The West has never been wilder!

Two-book Heaven's Gate Chronicles to start April 2013

A new gun-slinging fantasy series mixing the Wild West, Steampunk, angels, and a town that exists for only a day is set to begin its epic story next year, courtesy of Solaris.

Guy Adams’ The Good, The Bad and The Infernal is a weird western, a gun-toting, cigarillo-chewing fantasy built from hangman’s rope and spent bullets!

The Good, The Bad and The Infernal will be the first book in the exciting new Heaven’s Gate Chronicle series, debuting in April 2013. Details of the second title in the series will be announced in the near future.

"Guy's writing is fresh, exciting and laced with a wicked sense of humour,” said Jonathan Oliver, editor-in-chief of Solaris. “I love a good Western, but Guy's new series is so much more than that. The Heaven's Gate Chronicles promises to be a hell of a ride, and heaven to read."

“You wish to meet your God?” the gunslinger asked, “well now... that’s easy to arrange.”

Roughly every one hundred years a town appears. From a small village in the peaks of Tibet to a gathering of mud huts in the jungles of South American, it can take many forms. It exists for twenty-four hours then vanishes, but for that single day it contains the greatest miracle a man could imagine: a doorway to Heaven.

It is due to appear on the 21st September 1889 as a ghost town in the American Midwest. When it does there are many who hope to be there:

Travelling preacher Obeisance Hicks and his simple messiah, a brain-damaged Civil War veteran; Henry and Harmonium Jones and their freak show pack of outlaws; the Brothers of Ruth and their sponsor Lord Forset (inventor of the Forset Thunderpack and other incendiary modes of personal transport); finally, an aging gunslinger who lost his wings at the very beginning of creation and wants nothing more than to settle old scores.

Lighten your miserable Monday with a sunny Solaris round-up!

It is raining. A lot. Upon the roof of Abaddon/Solaris Towers a thousand ducks tap dance continuously, celebrating the onslaught of the Rainpocalypse - or, at least, that's what it sounds like. 

But what better way to get rid of the Monday morning blues than checking out some tip top Solaris reviews? First up is Hush by James Maxey...

The second book in the Dragon Apocalypse trilogy, Elitest Book Reviews had this to say: "Earlier this year I read GREATSHADOW by James Maxey, and despite my cynical reservations it blew me away. Now we have HUSH, the much anticipated sequel that I had to wait excruciating months for. Months! With great excitement I started reading about the most original and colorful fantasy world I have encountered in recent memory."

Hush is now available in the UK and in North America and also as a DRM-free ebook.

Fantastical Librarian called Greatshadow, the first book in the series, "a fabulous read" and said "if you like straight up adventure novels, kick ass heroines and dragons – lots of dragons – then you can't miss Greatshadow". And Fantasy Nibbles says "You hit the ground running with Greatshadow, straight in with the action and you’re pulled along for a brilliant ride".

And you can even read the first chapter totally for FREE!

Witchbreaker, the third book in the trilogy, is due to hits shelves in January.

Next up we have Deadfall Hotel, which Mass Movement Magazine has called "one of the best original ‘horror’ novels I have read in quite a while".

Deadfall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem is OUT NOW in paperback and Kindle in the UK and Ireland, and in paperback and Kindle in North America!

And looking ahead, we've had some very kind words from the guys behind Pornokitsch about both our imprints, but they specifically mention Lavie Tidhar’s breakout hit, Osama, which Solaris will be publishing in paperback in October!

Have a good Monday, however wet or sunny it may be :)

Happy UK publication day to Keith Brooke's alt.human!

The aliens are here. They always have been. And now, one by one, they’re destroying our cities.

io9.com called it one of the 'Books you can't afford to miss in May' and Keith Brooke's fresh take on alien invasion hits UK shelves today!

"We've enjoyed Brooke's writing a lot before, including his weird tales of virtual heavens," said io9. "And now he's back, with a novel that sounds weirder than all get-out."

And Alastair Reynolds said it was: "a startlingly new take on the theme of an Earth under alien occupation. Keith Brooke's vivid, high-definition prose makes us see it all with magnificent clarity, as if we were there, sharing the ruins and rubble with his strange but all too human characters."

alt.human (978-1-78108-002-3) is £7.99 in traditional paper form and is also available as a DRM-free ebook.

