Samit Basu's Blog: Newsletter!, page 12

Turbulence: Events and updates

Update – The book tour is done, and after travelling from Calcutta to Jaipur to Kochi to Bangalore to Bombay for round 2, I"m fairly glad it's over. Much fun was had, and there are a few updates, and this is a big one: Mumbai Mirror on Turbulence going Bollywood. The last few days have been full of meetings with film types, who basically have the same Bollywood conversations that us civilians do, but for a living.

Also, many thanks, once again, to the fantastic Ben Aaronovitch, who puts me in his humour list. Considering the company, and the maker of the list, I'm deeply honoured.

Turbulence reviewed in Biblio and Caravan

Also: Deccan Herald review. Bloomberg UTVs report/review video

Update: Outlook magazine review of Turbulence.

Also, a video, NDTV-Hindu report on a launch.

And interviews in Bookchums and Blogadda, a Bookchums review and a review in Helter Skelter.

Yes, another Update: Hindustan Times review. Also, Turbulence appeared at number 1 on the Oxford bookstore bestseller list last week (Rushdie,the Booker winner for this year, Robert Jordan and Satyajit Ray were nos 2 to 5, so I am cackling in delight) and was talked about on the India Today last page newsmaker thingie. Cue more cackles.

Also. Take part in contest! Superhero Quiz! Win prizes!

Update: Turbulence in Mumbai Boss

Yet Another Update: Turbulence in The Hindu. Also, I love Air India again; they have found my luggage and delivered it, which means I now have clothes again.

Update: First leg of tour now done. Chennai was also lovely, and Tishani Doshi is the most elegant, charming event host possible. Back in Delhi now. Air India, probably the Chennai sub-gang, has managed to lose my luggage, which is not a nice thing to happen when you've just finished a cross-country book tour and were travelling with most of the nice things you own.

On the bright side, though, there is this interview in the Mumbai Mirror, and this mini-review in the Telegraph (insert my usual murmurings about this not being a genre novel etc. here). Also, loose talk about Bollywood and bookbans in DNA.

Goa  later this month, I think, and then more to follow. Major Houseclean reporting for duty.

Another update: Calcutta launch done, Dr Abhijit Gupta was wonderful as usual, though the high point of the evening was unintended – he read women instead of men in a bit which talked about the hairy chests and unrepentant paunches of Indian men in the 80s.

Also, here's the Times of India (I weakly reiterate, this isn't a science fiction novel, really – it's being sold as completely mainstream fiction in India, though you could call it a superhero novel or, in the west, an urban fantasy novel) and Mid-Day Mumbai on the book. Also, extract at IBNLive

I'm hoping to put the video of Cyrus Sahukar's brilliant fake bodice-ripper reading at the Mumbai launch up soon.

Update: The Pune and Mumbai legs are done, and both of these legs were extremely fine, I thought. Meanwhile, Turbulence has been turbulating: We're no.1 on Flipkart's new releases and no.3 on The Hindu's bestseller list (behind F. Forsyth and D. Baldacci, a plague on both their houses)

Just done with the Delhi launch of Turbulence, which went off particularly well, I thought. Thank you very much if you were one of the almost-300-strong and extremely glamorous crew that showed up; it is a good thing I did not know that many of you had come, or I might have been tempted to yell 'This is Sparta!' which wouldn't have worked out well for anyone.

Here are links to the other Turbulence events coming up soon: Pune,23rd, Landmark, 630pm, with Saaz Agarwal, Mumbai,Mainland China Andheri W near Infinity, 7 pm, 25th, with Cyrus Sahukar, Kolkata, 7pm, 26th, at Oxford Bookstore with Dr Abhijit Gupta, Chennai, 7pm, Landmark Apex Centre, 3rd Nov, with Tishani Doshi. Do turn up if you can.

There will be more events, so do come back here around mid-November for updates if your city isn't covered already. Bangalore, Hyderabad are definitely happening, and I'm hoping Goa and Kochi as well.

Here's Ben Aaronovitch being extremely kind to the book.

