Sweeping, complex and challenging tour de force from the author of Snow Crash

What it’s about – from the cover
Anathem, the latest invention by the New York Times bestselling author of Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle, is a magnificent creation: a work of great scope, intelligence, and imagination that ushers readers into a recognizable—yet strangely inverted—world.

Fraa Erasmas is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the outside “saecular” world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals. Over the centuries, cities and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent’s walls. Three times during history’s darkest epochs violence born of superstition and ignorance has invaded and devastated the cloistered mathic community. Yet the avout have always managed to adapt in the wake of catastrophe, becoming out of necessity even more austere and less dependent on technology and material things. And Erasmas has no fear of the outside—the Extramuros—for the last of the terrible times was long, long ago.

Now, in celebration of the week-long, once-in-a-decade rite of Apert, the fraas and suurs prepare to venture beyond the concent’s gates—at the same time opening them wide to welcome the curious “extras” in. During his first Apert as a fraa, Erasmas eagerly anticipates reconnecting with the landmarks and family he hasn’t seen since he was “collected.” But before the week is out, both the existence he abandoned and the one he embraced will stand poised on the brink of cataclysmic change.

Powerful unforeseen forces jeopardize the peaceful stability of mathic life and the established ennui of the Extramuros—a threat that only an unsteady alliance of saecular and avout can oppose—as, one by one, Erasmas and his colleagues, teachers, and friends are summoned forth from the safety of the concent in hopes of warding off global disaster. Suddenly burdened with a staggering responsibility, Erasmas finds himself a major player in a drama that will determine the future of his world—as he sets out on an extraordinary odyssey that will carry him to the most dangerous, inhospitable corners of the planet . . . and beyond.

What people think
San Francisco Chronicle – It’s almost impossible to not be impressed by Anathem; there’s simply too much erudition, wit, craft and risk-taking.

Boston Globe – A daring feat of speculative fiction. Anathem offers the reader a luscious arrangement of words, jokes, and speculations.

Slate, Best of 2008 List – The world Stephenson builds is richly visual, its complicated social politics are convincingly detailed, and its cool and conflicted heroes struggle with thrilling intellectual puzzles while they are tested in epic physical adventures.

Washington Post – Reading Anathem is a humbling experience.

London Times – Anathem is a brilliant, playful tour of the terrain where logic, mathematics, philosophy and quantum physics intersect, a novel of ideas par excellence, melding wordplay and mathematical theory with a gripping, human adventure.

The author
Neal Stephenson is the author of seven previous novels. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Hardcover – William Morrow – 960 pages – BUY Anathem

Collection of imaginative shorts from award-winning author Charles Stross. Pre-order – out July 7, 2009

What it’s about – from the cover
The Hugo Award-winning author of such groundbreaking and innovative novels as Accelerando, Halting State, and Saturn’s Children delivers a rich selection of speculative fiction— including a novella original to this volume— brought together for the first time in one collection, showcasing the limitless imagination of one of the twenty-first century’s most daring visionaries.

What people think
Popular Science – A new kind of future requires a new breed of guide—someone like Stross.

New York Times – The act of creation seems to come easily to Charles Stross…[He] is peerless at dreaming up devices that could conceivably exist in six, 60 or 600 years’ time.

Gardner Dozois, Editor, Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine – Where Charles Stross goes today, the rest of science fiction will follow tomorrow.

SF Diplomat – One of the most flexible and intellectually powerful authors operating in modern SF.

The author
Charles Stross is a full-time writer who was born in Leeds, England in 1964. He studied in London and Bradford, gaining degrees in pharmacy and computer science, and has worked in a variety of jobs, including pharmacist, technical author, software engineer, and freelance journalist.

Hardcover – Ace Hardcover – 368 pages – BUY Wireless

Genesis – Bernard Beckett

The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun – J.R.R. Tolkein

This Is Not A Game – Walter Jon Williams

Without Warning – John Birmingham

The Affinity Bridge – George Mann

The Currents of Space – Isaac Asimov

The City & The City – China Miéville

House of Suns – Alastair Reynolds

Hard SF thriller about the gradual assassination of a thousand reconnaissance clones spread across the galaxy. Pre-order – out June 2, 2009

What it’s about – from the cover
Six million years ago, at the dawn of the star-faring era, Abigail Gentian fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones, which she called shatterlings. She sent them out into the galaxy to observe and document the rise and fall of countless human empires. Since then, every two hundred thousand years, they gather to exchange news and memories of their travels.