It's also OUT NOW as 'Harmony' in the US & Canada (978-1-78108-001-6) and is also available as an ebook.

You can also check out our interview with Keith from last month.

Blood, Feathers, and Rebellion

Follow-up to much anticipated debut Blood and Feathers announced

Solaris is delighted to announce that it has acquired the follow-up to the much anticipated debut novel from Lou Morgan, Blood and Feathers, which is to be released in August of this year.

The sequel, Rebellion, is due to be released in August 2013.

Rebellion will continue in Morgan’s fresh post-Milton world of gun-toting angels, demonic plots, and a heroine whose life is torn apart in the battle between heaven and hell!

The angelic war has spread, and violence erupts across the globe as the Fallen's influence grows.

As an army of the Fallen walk the Earth, the Archangel Michael is determined to destroy Lucifer once and for all - whatever the cost... and Alice and the angels will be called on to sacrifice more than they ever imagined possible.

The Fallen will rise. Trust will be betrayed. And all hell will break loose...

Blood and Feathers is already garnering attention and praise from across the industry, with Sarah Pinborough describing it as “dark, enticing and so sharp the pages could cut you, Blood and Feathers is a must-read for any fan of the genre", while Philip K Dick award-winner Michael Marshall Smith said it was "a hell of a ride, but heaven to read: eerie, compelling and very funny”.

“When you discover a debut author of such strength and range, as I did with Lou, it’s always a great privilege to bring them to the wider world,” said Jonathan Oliver, editor-in-chief of Solaris. “Blood and Feathers is a brilliantly original novel, that is both affecting and witty.  Rebellion promises to raise the bar even higher.”

What is truly real in Lalaland? Al Ewing takes a Philip K Dick look at LA in new SF title for Solaris

One of the freshest and most innovative writers in genre is to pen his first novel for Solaris.

The Fictional Man by Al Ewing, best known for his work on Judge Dredd for 2000 AD and Abaddon Books’ Pax Britannia series, will be published in May 2013.

A talent of terrific energy and wit, Ewing is one of the most distinctive writers working today. The Fictional Man channels the spirit of Philip K Dick but mixed with Ewing’s own brand of SF weird. In his first novel for the imprint, he proves himself to be a master of the genre.

“Al Ewing is one of those writers who never fails to surprise me, both in the quality of his prose and the depth of his imagination,” said Jonathan Oliver, editor-in-chief of Solaris. “Having worked with Al extensively on the Abaddon range of books, it’s a real thrill to bring him to Solaris and let him loose on a creation entirely of his own making. This promises to be a hugely exciting and unusual SF novel.”

Niles Golan is writing a remake of a camp-classic spy movie. The studio has plans for a franchise, so rather than hiring an actor, the protagonist will be 'translated' into a cloned human body.

It's common practice - Niles' therapist is a Fictional. So is his best friend. So (maybe) is the woman in the bar he can't stop staring at. Fictionals are a part of daily life now, especially in LA.

In fact, it's getting hard to tell who's a Fictional and who's not...

Ewing’s books for Abaddon Books’ Pax Britannia and The Afterblight Chronicles series revealed a writer whose complexity is not limited by genre, but who throws his readers into a story with wild abandon. Already breaking new ground in seminal comic book 2000 AD, Ewing’s SF visions are set to be revelatory.

“A poet of pulp.” - The Steampunk Scholar on El Sombra

“One of the best superhero pastiches I’ve ever read.” - Pornokitsch on Gods of Manhattan

Aliens, Alastair Reynolds and Fermi’s Paradox: The Keith Brooke Interview

Harmony

OUT NOW in US & Canada

$8.99/$10.99 ISBN 978-1-78108-001-6

Available as an ebook

alt.human

7th June (UK)

£7.99 ISBN 978-1-78108-002-3

Available as an ebook

The aliens are here. They always have been. And now, one by one, they’re destroying our cities.

Dodge Mercer deals in identities - until the day he deals the wrong identity and clan war breaks out. Hope Burren has no identity, and no past, struggling with a relentless choir of voices filling her head.

