Adrian Tchaikovsky's Blog, page 6

Spiderlight is out today! And getting some very nice reviews, for which I and all the little spiders are properly grateful. The book gets a mention in Leah Schnelbach’s “fiction’s greatest spiders” article here (can you believe someone beat me to that article?), I sneak into Barnes & Noble’s new release list (along with Emma Newman’s new Split Worlds novel, about which I am unreasonably excited), and if you’ve got this far on my blog but are still kind of scratching your head and thinking, “not sure about this weird spider guy” then the first chapter is up at Geek Syndicate here with a very nice review here, DJ at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape has a special Spiderlight-themed interview here and Holy Mother of God if that hasn’t swayed you then you are made of stone.

Anyway, as one of the chief schticks of Spiderlight is the deconstruction of the traditional fantasy setting, as seen and loved in tabletop RPGs everywhere, I thought I would introduce you to the cast of characters in a particularly appropriate way: please, then, meet our heroes of the hour:

I am up to my eyeballs with stuff right at this moment, principally Tiger & Wolf book 3 (tentatively The Hawk and the Hyena? Does that work? I keep thinking “handsaw” Beats “The Owl and the Pussycat” which was the working title for a while) but however I take a break to bring you Tidings of Good Things. Or possibly Elder Things.

The sequel to The Tiger and the Wolf is coming out probably around February 2017, incidentally. This is The Bear and the Serpent (1) and, avoiding spoilers, will take those characters who survived the first book to that other place. Hope I’m not giving too much away there.

In August, my shortish novel Spiderlight will be out in the US and beyond (including UK) from tor.com. Spiderlight is a bit of a deconstructionist fantasy where a recognisably D&D-ish adventuring party find that, to defeat the Dark Lord under the terms of the Prophecy, they have to take on a Mirkwood-style giant spider. Very much not a case of “You look trustworthy, would you like to join our party…”

In July, however, seeing as apparently I am doing this in any old arse-about-face order, I am very pleased to announce the release of Spoils of War from Newcon Press, the very first collection of Shadows of the Apt stories and not at all just released to keep this site address and my twitter handle relevant. Spoils of War collects some stories previously released here, some released in anthologies elsewhere and some completely new stories. If you’ve been eyeing the 10-volume madness that is SotA somewhat warily, or know someone who has, this should be a cracking introduction to the world of the kinden. Includes adventures of Tisamon in Helleron, tender moments of sentiment with face-changing mass murderer Scylla and Gaved down and out in the occupied Commonweal, amongst other tales.

Finally, in September (to be launched at Fantasycon-by-the-Sea in fact) I am equally happy to say that I am 1/3 of the contributors to The Private Life of Elder Things, a new collection of Mythos stories from Alchemy Press in which I am joined by horror, fantasy and erotica writer Keris McDonald and Cthulhu RPG writer Adam Gauntlett in bringing you a selection of stories about the Things of the Mythos and the way their existence intersects with we poor mortals. Whilst I am proud of my own offerings here, Adam and Keris have pulled an absolute blinder with their stories. Please do go pick up a copy if Lovecraftia is a thing you’re interested in.

Finally, there is one other project in the pipeline – still in negotiations but it looks as though a Shadows of the Apt RPG using the Savage Worlds system may hit Kickstarter towards the end of the year, all being well. Watch this space…

(1) Of course if you google “The Bear and the” to find the cover, it comes up with “Maiden Fair.” Damn you, GRRM!

Or TFW you can’t come up with a clever blog title (1). I have not done bloggery as I should, owing to other stuff to have been doing (25% through The Hawk and the (some other animal) as I write) and so a number of separate posts on stuff I’ve stumbled over and liked are going to be Frankensteined the crap out of in near-English wording. There follows ergo a rather rushed runthrough of what, in my personal and generally uninformed opinion, is good stuff.

Books!

Let’s start with the stuff I’m supposed to actually know about. Peter Newman’s The Malice is out, sequel to the brilliant, original and very well-received The Vagrant. This is a marvellous series, shades of Wolfe, Moorcock and Warhammer 40k, dancing on the line between SF and fantasy. Newman is an exceptional writer, and his 2nd book is every bit as good as his first. The setting is a world overtaken by chaos and corruption, thronging with invading demons, with some bastions of order and a great grimy no-man’s land between. The world is full of marvellous characters – shysters, fallen knights, demon lords, mad scientists – and there’s a lot of deep characterisation given very economically even for small roles. I especially liked the way that use of language (or lack of it) is such a defining tool of characterisation.

