Tag Archives: publishing

Out now from Solaris is the reissue of my 1994 novel Engineman. I went through it earlier this year, gasped at the errors I’d made, and rewrote it, cutting and cutting and then adding a chapter. In the same volume as the novel will be eight short stories set in the same universe as Engineman. There was another story, “Pithecanthropus Blues”, but I decided it was too light in tone to fit comfortably in the volume. (The book features a stunning new cover by Dominic Harman.)

In January and February I was busy writing the first draft of my post-global warming novel Guardians the Phoenix. The novel came about shortly after I’d finished a long short story of the same title for Mike Ashley’s anthology Apocalyptic SF. I realised that there was more to the story than what was in the thirteen thousand words I’d written so far. So last year I outlined the rest, expanding the plot, adding characters, and sent the chapters and outline via my agent John Jarrold to Jon Oliver at Solaris.

Glad to report, Jon liked it.

Guardians of the Phoenix is due out this December.

Next April Solaris will be bringing out The Big One. Well, that’s how I think of it.

I wrote The Kings of Eternity around ten years ago, based loosely on the short story of the same title first published in Scott Edelman’s magazine SF Age. Since then I’ve been playing around with it in odd moments, at one point completely re-writing the novel and adding forty thousand words, then cutting another, unrelated twenty thousand words. I also excerpted from the ms a thirty thousand word stand-alone novella (The Blue Portal) which David Pringle published in two issues of Interzone back in 2002.

The Kings of Eternity is the best thing I’ve written. Period. I feel for the novel as I’ve felt for nothing else I’ve done. It’s also quite unlike anything else I’ve written. It’s SF, but hard-to-categorise SF. It has two timelines, one set on a Greek island in 2000, the other set in London and Hampshire in 1935. It’s about immortality, love, loyalty, friendship, evil aliens, good aliens, strange other-worldly devices and much, much more.

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On the short story front I’ve been busy writing more Salvageman Ed tales, about Ed and his engineer Karrie, and their AI co-pilot, Ella.

The latest, “Laying the Ghost”, is now online at Clarkesworld:

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/brown_10_10/

Also out now is “The Human Element”, (not SF, but crime) in Postscripts 22/23.

Another Ed and Ella story, “The Soul of the Machine”, will be published in the forthcoming NewCon Press anthology, Further Conflicts, edited by Ian Whates.

Due out in Postscripts next year will be my very light-hearted alien invasion-cum-publishing industry satire, “The Scribe of Betelgeuse V”.

Pete Crowther at PS Publishing recently bought volumes three and four of my Starship novella series, Starship Winter and Starship Spring. They should be out some time next year. Later, PS plan to bring out the four novellas in one volume, entitled Starship Seasons.

And now it’s back to working on the plot of the next one.

My novel Cosmopath, the culmination of the Bengal Station trilogy, is out now from Solaris. PS Publishing recently brought out my novella Gilbert and Edgar on Mars. To read more about these books, check out the novels and novellas section above.

Xenopath

The second book in the Bengal Station trilogy is out now from Solaris. Vaughan is a telepath working on Bengal Station, a vast city-spaceport in the Bay of Bengal. The trilogy charts his progression from a disillusioned nihilist to something approaching a happy man. Find out more about the book in the novel section on this site.

Starship Fall

Just out from NewCon Press is Starship Fall, the second in the series of Starship novellas set on the backwater colony planet of Chalcedony, Delta Pavonis

Find out more about Starship Fall at: http://www.newconpress.co.uk

Xenopath, the second book in the Bengal trilogy, is due out from Solaris later this month.

Gilbert and Edgar on Mars will be out this summer from PS Publishing. The novella features G.K. Chesterton and Edgar Rice Burroughs and their adventures on the red planet.

Guilty?, a book for reluctant readers, is out now from Barrington Stoke. To find out for about this book, go to the Children’s section of this website.

“The Rest is Speculation”, a story set in the far future, features in Mike Ashley’s new anthology The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF, published by Constable Robinson. “Cold Testing”, a short story featuring Captain Ed and the crew of his salvage ship, is in the June edition of Asimov’s. Another story in the series, “Dissimulation Procedure”, will appear in the NewCon Press anthology Conflicts edited by Ian Whates later this year.