In a world where nothing is as it seems, where humans are segregated and aliens can sing realities and tear worlds apart, Dodge and Hope lead a ragged band of survivors in a search for the rumoured sanctuary of Harmony, and what may be the only hope for humankind.

Keith Brooke forces us to look again at the idea of alien invasion, abandoning tired cliché and instead creating an all-too-real world where mankind faces extinction. With his crystal clear prose and vivid imaginative storytelling, alt.human/Harmony promises to reinvigorate one of the oldest themes in SF.

As Harmony is published in North America, we caught up with Keith to discuss alien invasions, his favourite books, and why he chose to write about Fermi’s Paradox...

* Tell us a bit about alt.human/Harmony and why people should buy it.

Aw shucks. It's not easy to say why people should buy your own book, but clearly I hope everyone will. This story matters to me because it's a story that's been building for years.

Very loosely, it's part of a sequence which began with Genetopia and then The Accord, although I doubt anyone would spot that there's a connection there! For me, all three books are about what it is to be human, and what it might be to be human in the future.

The world of alt.human/Harmony is a parallel of our own, the most radical alternate history I could come up with: what if the universe was heaving with aliens? What if they were all around us, and they always had been?

This is the story of how humankind might have evolved if we had never been top dog, even on our home planet.

It was such a big concept that it took me several years to shape it into a story that would work; I wanted to tell a very human story, but also to capture the spirit of a universe with stories going on that are just too big for us to grasp.

Did I manage that? I hope I got close, but rather than me tell you why people should buy  alt.human/Harmony I should leave it to hard SF maestro Alastair Reynolds: "alt.human is a startlingly new take on the theme of an Earth under alien occupation. The  far-future Earth revealed to us is both familiar and weird, and Keith Brooke's vivid, high-definition prose makes us see it all with magnificent clarity, as if we were there, sharing the ruins and rubble with his strange but all too human characters."

* Please explain Fermi’s Paradox to us and why you chose to write about it.

Back in 1950, over lunch with colleagues at Los Alamos National Laboratory, physicist Enrico Fermi made an observation that has fascinated science-fiction authors ever since: given the vastness of the universe, if intelligent alien races have emerged then it's statistically almost certain that many will have appeared long before humankind; on a universal scale that "many" is a vast, vast number; races so much more advanced than us must have left their mark - radio signals, exploring other worlds, even re-engineering their corner of the universe on a large, and detectable scale. So, to use the phrase he blurted out some time after that conversation had moved on, "Where is everybody?" Are we really alone, or is there some other explanation for what became known as "the silence of the universe"?

My take on the Paradox was to turn it on its head. As  alt.human/Harmony opens: "If they existed, they would be here" -- Enrico Fermi

But they are here.
They're all around us.
They always have been.

Once that spin on the question had occurred to me, I just had to sit down and get writing!

* Alien invasions tend to be incredibly violent or sinister, but alt.human is more about colonisation – are you drawing parallels with the way humans behave?

Aliens are often used in SF as thinly-disguised ciphers for far more parochial concerns: alien invasion is such a Cold War trope. But even now, post-Cold War, we still return to the invasion theme: we have other conflicts to reinterpret through science-fictional eyes, the so-called War on Terror, for starters.

I've certainly written SF war stories that fall into this category, but I don't think alt.human is really one of them. For me, the many alien races in alt.human simply *are*; they exist, they're here, get on with it.

I've always shied away from aliens in my writing, but after twenty years in the field it was clearly a subject I was finally ready to explore. I think my problem was that I struggled to suspend disbelief: it's quite legitimate to write aliens as thinly-disguised humans, but that never interested me - if I wasn't convinced by the aliens then my readers wouldn't be either. The fascination for me, when I finally sat down to write alt.human/Harmony, was how to portray truly alien aliens that we could still relate to in some way. And writing alien aliens brought me round to writing inhuman humans, and aliens who were perhaps more human than some humans, themes that I've kept coming back to in Genetopia, The Accord and now alt.human.

* Tell us a bit about your writing routine.

I genuinely don't have one. I used to be very precious about my writing: I needed undisturbed silence, in blocks of several hours at a time, or I just couldn't do it, darling. One big thing I've learned in the last ten years is just how stupid that was, and how many writing opportunities I missed as a result.

