Crack reporting by Jessica Zellers
Through a marvelous stroke of luck, I managed to crash the Orbit luncheon on Saturday. Orbit is an imprint of Hachette Book Group. Orbit has been publishing Science Fiction and Fantasy in the United Kingdom since 1974, but now they’re hopping across the pond to the United States.
May I first mention that I got to spend lunch sitting next to the Orbit Publishing Director, who is dreamy. He has this to-die-for English accent. The man could have recited the periodic table of the elements and I would have been spellbound.
The poor man made the mistake of asking me if I liked to Science Fiction and Fantasy. I think he was just trying to be polite. There’s no way he could have anticipated that speculative fiction is my very favorite type of reading. Luckily for him, he was able to escape my dissertation-length discussion because he was the first featured speaker.
Tim started by telling us a little bit about Orbit in the UK. It was launched in 1974, at the same time as the invention of the disposable razor.
“It was therefore a year of considerable cultural significance,� said Tim.
Orbit is the UK’s leading SF/F imprint, with 70+ titles published per year. Their publishing strategy is short and to the point: “To publish the most exciting SF and Fantasy for the widest possible readership.� Major Orbit authors include Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan, and Tad Williams.
(Aside: Have you read Tad Williams’s Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series? It’s awesome. Read it while you’re waiting for George R. R. Martin to get off his duff and write the next book.)
SF/F currently constitutes about 10% of the fiction market, but Orbit believes that it should take up more. Why? SF/F takes up far more of the market in other forms of entertainment (movies, TV, computer games) and in children’s books. It’s time for adult books to follow suit. Orbit hopes to move things along by publishing books for people who like their fiction to be challenging, exciting, engaging, and a lit bit different. The majority of these new titles will be published in trade paperback, which is a fair bit more attractive than mass market editions.
And—this is just fabulous—Orbit is going to do something about the cover art. “We believe that imaginative fiction deserves imaginative covers,� said Tim. Maybe the reason that SF/F has a reputation for being juvenile, formulaic, and silly is because of all those stereotypical covers. You know what I’m talking about—the busty ladies, the lustrous-waving-hair macho men, and the hideous beasties trying to capture said busty ladies. Orbit’s going to try to make the cover art look a little bit more respectable.
Tim then told us about some of the highlights of launch season, including Brian Ruckley’s Winterbirth. It is a big, brutal, bloody epic fantasy. It’s set in a world of ice and blood, in a bleak, inhospitable land based on Scotland. It’s not the sort of world where magic comes along and saves the day. It’s a brutal tale of warring clans.
I. Am. SO. Excited. This book sounds right up my alley. As soon as I get back from conference, I am going to have to call in sick so I can read the galley.
Another launch season debut will be Jennifer Rardin’s Once Bitten, Twice Shy, an urban fantasy with a kickass heroine and vampires. The main character is an assistant assassin. Cool!
Another debut will be Black Ships, by Jo Graham. It has beautiful cover art. There are these lovely moody blue tones and a partial image of a woman’s face. Tim told us that Black Ships develops character, though, and place in a beautifully eloquent, beautifully economical way. But then he stopped talking because Jo Graham herself took over.
It’s a historical fantasy, she explained, a retelling of The Aeneid, in the same way that The Mists of Avalon is a retelling of the Arthurian legend. Jo first encountered The Aeneid as a high schooler taking Latin. Because she was working with a foreign language, she read it very, very carefully. (“Ah! He sat on the horse, not under it!�)
“The Aeneid is a historical novel, of course,� said Jo. Right, Jo. Of course it is. We all knew that. Er.
Inspired by The Aeneid, Jo sets her novel in 1200 BCE, a time of great crisis. Except for Egypt, all of the great empires are collapsing. Literacy in Greece has actually disappeared.
These days, archaeologists seem to think that the battle of Troy was actually two separate wars, ten years apart. Jo’s novel Black Ships (coming out in March of 2008) works on the premise that slaves were captured in the first war. It’s told from the point of view of one of the slave girls.
Then Jo read an excerpt. Though she only read the first two pages of the novel, it was apparent that the language is lovely, concise, and evocative.
This is one to look out for. You heard it here.
>>The majority of these new titles will be published in trade paperback, which is a fair bit more attractive than mass market editions.