Tobias S. Buckell's Blog, page 29
June 23, 2014
Hello reviewers, I have a new book out: Hurricane Fever. Please reach out to me if you don’t yet have a copy
Hello reviewers and commentators and book people.
I’ve tried not to be annoying about this, but I do feel obligated to put the word out that I have a new book coming out.
It’s coming out next Tuesday. July the 1st.
It’s called Hurricane Fever. Here’s the book’s dedicated page.
Here’s the US cover:
Here’s the UK cover:
Under my press kit are images of me that are high res, and high res book photos. Anything missing? Let me know.
How can you get your hands on the book? Leah Withers at Tor.com is my pu...
June 21, 2014
The new electric Harley
Even Harley-Davidson is starting to sense where the future is headed:
“Code-named Project LiveWire, the hand-built prototype – which will officially be revealed in New York on June 23 – is styled like no other Harley on the road, looking more like a sleek and low-slung racer than the big highway cruisers typically associated with the brand.”
(Via Hell Freezes Over: Harley-Davidson Unveils New Electric Motorcycle.)
Texas hopes to copy Japanese rail success
Another article about Texas rail:
“Richard Lawless, who as a C.I.A. officer posted in Tokyo in the 1980s was a frequent Shinkansen passenger, has long found America’s failure to embrace high-speed rail ‘mind-boggling.’ But today the former Bush administration official is in a position to change things, as chairman and CEO of Texas Central Railway, a private company that plans to link Dallas and Houston with a 200-mile-per-hour bullet train as soon as 2021. The venture just might be high-speed...
June 20, 2014
A voice from the Islands: Stephanie Saulter talks about her novel Gemsigns
Stephanie Saulter‘s first book, Gemsigns, is available in the UK and Commonwealth and in the US from Jo Fletcher Books. It arrived not too long ago on my doorstep, and I asked Stephanie if she’d like to post on this blog because I thought my readers might be interested in her work (see Boing Boing’s excerpt of the novel here).
Stephanie has a Caribbean connection, like me. And has had some very similar experiences visiting the US.
Read on:
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Gemsigns has made it to America,...
SpaceX wants to beat NASA to Mars by 20 or so years
I just recently posted the graphic of NASA’s plans to put people on Mars in the 2040s. This article says 2030s, but 2040s sounds more like what’s coming out of the plans.
SpaceX has other ideas:
“Elon Musk, speaking to CNBC about how the future of humankind is rather closely tied to our ability to get off this planet, is ‘hopeful that the first people could be taken to Mars in 10 to 12 years’ — with SpaceX rockets and spacecraft, of course. This lines up with some of his previous comments about...
DRM and Hachette
Cory Doctorow is smart about identifying one of the reasons Hachette, and other publishers, are locked into Amazon by dint of their using DRM:
“By allowing Amazon to put a lock on its products whose key only Amazon possessed, Hachette has allowed Amazon to utterly usurp its relationship with its customers. The law of DRM means that neither the writer who created a book, nor the publisher who invested in it, gets to control its digital destiny: the lion’s share of copyright control goes to the...
June 19, 2014
New senate bill pushed by Republicans aimed at slowing or stopping SpaceX in favor of… pork
This is fucked up:
“Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) has put his thumb on the scale. He has added language to the Senate bill that will make it a lot harder for commercial space companies—like, say SpaceX—to launch humans into space. He’s basically adding a layer of government to the requirements for commercial companies, making them account for costs and pricing.
Oddly, this sort of accounting is already in place with contractors like Boeing—which, shockingly, is a big player with SLS, and which h...
Orphan Black: the show too few are watching
Indeed. Worth watching just to see Tatiana Maslany inhabit all the different roles:
“Orphan Black isn’t most shows. It’s one of the best shows; the only problem is that no one is actually watching it.
Genre fans are living in a golden age of television these days, with series like Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead tearing up the charts as fellow standouts such as Arrow and Doctor Who continue to carve out strong niches. But ratings aren’t always indicative of quality, and those aren’t the on...
Small press publisher Hadley Rille Books is crowdfunding their move to the next level
Just got an email from Hadley Rille about their IndieGogo campaign to take it to the next level:
“Founded in 2005, Hadley Rille Books is a quality small press that publishes exceptional titles in fantasy, science fiction, and historical fiction. Our critically acclaimed authors craft a variety of worlds with diverse, complex characters, including everyday people who face extraordinary challenges.”
(Via Support the Growth of Hadley Rille Books: A Quality Small Press Publisher | Indiegogo.)
June 16, 2014
Cold War-style spy games come to the Arctic
Hmmmm… sounds familiar.
“In early March, a mysterious ship the size of a large passenger ferry left a Romanian wharf, glided through the narrow strait that separates Europe from Asia and plotted a course toward Scandinavia. After a two-year refitting, the $250 million ship will begin its mission: to snoop on Russia’s activities in the Arctic.
‘There is a demand from our political leadership to describe what is going on in this region,’ said Norway’s military intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Kjell G...
