Excerpt: CRASHING HEAVEN by Al Robertson (Gollancz)

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RobertsonA-CrashingHeavenAl Robertson‘s Crashing Heaven is one of my most-anticipated novels of 2015. I’ve heard great things, too. In advance of a review, Gollancz have sent me this excerpt to share with you all. First up, though, the novel’s synopsis:

Meet Hugo Fist. The most terrifying and enticing AI to grace SF since the works of Al Reynolds and Hannu Rajaniemi

A diamond-hard, visionary new SF thriller. Nailed-down cyberpunk ala William Gibson for the 21st century meets the vivid dark futures of Al Reynolds in this extraordinary debut novel.

With Earth abandoned, humanity resides on Station, an industrialised asteroid run by the sentient corporations of the Pantheon. Under their leadership a war has been raging against the Totality – ex-Pantheon AIs gone rogue.

With the war over, Jack Forster and his sidekick Hugo Fist, a virtual ventriloquist’s dummy tied to Jack’s mind and created to destroy the Totality, have returned home.

Labelled a traitor for surrendering to the Totality, all Jack wants is to clear his name but when he discovers two old friends have died under suspicious circumstances he also wants answers. Soon he and Fist are embroiled in a conspiracy that threatens not only their future but all of humanity’s. But with Fist’s software licence about to expire, taking Jack’s life with it, can they bring down the real traitors before their time runs out?

The novel is published in the UK on June 18th (tomorrow!). Now, on with the extract… Continue reading →

Upcoming: THE IMMORTALS by Jordanna Max Brodsky (Orbit)

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BrodskyJM-TheImmortalsUSI spotted the synopsis for Jordanna Max Brodsky‘s upcoming novel, The Immortals, a little while back in an Orbit catalogue. Today, though, Orbit has unveiled the rather splendid cover for the novel (right), by Kirk Benshoff. I think that’s a pretty great cover.

Here’s the synopsis:

The Restless Ones, the Bearer of the Bow, the Untamed…

… those are only a few of the names Selene DiSilva’s answered to over the years. But these days she’s content to work in secret, defending the women of Manhattan from the evils of men. She’s reclusive, stubborn, and deeply unfriendly to everyone but her dog. But when a woman’s mutilated body washes up in Riverside Park wearing a laurel wreath, Selene finds that she can no longer hide in the shadows.

As more women are threatened, Selene is forced to embrace the one name she’s tried hardest to forget — Artemis. For who better to follow the killer’s tangled trail than the Goddess of the Hunt herself?

The Immortals is due to be published by Orbit in February 2016 (which seems very far away…). I can’t wait to read it. For more, be sure to follow the author on Twitter.

Upcoming: CAREER OF EVIL by Robert Galbraith (Mulholland)

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I really enjoyed The Cuckoo’s Calling and The Silkworm, and have been rather looking forward to the third novel starring Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott: Career of Evil. Today, the cover and plot were unveiled, for both the UK and US editions! Here’s the synopsis (from the author’s website)…

When a mysterious package is delivered to Robin Ellacott, she is horrified to discover that it contains a woman’s severed leg. Her boss, private detective Cormoran Strike, is less surprised but no less alarmed. There are four people from his past who he thinks could be responsible – and Strike knows that any one of them is capable of sustained and unspeakable brutality.

With the police focusing on the one suspect Strike is increasingly sure is not the perpetrator, he and Robin take matters into their own hands, and delve into the dark and twisted worlds of the other three men. But as more horrendous acts occur, time is running out for the two of them…

The novel will be published on October 20th (US) and 22nd (UK), 2015, by Mulholland/Little, Brown. Robert Galbraith is, of course, better known as a pseudonym of J.K. Rowling’s…

Also on CR: Review of The Cuckoo’s Calling and The Silkworm

Review: FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS by Nalo Hopkinson (Tachyon)

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HopkinsonN-FallingInLoveWithHominidsA new anthology of short stories

Nalo Hopkinson (Brown Girl in the Ring, Skin Folk) has been widely hailed as a highly significant voice in Caribbean and American fiction. She has been dubbed “one of our most important writers,” (Junot Diaz), with “an imagination that most of us would kill for” (Los Angeles Times), and her work has been called “stunning,” (New York Times) “rich in voice, humor, and dazzling imagery” (Kirkus), and “simply triumphant” (Dorothy Allison).

Falling in Love with Hominids presents more than a dozen years of Hopkinson’s new, uncollected fiction, much of which has been unavailable in print, including one original story. Her singular, vivid tales, which mix the modern with Afro-Carribean folklore, are occupied by creatures unpredictable and strange: chickens that breathe fire, adults who eat children, and spirits that haunt shopping malls.