Only this millennium there is no gathering. Someone is eliminating the Gentian line. And Campion and Purslane—two shatterlings who have fallen in love and shared forbidden experiences— must determine exactly who, or what, their enemy is, before they are wiped out of existence.

What people are saying
The London Times - A thrilling, mind- boggling adventure.

BBC Focus – A crisper style that recalls hard SF from the ’60s and ’70s. This nod to the past seems fresh and new.

The author
Alastair Reynolds was born in Wales in 1966. He has a Ph.D. in astronomy. From 1991 until 2007, he lived in The Netherlands, where he was employed by The European Space Agency as an astrophysicist. He is now a full-time writer.

Hardcover – Ace Hardcover – 480 pages – BUY House of Suns

What it’s about – from the cover
New York Times bestselling author China Miéville delivers his most accomplished novel yet, an existential thriller set in a city unlike any other–real or imagined.

When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he investigates, the evidence points to conspiracies far stranger and more deadly than anything he could have imagined.

Borlú must travel from the decaying Beszel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own. This is a border crossing like no other, a journey as psychic as it is physical, a shift in perception, a seeing of the unseen. His destination is Beszel’s equal, rival, and intimate neighbor, the rich and vibrant city of Ul Qoma. With Ul Qoman detective Qussim Dhatt, and struggling with his own transition, Borlú is enmeshed in a sordid underworld of rabid nationalists intent on destroying their neighboring city, and unificationists who dream of dissolving the two into one. As the detectives uncover the dead woman’s secrets, they begin to suspect a truth that could cost them and those they care about more than their lives.

What stands against them are murderous powers in Beszel and in Ul Qoma: and, most terrifying of all, that which lies between these two cities.

Casting shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, The City & the City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.

What people are saying
Walter Mosley, author of Devil in a Blue Dress  – Daring and disturbing . . . Miéville illuminates fundamental and unsettling questions about culture, governance and the shadowy differences that keep us apart.

Brian Evenson, author of Last Days – Lots of books dabble in several genres but few manage to weld them together as seamlessly and as originally as The City and The City. In a tale set in a series of cities vertiginously layered in the same space, Miéville offers the detective novel re-envisioned through the prism of the fantastic. The result is a stunning piece of artistry that has both all the satisfactions of a good mystery and all the delight and wonder of the best fantasy.

The author
China Miéville is the author of King Rat; Perdido Street Station, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the British Fantasy Award; The Scar, Iron Council, winner of the Locus Award and the British Fantasy Award; winner of the Locus Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award; Looking for Jake, a collection of short stories; and Un Lun Dun, his New York Times bestselling book for younger readers. He lives and works in London.

Hardcover – Del Rey – 336 pages – BUY The City & The City

What it’s about – from the cover
High above the planet Florinia, the Squires of Sark live in unimaginable wealth and comfort.  Down in the eternal spring of the planet, however, the native Florinians labor ceaselessly to produce the precious kyrt that brings prosperity to their Sarkite masters.

Rebellion is unthinkable and impossible. Not only do the Florinians no longer have a concept of freedom, any disruption of the vital kyrt trade would cause other planets to rise in protest, ultimately destabilizing trade and resulting in a galactic war. So the Trantorian Empire, whose grand plan is to unite all humanity in peace, prosperity, and freedom, has stood aside and allowed the oppression to continue.

Living among the workers of Florinia, Rik is a man without a memory or a past.  He has been abducted and brainwashed. Barely able to speak or care for himself when he was found, Rik is widely regarded as a simpleton by the worker community where he lives.  But as his memories begin to return, Rik finds himself driven by a cryptic message he is determined to deliver:  Everyone on Florinia is doomed . . . the Currents of Space are bringing destruction. But if the planet is evacuated, the power of Sark will end–so some would finish the job and would kill the messenger. The fate of the Galaxy hangs in the balance.

What people think
The New York Times – Obviously, Isaac Asimov had a lot of fun concocting this merry tangle of interplanetary power politics. . . .  If it isn’t often science-fiction, it is always beautifully contrived melodrama. The reader will have just as much fun as Mr. Asimov.

The author
Isaac Asimov, author of the Foundation trilogy and many other novels, was one of the great SF writers of the 20th century.

Hardcover – Tor Books – 260 pages – BUY The Currents of Space

Steampunk Victorian adventure crammed with murder, automatons and zombies – Pre-order – out July 7, 2009

What it’s about – from the cover
Welcome to the bizarre and dangerous world of Victorian London, a city teetering on the edge of revolution. Its people are ushering in a new era of technology, dazzled each day by unfamiliar inventions. Airships soar in the skies over the city, while ground trains rumble through the streets and clockwork automatons are programmed to carry out menial tasks in the offices of lawyers, policemen, and journalists.

