Archive for Angry Robot
Angry Robot eBooks now available
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We’re big fans of eBooks, here at Angry Robot. Well, we’re big fans of books, and eBooks are just one of the formats that we love. We’ve been working furiously behind the scenes to get you eBook versions of our titles, and today we launch the first 9.
- Moxyland by Lauren Beukes
- Slights by Kaaron Warren
- Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero by Dan Abnett
- Winter Song by Colin Harvey
- The Crown of the Blood by Gav Thorpe
- Sixty-One Nails by Mike Shevdon
- The Road to Bedlam by Mike Shevdon
- Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
- Kell’s Legend by Andy Remic
Our eBooks can be purchased through a number of online retailers, including the Amazon US Kindle store*, Barnes and Noble, Sony Reader Store, and many others. In the UK you will shortly be able to purchase them through Amazon Kindle UK and Waterstones. Within a few days our titles will also appear in the Apple iBookstore.
We have also launched our own eBook store at
Our eBooks are all currently priced at £3.50 (through UK retails) or $4.99 (overseas).
and if you purchase your eBooks through our own store, you can download them as often as you need to (in case you change eReading devices, for instance, or lose access to your copy for any other reason). And all downloads from angryrobotstore.com are DRM-free!
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Kindle US Note:
The search facility for these titles isn’t currently working at the Amazon.com Kindle store, so here are the direct links, while the techie gurus work their magic:
- Moxyland
- Sixty-One Nails
- Slights
- Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero
- Winter Song
- Kell’s Legend
- The Road to Bedlam*
- Zoo City*
*available from Thursday September 2nd.
The Latest Interviews and Reviews
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Colin Harvey – author of Winter Song (out today in the US and Canada) tells about his inspirations for the novel in this fascinating interview:
I loved the idea of a man capable of acts of incredible brutality, yet who could write beautiful poetry, who was almost heroically ugly, yet his vitality attracted women. Ragnar (the antagonist in Winter Song) was a fusion of two people I knew, because the sagas don’t attribute emotions or motives, only the character’s actions.
The book review blog Dark Fiction Review is having an Angry Robot Special this week, to celebrate our US and Canada launch. The first book under the microscope is Kaaron Warren’s award-winning Slights.
Slights, is one of those books that reaches into your core and takes something from you, whilst ultimately leaving something you really aren’t sure you wanted to be left with.
Gav Thorpe’s epic fantasy The Crown of the Blood is published this week in the UK and in 4 weeks in the US and Canada. Gillian Polack had this to say:
The Crown of the Blood (Gav Thorpe) is an old-fashioned sword and sorcery romp. There’s not a great deal of sorcery, but there’s lots of fighting and plotting and planning to conquer… it’s a fun book. This book is for readers who want a blast from the past; who want their hour of adventure in a strangGe world.
Mike Shevdon’s superior urban fantasy, Sixty-One Nails has its roots in fact as well as legend. Here, Mike reminds us of some of the history behind the novel.
“Red Light District in a Convent Garden” is an article on the history of Covent Garden, one of the main locations for Sixty-One Nails, proving that truth can sometimes be more surprising than fiction. This is a genteel area in the heart of the West End now, but it has a seedy past.
SciFi Now magazine talks to Dan Abnett about his first (after 35 tie-in titles) original novel – Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero – out today in the US and Canada.
Triumff has been around in my head as a concept for a long time, I think a lot of writers when they start out, they have projects they’d like to develop, and Triumff – bits of it anyway, are getting on for 20 years in terms of an idea. Way back when I was first getting into comics I was thinking ‘Can I make this into a comic? Is there a book lurking there?’ All sorts of things like that. So when I finally got to write a novel of my own for publication, one that somebody was actually going to buy and publish, it seemed that by dint of seniority it deserved the chance.
while over at SF Signal, Dan extols the virtues of the pun:
what it is with me and puns. Call me paranomasiac, but I love ‘em, god help me. Homophonic puns, homonymic puns, homographic puns, Homer Simpson puns, I can’t get enough. I love graphological puns and morphological puns, logical puns and illogical puns, polysemic puns and metonymic puns, old school puns and current puns and, at the risk of fracturing myself, I love compound puns. I can’t have too many multiple puns and as for double entendres, woof! get a load of the double entendres on that, if you know what I mean.
