The Dow of Spanton

Really excited this morning to see the latest in SFRevu's new series of interviews with illustrators and editors. This time out, Senior Editor Ernest Lilley, interviews two friends of mine, illustrator Brian W. Dow and Simon Spanton, co-editorial director of Gollancz. Brian has done a number of covers for Pyr and Simon, well, I can't say enough good things about his taste.

Of his art and its inspiration, Brian says: "I always admired how Michael Whelan would put little symbolic touches into his paintings that meant something to him. They might not be immediately accessible to everyone, but they were there anyway. In Genetopia for instance, during my research I found a site that diagrammatically showed DNA code on a bar. I thought it would be kind of cool to have that pattern on Flint's staff. Again, not visible to anyone else but me. The novel, for me, had a very mystical quality to it. There was a calmness about it although there is much strife and turmoil. Ultimately, the mystical calmness won out. "

Of his editorial vision, Simon says: "I publish books that tell stories that excite me for some reason. Sometimes I'm wearing my literary hat and I fall in love with the ability of an author to make individual words fresh in your head, sometimes I'm wearing my commercial hat and the prose never occurs to me as the pages flip by on your way to the next cliff to hang from. Occasionally I get to wear both hats at once and those are the really special ones."

Again, I am just always really gratified by any and all efforts to call attention to the artists in our field, and thrilled to see editor's getting some exposure too. I love this new series from SFRevu and hope that long may it continue.

Fast Forward Has Been Boing'd

Very happy to say that last night Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge was reviewed by Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing. Cory called the book "wonderful...some stupendous stories," praising stories by Kage Baker, Elizabeth Bear, Ken MacLeod, Ian McDonald, Gene Wolf, Pamela Sargent, George Zebrowski, Robert Charles Wilson, Mary A. Turzillo, and Justina Robson.

But Cory especially liked "Wikiworld" by Paul Di Filippo, which he calls, "one absolute knock-out story ... that is among the most exciting pieces of fiction I've read in years... a vividly imagined, funny and weird story about a world run on gifts, wikis, rough consensus and running code."

And guess what? As Cory notes in his review - "Wikiworld" is online in its entirety for you to read! So what are you waiting for?

Update: Warren Ellis writes to say he thought "Wikiworld" was "Fucking brilliant." So, seriously, what are you waiting for?

Sung in Blood

Thank god for short novels. Once in a blue moon, I can actually fit one in between submissions and feel like I'm not completely myopic. As I've been wanted to do since I picked it up at the World Fantasy Convention last fall, and since I've just read five submissions back to back in rapid succession and wanted to reward myself and also clear my head, I forced some time that didn't really exist into enough of a block to be able to read something short and fast paced. I'm talking about Glen Cook's Sung In Blood. I was attracted to the book right off because of the wonderful Bob Eggleton illustration, and I've never read Glen Cook before, so I thought this would be a good, quick introduction to his work.

As it turns out, it both was and wasn't. The book, as the jacket warns but I didn't anticipate the degree to which it would be true, is a reworking of Doc Savage into a fantasy setting. A young scientist-magician inherits his father's role as the self-appointed Protector of a city (along with his father's tower laboratory and blimp armada) , only to find himself and his version of the Doc's Fabulous Five fighting off the machinations of an eastern emperor bent on conquest and modeled on Fu Manchu. The clipped style of the writing and the plotting, which puzzled one Amazon reviewer who clearly didn't get the allusion - "Curiously, the characters seem disimilar to other Cook characters he has created over time, and somewhat more shallow" - probably doesn't tell me much about Cook's usual output. But it tells me a lot about his sense of humor and his talent. Because I absolutely loved it. Just loved it. Guilty to be away from my submission reading, I read it at a furious pace that matched the nonstop action of the book, and laughed right up to the predictably open-ended conclusion. I don't know if a sequel were ever written - the open-endedness is part and parcel of the pastiche - but I'd love to read more adventures of Rider and his team vs the evil Shai Kei, and I sincerely hope Night Shade are considering commissioning a follow-up if none already exists. Really fantastic and highly recommended to lovers of good old pulp adventure, particularly if your name is Chris Roberson.

Meanwhile, my new iPod is totally psychic, because while it played songs like R.E.M.'s "Burning Hell" while I was reading Justina Robson's Selling Out in which a character travels to Demonia and the Smiths while I was reading a submission heavy on young man with old man romance, out of 4,736 possible songs it chose to play mostly long ballads from Yes' Relayer album while I was embroiled in this wonderous story.

Fast Forward Fast Approaching

My next anthology, Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge, is due to ship from the printer tomorrow, and I am all giggly. For one thing, I think this is the best anthology I've produced to date (it's the fifth, though the two magazines used similar brain cells), and for another - it might also be the best looking (many thanks to John Picacio and Jackie Cooke). Only a few trusted freinds and colleagues had read it as of a few weeks ago, and they all concurred. But now the reviews are starting to come in and I'm happy to say it's so far, so good.

