The Week in Review

Welcome to the week in review! Every Friday, we comb through the links and images we found and shared this week, and pull the very best for this post. Consider it concentrated genre goodness from all around the web.

• Because we love tormenting fans (and ourselves, let’s be honest), check out this post from Irene Gallo of Tor.com, who went behind the scenes to watch A Memory of Light being printed at the bindery. Also: Tor.com is having a NYC midnight launch for the final Wheel of Time book!

• Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit comes out today! Over on io9, there’s a fun list of 12 things you probably didn’t know about the epic new movie.

• Looking for new reading material for the holidays? Tor.com has you covered. They’ve invited some of their regular reviews to share their favorite reads of 2012. The result is an eclectic list of books sure to please almost any genre fan.

• A well deserved award: SFWA has named Gene Wolfe the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award Winner for 2012. If you want to check out some of the award-winning author’s earlier works, we’ve just announced 19 of his backlist titles are now available as ebooks.

• Tor.com has launched a new series: Talking with Tom. In this initial conversation, the legendary founder of Tor chats with L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

• In November, science fiction author Frederik Pohl made a rare appearance at Windycon, where he did an interview with ChicagoScope.

• Finally, io9 has their impressions of the first nine minutes of Star Trek: Into Darkness. Is anyone else ridiculously excited for this movie? I know I am, but I’m a bit of a Trekker, so…

The Tor/Forge newsletter went out this week! Check out these fascinating articles from our authors:

• The Toughest Part of Writing Cold City by F. Paul Wilson
• A Letter from Harry Ransom by Felix Gilman
• Crying Bully by J. A. Souders
• What if? Two little words that created S. J. Day’s Eve of Darkess by Sylvia Day

And, just to make Friday that much sweeter, here’s a list of sweepstakes and sales we have going on!

• Newsletter Sweepstakes: Big Fat Books for the Holidays (Ends 12/16)
• Goodreads First Reads: Impulse by Steven Gould (Ends 12/18)
• Goodreads First Reads: The Sixth Station by Linda Stasi (Ends 12/19)
• eBook Sale: People of the Earth by Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 1/2)
• eBook Sale: Count to a Trillion by John C. Wright is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 1/2)
• eBook Sale: Larry Bond’s Red Dragon Rising: Edge of War by Larry Bond and Jim DeFelice is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 1/2)
• eBook Sale: Imager by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 1/2)
• Goodreads First Reads: Homeland by Cory Doctorow (Ends 1/9)
• Goodreads First Reads: Kalimpura by Jay Lake (Ends 1/9)
• Goodreads First Reads: A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan (Ends 1/9)

A Letter from Harry Ransom

Written by Felix Gilman

[We are pleased to announce that the writings of the famous Harry Ransom – some might say notorious – have now been collected and published as The Rise of Ransom City. This letter was found too late to be included. Besides, the fellow who says he found it was asking too much money for it, and for all we know it is a forgery. The handwriting is atrocious. – The Editors.]

Dear May,
   or Jess,
     or Elmer,
       or whoever comes across this,

That’s that then. A stack of papers. Some of the pages got wet when we crossed this river or that on our way out west – who can remember all the rivers. Sometimes the typewriter broke or leaked ink. It was a good typewriter for all its faults and it is a miracle it got me this far, especially after the bullet it took. They made things to last back in Jasper City. Anyhow the thing is done. This stack of papers is the life of your humble correspondent, Harry Ransom; the story of my birth, the incident of the electric-cure, the tragedy of the Damaris, and the showdown with the murderer Mr. Knoll; and the days at the Ormolu Theater, and Mr. Carver, and Mr. Baxter, and Adela. My rise and fall and how come I am out here heading west . . .

I am having a devil of a time letting it go. I have been writing for so long now that if I fall silent I am half-scared of what will happen. Maybe all the words that used to come pouring out of the typewriter will build up in my head until it explodes. Something similar has happened with the Ransom Lightbringing Apparatus once or twice – in Kenauk, in White Rock, and in Jasper. But if you have read my letters then you know about those incidents, and you know that they were mostly not my fault.

