beds in use in our M*A*S*H units, that were directly inspired by the tech of Trek. And I do think that thinking "in SFnal ways" is good for the world at large.

But what really strikes me is how many of the fifteen people who responded to this question came themselves to SF&F through media tie-ins. So while maybe it's only a small percentage of media tie-in readers who graduate to the "real" stuff, it may be a high percentage of readers of the "real" stuff who came in via media tie-in. I know I came to SF publishing after a stint in SF television myself. And as Chris Roberson says, "You hear a lot about the 'graying of fandom,' and there are eternal cries for new fans and new readers. As nice as it would be to think that we could simply hand young readers the smartest, most 'challenging' novels that our genres have to offer, it seems unlikely to snare more than a bare handful of them. How much better to hit them where they live, to take franchises they already enjoy-in tv, film, video games, you name it-and offer them more of the same?"

Of course, the number one way that books are discovered isn't via browsing in bookstores. It's still good old word of mouth. Which means that the best thing you can do for SF&F is to share it. And on that note, I have to agree with Walter again when he says, "The success of media SF is on the whole a positive thing. It shows that there's an audience for SF, and that there's money to be made on science fiction ideas."

As long as those ideas are top notch, I think we're okay. Which it means its down to the individual writers to be excellent (even if excellent isn't a requirement). And, in a world where what we are being told to be is "spreadable," then seeing SF everywhere can only be good for the overall health of SF. As I've said before, more of everything means more quality as well as more crap. Omni-media SF is here to stay, we might as well start thinking of more ways to make it work for us.

Podcast: Lou ex Machina

I'm a guest today on Fantasy author Gail Z. Martin's Ghost in the Machine podcast. We talk about the two anthologies I have out this year, Sideways In Crimeand Fast Forward 2. We also talk about the difference in writing for short form vs novel length, Stephen King's It and The Gunslinger, and much more. And here it is:

The End of Science Fiction (yet again)

The Fix's Nader Elhefnawy offers The End of Science Fiction (Part One), the first three of "five big arguments for a bleak view of the genre's prospects that certainly merit consideration." These three - The End of Science, Changing Expectations, and The Life Cycle of Genres. He draws from John Horgan's The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age, Bruce Sterling's preface to Burning Chrome, and John Barnes's Helix column on science fiction as an “undead” genre (itself a fascinating read.)

I enjoyed the article, which if nothing else points to a lot of equally enjoyable essays and opinions, but I think the usefulness of this sort of thing is drying up for me. Is science fiction dying? From where I stand it appears to be exploding, but even if it is dying, what am I supposed to do with that? I'm reminded of the final lines from H G Wells' the Time Machine. "If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so. But to me the future is still black and blank..."

Here's to a black, blank future!

Fast Forward 2: The Full Jacket

The full cover for Fast Forward 2.Artwork by John Picacio. Design by Jacqueline Cooke.

Podcast: Yours Truly in Agony (Again)

The incredibly-well read and well-spoken Rick Kleffel and I discuss space opera today on the Agony Column podcast. Rick was enthused by reading Brian Greene's Icarus at the Edge of Timeand Peter F. Hamilton's Pandora's Star,neither of which I've read, but both of which sound right up my alley. So we talked about these works, about John Meaney's Nulapeiron Sequence, about Kay Kenyon's The Entire and the Rose series, about the general qualities of space opera, and about the differences between Star Wars and Star Trek, and whether Trek is space opera or military SF. Here's the direct link to the mp3, and you can also subscribe via iTunes.

Which you should. Rick is an amazing interviewer, asking really insightful questions, and his podcast covers a wide range of book-related topics. He covers enough works of a science fiction nature that I can justify my time as keeping me informed about the rest of the field, and enough works outside it that I don't get myopic. For example: My favorite in recent weeks, his interview with Charles Bamforth, 30 year head of research for Bass and the author of Grape vs. Grain: A Historical, Technological, and Social Comparison of Wine and Beer.And here's the direct link for that.

David Louis Edelman & the Underlying Purpose of the Human Race

David Louis Edelman is interviewed on Pat's Fantasy Hotlist. Here's a sample:

What was the spark which generated the idea that drove you to write the Jump 225 trilogy?