In addition to the PW review ("Outstanding!"), we have Neth Space:

"Lou Anders has a very ambitious goal – to start a new anthology series in the tradition of past landmarks like Damon Knight’s Orbit and Frederik Pohl’s Star SF. I have not read those series, but it’s safe to say that Anders is on the right track with Fast Forward 1...Short stories are always difficult for me to review, and collections even more so. Certain stories always exceed those around them, and others can be total failures. Anders has done well to avoid the failures, though some are as forgettable as the page number. Of course others still keep me awake at night. Fast Forward 1 is better than most – 7.5/10."

And FantasyBooksSpot.com:

"....a great anthology, filled with numerous and diverse stories and is bound to please any fan of science fiction."

And Alternative-Worlds.com:

"All the entries are strong with the best being those concentrating on everyday people dealing with commonplace technology like Paul Di Filippo’s 'Wikiworld' and Justina Robson’ 'The Girl Hero’s Mirror Says He’s Not the One' (in Mappa Mundi world) and those bringing the past into the future such as Tony Ballantyne’s 'Aristotle OS' and Ken McLeod’s 'Jesus Christ, Reanimator.' This is a fun collection that forecasts where technology will take humans including those left behind struggling with yesterday’s artifacts."

More as I know it!

Update: And here it is, the website the Eternal Night has posted an interview with Yours Truly, where we talk about the usual things and maybe a few unusual, along with the introduction I wrote for the anthology, "Welcome to the Future," where readers of this blog won't be surprised to find me proselytising the cause of SF yet again.

Compare and Contrast: Children of Men with The Da Vinci Code

In an interview in Filmmaker magazine, Children of Men director Alfonso Cuarón said of adapting the P.D. James novel, "I had the story I wanted to tell so clear in my head that I was very afraid of reading the book and getting completely confused. I read an abridged version of the book, and Timothy J. Sexton, my writing partner, read the [entire] book."

But there may have been a novel he did have in his head instead, or at least a film based on one. Consider Dan Brown's work vs. Children of Men:

• Both have protagonists who are contacted by associates who pull them into a conspiracy only to die.


• Both protagonists are left in charge of the protection/safely of a young woman.


• Both protagonists must flee with said young woman when those she should be able to trust (the cops or the fish respectively) turn out to have their own agendas.


• Both flee to the protection of an older colleague/mentor who lives in an estate in the country (and happens to be played by a famous British actor).


• Both must get the young woman out of the UK and into the waiting arms of a secret and mysterious organization.


• Both young women are special.

Coincidence? When Theo (and what does "theo" mean?) asks Kee who the father of her child is, her first response is to jokingly tell him that it was a virgin birth.

Just something fun to think about. Of course, there is one more point of commonality - both are also better films than books!

Hail, Eris!

With a heavy heart and great respect...Fnord.

Just What the Doctor Ordered - an Elephant in the Bathtub

My wife and I are presently watching the Extended Version of the The Return of the King. We're a bit behind on this, I know, but although we watched the previous two extended films when they debuted, we got married, bought a house, had a child and launched a publishing imprint all in the last few years, so we're a bit behind. But while watching it, I was, of course, again struck by how incredible the world building is. Say what you will about Tolkien - and you can, my wife is really struck on what an elitist society it is, Mr. Frodo - but there is little in literature or cinema to approach this scale of obsessional detail.

Now, just last week I was grooving on the new Essential Guides to the Star Wars universe, which just really make me heartsick. I was a huge fan of the The Next Generation Technical Manual, which was the first tech manual for an SF show that wasn't just some shit thrown together to sell to the idiot core, but was a really fantastically detailed bit of speculation in its own right, and the Star Wars guides are like that seven times over. The heartsickness comes in because while I am an ubergeek for the world building, I always feel that Star Wars is a bit of a rotten apple, with a beautiful skin of books, comics, games, reference manuals etc.. wrapped around an inferior core cinema property. In other words, I wish all that effort went into a better (or better executed) central storyline.

So, watching the final Lord of the Rings, I was wondering/lamenting how long it would be until someone sought to bring a work of SF or F to the screen again with that level of realism, verisimilitude and detail. A long time I thought, given that there are few properties that command that many decades of affection and few studios willing to make such a decade long commitment to a project.

Turns out I was wrong, as this article on SciFi Wire about James Cameron's Avatar attests. Now, while the project isn't based on an existing property, the director commands the clout in this case and the studio will risk the commitment. Now, this sounds exciting, doesn't it? As Cameron says:

"For me, as a lifelong fan of science fiction and action, Avatar is a dream project. We're creating an entire world, a complete ecosystem of phantasmagorical plants and creatures, and a native people with a rich culture and language. The story is both epic and emotional. The two things that make this film even possible are pioneering advances in CG effects and performance capture, as well as my 22-year relationship with Fox, since only with great trust can you operate so close to the cutting edge. I plan to honor that relationship by bringing them a winner. And I have the team to do it, the best team of artists and technicians I've ever been privileged to work with. This one's going to be a grand adventure."