More, soon. 
Angry Robot TV launches!
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Ok, it’s not so much a TV channel as a collection of our multimedia links – videos, first chapter recordings, interviews, podcasts, etc.
So, pull up a chair, crack open a tub of your favourite ice-cream, and enjoy…
Choose your channel from the drop-down list under the new AR TV link in the main menu bar, above.
Lauren’s interview at the BSFA (podcast)
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If you missed the (extremely well-attended) British Science Fiction Association get-together last week, with special guest Lauren Beukes, you can listen to it here.
This month, the special guest is Dan Abnett – well worth attending (August 25th, London). I’ll be interviewing Dan about his writing career – his comics, his novels, his screenwriting. And Dan is always worth listening to.
Venue details here. It’s free, and you don’t have to be a member!
Beukes rocks the BSFA
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A fine time was had by all in London last night, when an unusually packed BSFA meet played host to the one and only Lauren Beukes.
Following a day spent shopping, sightseeing and discussing top secret projects with a Certain Big Movie Producer, I’d thought I’d perhaps worn Lauren out. But faced with an attentive crowd hanging on her every word, Lauren rose to the occasion. Following a reading from Zoo City, Lauren was interviewed by blogger Jonathan McAlmont, and then took questions from the floor on Moxyland, Zoo City, future projects, 
the future of South Africa, all the usual stuff. As well as BSFA regulars, Lauren had attracted a fair number of South African ex-pats, one of whom even arrived bearing a genuine cuddly Moxy! The heavily illustrated Del Lakin-Smith had kindly brought his podcast mic to capture the whole thing, so all being well you’ll be able to hear it all as an online download in a few days.
Tonight it’s the turn of Forbidden Planet on Shaftesbury Avenue to host Ms B. It all starts at 6pm, but do get there early – the word is that those limited edition copies of Zoo City won’t hang around for long.
Meanwhile, the massive interest in Zoo City in Lauren’s native South Africa has produced another interview, this time in the form of a podcast with the (South African) Times. Well worth ten minutes of your time.
And may we just remind you all, cannibal penguin FTW!
Angry Robot – The Year Ahead
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As we near our US and Canada launch and our UK relaunch, we thought you might be interested to see how the year looks in terms of publishing schedule.
We’d already announced our September to November, but now our entire schedule right the way through to the end of June 2011 is available to view on our Books Page (scroll down to see the 2011 titles).
We’ll be linking to specific book pages over the coming weeks, but for now, cast your eyes over the titles, and just imagine the riches that await you…
Here are the Jan-June 2011 authors we’ve just added (and just wait until you see the rest of the year – oh, we are spoiling you…)
- J Robert King
- Aliette de Bodard
- Thomas Blackthorne (John Meaney)
- Maurice Broaddus
- Matt Forbeck
- Ian Whates
- Dan Abnett
- Lavie Tidhar
- KW Jeter
- Matthew Hughes
- Andy Remic
- Kaaron Warren
- Tim Waggoner
- Lauren Beukes
- Guy Adams
- Justin Gustainis
A few recent reviews and other interesting stuff
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s been a while since we posted any reviews (largely due to the fact that we’re in the middle of a short break before our US/Canada launch and our UK relaunch) but here are a few that came to our attention, recently:
The Speculative Scotsman has this to say about Kaaron Warren’s wonderful fantasy, Walking the Tree:
Warren’s almost detached tone belies a startling blackness at the heart of her narrative… Walking the Tree is an unpretentious, eye-opening experience. Dark but never dim, Karron Warren’s first novel since she documented the psyche of a serial killer in her debut Slights is an insightful, earthy chronicle of diversity and understandings arrived at and remade. Hers is a voice that demands to be heard, and I don’t doubt that this marvelous fable represents only the root of her talents.
Wow!