I lead a very busy life: writing, editing, running a small publising imprint, managing websites, lecturing... I rarely get those two or three hour blocks to write in. So I grab whatever opportunity I can. Half an hour at lunchtime, editing the previous day's writing, is enough to keep the story fresh in my mind. Twenty minutes at the end of the day, adding a couple of hundred words keeps the momentum going. Recently, I've written in coffee shops, pubs, on planes and trains, in hotel rooms and at friends' houses, on laptops, desktop PCs, a netbook, my phone, in notebooks, scraps of paper, etc. It probably means I'm an incredibly dull person, but at least I get lots of writing done!

* What are your five favourite novels?

It probably depends on when you ask me, but here are the ones that are consistently up at the top of any such list I'd write:
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald: beautiful, moving, passionate writing - perhaps a cliched choice as it's on so many school reading lists, but it's there for a reason.
Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg: oops - the only SF title on my list... A fantastic portrayal of a man losing his telepathic abilities. Brilliant stuff.
Black Dogs by Ian McEwan: perhaps not the obvious choice from one of my favourite writers, but I think this is the closest he's got to achieving the near-perfection of his early short stories at book length.
Waterland by Graham Swift: one of the best books I've ever read for sense of place and time, and a hell of a story, too.
The Honorary Consul by Graham Greene: although, to be honest, it could have been any of another half dozen or so of his books; a lesson in how to write outstanding fiction with economical, pinpoint prose.

* What advice would you give to new writers hoping to break into the field?

If you really want it, you'll be stubborn, and that's one of the most useful attributes to have. You'll get knocked back repeatedly, you'll get dispirited, you'll wonder why you're devoting so much of your life to something that, in all probability, won't come to anything. But to give yourself a chance you have to finish what you write and then write someting else; to give yourself a chance you have to revise your work, learning what works and doesn't, and why, and how you can fix it; to give yourself a chance you have to stick at it.

Happy US publication day to Harmony, Toxicity, and The Devil's Nebula!

Every day's a party day at Solaris and Abaddon Towers, especially a day when we have three (count 'em, THREE) books hitting shelves in North America! We have a cake and balloons, so it's time to welcome our babies into the world:

Harmony

by Keith Brooke

$8.99/$10.99 (US & CAN) ISBN 978-1-78108-001-6

Available as an ebook

The aliens are here, all around us. They always have been. And now, one by one, they’re destroying our cities.

Toxicity

by Andy Remic

$8.99/$10.99 (US & CAN) ISBN 978-1-78108-004-7

Available as an ebook

Andy Remic returns to the world of the Anarchy with another brash, no-holds-barred action!

Weirdspace: The Devil’s Nebula

by Eric Brown

$7.99/$10.99 (US & CAN) ISBN 978-1-78108-023-8

Available as an ebook

When an evil race threatens not only the Expansion, but the Vetch too - an evil from another dimension which infests humans and Vetch alike and bends individuals to do their hideous bidding, only cooperation between them means the difference between a chance of survival and no chance at all.

Toxicity and Harmony are both published in the UK on 7th June, with The Devil's Nebula arriving on the 21st.

The Dragon Apocalypse continues…

Hush

by James Maxey

Night descends 26^th June (US & Canada) and 5^th July (UK)

£7.99 (UK)
ISBN 978-1-78108-0-160

$8.99/$10.99 (US & CAN)
ISBN 978-1-78108-0-177

Available as an ebook

A world of faith versus magic. Apocalyptically-powerful dragons. A prophecy slowly coming to light. Solaris is proud to present the next book in a breathtaking new trilogy by one of its most popular authors.

Hush is the second title in the standout Dragon Apocalypse series by James Maxey, author of the Dragon Age series, a thrilling adventure which turns conventions on their head while entertaining the reader with sharp wit and a true love of fantasy.

The invulnerable, super-strong warrior Infidel has a secret: she’s lost her magical powers at the moment she needs them most. She must journey to the frozen northern wastelands. In the abstract realms of the Sea of Wine, she uncovers a conspiracy that threatens all life. Hush, the primal dragon of cold, has formed an alliance with the ghost of a vengeful witch to murder Glorious, the dragon of the sun, plunging the world into an unending winter night. Without her magical strength, can Infidel possibly survive her battle with Hush? If she fails to save Glorious, will the world see another morning?