Now, say what you will about Cameron, but he does know real SF (at least enough to appropriate it), his films are smart, his characters well drawn, and he even matches Peter Jackson for obsessive world building, renting a Russian nuclear sub to make sure he had the china dining ware on the Titanic right. And the very next project from the director of the highest grossing film of all time should certainly command a lot of attention. Which means that this film could be very good for SF, both for cinematic SF - Cameron often pioneers new effects and this may open the door to a post-Star Wars era of truly epic SF filmmaking now that Lucas' franchise is done - and for the literary variety as well, as tales of outer space and fully-realized alien cultures are thrust into the brightest of limelights. I've been preaching a pendulum swinging return of SF for a while, as well as a new focus on single planet exploration (drilling down from the vastness of space opera), so I'm pretty heartened to see this. Elephants and bathtubs and all that.

David Louis Edelman on NPR this Sunday

David Louis Edelman, author of Infoquake, which, did I mention, B&N.com just picked as the # 1 SF novel of the year in their Editor's Choice: Top Ten SF&F Novels of 2006 - is scheduled to be on NPR's Weekend Edition this Sunday, in a feature report from the Agony Column's Rick Kleffel which also includes such notables as TC Boyle, Jeff VanderMeer, Charlie Stross, Amir D. Aczel...and John Carpenter's THEY LIVE.

As Rick says, "Not Your Usual NPR Lineup. Not anyone's usual lineup for that matter." Reportedly, the chances are that the piece will air in the second hour of Weekend Edition.

Update: The piece, entitled "Writers Find New Fiction Source in Economic Genre" is now online at NPR.org, where it is available in both RealAudio and Windows Media formats.

Update 2: Rick Kleffel emailed to say that the piece was in the top twenty-five of NPR's "Most Emailed" list until today (1/10/07) and that this is "quite a long time" for a piece to stay on the list. Hopefully this will lead to more SFnal reports on NPR. Thanks to everyone who helped spread the news! Meanwhile, Rick has uploaded a DRM-free MP3 version of the piece to his website, the Agony Column. BoingBoing also gave the piece a mention. We're the "and others."

Fast Forward - Full Jacket Spread

Feast your eyes on this!

Art is by the amazing John Picacio, design by Jackie Cooke.

Not the last minute addiiton of the PW quote.

Ooh and ah at the bold statement this illustration makes.

Update: There's a really good interview with John Picacio, which also happens to display the above illustration sans text, over at SFRevu.

Pyr makes 3 of B&N.com's Top Ten SF&F Novels of 2006

I'm very pleased to announce that B&N.com has just picked three titles for inclusion in their Editor's Choice Top Ten SF&F Novels of 2006 list, prompting our publicity department to issue the following press release:

For Immediate Release

January 3, 200

"The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread Story of the Year"
Several Year-End "Bests"Cap 2006 for SF&F Imprint
Including Barnes & Noble's SF&F Book of the Year!

Amherst, NY — Barnes & Noble online today posted their Editor’s Choice lists for the best science fiction and fantasy books of 2006. Three books by Pyr, an imprint of Prometheus Books, are in this Top Ten Novels of 2006 list, including the top spot!

The Barnes & Noble Science Fiction/Fantasy Book of the Year, Editor’s Choice, is Infoquake by David Louis Edelman—a debut that ingeniously mixes business with pleasure, or as B&N puts it, “equal parts corporate thriller, technophilic cautionary tale and breathtakingly visionary science fiction adventure.”

The other two Pyr books included in this best of the year list are The Crooked Letter by Sean Williams at number four (“prepare to be blown away,” they write) and Resolution, the conclusion to John Meaney’s three-book Nulapeiron Sequence, at number six.

The UK bookseller Waterstone's also included two Pyr titles on their list of Top Ten SF for 2006: Crossover by Joel Shepherd and Paragaea by Chris Roberson.

Publishing blog Bookgasm posted a Best 5 Sci-Fi Books of 2006 list in which three of the best five books were from Pyr. River of Godsby Ian McDonald topped their list at number one, while Infoquake by David Louis Edelman and Crossover (both first novels) tied for fifth.

According to the science fiction and fantasy reviewer for Bookgasm,

"The biggest story of the year…is Pyr’s rise to prominence as a high-quality sci-fi imprint. Pyr has managed to round up a stable of authors and titles that represents the cutting edge of sci-fi and backs it up with promotion and marketing that pretty much outdoes the other imprints out there. Bravo, Pyr. Here’s hoping for an even greater 2007."

The imprint will certainly do its best to make 2007 even greater than 2006:

In February, Pyr will launch a new hard science fiction anthology series, Fast Forward 1, dedicated to presenting the vanguard of the genre and charting the undiscovered country that is the future. In March, Pyr will publish Keeping It Real, the first of Justina Robson’s Quantum Gravity titles that are being hailed as her “breakout” books—the most entertaining, fun, and commercial of her novels to date. Promotion for Keeping it Real includes a special music track by The No Shows (www.thenoshows.com)—the hottest rock band of 2021.

In May, it’s “Bladerunner in the tropics” with Brasyl by Ian McDonald, the writer the Washington Post said is “becoming one of the best sf novelists of our time.” McDonald moves from India (River of Gods) to past, present, and future Brazil, with all its color, passion, and shifting realities, in a novel that is part SF, part history, part mystery, and entirely enthralling.

Pyr has already begun developing a reputation for publishing “smart” science fiction. But in September 2007, Pyr gets fantastic with its first straight-up commercial epic fantasy novel: The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie. This book will lead Pyr’s Fall-Winter 07-08 season and be launched at Book Expo America in June 2007.

