Sunrise on Mars!

Hey all,

So having recently sent Guy Haley's Champion of Mars to press, I've naturally had the Red Planet on my mind (fun fact: the majority of the names for mars around the world either mean "fire star" or refer to war; cool, huh?).

Mars is an old fascination of mine; of everyone's, really. I tore through Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy as a youth; I wrote my own SF stories set on Mars; I played roleplaying games in which I peopled it with future colonies and strange cultures. It's always been a massive part of my imaginative life.

So anyway, today I stumbled on these pictures of Martian sunrises, on the very curious geek-culture blog Hyperlexia. Which was timely. They're artist's renditions (this is a correction; I was given to understand that they're real photos, but it turns out they're not, which is a slight shame) based on data taken from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter. Leaving aside for a moment the mind-blowing idea of how these pictures are created, aren't they amazing?

Just thought I'd share them with you.

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Champion of Mars is due to hit the shelves in May (Cover by Dominick Saponaro, left).

An extraordinary blend of cutting-edge, hard-SF transhumanism and glorious, classic science-romance, this is a treatment of Mars in which both Kim Stanley Robinson and Edgar Rice Burroughs (what is it with Mars and writers with three names, huh?) would find something to love.

It's also a work of breath-taking scope and ambition, spanning over seven hundred centuries and a war between different planes of existence. Massively recommended.

COMING SOON: The Red Planet as you've never seen it before

Champion of Mars

by Guy Haley

Battle begins April 24th (US/Canada) and 10th May (UK)

£7.99 (UK) ISBN 978-1-907992-84-1

$8.99/$10.99 (US & CAN) ISBN 978-1-907992-85-8

Available as an ebook

In the far future, Mars is dying a second time. The Final War of men and spirits is beginning. In a last bid for peace, disgraced champion Yoechakenon Val Mora and his spirit lover Kaibeli are set free from the Arena to find the long-missing Librarian of Mars, the only hope to save mankind.

In the near future, a scientist running from a painful past, joins the Mars colonisation effort, cataloguing the remnants of its biosphere before it is swept away by the terraforming programme. When an artefact is discovered deep in the caverns of the red planet, the consequences ripple throughout time, affecting Holland’s present, the distant days of Yoechakanon, and the eras that bridge the aeons between.

Combining the imagination of Kim Stanley Robinson with the pace and excitement of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Haley’s blend of hard science and epic storytelling creates a vision of the Red Planet that is both recognisable and utterly alien.

“A novel with an ambition on the scale of Olympus Mons itself, and it delivers. Recommended.”

– Stephen Baxter

Cover Lovelies

Hulloh

Here at Solaris Towers we've been busily working away on a whole raft of exciting future titles and I'm pleased to be able to give you a preview of the covers for some forthcoming books.

First up we have Champion of Mars by Guy Haley, a fantastic SF novel that's a mix of Rider Haggard style adventure and hard SF. Dominick Saponaro had provided us with stunning artwork for this novel:

And if fantasy is your thing, then I'm delighted to be able to tell you that Rowena Cory Daniells will be returning with a brand new trilogy in 2012. Clint Langley has returned for cover duties and I think that you'll agree that what he has produced is simply stunning:

So there you go. As ever, much to look forward to.

Happy reading!

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