Archive for Interesting Stuff
A chat with Maurice Broaddus (Podcast)
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Our Man in New York caught up with Maurice Broaddus last week, and chatted about the conclusion of his extraordinary Knights of Breton Court trilogy, and his future plans.
So, pop the kettle on, put a couple of biccies* on a plate, and listen in.
Theme tune from the wonderful John Anealio.
To download this podcast, right click here and save.
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*cookies
Darren Turpin joins Angry Robot
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We have fresh flesh! We are delighted to announce that Little, Brown’s Online Marketing Manager Darren Turpin will be joining SF & fantasy imprint Angry Robot from 7th November, as Marketing & Digital Manager.
Turpin will report to Angry Robot publishing director Marc Gascoigne, and work on promoting the full range of Angry Robot titles, as well as developing some currently unannounced new digital initiatives. (Yay, secret stuff!) Turpin had been at Little, Brown for three and a half years, originally working for the company’s science fiction and fantasy list, Orbit. He was also previously manager of the (legendary!) SF department at Waterstone’s Deansgate, Manchester, editor of their in-house SF magazine The Alien Has Landed, and one of the compilers of The Waterstone’s Guide to SF & Fantasy.
Darren said, without any coercion: “I’m hugely excited by the prospect of working for Angry Robot; they’re a cutting-edge independent publisher with a great reputation, an enthusiastic fan-base and a fantastic author roster… what’s not to love? It will be great to get back to genre publishing as well, it’s where my roots lie and where my heart has always been. I can’t wait to get started.”
Marco added, as you do: “Darren’s made quite a name for himself in both science fiction bookselling and publishing. It’s our tremendous good fortune to find a role for him that truly plays to all of his strengths. Angry Robot is growing in leaps and bounds both in the UK and US, and Darren is just who we need to take our message further than ever before.”
Look out for him popping up here as soon as he’s gone through the implantation procedures.
Support the World SF Travel Fund
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He’s a busy bee, that Mr Lavie Tidhar. Not content with running the World Fantasy Award nominated World SF Site, and writing a bunch of kickass books for us and other publishers, he’s just set up the World SF Travel Fund.
According to the World SF Travel Fund website:
A combination of genre professionals and fans from the international scene and the United States have gathered together to create the World SF Travel Fund. The fund has been set up to enable one international person involved in science fiction, fantasy or horror to travel to a major genre event.
The first recipient of the fund is genre blogger and activist Charles Tan, from the Philippines. Read More→
Now recruiting – new member of the Angry Robot team wanted
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Angry Robot Books – you know, us: the award-winning new publishers of SF, Fantasy and beyond – are expanding. To that end, we have a vacancy for a … well, let’s call it an Ebook & Marketing Manager.
The thing is, no one at Angry Robot just does one thing. We’re not that sort of company. We like multi-taskers who can turn their hand to more than one role. This is essential as we grow from our current small scale, our eyes firmly set on a worldwide presence.
Right now, the areas we want to expand are our rapidly-growing digital publishing programme, and our marketing and publicity activity. So we’d like someone – a bright, hard-working someone – to cover those roles. Both of those areas are set for large-scale expansion over the next 18 months, so this role will require an experienced self-starter, with clear project management skills, and a proven ability to deliver. Book marketing and metadata use, and familiarity with webstores and Ebook creation, are essential. And of course a strong knowledge of Science Fiction & Fantasy would obviously be most welcome. Read More→
Best of 5, Best of 20
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It’s an absolute joy to be able to announce that Gary McMahon’s superior horror novel, Pretty Little Dead Things, is shortlisted for the British Fantasy Society’s Best Novel award. Congratulations to Gary, and to the 4 other nominees.
You can read a sample, below, and pick up a copy from all good bookshops.
In other news, Zinzi December, the troubled protagonist in the Arthur C Clarke Award-winning Zoo City by Lauren Beukes, has been named by SFX Magazine as one of The 20 Greatest Heroes of SF Literature. You can also read an extract from Zoo City, below.
Sample chapters (click for full screen):
Open Submissions Month – some stats
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We reported in April that we’d had just under 1,000 submissions during our Open Door month in March. After accounting for duplicated and recalled submissions, the final tally is 944*.