Reviewed by Ryan Frye

I typically read short fiction for one of two reasons, either it’s an author whom I love, and I’ve devoured everything else of theirs so I dig into their short-form stuff, or it’s an author whom I’ve never read before and I want to sample their work without trying to pick out a full-length book to start with. The latter was the case with Nalo Hopkinson’s Falling in Love with Hominids. Hopkinson is an author who’s been on my radar for a while now, so when the opportunity came along to check out her yet-to-be-released short fiction collection I jumped at the chance. Continue reading →

Music: AEROSMITH

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PerryJ-RocksBecause I’m currently reading Joe Perry‘s Rocks, I thought I’d just share some of Aerosmith’s music videos. First, though, here are the details of the book, which is published by Simon & Schuster:

Before the platinum records or the Super Bowl half-time show or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Joe Perry was a boy growing up in small-town Massachusetts. He idolized Jacques Cousteau and built his own diving rig that he used to explore a local lake. He dreamed of becoming a marine biologist. But Perry’s neighbors had teenage sons, and those sons had electric guitars, and the noise he heard when they started playing would change his life. 

The guitar became his passion, an object of lust, an outlet for his restlessness and his rebellious soul. That passion quickly blossomed into an obsession, and he got a band together. One night after a performance he met a brash young musician named Steven Tyler; before long, Aerosmith was born. What happened over the next forty-five years has become the stuff of legend: the knockdown, drag-out, band-splintering fights; the drugs, the booze, the rehab; the packed arenas and timeless hits; the reconciliations and the comebacks. 

Rocks is an unusually searching memoir of a life that spans from the top of the world to the bottom of the barrel—several times. It is a study of endurance and brotherhood, with Perry providing remarkable candor about Tyler, as well as new insights into their powerful but troubled relationship. It is an insider’s portrait of the rock and roll family, featuring everyone from Jimmy Page to Alice Cooper, Bette Midler to Chuck Berry, John Belushi to Al Hirschfeld. It takes us behind the scenes at unbelievable moments such as Joe and Steven’s appearance in the movie of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (they act out the murders of Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees).

Full of humor, insight, and brutal honesty about life in and out of one of the biggest bands in the world, Rocks is the ultimate rock-and-roll epic. In Perry’s own words, it tells the whole story: “the loner’s story, the band’s story, the recovery story, the cult story, the love story, the success story, the failure story, the rebirth story, the re-destruction story, and the post-destructive rebirth story.”

I’m about 100 pages into the biography, and really enjoying it so far. I should be able to post a full review in the next week or so, time willing. Now, on with the music… Continue reading →

New Books (May-June)

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Featuring: Judy Blume, Nick Brown, Jack Campbell, Lincoln Child, Ernest Cline, Nathan Garrison, Mat Johnson, Stephen King, Jessica Knoll, Douglas Lain, Mark Lawrence, Aidan Levy, Jason Matthews, Naomi Novik, Matthew Palmer, Ron Perlman, Alexandra Petri, Loren Rhoads, Christopher Robinson, Neal Stephenson, Corey Taylor Continue reading →

Interview with MIKE BROOKS

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BrooksM-AuthorPicLet’s start with an introduction: Who is Mike Brooks?

Starting with a hard one, eh?

I’m currently thirty-three, but I tend to change my age every year. I’m British. I enjoy a select few video games, a select few Games Workshop games, walking in the countryside, watching football (soccer), MMA and nature/science documentaries, and playing guitar and singing in a punk band called Interplanetary Trash Talk. I also DJ occasionally, usually at the request/tolerance of the Rock Society of Nottingham Trent University, from which I graduated in 2003. I am, as you might expect, a massive fan of fantasy and science-fiction in various media.

I’m politically left-leaning, and it’s arguable whether that’s cause or effect of me working with the homeless for over ten years. I have little fear of public speaking or performance, but can struggle to make conversation one-to-one. I have difficulty in recognising or recalling faces, and would be much more comfortable in the world if everyone walked around with their name floating next to their head. I’ve been married for eight years. I go out of my way to say hello to cats.

Your debut novel, Dark Run, will be published by Del Rey this week in the UK. How would you introduce it to a potential reader? Is it part of a series?

I would introduce it as a science-fiction adventure featuring interplanetary smugglers, intrigue, revenge and an awful lot of treachery. You don’t need a physics degree to understand the science, it’s not so grimdark that you can’t see the walls, but there’s a lot of action and hopefully a fair bit of humour. People keep describing it as ‘fun’, and I’ll take that.

It is indeed part of a series – or at least, that’s the plan. The sequel Dark Sky is coming out in November, and after that… well, I’ve got plans, but the best-laid plans of mice and men seldom coincide. We’ll see what the future brings (hopefully a contract for more books). Continue reading →

Guest Post: “On Writing – I do it My Way” by Sue Tingey

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TingeyS-AuthorPicI would imagine if you ask half a dozen writers about how they get their ideas and how they go about putting them down on paper you would get a half a dozen different answers. For me, it changes from project to project. On the whole though, there are certain definites to my writing regime and process.

I try to be disciplined about my writing as that’s the only way it works for me. I write every weekday morning without fail from 7 a.m. until 8.30 a.m., and sometimes later when I’ve got caught up in a scene and forgotten the time. Fortunately I have a very supportive boss – at least he hasn’t sacked me yet! In these one and a half hours I re-read and edit the work I wrote the previous day to get me back into the flow and then I aim for a count of between 700 and 1000 words. If I manage more, I’m happy. If I write less than 700 – well, let’s not go there. Meeting the daily word count keeps me focused and if I wasn’t so strict on myself I would probably flounder and not get anything finished. Continue reading →