Another cracking fantasy I got a chance to look at is Tom Lloyd’s Stranger of Tempests (out 16th June). This is a cracking, fast-paced heroic fantasy about a mercenary company and its newest member, which is territory many writers have looked at. Lloyd’s take is one of the best and most engaging I’ve read, though. It’s a high magic setting (2) with a very likeable cast. Lloyd jokingly describes it as “Malazan marines team up with Lara Croft & travel across Joe Abercrombie’s Red Country with a detour through the deeps of Moria” and, although that doesn’t do it justice, it’s a good description if you take it in the best possible sense.

NK Jemisin’s The Fifth Season is a book I’ve meant to get round to way before now. I’ve enjoyed Jemisin’s writing before, and I think this is a stand-out even for her. It’s a brutal book set in a fascinating world – one dominated by earthquakes and natural disasters, where a caste of geomantic magicians are hated, feared, enslaved and used in equal measure. The book’s several viewpoints take us to, from and through a cataclysm described at the outset as “the end of the world” even for a world that has whole deep-rooted traditions for surviving disasters. Beyond the story itself, which showcases prejudice, fear and exploitation from many angles, the world itself is beautifully formed (and broken), every aspect of it fitting together with a proper sound logic.

Finally, you should also definitely read some Peadar Ó Guilín. I’ve just finished his SF trilogy, The Inferior, The Deserter and The Volunteer, which are also pretty damn apocalyptic. It’s hard to say much without spoiling the many reveals, but the first book kicks off with a tribe of primitive humans locked in carnivorous combat with a variety of equally savage alien races, while some manner of high-techery is obviously going on above. A bit like Smythe’s Way Down Dark, this is a book about people whose entire world is falling down, but whose viewpoint is such that they can’t appreciate it, while the reader can, and can only look on aghast. Ó Guilín’s  new YA book The Call is also recently out, a story about the Sidhe taking a terrible revenge on modern day Ireland. I got a chance to hear him read a section of it last year, and it was dynamite stuff.

Anyway, enough books. Let’s go outside the comfort zone

Games

Not so far outside the zone, then. I have been playing Sunless Sea, from Failbetter who made Fallen London (and sponsored the Kitchies awards?). I have tried to get into Fallen London twice and not managed it, but Sunless Sea turned out to be my game big time. Basically, it’s Victorian times, London has been dragged into a cavernous realm by bats, none of that’s important and you’re a ship’s captain setting out into a great dark seascape in the hope that you won’t die. Which you will, because it’s a rogue-like, but there’s a mechanism to build on your previous deaths so that’s all fine. Play switches between guiding your little ship about discovering islands and avoiding monsters and text adventures ashore. Sunless Sea is in a style I recently heard described as “Gothic Whimsy”; a lot of it is darkly humorous, and it could probably just have stuck with that, except, except… aided by a fantastic soundtrack, this is a game that switches from the risible to the remarkable very deftly. There’s a lot to explore, out on the Unterzee. Every island, every officer you pick up, has a story, and those stories are often tragic, immersive, deeply engaging. And the further you go from London, the weirder things get, until you’re like Roy Batty at the end of Blade Runner, stumbling over the revelations you can never quite impart to the doubting listeners. And your actions change things, even as you are changed by them. I scoffed a bit at the idea of replayability, but I’ve gone through three long-lived captains so far (3) to see how the same stories work out with different choices. I’ve colluded with apes, spiders and tigers against my own kind, I’ve eaten with devils and gone mad with sunlight, I’ve lost dear friends, saved others, and found out that some stories don’t work out happily no matter how you try to change them. It is a very good game. It also has the potential to be very frustrating at the start when you’ve no cash and die a lot, but there’s a function where you can turn on save points, and if you get stuck there is a wiki to look things up in.

Films

All right then. Ready the pillory. I’m going to talk about the Warcraft movie.

Computer game movies are usually terrible, let’s just put that out there. They generally come across as projects which were nobody’s labour of love, flung out half-formed in the assumption that the franchise name will bring people in anyway. With a few notable exceptions (4), fantasy movies are also generally bad, and the reason for that is harder to define, but secondary world fantasy seldom does well on the screen.