Of those 944:
131 were described by the authors as horror.
318 as science fiction
423 as fantasy
72 had no genre attached (despite the submission guidelines stating a genre should be chosen. Ah, well).
Of the 131 horror submissions, 120 were rejected without calling in a full MS. 11 full manuscripts were called in, of which 1 has been rejected so far, and 10 still under consideration.**
Of the 423 fantasy submissions, 246 were rejected without calling in a full MS, 14 were rejected after calling in a full MS, 150 are still in the reading list, and 13 have been escalated to the Angry Robot editorial team.
Of the 318 SF submissions, 130 were rejected without calling in a full MS, none have yet been rejected after calling in a full MS, 186 are still in the reading list, and 2 have been escalated to the editors.
Of the “other” 72, 64 were rejected without calling in a full submission, 6 were rejected after calling in the full MS and 2 have been escalated.
So, altogether:
336 still to read.
570 rejected at partial stage.
21 rejected after calling in the full MS.
17 have so far reached the editors’ desks (that’s 2.8% of the submissions read so far).
If the remaining submissions follow the same pattern, then around 26 manuscripts will be read by the AR editorial team.
Of the 17 that have been passed up so far, 15 are still under consideration. 2 have been read and rejected. One was very good, one was exceptionally good, but not a good fit for Angry Robot.
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*due to the way in which the filing system operates, these figures might be out slightly, but they’ll be more or less right.
** If you sent in a submission and marked it as horror, you should have received a response by now. If you haven’t, drop us a line through our Contact Form. (Note: if you marked it as “horror/fantasy” or “horror/SF” it’s been designated as fantasy or SF and will probably still be in our reading list, so don’t query, yet.
Mistification – a rat ate my readers’ notes
Posted by: | CommentsKaaron Warren‘s intriguing third novel Mistification is out in the UK and as an eBook this week, and coming to US stores at the end of the month. As is sometimes our wont, to accompany the launch we asked her for a few short notes on a book to, you know, give readers a little more insight into its origins, inspirations and the delights it promises. Well… this is what she sent us…
• • •
The working title for Mistification was “A Rationale of Stories”, which is one meaning of the word mythology. Marvo learns everything he knows from the stories people tell him. He learns about human behaviour, food, science and death. I was meticulous in my record-keeping in making sure that the lessons he learnt were used after he heard the story and not before. Sadly, these records, along with my early writing, were destroyed when a rat died in a box of papers in my shed while we were in Fiji. Look at his little paws!
One of the first stories Marvo hears is this one; the story of the cane he steals as his magic wand. I recently learned that the word “lady” means loaf kneader, from the Old English hlaf (loaf) and dige (kneader). It is strangely appropriate to this story.
The Cane
This came from a man who didn’t need it any more. Used it for years to beat his wife. He could see all right; everything working okay there. It was the downstairs department, the old one-two. Cos he wanted to, his wife being not bad to look at, but he couldn’t. He’d been okay with sluts and scrags, although he was often drunk then. So either the booze propped his prick up or it stole away the memory of his flops.
He’d try away and fail, and there under the bed sat the cane. He’d reach it out and give her a belt, swipe her with it, and pretend he hated her.
The wife got tired of this after a while. It wasn’t like she deserved it, talked back or whatever. So she got some outside help.
I don’t know if it was magic, or watching what she was doing, but it worked. First, she laid out two large rubber sheets on the lounge room floor. She poured jars of honey over one; wheat on the other.
Then she slowly removed her clothes. She bathed, soaping each crevice and nook, cleaning each strand of hair. She rinsed until her skin squeaked.
She walked naked to the room of honey and wheat, where her husband sat waiting and watching. She rolled over and over in the honey till her whole body was covered with it. Then she rolled in the wheat.
With his help, she removed the grains, rolling them off her skin and into a bowl. They ground the grains in a mill, four hands turning the handle anti-clockwise. The flour she mixed into a dough which she kneaded and kneaded and kneaded. Then she baked it into bread.
The man ate the bread and was very pleased with the results. So pleased he gave away his wife-beating cane and swore never to use it again.
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In Mistification you’ll also find a recipe for Bouillabaisse, a list of historical suicides, and four cures for epilepsy, including one involving the flesh of a white hound.