Working in the dot-coms, definitely. I started out writing a much more humorous novel -- a single novel, actually, that was to be called Jump 225.7. It was more lighthearted and satirical in tone, which is why I came up with all the funny acronyms like L-PRACGs and OCHREs, and silly names like SeeNaRee and the Defense and Wellness Council. I literally finished the first draft of that book on September 10, 2001. Then a few days later I put the whole thing aside and started over. I had darker things on my mind then: the future of Western society, the longevity of capitalism and democracy, the underlying purpose of the human race. So the trilogy has turned out to be a somewhat unique mixture of those two moods.

Also, there's a great review of MultiRealon Bookgasm today. I especially like Ryun Patterson's final thoughts: "People get accustomed to new ideas by leveraging the notion of things we’ve seen before, like saying this work is a cross between Wall Street and Neuromancer/Snow Crash/Blade Runner. That’s nice, I guess, but it doesn’t do justice to Edelman’s creation. With Infoquakeand MultiReal, he’s got new archetypes aplenty, and he doesn’t need old tropes to slow him down."

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.

User Generated Book Tours

Sarah Lacy, for Business Week, in an article entitled, "Book Publishers: Learn From Digg, Yelp—Even Gawker:"

"The conventional wisdom in publishing is that book tours no longer work. I agree, insofar as tours are confined to bookstores. The sad truth is that bookstores are declining in relevance. There are exceptions, of course, but even stores that draw big crowds for an author will struggle to reach the wide community of people interested in a particular author.

I'm learning this firsthand through what I'm calling my User Generated Book Tour, announced on my blog on a whim. My only rule: I'd go to 10 cities (not including San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York) based on response and enthusiasm. With few exceptions, I've held no bookstore events."

I think that "bookstores are declining in relevance" is a little harsh. And a little premature, especially in light of the way the independents are being linked to both the shop local and the green movements. But I'm intrigued by the idea of taking the tour beyond the traditional venues, and using the internet to dictate where that is.

Thoughts?

Podcast: Lou on Writing Excuses

At the recent World Science Fiction Convention, I was honored to be a guest on Writing Excuses, the podcast of writing advice hosted by Brandon Sanderson, Howard Taylor, and Dan Wells. The episode is available on iTunes and elsewhere, and here is the direct link. Their description (not mine!):

So what exactly does an editor, do, anyway? We’ve already talked about the process of submitting to an editor; today we talk about the millions of vital things that happen after an editor says “I want to buy your book.” Not only that, but we get to hear it all straight from the mouth of Lou Anders, the Hugo-nominated editor from Pyr Books, who this year alone helped create a Hugo-nominated book and two Campbell-nominated authors. In other words: when this man talks about editing, you listen.

WorldCon 2008 / Paul Cornell's Denvention3 Report

Paul Cornell's belated WorldCon Report is probably my favorite convention report ever and well worth reading. He begins, "Worldcon is always too big to blog about. It’s a culture, a civilisation. It lasts just long enough that you start to think of it as a career, and then it goes away. It always leaves me inspired, wanting to write, wanting to be one of these people always."

That he talks about me a lot didn't sway me in my opinion in the slightest, really. Okay. Maybe. But read it anyway.

My New Favorite Quote

Sims and Spore creator Will Wright, in the September 2008 issue of Fast Company, from an interview with Clayton Neuman:

"I'm getting to the point where it's almost disappointing if people don't push back, because if it sounds like a great idea, that means either it's obvious or other people have tried it. Typically, if you tell somebody, 'I have this idea,' and they start telling you how horrible it is, at least you know it's unexplored territory."

Happy Birthday Science Fiction Awards Watch!

One year ago today, Cheryl Morgan and Kevin Standlee launched the Science Fiction Awards Watch website, a site to aggregate, track, report on and discuss the multitude of genre-related awards in our industry. The site (as well as the related SFEditors Wiki) is absolutely invaluable. Contrary to what you may have heard, fandom isn't dying - it's booming online, and this website is an example of the way that fandom can marshal the capabilities of the internet to better inform itself. I'm grateful someone takes the (considerable) time to provide this essential resource. Happy Birthday, Science Fiction Awards Watch! Many happy returns!