Warcraft has garnered some stinking reviews, and in my fairly strong opinion does not in any way deserve them. I enjoyed it; it was a good fantasy film, and also a good Warcraft film speaking as a player of many years’ standing. There was a lot to like. The characterisation was good for many of the characters – there was depth and conflict in most of the cast, and the humour came over as character-driven rather than forcibly inserted by Witty-quip 3000 in post production. The SFX was extremely good – a lot of the film was rather beautiful to watch, even. I never got yanked out of immersion by ropy CGI. Duncan Jones, of Moon fame, took what could have been either a dull stock fantasy or just lazy franchise fayre and made a good film out of it. So there.

Comics

I am in no way qualified to be a comics pundit (although I guess I missed my natural segue, as Paul Cornell has written a Warcraft prequel comic), but I have discovered The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (North and Henderson) and I haven’t stopped giggling since. It does the same number on the Marvel universe as another old favourite of mine, Next Wave, except it explodes less of it.

(1) Which erroneously suggests I ever did

(2) This seems to be a trend at the moment, a swing from the low-magic settings fantasy has been dominated by for a while.

(3) And an undisclosed number of short-lived ones.

(4) No, not Hawk the Slayer.

I have actually been sitting on a post for a while – basically my usual Clarkes shortlist writeup, except it now feels super weird to post it, even though it amounts to little more than a “these books are awesome do go read.” So… no idea if that will ever get posted. But they are all awesome and please do go read.

But today I found out that my own little Guns of the Dawn has been shortlisted for the British Fantasy Society’s Robert Holdstock Award (aka the other award I usually do a shortlist reading post for, as of last year). And that is marvellous news, and I am enormously indebted to all the BFS members who voted for me, and for people like Michaela Graham and Emma Newman who have championed the book so much.

Last year was the first time I got novels out which weren’t part of an ongoing series, and it’s terrific that both of them have got this kind of recognition. I’m not going to do my usual self-effacing bit. I’m going to admit that I am really very, very happy with how that all worked out.

Moving on, though: how about those shortlists, eh? Take a look here. It’s an exceptionally strong year on all fronts, I think. There’s a mix of big names and smaller players too – so for example Stevenson’s Nimona (a personal favourite) is neck and neck with, Sandman, Ms Marvel and the multi-awarded Saga, and Stephen Volk is up for the screen award along with Mad Max and Star Wars (and nice to see Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell there as well!). And Tor UK have had a particularly good year, with Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown hitting two lists, Adam Nevill hitting two lists, and Novak’s Uprooted quite possibly the favourite to win the Holdstock itself, having already won the Nebula. Nice to see Jen Williams’ Iron Ghosts there too.

Paul Cornell’s Witches of Lychford is up for the novellas – pipped by Aliette de Bodard for the BSFA short fiction, but looking good here (My praise for it here  and in fact Paul’s 3rd Shadow Police novel, Who Killed Sherlock Holmes is now out and I must get myself a copy of it), Becky Chambers, whose brilliant A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is up for the Clarkes, is on the Best Newcomer list for the same book (and it’s a phenomenal read) along with Zen, Peter Newman (who has just released The Malice, a sequel every bit as good as The Vagrant), Marc Turner and Steven Poore, good writers all.

The winners will be announced at this year’s Fantasycon this September.

I regret to announce that I won’t be doing my annual readthrough of the Clarkes shortlist this year because of a thorny little conflict of interest. It appears that someone did, after all, think of the Children (of Time) and Portia and her little friends have scuttled their way onto the shortlist.

Is this a good point to mention that CoT is just out in paperback in the UK? It surely is. (Also, Spanish language edition on its way!)

The other shortlisters (shortlistees?) are a formidable field. I’ve already waxed about Dave Hutchinson’s Europe at Midnight, and about the writing of Nnedi Okorafor and James Smythe, though I’ve yet to read their Book of Phoenix and Way Down Dark respectively. I haven’t read Ian Pears’ Arcadia, nor Becky Chambers’ A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, although I’ve certainly heard a great deal of praise. Anyway, I have acquired the rest of the list and will be reading through, no doubt grinding my teeth at how good they all are.

But anyway, before these shenanigans ensued I was about to provide my specious casting of my multispecies novel for our delectation, and I see no reason not to indulge myself. Usual caveat that this is not a thing, there is no film (though rights remain available, hint hint), and it’s all just a bit of fun. I’ve assumed that the various generations of Portias, Biancas and the like would have a single voice her name over the years.

