Excerpt from Richard Morgan's THE COLD COMMANDS

Yesterday, author Richard Morgan teased the next novel in his series, The Cold Commands, on his blog, writing:

Look – you’ve all been very patient.

Thank you.

Here’s a little something to tide you over until The Cold Commands actually hits the shelves. Strictly a Work In Progress, but I doubt it’s going to change very much in final draft, so here you go.

Read an excerpt from The Cold Commands on his blog.

Book Trailer: Death Most Definite

Here's the brand-spanking-new trailer for Trent Jamieson's new book, Death Most Definite.

Free Fiction Round-Up: August 9, 2010

Audio Fiction and Podcasts

• Download The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins through Audiobook Community.
• Listen to “Billion-Dollar View” by Ray Tabler at Escape Pod.
• Listen to “Edgar Can’t Stand It” by Fabio Fernandes and “They Twinkled Like Jewels” by Philip Jose Famer at StarshipSofa.
• Listen to “Paper Cuts Scissors” by Holly Black at PodCastle.

Flash and Micro Fiction

• Read the flash fiction “In The Bag” by Kit St. Germain at Abyss and Apex.
• Read the flash fiction “The Thief of Shadows” by Paul Phillips.
• Read the flash fiction “Three Basic Defenses against Web Goblins” by Rudi Dornemann at Daily Cabal.

Novels and Preview Chapters

• Download Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum from ManyBooks.net.
• Download the novel Vampires Drool Zombies Rule by Rusty Ficher at Lulu.com.
• Read an excerpt of The Dervish House by Ian McDonald at Pyr.
• Read a preview of Death Most Definite by Trent Jamieson at Orbit books.

Awards: Sidewise Winners

Winners of the Sidewise Awards for Alternate History were announced at ReConStruction, the 10th NASFiC, held August 5-8, 2010, in Raleigh, North Carolina.  The winners are Reynolds and Conroy.  The judges noted before the announcement that, in the Long Form category, No Award was an option.  

Short Form

• “The Fixation” by Alastair Reynolds (Solaris Book of New Sci-F)
• “Yes, We Have No Bananas” by Paul Di Filippo (Eclipse 3)
• “Edison’s Frankenstein” by Chris Roberson (Postscripts 20/21)
• “Black Swan” by Bruce Sterling (Interzone 221)
• “The Persistence of Souls” by Sarah Zettel (The Shadow Conspiracy)

Long Form

• 1942 Robert Conroy (Ballantine)

Book Trailer: The Passage

Fantastic book!

Book Trailer: Zero History

William Gibson reads a passage from his upcoming novel, Zero History, which finishes the sequence of novels that includes Pattern Recognition and Spook Country. The book hits shelves September 7th.

 io9 says "this new book trailer will make you want to get to reading it right now. When he tweeted about the trailer last night, Gibson joked that "some geezer" is reading the lines from his novel in this trailer. Yes, that would be Gibson himself."

There Are 129,864,880 Different Books in the World

Google, which is engaging in extensive book digitization projects, recently set out to determine the number of distinct print books currently in existence:

After some intensive analysis, we’ve come up with a number. Standing on the shoulders of giants—libraries and cataloging organizations—and based on our computational resources and experience of organizing millions of books through our Books Library Project and Books Partner Program since 2004, we’ve determined that number.

As of today, we estimate that there are 129,864,880 different books in the world. That’s a lot of knowledge captured in the written word! This calculation used an algorithm that combines books information from multiple sources including libraries, WorldCat, national union catalogs and commercial providers. And the actual number of books is always increasing.

Source:  GoogleBlog via Cool-O-Rama
Photo: Flickr user Nrbelex used Creative Commons license

Awards: 2010 Parsec Finalists

Finalists for the 2010 Parsec Awards, which honor speculative fiction podcasters, have been announced.

Best Speculative Fiction Story (Short Form)

• Clarkesworld Magazine - "The Things" by Peter Watts
• Podcastle - "Restless in my Hand by Tim Pratt
• Tales of the Children - "Swimming Lessons" by Gabrielle Harbowy
• "The Tank" by Scott Sigler
• Dunesteef Fiction Magazine - "A Princess Of Earth" by Mike Resnick

Poetry: "The Last One"

In honor of W. S. Merwin being named the new Poet Laureate of the U.S., I thought I'd post what has long ben my favorite Merwin poem - maybe my favorite poem ever.

The Last One

 

Well they'd made up their minds to be everywhere because why not.
Everywhere was theirs because they thought so.
They with two leaves they whom the birds despise.
In the middle of stones they made up their minds.
They started to cut. 

Well they cut everything because why not.
Everything was theirs because they thought so.
It fell into its shadows and they took both away.
Some to have some for burning

W. S. Merwin Named New Poet Laureate

W.S. Merwin has been named the 17th U.S. Poet Laureate for 2010-2011.

"William Merwin’s poems are often profound and, at the same time, accessible to a vast audience," said James Billington, Librarian of Congress. "He leads us upstream from the flow of everyday things in life to half-hidden headwaters of wisdom about life itself. In his poem ‘Heartland,’ Merwin seems to suggest that a land of the heart within us might help map the heartland beyond—and that this ‘map’ might be rediscovered in something like a library, where ‘it survived beyond/ what could be known at the time/ in its archaic/ untaught language/ that brings the bees to the rosemary.’" For information about Merwin and his poetry, visit The Poetry Foundation and the Library of Congress Poetry Page.

Free Fiction Round-Up: August 2, 2010

Audio Fiction and Podcasts

• Free Listens has compiled a list of the Best Free (Classic) Audio Short Stories.
• Listen to "Gulls" by Tim Pratt at Pseudopod.
• Listen to "Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time" by Catherynne M. Valente.
• Listen to "To Have and To Hold" by Langdon Jones at StarShipSofa.

Flash and Micro Fiction

• Read the flash fiction "A Woman Made of Gold" by Uri Grey at Brain Harvest.

Book Trailer: Shades of Milk and Honey

Shades of Milk and Honey is described as the novel Jane Austen might have written, had she lived in a world with magic.

The SF Signal Podcast

The popular blog SF Signal is launching its own podcast.  It their first episode they hold a round table discussion about the new exclusivity deal between Kindle and a host of authors represented by Literary Agent Andrew Wylie and how this could affect eBook sales and purchases of genre titles if similar deals become the norm.  Then, John DeNardo and JP Frantz, sit down with Lou Anders, editorial Director of Pyr books, to chat about his recent projects and anthologies.