But beneath this shiny veneer of progress lurks a sinister side.

Queen Victoria is kept alive by a primitive life-support system, while her agents, Sir Maurice Newbury and his delectable assistant Miss Veronica Hobbes, do battle with enemies of the crown, physical and supernatural. This time Newbury and Hobbes are called to investigate the wreckage of a crashed airship and its missing automaton pilot, while attempting to solve a string of strangulations attributed to a mysterious glowing policeman, and dealing with a zombie plague that is ravaging the slums of the capital.

Get ready to follow dazzling young writer George Mann to a London unlike any you’ve ever seen and into an adventure you will never forget.

The Author
George Mann heads the editorial and production teams of two divisions of the UK-based Games Workshop: Solaris Books, a SF/Fantasy publisher, and Black Library, a publisher of game-related fiction. He is the editor of The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction anthology series and the author of a number of fiction and non-fiction books, including The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, The Human Abstract, and Time Hunter: The Severed Man. He maintains a blog at http://georgemann.wordpress.com.

Hardcover – 336 pages – Tor Books – BUY The Affinity Bridge

Gulf War I is about to start, when America is suddenly wiped out by an energy wave. First in a dramatic trilogy which looks at the repercussions of the world, without the US as we know it.

What it’s about – from the cover
In Kuwait, American forces are stacked up, locked and loaded for the invasion of Iraq. In Paris, a covert agent, a woman who inhabits a twilight of lies and death, is close to cracking a terrorist cell. And just north of the equator, a forty-foot wood-hulled sailboat, manned by a drug runner, a pirate, and two gun-slinging beauties, is witness to the unspeakable. In one instant, all around the world, for politicians and peasants, from Gaza to Geneva, things will never be the same. A wave of inexplicable energy has slammed into the continental United States.

America, as we know it, is gone. . . .WITHOUT WARNING

Now U.S. soldiers are fighting a war without command or control. A correspondent records horrors for no one. Washington is gone and the line of succession is in tatters; the functioning remnants of government are in Pearl Harbor, Guantánamo Bay, and one desperate, isolated corner of the Northwest. For the jihadists, it’s Allah’s miracle. For Saddam, it’s a chance to attack. Iran declares war on an America that doesn’t exist–except in the hearts and souls of the men and women who want it to.

In this astounding work of alternate fiction, John Birmingham hurtles us into a scenario that is unimaginable but shatteringly real: a world of financial ruin where a cloud of noxious waste–from America’s burning cities–darkens Europe, while men and women in offices around the globe struggle to make decisions that cannot hold and opportunists unleash their secret demons.

From a slick Texas lawyer who happens to be in the right place at the right time to a hard-working city engineer in Seattle who becomes his terrified city’s only hope, from the cancer-stricken secret agent to a drug runner off the Mexican coast and a U.S. general in Cuba, Without Warning tells a fast, furious story of survival, violence, and a new, soul-shattering reality. The first in an epic trilogy that will leave readers breathless and astounded, Without Warning offers a world without its policeman, its Great Satan, or its savior–as an unknowable future struggles to be born.

What people are saying
Time – Weapons-grade military techno-thriller . . . [Birmingham] describes military hardware with an exuberance and virtuosity that’s positively Clancyesque.

Entertainment Weekly – Birmingham’s enthralling battleground mixes provocative historical fiction and socially conscious futurism.

Booklist – While Birmingham’s shocking premise may unnerve some American readers, a story line replete with full-throttle action should appeal to Anglophones everywhere.

The Author
John Birmingham is the author of Final Impact, Designated Targets, Weapons of Choice, He Died with a Felafel in His Hand, The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco, How to Be a Man, The Search for Savage Henry, and Leviathan, which won the National Award for Nonfiction at Australia’s Adelaide Festival of the Arts. Birmingham is also the recipient of the George Munster Prize for Freelance Story of the Year and the Carlton United Sports Writing Prize. He has written for The Sydney Morning Herald, Rolling Stone, Penthouse, Playboy, and numerous other magazines. He lives at the beach with his wife, daughter, son, and two cats.

Hardcover – 528 pages – Del Rey – BUY Without Warning

You may also like – One Second After by William Fortschen

Compelling near-future thriller where gaming, gamers and murder collide.

What it’s about – from the cover
Once upon a time, there were four of them. And though each was good at a number of things, all of them were very good at games…

Dagmar is a game designer trapped in Jakarta in the middle of a revolution. The city is tearing itself apart around her and she needs to get out.