Kern – Eva Green, Mason – Edward James Olmos, Lain – Lupita Nyong’o

Guyen – Patrick Stewart, Karst – Idris Elba, Vitas – Lucy Liu

Scoles  -Christopher Walken, Nessel – Rosario Dawson, Alpash – Grant Imahara

And the vocal talents of:

Portia – Tilda Swinton, Bianca – Taraji P Henson, Fabian – James McAvoy

Viola – Tatiana Maslany

Eliza – Samantha Morton

Just a few of my #shapechallenge doodles from March. In other news; just about to start the third and last Tiger & Wolf book. Proper post soon, hopefully.

One of the recurrent topics at cons is whether e-publishing will impact on the publication of shorter fiction. Thus far: not so much insofar as I’ve seen. Although it is now quite possible to, say, sell a single short story as an e-book(let?) on Amazon, nobody seems to be saying this is a big thing and a way for a writer to pay the bills (please correct me in comments if I’m wrong!). However, there is the matter of the novella. Previously novellas were a rarified enough thing that I only really had them flagged up as a thing when looking at award categories. This is mostly because the length of an epic fantasy novel tends towards the “2 entire novels of any other genre” rather than to brevity. A novella runs from 17,500-40,000 words according to the Hugo criteria, because back in the palaeozoic there were full-on fantasy and SF novels clocking in at 40,001 (between this and the 7,500 word short story is, of course, the moist novelette). I get the impression that historically novellas have been tricky things to market – a very slim volume on the shelves, or possibly gathering for safety in numbers with other novellas (like the two I’ve done for Abaddon, in Journal of the Plague Year and Monstrous Little Voices.)

Of course an e-book doesn’t care as much how long it is, and though the short story revolution some people predicted hasn’t kicked off yet, there does appear to be an armed novella uprising. Specifically, I’m seeing more submission calls for novellas, and last year Tor.com kicked off their own novella line which I thought I’d give a look at. I’ve managed to grab up a half dozen and, as I don’t e-read, I got to see just what you received if you ordered a print copy. The answer being, a very nice little volume indeed that sits on the shelf without being overwhelmed and with top notch cover art (see the images I’ll hopefully remember to garland this post with).

What’s fascinating is seeing how the authors – most of whom, at least, I know from longer work – approach their shortened circumstances, because it’s plain that there’s more than one way to skin a cat down to 30,000 words.

Paul Cornell gives us The Witches of Lychford, a story about supernatural intrusion into a little English village of the modern day – incorporating the takes of the new local vicar, the atheist magic shop owner and a local witch on a menace from outside in more ways than one. It’s a lovely tale, very neatly told, and left very open for the next go-round with the characters (which I believe is indeed on the way) – so that it plays like the first episode of a serial, say. The style recalls Cornell’s excellent Shadow Police books, but the very different setting and less “professional” characters give it a new spin. (As I write this one is on the short fiction shortlist for the BSFA awards).

In contrast, Daniel Polansky’s The Builders is unrepentantly the last act of a story told in piecemeal recollection as we’re introduced to the cast, who are pretty much on their way to a final confrontation with an old enemy. Polansky writes the grittiest of the grimdarks, and this is certainly just as dirty-nailed and dark-humoured as his Low Town books. There is an additional level of joy with the characters being anthropomorphic animals, so that it plays out as though the cast of Wind in the Willows were in a dystopic Western (or ‘Rango Unchained’ maybe?). The species choices for the characters add a whole extra dimension.

Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti is a beautiful piece of SF, with the titular character the first to leave her insular people on earth and go to a multispecies university – against the wishes of her family and bringing along a whole set of traditions that mark her out as ‘other’ amongst the other humans. However, everything changes when the ship is attacked by hostile aliens intent, it seems, on wiping out everyone on board. Binti fits the novella length by a keen focus on the title character, resourceful, intelligent, frightened and very, very human. As with Lagoon’s Nigeria, Binti, one of the Himba people of Namibia, brings a whole new perspective on (and solutions to) SF tropes and situations.

KJ Parker’s novella is The Last Witness, and any fan of his will find it a perfect Parker tale in miniature – the same moral complexity, the same easy voice, the same sudden vertiginous twists. It’s a powerful little tale, and one dealing with some more up-front out of the ordinary elements than Parker generally does (they are there in his work, but often buried deep, or of debatable effect, or just a shock revelation late on – whereas here they are the point of the story).