In other 2006 year-end awards, the blog Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist called Pyr “a breath of fresh air in both the fantasy and science fiction genres” and gave the imprint the creatively named and gratefully accepted “Best Thing Since Sliced Bread Award.”

Interview and a Starred Review

Today's been pretty good so far. Ernest Lilley, over on SFRevu, has just posted his interview with Yours Truly, where we talk about Pyr, Fast Forward 1, media SF, Hollywood, and a host of authors (including Ian McDonald, Kay Kenyon, Justina Robson and Joe Abercrombie). I think it came out pretty well, considering I was typing my responses until the wee hours.

So, that goes up on SFRevu this morning, and within minutes, I get word from our wonderful publicity director that Publishers Weekly has given my upcoming anthology, Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge, a Starred Review!!

They praise stories by Robert Charles Wilson, Mary A. Turzillo, Paul Di Filippo, and Ken MacLeod, and say:

"The solid, straightforward storytelling of the 19 stories and two poems that Anders (Futureshocks) gathers for this first in a projected series of all-original SF anthologies speculates on people's efforts to "make sense of a changing world." The contributors don't necessarily assume that humans will find it easy or even possible to cope with all the changes around and within them-but they'll try, which is just part of SF's continuing dialogue about the future... All the selections in this outstanding volume prompt thoughtful speculation about what kind of tomorrow we're heading toward and what we'll do when we get there."

What's more, they've selected John Picacio's wonderful cover illustration for the table of contents page. We've stopped the presses, literally, to get the PW quote on the cover, so the timing couldn't be better.

Meanwhile, Fast Forward 1 debuts in February, with the following TOC:

Introduction:Welcome to the Future...Lou Anders
YFL-500...Robert Charles Wilson
The Girl Hero's Mirror Says He's Not the One...Justina Robson
Small Offerings...Paolo Bacigalupi
They Came From the Future...Robyn Hitchcock
Plotters and Shooters...Kage Baker
Aristotle OS...Tony Ballantyne
The Something-Dreaming Game...Elizabeth Bear
No More Stories...Stephen Baxter
Time of the Snake...A.M. Dellamonica
The Terror Bard...Larry Niven & Brenda Cooper
p dolce...Louise Marley
Jesus Christ, Reanimator...Ken MacLeod
Solomon's Choice...Mike Resnick & Nancy Kress
Sanjeev and Robotwallah...Ian McDonald
A Smaller Government...Pamela Sargent
Pride...Mary A. Turzillo
I Caught Intelligence...Robyn Hitchcock
Settlements...George Zebrowski
The Hour of the Sheep...Gene Wolfe
Sideways from Now...John Meaney
Wikiworld...Paul Di Filippo

And it's worth mentioning that my good day actually started yesterday, when I found this Ideomancer review of Fast Forward 1, which concludes with the sentiment: "This anthology is proof hard science fiction is still a vibrant, worthwhile endeavor for any writer; here's hoping this anthology series has a long, healthy life." Here's hoping indeed.

The Voyage of Night Shining White

The weekend before Christmas, I opened up my mailbox and was delighted to find Chris Roberson's The Voyage of Night Shining White, just out from PS Publishing. I've been waiting for this book for a long time. A really long time. Not only do I think it's one of the best stories Chris has written and a shoe-in to appear in a few Best of anthologies, maybe even a Hugo nomination for Best Novella if enough people see it - but I'm proud to have a bit of personal history with it and with the genesis of the succession of stories of which it forms one part.

The Voyage of Night Shining White is part of Chris' Celestial Empire sequence, an ongoing collection of stories set across hundreds of years in an alternate earth where the Treasure Fleets of the 15th century Chinese Empire were never recalled, but continued to carry Chinese expansion throughout the world (and beyond). The first of these stories, "O One", was written for my anthology Live Without A Net(Roc, July 2003), and featured a challenge between an English inventor appealing to the Emperor's patronage for the development of a mechanical calculating device. Said ur-computer is matched in a competition with the head of the Ministry of Calculations, whose organization employs an army of abacus-weilding scribes in order to handle all the mathematical needs of the empire. It was part of the backstory that the Emperor of that era was interested in space exploration and, hence, very eager for anything that could spead up the process of calculation.

"O One" was one of my three favorite stories in the anthology, and was called out in several reviews. Although the anthology is now out of print, copies can still be had on Amazon and elsewhere, and you can read it online here. Please do! You won't be sorry. Meanwhile, I was quite taken with the notion of an Imperial China in space and wanted to see more. So although Chris hadn't initially planned to develop any more of these tales, during my brief tenure as a magazine editor, I commissioned a novella from him, specifically requesting a story about the actual migration to the red planet. The Voyage of Night Shining White was the result. But, alas, in a tale about which no more need be said that has been said already, it was not to be. Suffice to say, this brilliant tale was left without a home. (Aside: you can see the intended Stephan Martiniere cover here, never utilized, but available afor sale as a print.)

But while NSW floated in limbo, Chris continued to write Celestial Empire tales. “Red Hands, Black Hands” (read online) appeared in the December, 2004 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction (December, 2004) to good acclaim. Nick Gevers, writing in the November 2004 issue of Locus, praise it thusly:

"The highly talented Chris Roberson, recent winner of the Sidewise Award for his story 'O One', continues that tale’s vein of opulent Sinophilia in 'Red Hands, Black Hands' – in this alternate timeline, Imperial China dominates the world in place of Europe – but exacerbates the peculiarity of the setting by transferring it to a partly terraformed Mars ruled by the Mandarins. The Emperor’s oppressive writ runs severely, and a woman novelist, part of a circle of rather dilettantish bohemians, becomes involved in serious seditious activity, falling in love with a revolutionary and spreading his propaganda via her writings (which include an opera libretto portraying a uchronia under Aztec supremacy, wheels within counterfactual wheels…). The atmosphere is sumptuous, the invention lavish; the experience of reading the story is mind-expanding."

Step in Pete Crowther and PS Publishing, who bought a subsequent tale, "Gold Mountain." The story, about the construction of the Space Elevator as the first stage to colonizing Mars, appeared in Postscripts Magazine, Issue 5. It was around that time that PS Publishing bought The Voyage of Night Shining White as well - to my considerable delight. (The full illustration for the PS Publishing book, by Tomislav Tikulin, can be seen here.) I can't tell you how thrilled I am that this novella is finally out, as I've been aware of its brilliance for some time and eager for others to share in it. It's been like having a secret and being unable to tell anyone.

Meanwhile, Chris has two more Celestial Empire stories forthcoming, "All Under Heaven," appearing in the Firebirds Soaring anthology (Firebird, 2008) and "Metal Dragon Year" due to appear in Interzone. I've not read either of these yet, but I can't wait for their publication.

But wait - there's more! Two Celestial Empire novels are also on the horizon. The Dragon's Nine Sons will appear from the new Solaris imprint in 2008. From their press release:

"The Dragon’s Nine Sons is an epic story of war in space and of the people caught in-between when empires clash. A disgraced naval captain and a commando who knows secrets he should never have learned are picked to lead a suicide mission, piloting a salvaged Mexica spacecraft to Xolotl, the asteroid stronghold of their enemies, armed with enough explosives to reduce the Mexica base to dust. But when they arrive to find dozens of Chinese prisoners destined to be used as human sacrifices, their suicide mission suddenly becomes a terrifying rescue operation. The Dragon’s Nine Sons is the first novel in The Celestial Empire sequence, an epic, sprawling alternate history sequence in which China rises to world domination in the early days of the 15 th century and goes on to conquer the stars."

And, also due in 2008, a Celestial Empire Young Adult novel from Firebird – Iron Jaw & Hummingbird is the tale of "two youths caught up in the revolution against a despotic Martian government controlled by the Dragon Throne of Imperial China." As Chris says, the novel is "essentially an opera on a terraformed Mars, it's got bandit chiefs, revolutionaries, religious fanatics, corrupt generals, wastrel second sons, and thieves.... the same old, same old."

But while you wait, read the two existing Celestial Empire stories online, track down "Gold Mountain," which was reprinted in The Year's Best Science Fiction Twenty-third Annual Collection and by all means, get yourself a copy of The Voyage of Night Shining White. I am quite proud to publish Chris' other wonderful series at Pyr – the multiversal tales of his extended Bonaventure-Carmody clan that include Here, There & Everywhere, Paragaea: A Planetary Romance and the forthcoming End of the Century – but I'm convinced that the Celestial Empire stories will shortly be viewed with the same respect and affection that Allen Steele's Coyote stories garner. And hey, Night Shinging White is dedicated to me. So what are you waiting for?

Pyr Makes 3 of Bookgasm's Top 5 (point five) & 3 of Pat's Fantasy Hotlist Top 10 Novels of 2006

Bookgasm has posted their list of the 5 Best Sci-Fi Books of 2006.

David Louis Edelman's Infoquakeand Joel Shepherd's Crossovertie for fifth place. And, in a list that includes Tobias S. Buckell, Kim Stanley Robinson, and John Scalzi, the number one spot is given to Ian McDonald's River of Gods.

Of Infoquake and Crossover, Ryun Patterson writes:

"This pair of books is a great example of what Pyr is doing right. Infoquake is a tech-heavy exercise in scientific speculation that combines economics, high technology and business mechanics into an all-too-human story of greed, loss and redemption. Crossover isn’t satisfied with being just another hot-chick-android-assassin book and goes for some heavy-duty characterization (not unlike what’s been going on in TV’s Battlestar Galactica) that makes the kicking ass that much more tremendous."

As to River of Gods:

"It’s at once cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk, awash in the verbiage of globalization and emerging-markets uncertainty. As the story’s huge cast of characters tumbles toward their individual destinies in tomorrow’s India, it’s hard to believe that McDonald doesn’t have a time machine stored somewhere in his backyard..."

And they open the list with this comment about the Pyr imprint:

"The biggest story of the year, in my opinion, is Pyr’s rise to prominence as a high-quality sci-fi imprint. Pyr has managed to round up a stable of authors and titles that represents the cutting edge of sci-fi and backs it up with promotion and marketing that pretty much outdoes the other imprints out there. Bravo, Pyr. Here’s hoping for an even greater 2007."