World's First Wearable Motorcycle

Via Geeks are Sexy, Yamaha's prototype Deus Ex Machina, the world's first wearable motorcycle:

Batman & Iron Man

Thanks to Sean Williams for pointing this out. Probably already made the rounds, but still funny:

3 Reviews Worth Noting...

And they are:

Tammy Moore of SFSite on Mike Resnick's Stalking the Unicorn:

"...a deeply enjoyable read. ...there's a freshness and earnestness to the prose, a genuine sense that the author is enjoying the journey as much as the reader, that is hard to resist."

Sandy Amazeen review of Mike's second John Justin Mallory novel, Stalking the Vampireon Monsters & Critics:

"Resnick’s alternative Manhattan is a hoot with such well known landmarks as the Madison Round Garden and Vampire State Building along with less popular destination points like Hills of Home Mortuary, Cemetery & Deli. This sequel to Stalking the Unicorn features offbeat humor, amusing dialog and a zany cast of characters that is sure to entertain the most jaded sci-fi fan and spark plenty of interest in an emerging series."

John of Grasping for the Wind on the just-released Last Argument of Kings, by Joe Abercrombie:

"I recommend reading this novel. It is unique in the epic fantasy subgenre, and has only a few comparisons within the broader realm of Speculative Fiction, and most of those are short stories. This alone makes it worth reading, though don't expect to come away from Last Argument of Kings on an emotional high. Joe Abercrombie deserves the accolades he has [been] given, and in recognition of a singular achievement in epic fantasy, I think he deserves the all elusive ten out of ten stars."

Psst....Last Argument of Kings is Out

Joe Abercrombie's Last Argument of Kings: The First Law: Book 3is In Stock at Amazon.

I'm just saying, is all.

Remembering the Batusi

Via SF Signal, because I had to:

Podcast: Yours Truly in Agony

The wonderful Rick Kleffel, whose Agony Column podcast is required listening on this editor's iPod, has interviewed me today. We take about Denvention, the Hugos, and what's forthcoming from Pyr. Here's the direct link to the mp3.

A Trio of Reviews: Last Argument of Kings, MultiReal, Stalking the Unicorn

Tomas L. Martin, for SFCrowsnest, on Joe Abercrombie's Last Argument of Kings:

"The sheer audacity of many of the plot twists and conclusions to character arcs are dazzling. The realism and grittiness of Abercrombie's world continues to the end, with no character emerging unscathed with a fairy-tale ending. These are flawed characters, he seems to say, so why should they finish any less flawed? ...without re-treading the old formulae and by populating his complex world with dynamic, immensely imperfect characters Abercrombie has produced a reinvigoration of the genre.

Patrick of Pat's Fantasy Hotlist on David Louis Edelman's MultiReal:

"...this is one sequel that delivers! No middle book syndrome for David Louis Edelman. ...a superior read. Moreover, if the final installment lives up to the expectations generated by its predecessors, this series could well be the best thing ever published by Pyr. That's saying something!"

John DeNardo of SF Signal on Mike Resnick's Stalking the Unicorn:

"Mallory is a strong character; the book doesn't take itself seriously; humorous dialogue and prose. ...What's interesting about this book, besides the lighthearted tone and wry humor, is how it overcomes my usual reservations about fantasy by blatantly flying in the face of everything that normally makes me want to roll my eyes. ...a fun story when all is said and done, and I give credit to the author for making a palatable fantasy novel that even this hard-case fantasy reader could enjoy."

WorldCon 2008: A Few More Pics...

...worth sharing.

From the first night, Chris Roberson (The Dragon's Nine Sons, End of the Century) and Bill Willingham (Fables):


From the dinner at Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta's house, Jeff Carlson (Plague Year, Plague War) looking like he might eat you:


From the Pyr Party, John Scalzi (The Android's Dream, The Last Colony) and Yanni Kuznia:


From the pre-Hugo reception, David Louis Edelman (Infoquake, MultiReal) and Liza Trombi (Locus magazine):


Ian McDonald (River of Gods, Brasyl) and partner Enid Crowe:


George Mann (Solaris Books) and Sean Williams (The Crooked Letter, Cenotaxis):


AND Irene Gallo (Tor art director), John Picacio (artist) and Traci Picacio:


Good seeing you all.

The Stormcaller - Full Jacket

Full jacket for Tom Lloyd's The Stormcaller: Book One of the Twilight Reign.Art by the amazing Todd Lockwood. Design by Grace M. Conti-Zilsberger.