Her boss Charlie has his own problems — 4.3 billion of them, to be precise, hidden in an off-shore account.

Austin is the businessman — the VC. He’s the one with the plan and the one to keep the geeks in line.

BJ was there from the start, but while Charlie’s star rose, BJ sank into the depths of customer service. He pads his hours at the call-center slaying on-line orcs, stealing your loot, and selling it on the internet.

But when one of them is gunned down in a parking lot, the survivors become players in a very different kind of game. Caught between the dangerous worlds of the Russian Mafia and international finance, Dagmar must draw on all her resources — not least millions of online gamers– to track down the killer. In this near-future thriller, Walter Jon Williams weaves a pulse-pounding tale of intrigue, murder, and games where you don’t get an extra life.

What people think
Publishers Weekly – Williams (The Rift) weaves intriguing questions about games, gamers and their relationships with real life into this well-paced near-future thriller … Though the technology talk occasionally becomes intrusive, it’s convincingly written; the characters are realistic and absorbing, and the story deeply compelling.

The author
Walter Jon Williams has been nominated repeatedly for every major SF award, including Hugo and Nebula Award nominations for his novel City on Fire. His most recent books are The Sundering, The Praxis, Destiny’s Way, and The Rift. Mr. Williams lives near Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his wife.

Hardcover – 384 pages – BUY This Is Not a Game

Written before The Hobbit, a Norse tale from the grandmaster of fantasy. Pre-order – out May 5, 2009.

What it’s about – from the cover
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún is a previously unpublished work by J.R.R. Tolkien, written while Tolkien was Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford during the 1920s and ‘30s, before he wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It makes available for the first time Tolkien’s extensive retelling in English narrative verse of the epic Norse tales of Sigurd the Völsung and The Fall of the Niflungs. It includes an introduction by J.R.R. Tolkien, drawn from one of his own lectures on Norse literature, with commentary and notes on the poems by Christopher Tolkien.

The author
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) is the creator of Middle-earth and author of such classic and extraordinary works of fiction as The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and The Children of Húrin. His books have been translated into more than forty languages and have sold many millions of copies worldwide.

Christopher Tolkien is the third son of J.R.R. Tolkien. Appointed by Tolkien to be his literary executor, he has devoted himself to the editing and publication of unpublished writings, notably The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-Earth, and The Children of Húrin.

Hardcover – 384 pages – BUY The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun

What it’s about – from the cover
Set on a remote island in a post-apocalyptic, plague-ridden world, this electrifying novel is destined to become a modern classic.

Anax thinks she knows her history. She’d better. She’s now facing three Examiners, and her grueling all-day Examination has just begun. If she passes, she’ll be admitted into the Academy—the elite governing institution of her utopian society. But Anax is about to discover that for all her learning, the history she’s been taught isn’t the whole story. And that the Academy isn’t what she believes it to be. In this brilliant novel of dazzling ingenuity, Anax’s examination leads us into a future where we are confronted with unresolved questions raised by science and philosophy. Centuries old, these questions have gained new urgency in the face of rapidly developing technology. What is consciousness? What makes us human? If artificial intelligence were developed to a high enough capability, what special status could humanity still claim? Outstanding and original, Beckett’s dramatic narrative comes to a stunning close. This perfect combination of thrilling page-turner and provocative novel of ideas demands to be read again and again.

What people are saying
Amazon reviews – Genesis reads like a thriller to the last word, propelled by the power of ideas longing to be unleashed.

The author
BERNARD BECKETT, born in 1967, is a high school teacher based in Wellington, New Zealand, where he teaches drama, mathematics, and English. Genesis was written while he was on a Royal Society genetics research fellowship investigating DNA mutations. The book has already received international acclaim, including two literary prizes in Beckett’s native New Zealand. Rights to Genesis have been sold in twenty-one countries.

Hardcover – 160 pages – BUY Genesis

What it’s about – from the cover
Many of Peter F. Hamilton’s dazzling novels, which offer startling perspectives on tomorrow’s technological and cultural trends, are epic in scope, spanning vast stretches of space and time. And yet they are grounded in characters–human, alien, and other–who, for all their strangeness, are still able to touch our hearts and fire our imaginations. Now Hamilton returns to the universe of his acclaimed Commonwealth saga with The Temporal Void, the second volume in the trilogy that began with The Dreaming Void.

Long ago, a human astrophysicist, Inigo, began dreaming scenes from the life of a remarkable human being named Edeard, who lived within the Void, a self-contained microuniverse at the heart of the galaxy. There, under the beneficent gaze of mysterious godlike entities, humans possessed uncanny psychic abilities, and Edeard’s were the strongest of all. Equally strong was his determination to bring justice and freedom to a world terrorized by criminal violence and corruption.