Maybe you have by now and maybe you haven’t. Who knows if any of this will make it back east to you. I have been typing in triplicate and sending parts back as we go. Whenever anyone deserts (and we have had a few deserters) I say, no hard feelings, utopia isn’t for everyone, but will you please take back a letter? Only once have I been refused. Mr. Cantor hit me in the face and said I was a fraud and a lunatic. But his wife was sick with a fever and I do not blame him for losing hope. Mr. Belbo took back a hundred pages or so, and Miss Luria took fifty. . . But there are a lot of dangers on the road, between here and a post-office, in these terrible times.

The typewriter is finally broken for good, and I am writing this by hand, as you can see. Fortunately it so happened that one of the Beck brothers brought a pen with him when we set off for the uncharted west. It is very fine indeed, but the initials engraved on it are not his. I guess it is too late to worry about that sort of thing now. When we get to where we’re going and build our city we will start with a clean slate. Perhaps we’ll abolish property altogether – I haven’t decided.

I write on a rock by the shore of a lake, sunlit and silvery, whispering, nameless and unmapped, at least so far as I know. It bars our way west. We are considering the construction of boats. Thomas and Carlo and Lillian are turning back. So be it. Everyone is free to come or go to Ransom City as they please, otherwise how would we be better than anywhere else? They’ll take the last of my letters (but this one I’ll keep back, just in case). Thomas is checking his rifle, again and again. We are out on the wild edge of things and we have seen the tracks and heard the roar of big cats at night – I think they are cats. Good luck, Thomas, and shoot straight!

As for those of us who are going on – well, I have generally had bad luck with boats. I will fold this letter, and leave it under the typewriter. If in some distant future anyone should chance by this place, and observe the rusted hulk of my typewriter on a rock, and be curious enough to investigate, they will know–if nothing else, if none of my other writings survive — that at least I tried to set the story straight. I did.

Yours,
  Harry Ransom

…………………………

From the Tor/Forge December newsletter. Sign up to receive our newsletter via email.

…………………………

More from the December Tor/Forge newsletter:

• The Toughest Part of Writing Cold City by F. Paul Wilson
• Crying Bully by J. A. Souders
• What if? Two little words that created the world of S. J. Day’s Eve of Darkness
• Big Fat Books for the Holidays Sweepstakes

New Releases: 11/27/2012

See upcoming releases.

The Week in Review

Welcome to the week in review! Every Friday, we comb through the links and images we found and shared this week, and pull the very best for this post. Consider it concentrated genre goodness from all around the web.

 

• There was a total solar eclipse earlier this week! Sadly, it was only visible from Australia. Luckily, NASA and National Geographic, among others, have us covered for images.

• Sir Terry Pratchett, the insanely prolific author behind the Discworld series, has decided to pass his world on to his daughter when he dies. May the Discworld live forever, trundling endlessly through space on the back of a giant turtle.

• Have you seen the first two episodes of BSG: Blood & Chrome? You should! The next webisodes will be available at some point today, if they aren’t already. Great way to waste some time this afternoon!

• Oxford Dictionaries has named a U.S. and U.K. word of the year. Any guesses? Well, the American Word of the Year is. . . GIF. (I know, right?) And the British Word of the Year is. . . omnishambles. Interesting.

• And last, but definitely not least, our sister site Tor.com is looking to hire an in-house publishing liaison. Follow the link for details of the position.

 
The Tor/Forge newsletter went out this week! Check out these fascinating articles from our authors:

• How Many Syllables Was That Again, or “Can I Buy a Vowel?” by Melissa Ann Singer, Senior Editor
• Living in a Real Teenage Dystopia: The Classroom by Isamu Fukui
• The Care and Feeding of a Villain by Joseph Nassise
• On Taking Risks and Being Dead by Sharon Lynn Fisher

 
And, just to make Friday that much sweeter, here’s a list of sweepstakes and sales we have going on!
 

• Goodreads First Reads: Forge of Darkness by Steven Erikson (Ends 11/18)
• November #TorChat Sweepstakes (Ends 11/21)
• A Memory of Light Backpack Sweepstakes (Ends 11/21)
• