September 2021 Archives

It's launch day for Invisible Sun in the UK today, so without further ado ...

Invisible Sun comes out next week!

If you want to order signed copies, they're available from Transreal Fiction in Edinburgh: I'll be dropping in some time next week to sign them, and Mike will ship them on or after the official release date. (He's currently only quoting UK postage, but can ship overseas: the combination of Brexit and COVID19 has done a whammy on the post office, however things do appear to be moving—for now.)

I'm also doing a couple of virtual events.

First up, on Tuesday the 28th, is a book launch/talk for Tubby And Coos Book Shop in New Orleans; the event starts at 8pm UK time (2pm local) with streaming via Facebook, YouTube, and Crowdcast.

Next, on Wednesday September the 29th, is the regular Tom Doherty Associates (that's Tor, by any other name) Read The Room webcast, with a panel on fall fantasy/SF launches from Tor authors—of whom I am one! Register at the link above if you want to see us; the event starts at 11pm (UK time) or 6pm (US eastern time).

There isn't going to be an in-person reading/book launch in Edinburgh this time round: it's beginning to turn a wee bit chilly, and I'm not ready to do indoors/in your face events yet. (Maybe next year ...)

Invisible Sun Cover

I have a new book coming out at the end of this month: Invisible Sun is the last Merchant Princes book, #9 in a series I've been writing since 2001—alternatively, #3 in a trilogy (Empire Games) that follows on from the first Merchant Princes series.

The original series was written from 2001 to 2008; the new trilogy has been in the works since 2012: I've explained why it's taken so long previously.

Combined, the entire sequence runs to roughly a million words, making it my second longest work (after the Laundry Files/New Management series): the best entrypoint to the universe is the first omnibus edition (an edited re-issue of the first two books—they were originally a single novel that got cut in two by editorial command, and the omnibus reassembles them): The Bloodline Feud. Alternatively, you can jump straight into the second trilogy with Empire Games—it bears roughly the same relationship to the original books that Star Trek:TNG bears to the original Star Trek.

If you haven't read any of the Merchant Princes books, what are they about?

Let me tell you about the themes I was playing with.

So, I'm going to talk about Elon Musk again, everybody's least favourite eccentric billionaire asshole and poster child for the Thomas Edison effect—get out in front of a bunch of faceless, hard-working engineers and wave that orchestra conductor's baton, while providing direction. Because I think he may be on course to become a multi-trillionaire—and it has nothing to do with cryptocurrency, NFTs, or colonizing Mars.

This we know: Musk has goals (some of them risible, some of them much more pragmatic), and within the limits of his world-view—I'm pretty sure he grew up reading the same right-wing near-future American SF yarns as me—he's fairly predictable. Reportedly he sat down some time around 2000 and made a list of the challenges facing humanity within his anticipated lifetime: roll out solar power, get cars off gasoline, colonize Mars, it's all there. Emperor of Mars is merely his most-publicized, most outrageous end goal. Everything then feeds into achieving the means to get there. But there are lots of sunk costs to pay for: getting to Mars ain't cheap, and he can't count on a government paying his bills (well, not every time). So each step needs to cover its costs.

What will pay for Starship, the mammoth actually-getting-ready-to-fly vehicle that was originally called the "Mars Colony Transporter"?

Specials

Merchandise

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Propaganda