Also, listen to the dulcet tones of Anindita Ghose and the strangled-robot voice of the author as Turbulence is discussed on the Lounge podcast

Filed under: just

Turbulence

Aman Sen is smart, young, ambitious and going nowhere. He thinks this is because he doesn't have the right connections – but then he gets on a plane from London to Delhi and discovers, a few days later, that he has turned into a communications demigod, able to control and manipulate all networks, including the internet. And he's not the only one with a secret.

Everyone on Aman's flight now has extraordinary abilities corresponding to their innermost desires. Vir, an Indian Air Force pilot, can now fly. Uzma, a British-Pakistani aspiring Bollywood actress, now possesses infinite charisma. Tia, a housewife from the troubled Indian north-east, can now live out all the lives she dreamt of by splitting into multiple bodies. And these are just the nice ones. Terrible new forces have been unleashed. Businessmen, politicians, criminals, each with their own agenda. One of these is Jai, an indestructible one-man army with an old-fashioned goal – military conquest of the world. And there's another, even more sinister force at work. A mind capable of manipulating mobs, of driving humans and superhumans into an all-destroying frenzy.

Aman and his rag-tag collective of superhumans find themselves in grave danger in a part of the world that needs radical change much more than it needs protection. They must decide what to do with their powers and their lives – and quickly. Aman dreams of uniting their powers to fight the world's real villains – faceless, amorphous corporations, corrupt government officials, religious fanatics. Of ensuring that their new powers aren't wasted on costumed crime-fighting, celebrity endorsements, or reality television. He wants to help those who need it most – untold millions without food, power, schools or voices. He intends to heal the planet. Save the world. But with each step he takes, he finds helping some means harming others, playing with lives, making huge, potentially disastrous decisions. Will they actually make the world better or will it all end, as 80 years of superhero fiction suggest, in a meaningless, explosive slugfest?

TURBULENCE is an hyper-real novel set in an over-the-top world. It features the 21st-century Indian subcontinent in all its insane glory – F-16s, Bollywood, radical religious parties, nuclear plants, cricket, terrorists, luxury resorts, crazy TV shows – but is essentially about two very human questions.

How would you feel if you actually got what you wanted?

What would you do if you were given the power to change the world?

'For wicked wit, for post-modern superheroics, for sheer verbal energy and dazzle, Samit Basu doesn't so much push the envelope as fold it into an n-dimensional hyper-envelope, address it to your hind-brain and mail it with a rail gun.'- Mike Carey (X-men, Lucifer, the Felix Castor series)

'You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll gasp and you will demand a sequel.'- Ben Aaronovitch (Doctor Who, Rivers of London)

This is the paperback cover, designed by Peter Cotton. Many thanks to Priya at Hachette for adding production effects. It looks really good in book form.

There's also a limited edition hardback, with an extra section that reveals more about a few characters. This is the cover, the image is by that formidable world-famous artist duo Sarnath Banerjee and Bani Abidi. Remember to play spot-the-difference with the back cover if you pick this up.

The Facebook  page is here.

For preorders, visit Indiaplaza here or Flipkart (paperback and hardback)

Links to events pages coming up soon.

For review copies/events/RSVPs, contact Anurima Roy anurima.roy@hachetteindia.com

Filed under: just

World SF interview

Here.

Thanks Charles A. Tan and Lavie Tidhar for doing this.

Filed under: books

Update

Because fungus was growing on this blog. Again.

So. About a month to go to Turbulence. Proofs are done. Covers are in. There's going to be a limited edition hardback, with an extra section ( a cluster of very short stories set in the world of the novel, with the few compulsory drastic reveals) with cover artwork by that noble pair, Sarnath Banerjee and Bani Abidi. The paperback cover is by Peter Cotton, a most splendid cover designer from the UK and probably not the author of Practical Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, which is one of the early Google results for his name. Both Turbulence covers feature some very nice and incredibly kind things said by two writers I admire greatly, Mike Carey (about whom I have burbled enthusiastically and fanboyishly several times before on this blog) and Ben Aaronovitch (Doctor Who fans will be familiar with his name – and his first novel, Rivers of London, is superfantastic and will be out early next year). Thanks again, gentlemen.

