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How to get a signed copy of The Delirium Brief

The Delirium Brief The Delirium Brief

So The Delirium Brief is imminent! It officially goes on sale on July 13th in the UK and (in a different binding, from a different publisher) on July 11th in the USA.

I'll be doing my usual launch reading/signing event in Edinburgh at Blackwell's Bookshop on Wednesday July 12th — it's a ticketed event but tickets are free.

You can order signed copies of The Delirium Brief both from Blackwell's (see the bottom of the linked event page for details) and from my favourite local specialist SF bookstore, Transreal Fiction in Edinburgh. (Transreal takes Paypal and can ship overseas; Mike can also provide signed copies of many of my other books upon request.)

44 Comments

1:

This is coming right up for everybody....

2:

There are no skull-headed spiders in THE DELIRIUM BRIEF!

Honestly, what do you take me for?

(Spiders are mostly straightforward predators, not hypercastrating parasitoids.)

3:

W00T. :)

IIRC you mentioned that first day sales from pre-orders is important to you, Charlie. Any preference about where we pre-order in terms of earnings or data? Amazon OK?

4:

The skull headed spider in the comic might just be grumpy because it is infested with hypercastrating parasitoids.

5:

Amazon works, but I get more money per copy sold from the likes of Blackwells or Transreal.

6:

No London signing? If not, I'll order through the links you've provided ....

7:

London is a foreign country, Greg. I can't get there and back in a day — the only even theoretical option is the Scotrail Sleeper, and I can't sleep on it. So it's airport and passport time, or an even more expensive first class return rail fare (hint: five hours in second class is not my idea of fun), and a night in a hotel.

8:

Oooh. I quite fancy both of those covers. And while I like both authors, I'm more tickled by Ellis' blurb. :D

Are there any US vendors you'd prefer us to give our custom to (even if it sadly means unsigned)?

9:

I'm getting the ebook. How do I get that signed?

10:

Yeah, I know. I haven't been to Edinboro' since 2003 (!) Must get uo there some time again in the next few years .....

11:

Grr, I'll be in Edinburgh 10 days before and 10 days after...

...thinks, I shall contact a child who happens to live close by and needs help moving flat ( bwah ha ha, etc )

12:

BTW, just heard that Rob Sinclair has won the 2017 West Highland Way race in less then 14 hours, which is sufficiently mind boggling to wonder if he avoids going out on sunny days !

( => averaging < 9 mins per mile for ~95 miles cross-country, starting at midnight with a torch to see where you're going )

13:

Hmm, probably best not to use angle brackets...

averaging less than 9 mins per mile over 95 miles cross-country, starting at midnight with a torch to see where you're going

14:

I got to visit Edinburgh in 2004 on R&R. I happened upon Transreal Fiction while wandering around doing touristy stuff. I'd really like to visit them again.

15:

Have you seen how bright some of the torches designed for fell runners are these days?

16:

a 'Fell runner' sounds Lovecraftian..

17:

They carry bright uv torches so that they can make one another explode.

It's called being competitive.

18:

Off-topic - perhaps Indie article on H P L Strong empahsis on his racism.

19:

Just came across these illustrations: Disney Illustrator Creates A Series About Life With A Pet Octopus Lots of Steampunky tentacles, some Doctor Who themed. The Hannukah one's a favorite.

20:

Off topic but something I've noticed over the past few weeks...

I'm currently re-reading a lot of short science fiction due to travel and being up to date on most series I want to read so I'm revisiting Gardner Dozois's best of year books and that's brought me to a revolution - a story seems wrong as soon as someone gets in a car and starts driving it.

Now the weird thing is that I'm happy to re-read a cyberpunk story that ignores the fact that all information is available immediately online virtually anywhere due to the small screen we all carry around yet as soon as a story mentions driving it suddenly feels wrong and jolts me out of the story..

21:

Yup: I ran across this a year or two ago in the iOS app store, as the first book was released as an app. It's delightful; music and narrative as well as the graphics. Alas, no updates and the subsequent books didn't get app-ified, so I guess it didn't pay back its development costs.

22:

Also: phone booths, and plots that only work because nobody has a mobile phone, not even an early 90s-vintage dumbphone. Right?

A modern smartphone would make an amazing espionage tool in terms of 1950s cold war spy thrillers, even without network support. It's got multiple cameras (including video!), microphones, can take high-resolution snapshots of documents and turn them into text transcripts using OCR, can act as a voice recorder, and so on, and it more or less fits inside a cigarette case. Plant a picocell and a satellite uplink (or something to put it in contact with your far future Time Patrol servers) within a couple of hundred metres of a target installation and your infiltrator is suddenly streaming live data and planting bluetooth enabled bugs everywhere and has positional awareness and mapping capability. And we take this stuff for granted?

23:

There are plenty of places in the UK that have no mobile telephone coverage, but they tend to be, er, lightly populated and remote. I agree that the past 3 decades have seen computers affect our lives far more than they did in the previous 3 decades, despite the technical changes being far greater in the earlier period. What I find surprising is actually how little of the potential functionality of modern electronics is used, or even made available to the customer. Smartphones are a partial exception, but even those mostly provide an aggregation of the functionality of the previous era, rather than what they could do.

24:

"...Right?"

...Nope. That just seems normal to me. I was going to add "because that's how I live" but it then occurred to me that I'm also perfectly at home with plots where nobody has a car, and all travel is by train/foot/horse [and cart].

If anything it's the other way round; it's plots that do go on about phones that graunch with me. I keep having thoughts like "oh shit, the bastard things are even getting into books now".

25:

Not at all surprised that you'd seen them. Looks like the app is no longer available, and the first book is out of print, though the others are still available.

WRT phones in fiction: I recently finished writing a novella, set in the mid-1920s. In one scene a character has to warn others of something about to happen, so she's cranking on the phone until people on the party line pickup theirs. I wasn't really able to find anything other than a basic description of something like that. Hopefully I got it right. OTOH, it's a prequel to my Urban/Portal Fantasy novel where everyone has a smartphone. Only one car at the end of the former, plenty of them in the latter.

26:

Also, pre-ordered the book more'n a week ago.

And that Politico article about Colorado Springs politics you re-tweeted: I'd repressed a lot of that. Didn't vote for the "Strong Mayor" nonsense, or the mayor who came along with it. I voted for Skorman (a mensch, used-book store & restaurant owner. The rare kind of business person who goes into politics and doesn't think that government should be run like a business) then and more recently. Didn't vote for the current Mayor, though he has turned out to be not terrible, much better as mayor than he was as District Attorney.

27:

Actually, there are several ways in which governments SHOULD be run like (successful) businesses, whereas the UK's loons of the past 30 years (and, to a lesser extent, the USA's) have run them like failing businesses (or arguably, like households on fixed incomes). For example, if your business starts to make a loss because of changing circumstances, you MUST continue to invest in training, equipment, R&D and breaking into new markets - NOT cutting them back or out to balance the cash flow, or you WILL go broke in the medium term. Similarly, outsourcing works only if you have a strong, TECHNICAL purchasing department that ensures that you get a better result for less money than doing the task in-house does.

28:

Consider the greatest Cyberpunk novel ever written: "The sky over the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel."

Kids these days probably think that means "blue." And Neuromancer included pay phones (and probably other anachronisms as well.) If you're the author its gotta hurt!

I feel bad for the kids reading it. How can they know the joy of seeing a port (sea or space?) with the cranes and gantries posed against clouds the color of static?

DAMNED KIDS! GET OFF MY LAWN!

29:

If you want to see some interesting technological development in the movies, you might try watching The Maltese Falcon. Not just the 1941 version with Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor - the ones made in 1931 and 1936 (yes, three versions of the movie in 10 years - this was how life was in the Before Times).

As one example: in the 1931 version, Sam Spade (Ricardo Cortez) picks up a phone and talks to an operator to get connected. By the time 1941 rolls around, Sam Spade (Bogart) is able to dial direct - but watch how many numbers he dials!

The 1936 version (Satan Met a Lady) isn't all that good, but since all of the movies are set in 'the present', the little details show how technologies changed.

30:

Elderly Cynic @27: I had the thought after posting that perhaps I should have said "run like a big corporation". Reagan 'shrank' the government by outsourcing various aspects, though in actuality that led to there being triple the number of employees involved. I had a friend who did data entry with a company contracted with the Dept. of Labor in the early 90s. Ronnie also wanted agencies like NASA to make a profit, which arguably led to the Challenger disaster. My take on it. And here's the article mentioned above: The Short, Unhappy Life of a Libertarian Paradise

JReynolds @29: (yes, three versions of the movie in 10 years - this was how life was in the Before Times). Hmm, what they call Rebooting now, how many versions of Spiderman/Batman/Superman in the last couple decades? I've only seen the Bogart version, though knew about the earlier ones. In my novella I intentionally avoided having an operator, someone who might be listening in—was trying to keep it simple, and it's set in a small town with other issues that would complicate things.

Hey Charlie! How's this for a Tzompantli: Aztec tower of human skulls uncovered in Mexico City Yeah, I'm sure you've seen this too.

31:

Yep, I saw the news about that Tzompantli.

I am now working out a role for them in future Laundry Files novels.

(Sweet dreams!)

32:

A modern smartphone would make an amazing espionage tool in terms of 1950s cold war spy thrillers, even without network support.

You're not just right, you're so right they made a movie and a TV series about it. At least some of it is online; a short clip on youtube shows us how 1972 implemented a smartphone and Siri system. Quite well really, just with more people and more blinking lights. I don't think the turtleneck sweaters were mechanically necessary.

Apparently it was called Search Control on BBC 1; someone here might have memories of seeing it on the air.

33:

Or to deal with something a little more recent, how about the style of news-gathering on Max Headroom, which is very possible right now.

34:

I do remember that series, though the most detailed memory is of other members of the team trying to find out what the "C R" in C R Grover stood for.

35:

Re: outsourcing. Ditto in the UK, starting with Thatcher, and continuing up to Cameron. May is too busy bailing out the canoe :-)

36:

:) Well, I saw a copy in the wild for the first time; Waterstones. I had to bite my tongue and not buy it until next week...(although I may have read the second and third chapters...)

37:

Or to deal with something a little more recent, how about the style of news-gathering on Max Headroom, which is very possible right now.

I'll take "live and direct" over "fair and balanced," thank you...

38:

Kids these days think it means "black": blue channels went out a few years ago. And given Gibson has said he was thinking of 1950s dead channels ("silvery-black, almost all dark" apparently), they may be more 'correct' than us.

TL;DR: The kids are alright. :-P

39:

Gibson has said he was thinking of 1950s dead channels ("silvery-black, almost all dark" apparently)

He was writing something noir. I assume that he was not talking about pictures of an Indian and a tube in the sky. ;)

40:

I may have to get a signed copy shipped to Aus. The pre-purchase Delerium Brief (and most earlier Laundry) have disappeared from Google Play Books in Australia. I suppose I should email Hachette and find out what is happening. I was planning on re-reading the last few as a refresher.

41:

I haz new Strozz book now. Iz happy.

42:

No borrowing of Scalzi's soapbox this time around, then?

43:

Yay! Back on Google Play. All there now for my day to day reading method.

44:

Currently half way through and I have to say it is up to form. In fact it is eerie how accurately it mirrors the current political landscape. There are times when it is easy to forget it is a work of fiction.

One minor quibble. If Bob is travelling from London to Bristol, why bother with the M5?

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This page contains a single entry by Charlie Stross published on June 27, 2017 12:03 PM.

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