A natter with Damned Busters cover artist Tom Gauld
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So look, everyone is saying that Matthew Hughes’ first novel for Angry Robot, The Damned Busters, is bloody great fun. And they are wise to say such a thing, for it be true.
But perhaps as much attention has been paid – by those who’ve seen the physical editions at least – to the fab cover from cartoonist and illustrator Tom Gauld. In the UK, trendy bookish types like us know him from his pithy cartoons on the letters page of The Guardian‘s Review section every Saturday. In the US and even further afield, though, I suspect he is known to just a few connoisseurs of small press cartoon work. So we tracked him down last Friday afternoon and fired a few questions at the fellow. This is what came back… (All images can be clicked for larger versions, in case you were wondering.)
Q: What do you call yourself – graphic artist, cartoonist, professional doodler, etc?
I say “cartoonist and illustrator”.
Q: How did you get into “all this”?
I drew a lot as a child, and when I realised that you could draw as a job I decided that was for me. I studied illustration at Edinburgh College of art and the Royal College and since graduating in 2001 I’ve been drawing full time.
Q: Do you do lots of sketches and throw all the bad ones around the room or do you chew your pencil for days and then nail it first off?
I sit and doodle in my sketchbook and try to play around quite a lot about with ideas before going on to make a picture. My technique is relatively time consuming and its not easy to change things once they’re drawn so I try to think it all through at the beginning.
Q: What’s your typical working day, if there is one?
I’m at my studio from about 8.30am till 4.30pm. I work best in the morning so that’s when I do most of my creative work and in the afternoons I do more research and admin and internet time-wasting.
Q: Is it really annoying, when people say it’s just scribbling and colouring in, and when will you get a proper job?
Well it’s not really a proper job, and much of it IS just scribbling and colouring in. I don’t deny that it’s a nice way to make a living. A more common misunderstanding is that people say “Oh you must have such FUN coming up with all these FUNNY ideas! You must be laughing all day long!” whereas I’m either wracking my brain for a good idea or meticulously editing the idea to make it as funny or interesting as possible.
Q: Do you think there should be more cartoon-style novel covers?
I don’t think THAT many novels really suit this style, but when it’s done right it can be really great: I’d like to see more great ones. Chris Ware’s cover for Candide was one of the first I saw and one of the best.
Q: What would you kill to illustrate?
Kurt Vonnegut’s books.
Q: Anything you really hate/struggle with drawing?
People. I’m continually seeking a way of drawing people which satisfies me and works for my ideas and stories. I’m slowly getting better but I’m not there yet. Robots are so much easier.
Q: You’ve got a really distinctive style – do you ever experiment with other techniques, formats or materials?
I mess around a bit with other things (brushes, colouring pens, collage, Lego) and I find it can be very helpful for generating and exploring ideas, but I tend to find that when it comes to finished work I’m happy with the simplicity of my usual pen on paper style.
Q: Just how obsessed with robots are you?
I wouldn’t like to say obsessed, but I find them almost endlessly interesting. There is tragedy in their place between sentient beings and disposable products. And as I said, they are much easier to draw than real people.
Q: Isn’t it great how many times you sneak SF/genre tropes into your Guardian Review cartoons? (Sorry, that’s more of a statement.)
Yeah. Sci-fi and genre fiction have much better visuals than literary fiction. I’ve attached a cartoon about this.
Q: Which means you must read widely too – who are your favourite authors, any genre?
Off the top of my head Kurt Vonnegut, PG Wodehouse, John le Carre, Magnus Mills, William Golding, Geoges Simenon.
Q: Who in your field deserves more acclaim?
Anders Nilson is an amazing artist, I’m very excited about his forthcoming 600-page epic Big Questions.
Q: What would you be if you didn’t do this?
If I couldn’t draw for a living, I’d like to write or animate. If I had to do something completely different I’d be a baker.
Q: And will we ever see the Bumper Complete Book of Collected Tom Gauld one day?
Yes, well sort of. I’m just finishing up a graphic novel and once that’s out of the way I’m going to figure out a way to collect much of my previous work in some way or other.