My to-do list is still far from empty at this point – I've been working with The Tadpole Repertory (if  you're in Delhi and like English theatre, or have been following the Hindu MetroPlus Theatre Awards you probably know them already) to make a bunch of very short films set in the world of the book. These should be out over the course of the next month as well.

There's also going to be a trip to Sweden for the Sodra Teatern autumn festival, where I'll be in a panel with that other noble pair, Zac O'Yeah and Anjum Hasan. Zac's book is out soon from Hachette. If it is half as cool as his name, it will be very cool. Plus a couple of workshops and events and things. There's also a film and a GN to write, but then, there always is.

Haven't been doing much except proofs, cover design work and video edits since the Morningstar tour, which ended, alas, in illness and thus in  having to miss a bunch of cities I really wanted to go to. Touring is fun but crazy. It is a good thing I did not become a rockstar. Not that it was ever an option, but you know what I mean.

Filed under: just

Morningstar events

Hello. I've just started the first leg of the Terror on the Titanic tour. The dates for the launches in Bangalore, Mysore and Calcutta are:

Bangalore: Reliance TimeOut bookstore, Cunningham road, 630 pm 13th July.

Update: Here's a piece in DNA Bangalore about the tour and the book.

Further update. The Hindu (The cameo in Turbulence is actually Anurag Kashyap, not Basu, but I mumble like a champion so it's not the reporter's fault)

Mysore:  Sapna book house, Narayan Shastry road, 6 pm, 15th July

Calcutta: Starmark South City, 630 pm, 22nd July

Do come and encourage fellow eccentrics to do the same.

Further update: Quick review from the mighty Jai Arjun Singh, posted on his blog, from his column in the Sunday Guardian.

Filed under: just

We the Tweeple

Was on an NDTV show, We the People, a couple of weeks ago. It was about Twitter. Much fun. The video is here.

Filed under: boop

Preorder the first Morningstar Agency book!

Read the first chapter here.

The book is currently no.1 on the Top new releases on the Flipkart homepage. The book page is here.

It's fun. Promise.

And the Facebook group is here.

Update:

Just adding a few more sites where online ordering is possible:

Indiaplaza

Odyssey 360

Friendsofbooks

Bookvook

NBCIndia

Filed under: books, buy, hear ye

Untouchable is out. The comic, that is.

I've been waiting for this for many months. Untouchable, the comic I co-wrote with Mike Carey, is now out. Don't know if there'll be a print edition, but the digital version is out on Scribd, here.

So relieved. Now I can gloat about there being actual evidence of my having worked with Mike-who apart from being one of the writers I admire most ( and if you haven't read Lucifer, his X-Men: Legacy run, his Felix Castor books, his current and brilliant series The Unwritten, hell, all his work, please do so at once) is just incredible to collaborate with, and bizarrely nice for someone so successful. All rights to Untouchable are with Liquid Comics, but the bragging rights here are totally mine.

Go read. Hope you like.

Update: Turns out only the preview is readable, the first five pages. Don't bother clicking the download link unless you're in the US. It's downloadable only there. Makes no sense, of course, but there you have it. This is that point where I'd offer the rest of you free copies, but I have none myself. If I hear of it being downloadable for the rest of the world, I'll update again.

Filed under: buy, comics, coolness

Terror on the Titanic cover

So, this is my first YA novel, out in June from Scholastic. Turbulence is out from Hachette in October. More info on Terror on the Titanic and the Morningstar Agency series closer to publication date. It's going to be a fun year.

Cover design is by the supertalented Priya  Kuriyan.

Filed under: books, hear ye

How the years speed by

I finished my first book almost exactly eight years ago. Don't remember the date, but it was in April 2002. I'm about a week away from finishing my fifth, my first young adult novel. That, plus about fifteen issues of comics, twelve short stories or so, two screenplays sold but as yet unproduced, a couple of newspaper columns, a bunch of articles, and some TV work no one knows about; that's where the years went. If you've read any of this, and decided to stick around, thank you.

Filed under: just