Congratulations to all six authors. On this end, we'll certainly do our best to make 2007 even better than 2006.

Update: Three must be a magic number, because Pat's Fantasy Hotlist has just posted their Top Ten Novels of 2006, and once again Pyr is on the list with three titles.

Ian McDonald's River of Gods comes in at # 4.
Joel Shepherd's Crossover is # 7.
And Sean Williams' The Crooked Letter is # 9.

Pyr is also given the "Best Thing Since Sliced Bread Award", with the comment that we are "a breath of fresh air in both the fantasy and science fiction genres."

A Climate of Opinion

Hot on the news that James Gunn will be named the next Science Fiction Grandmaster - an award he will receive at the 2007 Nebula Awards ceremony in May- John Joseph Adams ran an interview on SciFi Wire that I only just stumbled on now (I've been away). At the close of the interview, Gunn articulated something so well that I'm going to repost it here, italics mine:

"Let's save the world through science fiction. Built into SF is a concept that the world is changing, and we can influence the direction of that change by the choices we make today. I believe SF thinking has the potential to save the world, not in specific ways—it always has stressed the need to do something about pollution, overpopulation, war, racial and gender prejudice and all the other crimes against humanity that we could change if we chose—but in the more important general ways. So it isn't any one thing, but our human outlook that can save the world. To offer one illustration: Isaac Asimov said, 'SF writers and readers didn't put a man on the moon all by themselves, but they created a climate of opinion in which the goal of putting a man on the moon became acceptable.'"

It's that climate of opinion that I think is so important. I remember when James Cameron's Terminator 2 came out in 1991 , being really struck by how important it was that Cameron suggested the annihilation of humanity via technology (which I took then as a strong metaphor for our nukes) wasn't inevitable. Even the uber-optimistic Star Trek always just assumed that WWIII happened sometime in the 1990s. It was an assumption that was pretty universal (even in comics continuity - poor Jonah Hex) all through the 60s and 70s, and Cameron was the first time I registered someone standing up and saying "Maybe this doesn't have to happen." And say what you will about Arnold Schwarzennegger - putting out a mass meme like that is of major importance. Because the ideals of our media do trickle down into our collective consciousness and take root. (There's a great line I seem to recall reading in Japan Edge: The Insider's Guide to Japanese Pop Subculture that talks about how we're the generation that got our morality from The Brady Bunch but saved the higher philosophical notions for Empire Strikes Back. True.)

Nor do I think Cameron's subtitle Judgment Day should be overlooked. Because there's no literal final judgement by the machines of the humans in the film; no judgment imposed from the outside (by robots or dieties) - the day in question is the day in 1991 where the concept that the future is predetermined (uh, predestined) is undermined. And it was around that same time, sometime between August 2, 1990 and February 1991 - a period I spent mostly in London - when I was back in Alabama watching with horror as those around me, some of them relatives, all speculated if the Gulf War wasn't the start of Armaggedon - the general opinion of the time being that if it was, they were all ready to meet Jesus. (I sure as hell wasn't!) And the realization then that we had a man in power with his finger on the button who might share the same crazy notion as those around me sent a chill down my spine. So, for my money, the importance of fostering a climate of opinion in which we have some positive alternatives to blowing ourselves up was and remains vital.

Covering the Artists' Story

I'm thrilled with the way the bloggosphere has been focusing attention on SF&F illustrators lately, between artists' blogs and blogs about artists, and a rash of interviews with artists. Now, Up Againt the Wall has just posted "Shadowboxing with John Picacio," an interview that ranges from his first Moorcock assignment to his current one - the forthcoming Del Rey Elric reissue I personally can't wait for! John talks about his process:

"I definitely start with reading the book.... I’m generally looking for things that are evocative more than things that are representative. If an author has described something in very, very vivid detail, I tend to shy away from images like that. I’m going to look for the moment that is either before or after something has happened. I’m going to try to find something that is complementing the manuscript rather than trying to mimic it. It’s not much fun for myself as a reader to read something and then see a picture that says exactly what I’ve just read, or tries to. I would use the phrase 'you steal the reader’s right to imagine' by doing things like that. There’s a very fragile line there."

Meanwhile, a few days ago Irene Gallo posted an interview with Stephan Martiniere on her blog, The Art Department, where he talks about a career highlight that was also a turning point, directing the animated Madeline specials:

"It was really the first time I was able to realize a vision and direct without all the battles and the politics associated with bigger project. The show ended up a success and received numerous awards. Directing "Madeline" was also decisive in my career. It forced me to reevaluate myself as an artist. In this business it is seldom that one is given this kind of opportunity to work on something really meaningful and rewarding. It was likely that my next animated project would end up being another political battle with mediocre results. I decided to shift gears and go back to design. I went to work for a theme park company as a concept artist. It's always amazing to realize how small things sometimes can have a huge impact in your life."

I don't think it's any secret that John and Stephan are two of my very favorite artists, as anyone can tell from a glimpse at the Pyr catalog. Stephan has done 8 covers for us, with two more on the way, and Picacio has done 10, with two more also on the way. My personal favorites displayed above. Working with both of them is one of the most rewarding aspects of my job.