Meanwhile, over at BiblioBuffet, Arthurian specialist Gillian Polack touches on what makes a successful retelling of the Arthurian myth. King Maker comes under some pretty close scrutiny (the section on King Maker is about halfway down the feature):
King Maker is different. King Maker is based on an idea so very clever that I keep telling my friends “Look—it’s clever!” It’s like watching West Side Story for the first time. It’s like reading Malory as an adult, after having discovered Geoffrey of Monmouth and Nennius and Wace and Chrétien and Marie.
There is so much more I could quote from this article, but rather than just read the odd soundbite, I urge you to read the full piece.
And finally (for now), Mat Coward reviews Colin Harvey’s Winter Song for the Morning Star newspaper:
This is tough, traditional science fiction with plenty of “Hard SF” and world-building, intriguingly leavened by the spirit of the Norse myths that runs through it. Good entertainment by a thinking writer.
Angry Robot of the Week
Posted by: | CommentsThis week’s feature, by Alasdair Stuart, was originally scheduled for last week, but we had to hold it back because Sonny was Just. So. Angry! Luckily, he’s calmed down a bit, now. And no – the name of the film in which he stars is not the working title for the next Apply gadget, even though Sonny looks like he was designed in those hallowed halls. We think.
Angry Robot of the Week
Week Four
Sonny
So let’s talk about the product placement in the room, shall we? Sonny is the central robot in I, Robot, Alex Proyas’ controversial adaptation/hybrid/chimera/Chuck Taylor Converse ad version of some of Isaac Asimov’s stories. It’s a very easy film to rag on for a whole variety of reasons, starting with what a lot of people perceive as a script that doesn’t remotely honour the source material and finishing with Will Smith looking up at a large bank of evil robots and muttering ‘Oh HELL no.’ Read More→
Justin Gustainis joins the Robot Horde
Posted by: | CommentsThis is a bit of a special announcement for us – our first new signing post since we became an independent publisher!
We are absolutely thrilled to announce our latest signing, bringing a stunning series of books set in the harassed police department of a city full of vampires and werewolves.
We have signed urban fantasy author Justin Gustainis for a new series set in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in a world where supernatural beings are part of everyday life.
Stan Markowski is a Detective Sergeant on the Scranton PD’s Supernatural Crimes Investigation Unit. As Stan puts it in the first book, Hard Spell:
“Like the rest of America, Scranton’s got an uneasy ‘live and let unlive’ relationship with the supernatural. But when a vamp puts the bite on an unwilling victim, or some witch casts the wrong kind of spell, that’s when they call me.
My name’s Markowski. I carry a badge.
Also, a crucifix, some wooden stakes, a big vial of holy water, and a 9mm Beretta loaded with silver bullets.”
Justin Gustainis said, “I’m tremendously pleased to be associated with one of the most dynamic publishers in speculative fiction today, and I look forward to selling enough books to put a smile on that robot’s face.” Ooh, you sweet-talker, you…
The first title in this sensational series, Hard Spell, will be published by Angry Robot in spring 2011, in both the UK and USA.
And so the Angry Robot merchandising begins…
Posted by: | CommentsMy 6-yr old daughter complained to me recently that although there’s a Mother’s Day and a Father’s Day, there’s no Children’s Day. I trotted out the same old argument that every other day is Children’s Day, blah, blah, blah. Marco pointed out that I should have decreed there actually was a children’s day, and as a special treat I should make my daughter something flimsy and useless out of two empty toilet rolls and half an eggshell.
Last weekend was Father’s Day in the UK, so imagine my delight when, instead of a poorly-constructed replica of the Eiffel Tower made out of an old washing-up liquid bottle and a yoghurt pot, I received something actually quite useful, and very sweet.
Click to enlarge
Verity had made me a mousemat for work. She has drawn around her hands, and added decorative detail (she’s fascinated with the Indian culture, and often incorporates her versions of Asian design into her work), and in each corner, there’s a tiny picture of a robot, with the words “Angry Robot” beside it. The finished design was then taken to a gift company and transposed onto a mousemat.
Decorative and practical!
I also received some hand-cut marzipan shapes, dipped in chocolate. I think I’ll keep her.
So, the first Angry Robot merchandise – I think we could do a lot worse, don’t you?