An incredible mix of adventure, fantasy and lurking menace, with Hush Maxey is a real master of the genre and continues one of 2012’s stand-out new series.

“one of the most extravagantly fantastical worlds I've ever seen” – Orson Scott Card

“This isn't your bog-standard intro quest: Greatshadow is a skip-to-the-back-of-the-book epic-level adventure.” – Pornkitsch

Three months, three novels – a new saga begins

Book One of The Outcast Chronicles:

Besieged

By Rowena Cory Daniells

A new epic trilogy begins on 26th June (US & Canada) and 5th July (UK)

£7.99 (UK) ISBN 978-1-78108-010-8

$8.99/$10.99 (US & CAN) ISBN 978-1-78108-011-5

Available as an ebook

REVIEW COPIES AND AUTHOR INTERVIEWS AVAILABLE

Rowena Cory Daniells, the creator of the best-selling Chronicles of King Rolen’s Kin, brings you a stunning new fantasy epic, steeped in magic and forged in war.

Solaris is releasing the three volumes of The Outcast Chronicles, each with a stunning cover from award-winning artist Clint Langley, over three months in what will be the fantasy event of the summer!

Sorne, the estranged son of a King on the verge of madness, is being raised as a weapon to wield against the Wyrds. Half a continent away, his father is planning to lay siege to the Celestial City, the home of the mystical T¹En, whose wyrd blood the mundane population have come to despise. Within the City, Imoshen, the only mystic to be raised by men, is desperately trying to hold her people together. A generations long feud between the men of the Brotherhoods and the women of the sacred Sisterhoods is about to come to a head. With war without and war within, can an entire race survive the hatred of a nation?

Daniells has spun another web of golden fantasy with a series that will keep fans of George R. R. Martin, Robin Hobb or Gail Z. Martin enthralled over the summer of magic.

“Page-turning, plot-twisting, breakneck adventure” – SFX on The King’s Bastard

Check out this awesome trailer for The Outcast Chronicles from Rowena Cory Daniells!

As mentioned yesterday, to celebrate the forthcoming release of the first in Rowena Cory Daniells' brand new trilogy, The Outcast Chronicles, we're giving readers the chance to experience her first best-selling series for Solaris at a fraction of the price!

King Rolen's Kin trilogy was a hit when it was released in 2010, with the three books being published over three months - something we're doing again with The Outcast Chronicles, beginning with the gorgeous looking Besieged in July.

The King's Bastard,The Uncrowned King, and The Usurper are now available for just £3 EACH as DRM-free ebooks from the Rebellion store

And talking about The Outcast Chronicles, check out this awesome trailer for the series!

Get Rowena Cory Daniells' King Rolen's Kin trilogy as DRM-free ebook for just £3 each!

to celebrate the forthcoming release of the first in Rowena Cory Daniells' brand new trilogy, The Outcast Chronicles, we're giving readers the chance to experience her first best-selling series for Solaris at a fraction of the price! 

The King Rolen's Kin trilogy was a hit when it was released in 2010, with the three books being published over three months - something we're doing again with The Outcast Chronicles, beginning with the gorgeous looking Besieged in July.

The King's Bastard, The Uncrowned King, and The Usurper are now available for just £3 EACH as DRM-free ebooks from the Rebellion store!

Den of Geek gave The King's Bastard four out of five and said it was "exciting, daring and silly in all the right proportions", while SFX said it delivered the "page-turning, plot-twisting, breakneck adventure" that got them reading fantasy in the first place!

And don't forget that an exclusive ebook novella set in the world of King Rolen's Kin, The King's Man, will be coming soon!

Solaris review round-up - Monday 14th May 2012

In keeping with the near-constant downpour outside, we have a deluge of new reviews of Solaris titles for you upon this drenched morning which should be enough to keep the memories of the gloriously sunny weekend in your minds...

First off, Starburst has given Guy Haley's Champion of Mars an excellent eight out of ten, calling his first title for Solaris "highly entertaining and original, and well worth a look."

There's also love for Deadfall Hotel over at Invisible Vanguard, with Steve Rasnic Tem's blend of weirdness, surrealism, and horror getting a nice write-up: "fans of the graphic novels Locke and Key, House of Mystery, Fables, or the work of Edward Gorey will feel right at home here, as will anyone who ever wished that Neil Gaiman had written The Shining instead of Stephen King."

And talking of horror, Christopher Fowler's excellent Hell Train has gone head-to-head with Tempest by Julie Cross in a competition to see which of the two books the reviewer most wanted to continue reading after the first 50 pages. Hell Train delivered a knock-out blow and has progressed to the next round, where it could end up facing Simon Bestwick's The Faceless.

In a great Solaris round-up, The Nameless Zine has reviewed a whopping FIVE of our titles this month, including calling Juliet E. McKenna's Darkening Skies "enthralling", saying that House of Fear is "one of the best thematic anthologies to come along in years", declaring that James Maxey's Greatshadow is "a must for dragon fantasy lovers who demand good writing and can't put it down action. If I used a star system it would get a five", recommending that "lovers of horror with [a] unique twist" will love Simon Bestwick's The Faceless, and admitting that they "couldn't put down" Paul Kearney's Kings of Morning.

And finally, Regicide by Nicholas Royle gets reviewed by the Sacremento/San Francisco Book Review site which calls it "interesting and thoughtful" and says "when the plot engages in the second half, it all comes together nicely in a spooky kinda way".

Solaris scoops (is that the right word?) award nominations! Huzzah!

We love what we do, and we hope you do too. So when someone says 'well done' for doing what we love it makes it even more worthwhile...

We're delighted to have discovered that our House of Fear anthology, edited by our own Jonathan Oliver, has been nominated for 'Best Anthology' in the British Fantasy Society Awards! Not only that, but one of the short stories from the collection, Florrie by Adam Nevill, has been nominated for the 'Short Fiction' award!

Huzzah!

And just a day after we announce that Solaris is to publish Lavie Tidhar's groundbreaking Osama in paperback, than the title is announced as one of the contenders for the finals of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award! Fingers crossed for Lavie, for what is an absolutely stunning book that we're delighted to be publishing.

Double huzzah!

Keep an eye on the Solaris Editors Blog for future updates!

Solaris Publication Day: Red and Dead(fall)

Here at Solaris Towers we believe in giving you more. More great books. More fantastic authors. More ... stuff.

And today, we give you two lots of more. More Mars. More weird. More Solaris.

Champion of Mars

Champion of Mars by Guy Haley is OUT NOW in paperback and on Kindle in the UK and Ireland, and in paperback and on Kindle in North America!

£7.99 (UK) ISBN 978-1-907992-84-1 $8.99/$10.99 (US & CAN) ISBN 978-1-907992-85-8

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.

Stephen Baxter himself said of Champion of Mars: “A novel with an ambition on the scale of Olympus Mons itself, and it delivers. Recommended.”

Guy answered some questions from us about his take on the Red Planet and also gives you, the reader, an exclusive extract on his blog.

Deadfall Hotel

Deadfall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem is OUT NOW in paperback and Kindle in the UK and Ireland, and in paperback and Kindle in North America!

£7.99 (UK) ISBN 978-1-907992-82-7 $8.99/$10.99 (US & CAN) 978-1-907992-83-4

The Deadfall Hotel is where our nightmares go, where the dead pause to rest between worlds, and where Richard Carter and his daughter Serena go to rediscover life — if the things at the hotel don’t kill them first.

The product of nearly twenty years of work, Deadfall Hotel is arguably Solaris’ most ambitious and striking title to date. Steve Rasnic Tem’s entrancing and powerful prose combines the atmosphere of Edward Gorey with the phantasmagoric richness of Mervyn Peake, creating a unique work of genius that will leave you spellbound.

Explore for yourself what may be the Bram Stoker, British Fantasy and World Fantasy award-winning author's finest creation to date with an extended excerpt from the novel, courtesy of Weird Fiction Review.

Terror Tree said: "This is no ordinary novel. It is not a comfortable read and it is incredibly surreal. However, it is a book that must be read."

"A dark and moving story of love, loss and change, with a posse of horror kittens thrown into the mix," said The Guardian.

< And Spooky Reads said "...just when you think you’ve found the lay of the land in this most rich and fertile of imaginative plains, and you’re thrown a twist or turn, or simple line of speech masquerading as so much more. Just when you think you’ve nailed a certain style or emotion in the text and again it buckles and surprises."

Read an extended excerpt from the novel courtesy of Weird Fiction Review, and then read Steve Rasnic Tem in his own words at the Create Your Own Genre blog.

Solaris acquires paperback rights to Tidhar’s Osama

Solaris is proud to announce that it has acquired world English mass market rights to Lavie Tidhar’s highly-praised and BSFA Award-nominated novel Osama from the Zeno Agency.


Lauded as one of the most significant genre books of the year, Osama will be released in October 2012. 


The most exciting, daring and sensitive, fictional engagement with the post-9/11 era, Osama is set in an alternate world without global terrorism. A private detective is hired by a mysterious woman to find a man: the obscure author of pulp fiction novels featuring one Osama Bin Laden – Vigilante...


Joe’s quest to find the man takes him across the world, from the backwaters of Asia to the European Capitals of Paris and London, and as the mystery deepens around him there is one question he is trying hard not to ask: who is he, really, and how much of the books are fiction? Chased by unknown assailants, Joe’s identity slowly fragments as he discovers the shadowy world of the refugees, ghostly entities haunting the world in which he lives. Where do they come from? And what do they want? Joe knows how the story should end, but even he is not ready for the truths he’ll find in New York and, finally, on top a quiet hill above Kabul—nor for the choice he will at last have to make...


The critical reception of Osama has been nothing short of astonishing and it was nominated for the prestigious BSFA award last year. The hardback from PS Publishing was published in October last year.


Lavie Tidhar was in Dar-es-Salaam during the American embassy bombings in 1998, and stayed in the same hotel as the Al Qaeda operatives in Nairobi. Since then he and his now-wife have narrowly avoided both the 2005 London, King’s Cross and 2004 Sinai attacks—experiences that led to the creation of Osama.


Tidhar brilliantly delves into the modern global subconscious, mixing together film noir, non-fiction, alternative history and thrillers to create an unsettling yet utterly compelling portrayal of our times.

“Bears comparison with the best of Philip K Dick’s paranoid, alternate-history fantasies. It’s beautifully written and undeniably powerful.” – The Financial Times

“Not a writer to mess around with half measures … brings to mind Philip K Dick’s seminal science fiction novel The Man in the High Castle.” – The Guardian

JOB OPPORTUNITY: Rebellion looking for junior graphic designer

JUNIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER, £16-18,000 p.a.      


REBELLION, OXFORD.


Rebellion publishes two fiction imprints, Solaris and Abaddon Books, along with 2000 AD, encompassing the weekly comic 2000 AD, the monthly Judge Dredd Megazine and 2000 AD Graphic Novels. 


We are seeking a full-time junior graphic designer to join our busy publishing department in Oxford.  The successful candidate will have a graphic design qualification, a good knowledge of Adobe InDesign and Photoshop and familiarity with Quark and Adobe Illustrator.


Duties will include: flowing in text and laying out interior pages for novels; prepping comic strip pages for print; scanning/colour correction and basic image manipulation; making corrections and final pdfs; designing advertisements; assembling the files for graphic novels. The successful candidate will be required to develop a broad knowledge of our archive to source and choose images for external licensees and others. Experience of design for websites and the internet will be useful.


There will be scope to develop this design role, however this position is not a platform for submitting or producing artwork for Rebellion-published comics and graphic novels.


To apply please send your CV and any available graphic design work portfolio link or hobby work to vacancies@rebellion.co.uk


Rebellion can only consider applicants who can legally work in the UK.

Babylon Steel short-listed for the Compton Crook Award

We're delighted to announce that Gaie Sebold's stunning fantasy debut, Babylon Steel, has been nominated for the Compton Crook Award. This is given every year by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society at Balticon.

Past winners of the award include Paolo Bacigalupi, Naomi Novik and Elizabeth Moon.

Congratulations to Gaie from all of us at Solaris!