Another approach to the shortened narrative, and a very effective one, is David Tallerman’s Patchwerk, which brings us in in medias res and basically doesn’t stop running throughout the book, in a desperate chase from start to finish as the lead character tries to undo the terrible result of his own scientific genius. I’ve enjoyed Tallerman’s writing before (His …Thief series is superior fantasy) and this is him showing just how versatile he can be. For reasons I can’t go into (because spoilers) there is a huge amount of variety packed into this little book, and it doesn’t flag for a moment. It’s based around a fascinating concept that, again, I can’t tell you, but highly recommended.*

Finally, we have the only one I’ve read by an author I’ve not come across before, Kai Ashante Wilson’s The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps. This one is compared to Gene Wolfe on the cover, which by my book is a damn high bar, but Wilson clears it readily. Here, rather than the first or last section, the book reads like a comfortable, richly-detailed second act, with the preceding events told sparingly in flashback, and leaving me definitely wanting to know what might happen next. There is a whole lot of worldbuilding packed in, and the world is fascinating and definitely redolent of the New Sun setting, but at the same time the characters are all brought deftly alive – from the titular sorcerer down to the least caravan guard – , the dialogue is a fascinating example of how to use modern idiom in a fantasy setting and make it work, and the prose style is poetic and elegant and a real joy to read.

There are more out there I intend to track down, and I am particularly looking forward to Every Heart a Doorway from Seanan McGuire, a story about a school for children who have returned from adventures in other worlds. So far, though, I’ve enjoyed every one I’ve tried.

*I’m not just saying this because I get a mention in the dedication.

Busybusy with secret projects, but here’s a thing to be going on with.

Further to previous posts about wanting to get back into the drawing game, I discovered a rather neat little artist challenge on Twitter known as #ShapeChallenge. This is a diversion helmed by Studio TeaBreak (@virtualstudio) that I first found through Sarah McIntyre (who, with Phillip Reeve, creates such wonderful books as Cakes in Space and Pugs of the Frozen North) as @jabberworks. Each day a new shape – an outline with a red circle inside it – is posted up at @virtualstudio and the challenge is to turn the innocuous shape into something rare and interesting. I strongly encourage you to go take a look at the gallery under the #ShapeChallenge hashtag, if you’re on Twitter, and even to take up the pen yourself if you’re so inclined.

Below are the pick of my own sketches over February, for your delectation. Look out for the red (or orange, in one case) circles. Some of the original shapes are a bit hidden in the detail…  

So the tigers and the wolves have been let out of the cage and rushed off into the world. I don’t know how this sort of thing affects most authors. For myself, I hit an absolute high buzz when I get to do something properly Authorial – a convention, say, or especially a launch, and then there’s a crash twice as big on the other side. I definitely have one of those subconsciousnesses which really, really disagrees with my having a good time. But! Initial reviews have all been good – 4 stars in SFX and the headline review, no less, in the current issue out right now, which is nothing to complain about. Geek Syndicate likes it, as does Strange Alliances and several other sites have also had nice things to say about it. If you’ve read and enjoyed, please do review on Goodreads, Amazon, wherever you can, really. It all helps, believe me.

I am currently looking forward to Super Relaxed Fantasy Club 24 on the 23rd February, where I’ll be reading a little excerpt and answering questions if anybody has them. It’s 18.30 at The Grange Holborn Hotel in Central London. On the evening of Thursday the 25th my host, Jen Williams, will be launching her 3rd novel The Silver Tide at Forbidden Planet and I hope to be there too. In the interim I will be cracking on with the north face of the projects I’m working on, in particular finishing off the submission-grade draft of The Serpent and the Bear, sequel to the aforementioned tiger, and then looking at a piece of near-future SF I’ve been kicking about, codename Special Forces.

Because I can’t leave stuff alone, I have various internet alerts set up. One thing that is particularly gratifying is the way the Shadows of the Apt one has kept springing up new results even though the series itself finished up a year and a half ago. People are still recommending the books on forums, reviewing them and generally talking about them. The insect-kinden are close to my heart, still (and there are those short story collections coming out this year, with further adventures in the Lowlands and beyond) and it’s grand that, though Seal of the Worm has been and gone, the books remain a going concern.The one thing I’d really like to see would be a tabletop RPG of the series, and every so often I get together with someone and talk about the logistics of it. If there is a games publisher out there that is looking for a rather different fantasy setting, by all means give me a call…