A Bob a Day Keeps Godzilla Away

The wonderful, talented, friendly and (from where I stand) hairy Bob Eggleton has launched a blog. Bob's Art du Jour begins his "painting-a-day" online exhibition, where he will produce one work of art a day, just like it sounds, and offer the results, along with commentary, for enjoyment, illumination, and sale. I'm really excited to see this play out. Lately, I've been really grooving on his work, including the cover of Mike Resnick's Ivory he did for Pyr and the recent piece he's done for John Scalzi's upcoming The Sagan Diary. And the recent trend of artists blogging (and blogging about art) is something I heartily applaud.

The New Lou Review Number Two (or maybe Three)

Casino Royale: Once upon a time, Batman films were very silly things indeed. The villains, who were always more interesting than the protagonist himself, were filled out by a procession of famous actors like Christopher Walken, who hammed it up as a over-the-top, pantomine baddies, while two dimensional love interests like Kim Bassinger clung to our hero's hand, blond bombshells required to do little more than scream, swoon, ask the right questions, and get rescued at the appropriate moments. Then, something happened - Batman Begins, the first Hollywood live-action adaptation of the Caped Crusader to actually pay attention to the source material. In an easy parallel, once upon a time, Bond films were also very silly things indeed. The villains, who were always more interesting than the protagonist himself, were filled out by a procession of famous actors like, well, Christopher Walken, who hammed it up as a over-the-top, pantomine baddies, while two dimensional love interests like, well, Kim Bassinger clung to our hero's hand, blond bombshells required to do little more than scream, swoon, ask the right questions, and get rescued at the appropriate moments. Then something happened. As Paul Cornell has already said, and said beautifully: "Well, it took us fifty three years, but finally someone has made a movie based on James Bond. You may recall the character. He’s an assassin, who’s been horribly injured, both mentally and physically, in the course of his career. He regards it as his job to do terrible things, but wishes innocents to be spared the sight of those things. He can be ruthless, and enjoys killing in the moment, but we care for him because of the awful personal cost. He rewards himself with the finest cuisine, and has complex and difficult relationships with women. Daniel Craig is perfect as the first screen James Bond. And I hope we’ll now see a whole series of such tremendous movies about him. The potential is enormous. I don’t know why nobody’s thought of doing it before." Certainly all the hype you have been hearing is true. The Best Bond since Connery. The Best Bond script since (my personal favorite) On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The most developed female character since Diana Rigg, etc... So, so nice to see a Bond that bleeds, too. As a childhood fan of the books, I'm so glad there are now three good, accurate Bond films out of the 21. Don't know what "Bond 22" is going to be, but since we've rebooted from Book One, it would sure be nice if they had the guts to actually shoot the books in order, as written but adapted for the 21st century as Casino Royale was. Surely an updated, Daniel Craig version of From Russia With Love need not feel itself in competition with a 1963 film. I mean, we'll always have Paris and all that, but think about it...

And speaking of Batman...

Batman & Son: Though I think Grant Morrison is an absolute genius, one of a handful of comcbook names that will endure for all time, please don't kill me but I just don't think he can write for Batman. I said that last century when he wrote Arkham Asylum, and, yes, I know he did some interesting things with the Darknight Detective in the pages of Justice League while I was away, but when it comes to the new run in Batman comics, I am bitterly disappointed in his Batman. Loved the man-bat stuff and Bruce Wayne as a return to the Playboy days, but how "on the nose" can you get with a name like Damien for the "bad" son? It's not like the didn't just remake the Omen this year. And I thought Wayne's reaction to having a son was horribly misportrayed. I'm a very big fan of Mike W. Barr's brilliant Son of the Demon graphic novel. In that tale (spoiler), when Batman learns that Talia is pregnant he immediatley packs it in and hangs up the cape. Reason? In his mind, the absolute worst thing he can image is to be an orphan, a child whose parents were taken from you at a young age. This is the fate worse than death that drives his entire modus operandi. There is no way in Hell he'd risk doing that to someone else. So when Talia says she is going to conceive, he quits in no uncertain terms, forcing her to return him to himself by giving the child up for adaption and faking a miscarriage. Mike W. Barr understands Batman's motivation and what happens when events take him back to his core. But Morrison has never gotten inside the cowl. His Batman just leaves the kid hanging around the Batcave to wreck the place, murder my favorite long-absent 70s villian, and nearly slaughter Robin. This gets him a "bad boy, we don't kill" lecture and an "I guess you can come out adventuring with me after all, but no more cutting people's heads off, okay?" a few minutes later. Okay, this is asanine! And Batman's proposed solution to the problem of procreating? Just dumping the kid back with his mom, the international criminal and terrorist so they can have a second chance? At what? Blowing up the world together? Come on! This makes Batman as big a dead beat as the woeful Clark Kent of Superman Returns. "Don't worry Lois, I'll be around." Yes, I suspect that a lot of what was GOOD about the issues was Morrison himself, and BAD about it orders from above, but this sucked. I've also realized that Batman exists for me from Denny O'Neil to the (long gone) "good" Frank Miller, with moments like Long Halloween and Dark Victory tacked on, but that post-Dark Knight Batman of current DC continuity is pretty much infintile and I should stick with the animated series for my fix (and with Paul Dini, whose doing a great job over at Detective).