I’ve recently completed the third book in the Bengal Station series, Cosmopath, which will be published by Solaris in January 2010. Xenopath, the second in the series, will come out in summer.
Starship Fall, the second novella in the Starship series, is due out from NewCon Press in April.
Gilbert and Edgar on Mars, a novella featuring G.K. Chesterton and Edgar Rice Burroughs on the red planet, is due out in summer from PS Publishing.
Two children’s books, Guilty and A Dinosaur Ate My Socks, will be published by Barrington Stoke later this year.
Short stories will be appearing in Asimov’s, Postscripts, Mike Ashley’s Mindblowing SF anthology from Robinson, and elsehwere later this year.

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Last May I attended the American Book Exposition in LA to sign copies of Kéthani and proof copies of Necropath. The highlight of the three days was a spectacular toucan attack on friend and writer Nathan Long. A stall across the aisle had a ‘tame’ toucan on hand to promote their pet care manuals, and for some reason the avian menace took a dislike to Nathan, flew across and clawed his face. It’s a hard life, being a writer.

The rest of the Expo passed without incident. Hi to all the fans and readers I met there.

Now, back to the reality of grey English summer days, and work on the next novel.

Necropath, the first novel in the Bengal Station series, is out now from Solaris.
Necropath follows telepath Jeff Vaughan as he uncovers a bizarre religious cult on Bengal Station. Read more in the novel section on this site.
Xenopath, the second in the series, will follow next June. Cosmopath is due out in 2010.

Kéthani is now out from Solaris, featuring a breathtaking cover by John Harris.

Saturday the 10th saw me signing copies at Forbidden Planet, London, and I’d like to thank everyone who turned up. Especially nice to meet SF writer Nigel Brown – no relation – and old friends Keith Brooke and Josh Lacey.

Kéthani has been described by one reviewer as the most benign alien invasion story ever written, which is a pretty good description of the novel. It’s about the eponymous Kéthani and their gift to humanity: immortality – and how this changes everything we’ve ever taken for granted. It’s a quiet, unsensational story of a group of friends in a small West Yorkshire village, and how they react to the coming of the Kéthani.

Contents:

‘The Children of Winter’ first appeared in Interzone 163, January 2001

‘Thursday’s Child’ first appeared in Spectrum SF 9, October 2002

‘Ascent of Man’ first appeared in Interzone 167, May 2001

‘Ulla, Ulla’ first appeared in The Mammoth Book of Science Fiction, 2001

‘The Kéthani Inheritance’ first appeared in Spectrum SF 7, November 2001

‘Instructions for Surviving the Destruction of Star-Probe X-11-57′ first appeared in Spectrum SF 6, July 2001

‘Eye of the Beholder’ first appeared in Interzone 119, May 1997

‘The Touch of Angels’ is original to the collection.

‘The Spacetime Pit’ (with Stephen Baxter) first appeared in Interzone 107, May 1996

‘Hunting the Slarque’ first appeared in Interzone 141, March 1999

Latest Books:

Helix is out now from Solaris. It’s a SF adventure about a group of human spacers who find themselves in a very strange star system, and the aliens who live there. To read more, click on the Novels link, left.

Starship Summer, a long science fiction novella, is out now from PS Publishing.

Revenge, a short thriller for adult reluctant readers, is now out from Barrington Stoke.

Parallax View, the collection written with Keith Brooke,  first published by Sarob Press, has just been reissued by Immanion Press. It includes a new novella, In Transit, written with Keith, and drops the two solo stories of the first edition.

Threshold Shift, a collection of SF stories, is out now from Golden Gryphon in the US.

Forthcoming books:

• Kéthani, the collected Kéthani stories, with linking sections, will be published by Solaris in May 2008.
• Gilbert and Edgar on Mars, a novella featuring G.K. Chesterton, Edgar Rice Burroughs and their adventures on the red planet, will be published by PS Publishing in 2009.