Archive for Robots at large
Robot fun for the holidays
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That’s the end of our Twelve Days. The Angry Robot offices are now closed until January 4th 2010, but we will be picking up email, Twitters and Facebook messages pretty much as normal throughout so don’t hold back. Perhaps just don’t expect an instant reply.
While you’re waiting for our Christmas Day Message, or in the long days that will stretch out between now and our return, here are some robot-related links to keep you amused, bemused or downright confused.
Thanks to each and every one of you for your support, help and wild creativity this year. Here’s to a very Robot New Year. Brace yourselves, North America – you’re next.
– Marco & Lee & Chris xxx
Those links…
• Fabulous handmade retro robots
• Even more cute, with top robot love sequence (courtesy Graham Linehan)
• The Old Robots page (cheers, Lauren)
• Amazing what shows up on CCTV: One and Two
• Faces in odd places, including an angry robot
• Robot ferrets to find drugs
• That robot Xmas tree dance
• That amazing short in which giant robots attack Montevideo
• Lovely Russian kids’ book robots
• Why yes, we’d love one each if you’re feeling flush
• Not us
• We don’t talk about this one
• And finally, how we actually genuinely totally truthfully came up with the stunning imprint name Angry Robot (not really)
Free Maurice Broaddus!
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No, no, not from some kind of human bondage or incarceration in a dank and dismal prison cell.
Free as in “gratis”, for nowt, zilch, zero spondooliks. To get to the point, Apex are featuring a bloody fabulous short story by Maurice Broaddus, dashing and debonair author of King Maker, which is just the first of three volumes in his frankly brilliant Knights of Breton Court series. It’s called Pimp My Airship, and if that title alone doesn’t make you reach for a damp cloth, well, we’re going to have to take away your membership and boot you out the door, kid.
Go read it now.
Novacon this weekend
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Says it all, really. Except to add that:
- Novacon is one of the UK’s most venerable SF conventions.
- For years it was held in a truly dismal venue in Walsall, one of the world’s great locations (for fans of urban blight).
- This year it’s moved to Nottingham. To a hotel maybe 400 feet from the Angry Robot offices. Across the road from the official Angry Robot local pub. Our manor, basically.
- (Yes, the rumours are true: we did try to persuade the landlord of the Grosvenor to change hisname to the Angry Robot for the weekend. No dice, worse luck. We’d trash the place, but hell, it’s the nearest pub to the office, y’know.)
- There’ll be all manner of fabulous science fictional types around. As well as fragrant guest of honour Justina Robson, meet and greet with Angry Robot types Mike Shevdon and Ian Whates, and at least one of the AR multitude. OK, me.
Scary Angry Robot mask for Halloween!
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Click for a much larger, printable version.
So look, we were talking in the office, and as a joke, purely as a joke, I said – or maybe Lee said – words to the effect of: why don’t we turn Angstrom, the Angry Robot logo droid, into a mask and give it away for Halloween? We chuckled for a few moments, shook our heads, and went back to rejecting seventy more urban fantasies in which the Celtic Wild Hunt somehow rampage around Chicago, putting the willies up several characterless cardboard-cutout students.
Only… the other evening over too many beers I mentioned it to the nice people at our design agency, Argh! Nottingham. They laughed the sort of laugh that says, “You gotta be kidding.” and their eyes went all panicky. I reassured them that despite the earliness of the hour, I was deadly serious. They went away, they came back again, and thus…
Either print it onto as thick a piece of card as your printer can handle or glue a flimsier printout onto thicker card. (Note to self: Insert something here about A3 paper for people with scarily big heads, but don’t make any reference to one particular Angry Robot author, oh no.) Then cut around all the dotted lines without severing your fingers, do something clever with some thin elastic cord or glue it directly to your forehead, then go scare the bejeezus out of the neighbourhood. Slightly less comprehensive instructions are on the mask too.
And yes, we are serious. “Best” photos of you or unsuspecting child-units in full AR mufti will win prizes. Who’s up for an Angry Robot flash mob in the bar at World Fantasy? Now that’s terrifying!
Send your pics to: incoming [AT] angryrobotbooks.com
More Sixty-One Nails secrets
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The lovely Mike Shevdon continues his series of blog posts looking at the real locations behind Sixty-One Nails with this look at the delightful cottage where Blackbird, the centuries-old female protagonist of his fabulous novel, grew up. What’s more, it turns out you can even stay there!
The blogsophere is starting to go nuts about Sixty-One Nails right now, and rightly so. Mike promises more posts shortly going beneath the everyday world of London and British life, to examine the fantastical hidden realm that lurks just beyond our attention. If you missed the first one, about a secret London Underground station, you’ll find it on his blog too. Wooooahhhh.