Inigo’s inspirational dreams, shared by hundreds of millions throughout the galaxy-spanning gaiafield, gave birth to a religion–Living Dream. But when the appearance of a Second Dreamer seemed to trigger the expansion of the Void–an expansion that is devouring everything in its path–the Intersolar Commonwealth was thrown into turmoil. With the adherents of Living Dream determined to set forth on a dangerous pilgrimage into the Void, interstellar war threatens to erupt.

With time running out, the fate of humanity hinges on a handful of people. There is Araminta, only now awakening to the unwelcome fact that she is the mysterious Second Dreamer–and to the dire responsibilities that go with it; Inigo, whose private dreams hint at a darker truth behind Edeard’s legendary life; Paula Myo, the ruthless field operative of the Commonwealth, whose search for Araminta and Inigo is about to yield a most unpleasant surprise; and Justine, whose desperate gamble places her within the Void, where the godlike Skylords hold the power to save the universe . . . or destroy it.

What people are saying
Publisher’s Weeky – Fusing elements of hard SF with adventure fantasy tropes, Hamilton has singlehandedly raised the bar for grand-scale speculative storytelling.

Booklist – This second book of a trilogy promises a spectacular finish.

The author
Peter F. Hamilton is the author of numerous novels, including The Dreaming Void, Judas Unchained, Pandora’s Star, Fallen Dragon, and the acclaimed epic Night’s Dawn trilogy (The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist, and The Naked God). He lives with his family in England.

Hardcover – 736 pages – BUY The Temporal Void (Void Trilogy)

What’s it’s about – from the cover

After a violent civil war and the devastation wrought by the now-fallen Darth Caedus, the Galactic Alliance is in crisis–and in need. From all corners, politicians, power brokers, and military leaders converge on Coruscant for a crucial summit to restore order, negotiate differences, and determine the future of their unified worlds. But even more critical, and far more uncertain, is the future of the Jedi.

In a shocking move, Chief of State Natasi Daala orders the arrest of Luke Skywalker for failing to prevent Jacen Solo’s turn to the dark side and his subsequent reign of terror as a Sith Lord. But it’s only the first blow in an anti-Jedi backlash fueled by a hostile government and suspicious public. When Jedi Knight Valin Horn, scion of a politically influential family, suffers a mysterious psychotic break and becomes a dangerous fugitive, the Jedi become the target of a media-driven witch hunt. Facing conviction on the damning charges, Luke must strike a bargain with the calculating Daala: his freedom in exchange for his exile from Coruscant and from the Jedi Order.

Though forbidden to intervene in Jedi affairs, Luke is determined to keep history from being repeated. With his son, Ben, at his side, Luke sets out to unravel the shocking truth behind Jacen Solo’s corruption and downfall. But the secrets he uncovers among the enigmatic Force mystics of the distant world Dorin may bring his quest–and life as he knows it–to a sudden end. And all the while, another Jedi Knight, consumed by the same madness as Valin Horn, is headed for Coruscant on a fearsome mission that could doom the Jedi Order . . . and devastate the entire galaxy.

What people think

Booklist – Fast moving and thrilling, with a tight and well-developed plot, Outcast is the first of a new nine-book series, to be written by Allston, Troy Denning, and Christie Golden. The extended Skywalker family is the focus of the series; Luke, Han, and Leia may be 40 years older, but their personalities haven’t changed, and long-term Star Wars fans will be happy to welcome back old friends from both the books and the movies. An exciting addition to the Star Wars saga and a very promising beginning to a new series.

The author

Aaron Allston is the New York Times bestselling author of the Star Wars: Legacy of the Force novels Betrayal, Exile, and Fury; the Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Enemy Lines adventures Rebel Dream and Rebel Stand; novels in the popular Star Wars X-Wing series; and the Doc Sidhe novels, which combine 1930s-style hero-pulps with Celtic myth. He is also a longtime game designer and was recently inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design (AAGAD) Hall of Fame. He lives in Central Texas.

Hardcover – 336 pages – BUY – Outcast (Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi, Book 1)

One Second After

A realistic look at what would happen if an EMP went off over the US.

What it’s about – from the cover

New York Times best selling author William R. Forstchen now brings us a story which can be all too terrifyingly real…a story in which one man struggles to save his family and his small North Carolina town after America loses a war, in one second, a war that will send America back to the Dark Ages…A war based upon a weapon, an Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP).  A weapon that may already be in the hands of our enemies.

Hardcover – 352 pages – BUY – One Second After