Massive thanks to Tom. See his work online at tomgauld.com. And look, he even made us a new Angry Robot logo. <3
Putting South African Science Fiction on the map
Posted by: | CommentsThere’s a great feature about South African science fiction over at The Guardian, today. Unsurprisingly, our very own Lauren Beukes features quite prominently, being described as having “heralded something of a coming of age for South African speculative fiction.”
It’s a good read, and well worth ten minutes of your time.
While we’re on the subject of Lauren, her quite brilliant Zoo City has just been reviewed over at the SciFi London website:
You see in this reader’s humble opinion it was the only one [of the Arthur C Clarke shortlisted books] with a genuine pull-you-along-for-the-ride decent story inside, a murder/mystery/thriller set against a sci-fi backdrop that compelled you to keep reading until you got to the end and found out what happened. Not the cleverest, funniest, best-written, smartest or most technologically interesting of the six, but by far and away the best story, and really, that’s what makes a great book.
Competition Time – Remix the Robot!
Posted by: | CommentsAnnouncing! The frankly incredible Remix the Angry Robot Theme Tune contest. Woah lawd yeah!
OK, so first there were our wonderful monthly podcasts, conducted by Mighty Mur Lafferty (no really, that’s her full three-word name – check her passport if you don’t believe us). To help give her broadcasts a proper opening, our Mur commissioned the uncontainable talents of John Anealio to create the Angry Robot theme tune. And lo, toes were tapped most verily and heads they did nod.
Its life-changing twenty-two seconds were enough to lead into whichever of our intrepid authors were braving Mur’s piercing questions, but unbeknownst to us mere mortals, minds immeasurably superior to ours were beavering away behind the scenes on something far grander. For yes indeed, that man Matt Forbeck was plotting away with the selfsame Anealio to produce a version that had, oh my, verses… containing, gasp, lyrics, no less. And thus it became lead track on John’s recent Robots EP, still available for ** free ** download over at Bandcamp.
But that busy Mr Anealio couldn’t resist fiddling about. Typical human. So this week he debuted the following gentle mood manipulator, the unplugged version of “Angry Robot”, via the primitive broadcast system known as YouTube:
But why should the composer have all fun, you cry! Where’s our chance to dick around with this song, you demand! Well hush yo mouth and listen up, sparky, cos that’s what we’re getting to.
For yes, we can proudly announce our next frankly mental contest. Unlike your average genre publisher, Angry Robot has a theme tune. Now it’s time for you guys to REMIX THE THEME TUNE. Here’s all you have to do…
1) Follow the link of your choice below to download the multitracked parts of John and Matt’s full length Angry Robot song.
2) Slice, dice, layer, shuffle, remix, scratch, burn, weld, rip, belay and flense them into a totally different form. Or use these as inspiration for your own band’s version. Or get out comb, paper and vastly expensive sampling software now inexplicably available on your iPhone for only 59¢ and make the ultimate bootleg mash-up. Whatever it takes, make us a new version of the Angry Robot song and rock our metal souls.
3) Send us the resultant magnificent octopus as an MP3, by the end of April 1st.
Assisted by the astute brains of Mr John Anealio and the very Reverend Matt Forbeck we’ll pick our favourites and host them here. If we get enough good tracks, we can probably be persuaded to sort out a Bandcamp EP of all of them, for one and all to download until the robot cows come home.
And of course the very best one will win something as demented as the song: you’ll get a role in Matt Forbeck’s next novel for Angry Robot – and a very nasty death is guaranteed too!
The various parts you need are no longer available, because the competition has closed. Sorry.
John said to tell you muso types that the original files are in D minor, at 116 bpm. Yeah, like, back in the lab, professor! Anyways, send your entries as an MP3, preferably inside a .zip file, to us at incoming@angryrobotbooks.com
Don’t forget sensible stuff like your name and email address, and remember to ask your parent or guardian before using any scissors.
THE SMALL PRINT
All samples are provided as is. All samples are freely usable in any way you see fit, under Creative Commons. You are allowed to chop these samples into pieces, loop fragments, blow them up, timestretch them out, do whatever. If you use any samples from *other people’s works* for some demented mash-up and they come after you with swanky lawyers, we don’t know you. If somehow you have a top ten hit with these and are suddenly neck-deep in floozies and fast cars, ours is a pint of champers and a Ferrari. Each. You agree that we can post your mad remixes on the internet for humans to hear.