Interviews with some Angry Robot stars
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Andy Remic at the Angry Robot launch event
On Saturday we held our official UK launch at the Forbidden Planet Megastore in London. Marc Gascoigne and myself were joined by a bunch important people (Angry Robot authors), a bunch of other important people (Liz and Mark from My Favourite Books - watch out for an exclusive Angry Robot competition on their site, soon), a whole host of Angry Robot friends and supporters, and (of course) the book-buying public!
It was the first time I had been to this branch of Forbidden Planet (I live oop north) and I am so glad I didn’t bring all my credit cards with me! What a fantastic selection of graphic novels and books! I could have spend thousands, there. Well, if I had thousands…
So, a huge thanks to everyone listed above who attended, and an even bigger thanks to Nick from loudmouthman.com who not only recorded the event, and conducted a series of interviews with some of those present, but who also took the time and effort to craft it into a smart little video, which is presented below.
Robot Army Invades FantasyCon!
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This weekend sees the (frankly quite fabulous) annual FantasyCon, again in the historic city of Nottingham, and Angry Robot will be out in force!
Angry Robot, of course, is based in Nottingham (or, as we’re campaigning to have it renamed, Robottingham), so it was inevitable that the robot commanders Marc Gascoigne and Lee Harris would make an appearance.
A bunch of our authors will also be there, some signing, some reading, all boozing. So, come along and meet Colin Harvey (Winter Song), Andy Remic (Kell’s Legend), Guy Adams (The World House), Mike Shevdon (author of Sixty-One Nails), and recent signing Ian Whates (City of Dreams and Nightmares).
If you’re still undecided, click here for a little FantasyCon teaser, written for SFX.
BYOR (Bring your own robot)
Posted by: | CommentsYou know, for a science fiction convention, there has been a distinct lack of robots at WorldCon. Good job, then, that we decided to bring our own.
Angstrom the Angry Robot has had his anger chip removed, though as part of a mad experiment, and we have installed a gigolo chip installed, instead. This is him chatting with author Lauren Beukes at the tremendous Angry Robot party at WorldCon in Montreal last night.
Lauren left the party early, and coincidentally, Angstrom left a discreet 10 minutes later. No insinuations – just sayin’…
We had enormous fun at the party with the robot, and you’ll see a few more clips over the coming weeks. Immense thanks to Steve, who chauffered the robot from his cyber-lair in Toronto, and did a fantastic job helping to keep our guests entertained. Head over to Steve and the robot’s home (they’re just good friends) over at Robot Promotions.
Montreal Smoked Robot
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Yes, we’re at Anticipation, the fabulous 2009 Science Fiction Worldcon, held in the convention centre here in the sunny city of Montreal, Canada. The Angry Robot crew are here in force – as well as Lee and yrs trly, we have Kaaron Warren, Lauren Beukes, Colin Harvey and latest signing Aliette de Bodard. And also, it seems, a legion of admiring followers. Thanks to everyone who has made us so welcome here already.
And double thanks to everyone who made it to the first Angry Robot Worldcon Party. It was a blast. First, we had a real live Angry Robot. Look, there he is, cheerfully insulting Colin Harvey. Massive cheers to Steve who brought along Angstrom the Angry Robot, and allowing him to demonstrate that even the angriest of robots can be great fun. In short, hell yes we had a real talking, moving, gag-making, song-murdering robot at our party. We rock.
Second, well, it’s true, we got busted by the Man and were told to shut down the party… because the Con organisers had allocated us a party room on a non-party floor. Er yeah, real helpful. Bit of a cock-up on the common sense front there, people. But huzzah to everyone at our do, who just grabbed a couple of bottles each and relocated us to another room. (Extra thanks to new Robot friends, the Tor crew, for volunteering use of their room.) In the end, it just brought us to a whole new crowd of happy people, and gave Angstrom a new audience for his increasingly wild responses. Thanks to all, though.
And finally to close tonight with another reason to celebrate, we just learned that Chris “Book of Secrets” Roberson won the Sidewise Award for alternate history earlier tonight, for his fine Solaris novel The Dragon’s Nine Sons. Congratulations, Mr R, very well deserved.
Phew.
An author, a publisher and an agent walk into a bar…
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For French writer Aliette de Bodard, it was just another of those annoying airport delays that plague us all from time to time. But it turned out to be just the break she needed.
Forced to spend an extra day in Canada at Calgary airport on her way back from the World Fantasy Convention last November, she fell in with a couple of cheery Brits. They got talking, and the pair mentioned they were setting up a new publishing imprint, and a new literary agency respectively. After no little persuasion, Aliette revealed that she, too, was in the writing game, and following a few well-received short stories had been working on her debut novel. A few months later, like the plot of a Hollywood movie, she’s proud to announce she has a deal with both of them – with the novels represented by new literary agency Zeno, and to be published by new HarperCollins-funded imprint Angry Robot.
For the full story, check out the press release, here.
