Posts Tagged: Hodder & Stoughton

long-way-to-a-small-angry-planet-by-becky-chambers

Via their blog, Harper Voyager announced today that Becky Chambers’ critically-acclaimed science fiction novel, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet will be coming to the United States this year. It was acquired by Kelly O’Connor, Assistant Editor at HarperCollins Publishers. Chambers initially self-published The Long Way after a successful Kickstarter campaign, and eventually saw the novel nominated for a Kitschie Award. After that, traditional publishers began to take notice. In addition to Voyager, Hodder & Stoughton is publishing Chambers’ novel in the UK.

“We can’t wait to get this into readers’ hands,” O’Connor told me. “We’ve had The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet on our radar for some time, and jumped at the chance to publish it again in the US. This story is space opera at its finest, but also so much more! Becky does a fabulous job of touching on important themes like family, diversity, and identity.”

I’m disappointed to see Voyager re-using cover art assets from the self-published release, rather than following Hodder & Stoughton’s lead and producing a new, original cover for the book (I mean, check out the UK cover! Gorgeous!), but a tight production schedule and (initial) digital-only release necessitate some concessions.

Coinciding with Hodder & Stoughton’s hardcover release in the UK, Voyager will release a digital edition of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet on August 13th, just a few weeks from now, followed by a paperback release in Summer 2016.

The Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay

Yesterday, via CBC Books, Guy Gavriel Kay revealed new details about his upcoming novel, The Children of Earth and Sky, including its setting. Kay has a penchant to explore human history while building his fantasy worlds, delving deep into our planets’ myriad cultures and histories, and turning the stories we know slightly towards the fantastic. Fans always have fun speculating, so where’s The Children of Earth and Sky drawing inspiration from? The Mediterranean regions of Europe during the Renaissance.

“In The Children of Earth and Sky Kay returns to the familiar territory established in several earlier works,” said Oliver Johnson of Hodder & Stoughton, the novel’s UK publisher. “[It’s] a reimagining of the melting pot of the medieval Mediterranean. In his hands well-known places and events are transformed into the wonderful and strange through the lens of fantasy, and brought to life with brilliantly drawn characters and the most graceful of styles, which will seduce his many fans and new readers alike.” Read More »

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Uuuuurrrrggghh.

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, a landmark epic fantasy trilogy published in the ’90s. So, when Hodder & Stoughton, one of my favourite SF/F imprints, announced they’d be publishing the series in the UK with brand new covers, I was appropriately excited. I’m usually a fan of Hodder & Stoughton’s covers, and Summers’ previous work for Hodder & Stoughton is stylish—particularly his cover for Lavie Tidhar’s A Man Lies Dreaming—but these are a big miss for me.

Even in a vacuum, where the series doesn’t already have some of the most iconic cover art, by one of the field’s legendary artists, these just aren’t right for the series. Memory, Sorrow and Thorn might have inspired George R.R. Martin to write A Song of Ice and Fire, but they’re not edgy or dark. They’re bright, expansive, and full of colour—these covers do little to convey the tone and spirit of Williams’ classic tale.

That all said, I do think the cover for Stone of Farewell is the best of the bunch, and is nice in a gritty, punch-you-in-the-face kind of way. Reminds me a bit of Stina Leicht’s (very good) contemporary Irish fantasy, Of Blood and Honey.

What do you think?

“What’s your new book about?” readers ask writers all the time. It’s not such an easy question to answer, Daniel Polansky told me when we started chatting about his new book, Those Above “It’s meant kindly, hardly an unreasonable question given that you did write the damn thing, bound to bring an author to the brink of despair.”

If there are a thousand readers, there are a thousand answers to that question, and Polansky often attempts to find the correct answer to fit the person who’s asking. “There’s the answer that I give to bloggers or interviewers or editors or anyone else who might help generate sales,” he said. “Those Above is the story of a civilization of near-perfect, almost-immortal humanoids who live in a wondrous city at the center of the world, and of the attempts of their enslaved human population to shake off this yoke. There are multiple intersecting viewpoints, there’s political scheming and moral quandaries, there’s sword fights and murder and just enough sex to keep the thing entertaining.” Read More »

the-long-way-to-a-small-angry-planet-by-becky-chambers

My, my, my.

Many things could be said for of Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, a self-published success story that Jared Shurin of Pornokitsch described as “a joyous, optimistic space opera […] progressive but not worthy and filled with warm and endearing characters”, however, the original cover art – which could be lauded for its enthusiasm, if nothing else – was not a showstopper. So, alongside a new publishing deal from Hodder & Stoughton and a Kitschie nomination for Best Debut, comes a gorgeous new cover for Chambers’ debut. Isn’t it just lovely?

The crew of the Wayfarer, a wormhole-building spaceship, get the job offer of a lifetime: the chance to build a hyperspace tunnel at the centre of the galaxy. The journey will be time-consuming and difficult, but the pay is enough to endure any discomfort. All they have to do is survive the long trip through war-torn interstellar space without endangering any of the fragile alliances that keep the galaxy peaceful. But every crewmember has a secret to hide, and they’ll soon discover that space may be vast, but spaceships are very small indeed.

“I fell in love with Becky’s universe the moment I started reading The Long Way,” Anne Perry, Chambers’ editor at Hodder & Stoughton, said after revealing the deal on the publisher’s official blog. “The world she creates is warm and wonderful and so involving that I found myself resenting any time spent not reading the book. I was thrilled to learn about the Kitschies shortlisting so soon after agreeing the deal with Becky – The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is an incredibly assured debut and I am absolutely delighted be working with her at such an exciting moment in her career.”

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet will be released by Hodder and Stoughton as an eBook on March 16th, 2015, followed by a hardcover release August 13th, 2015.