But, having now mentioned comics, superspies and Paul Cornell, a comic I'm much more excited about is...

Wisdom: Paul Cornell's new Marvel 6 issue is off to a fantastic start. Pete Wisdom is a sort of John Constantine ghost-buster if he worked for MI-6, or in this case, MI-13, the branch of British Intelligence charged with protecting the British Isles from anything supernatural, superhuman or just plain strange. Wisdom was created by Warren Ellis in the pages of Excalibur, but I never encountered him until now. Assisted by a motley cast of characters that includes fairy dissident Tink and John the Skrull (essentially an alien copy of John Lennon), I'm hooked, even though issue one is mostly just "let's meet the gang" and now it remains to see where it goes. But I LOVE the set-up, and I wouldn't mind seeing this mini-series graduate to a full on ongoing monthly.

But the supernatural ought to allow for my finale segue into magic and...

The Prestige: Smartest film I've seen in a long damn time. Never read the book, or anything by Christopher Priest, so can't speak to how good or poor an adaptation it is, but as a film, it's utterly brilliant and Christopher Nolan, who had me at Momento, is on the fast track to be my favorite director. Just so, so refreshing to see a film that has both complicated plot and character and script all coming together, and the script - wow - it just sang it was so masterfully executed. No wasted scenes or bad dialogue. Loved it. There are flawed films that have resonated with me more (Batman Begins for one, natch), but to find another example of the kind of "perfect film" this one is I have to go all the way back to L.A. Confidential. I'm trying to get with the Net Flicks mindset and get over the oh-so-20th century mode of ownership of cinema, and it's not like with a child to raise and an imprint to run I'm ever, every going to have the time to read or watch anything twice again, but it's going to be really hard not to own this one when it comes out. Favorite film of the year!

Medieval Dead

Over on new blog No Fear of the Future, Chris Nakashima-Brown uses Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia as springboard for a nearly-incomprehensible-in-its-hippitude essay which asks the question "Is the idea of Utopia rendered completely frivolous in a world that has made the cyberpunk dystopia so completely real? In a world where the pragmatic inevitability of market capitalism seems to have proven the inherent truths of its basic assumptions about the innate self-interest at the core of human nature?"

C N-B laments that Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy was the last compelling vision of utopian SF in relatively recent times, and that one has to look "back further for the rest: Aldiss, LeGuin, Van Vogt, Stapledon, Dick." (I can, I hope, be forgiven for pausing to add Zebrowski to that list, as his 1979 novel Macrolife is still unsurpassed in its unique take on viable utopias).

Meanwhile, my friend Paul Wargelin points me towards an article by Jason Silverman of Wired lamenting the lack of series SF cinema. "Hollywood Eats Sci-Fi's Brains," keys of the recent box office failure of Darren Aronofksy's The Fountain, which cost $35 milllion to make and earned a whopping $5million over the extended Thanksgiving weekend, to ask why Hollywood has stopped making series sf. Drawing on opinions of Hollywood insiders, Silverman diagnoses the problem as being a combination of the fact that SF films are always hit-or-miss, never a "slam-dunk" - with the fact that the budgets necessary create a barrier for entry. As Gordon Paddison, New Line Cinema's executive vice president of new media and marketing, says, "You have to put a certain level of budget into these films. You have to swing for the fences, otherwise you just aren't in the game at all."

This perspective seems to me one likely to date fast, as we see an increased democratization of the tools necessary to produce special effects. A more relevant question is found in Silverman's closing paragraph, where Paddison asks, ""The Gene Roddenberry form of sci-fi was the accepted template for years and years, the vision of what the future was to be for many, many people. Then it evolved into the horror sequences of Alien. So what is it now? What are we and our children fantasizing about?"

I don't know, but I suspect, as Silverman comes just short of hinting, that a good place to look for clues might be on YouTube.

Meanwhile, I wonder why no one ever thinks to suggest that the reason a film like The Fountain failed at the box office was not because of the subject matter, but because the trailer looked completely uninspiring and failed utterly to suggest a compelling reason to see the film. The other recent Hugh Jackman vehicle, The Prestige,which exited my local theaters to make room for The Fountain, while by no means a blockbuster, faired considerably better and was a very smart, very demanding film.

Hollywood has a very bad habit of blaming the genre or the setting when they should be blaming the script or the directing. I've just seen the trailer for Eragon, and am significantly underwhelmed. I imagine the legions of fans devoted to the book is enough for them to get their money's worth out of it anyway, but supposing that the film tanked at the box office, or, more realistically, simply underperformed. Then all those producers currently in development on adaptations of books by George R R Martin and Terry Brooks and whatever other fantasies were greenlit immediately following the success of The Lord of the Rings beware. The men in suites will look at Eragon's failure and proclaim that fantasy is dead, without ever once considering that maybe John Malkovich is a poor substitute for Ian McKellen and that cheaply CGI'd Dragons are no match for the decade plus of painstaking, loving, obsession that went into bringing Tolkien to the screen. But why should they when an easy excuse is close at hand?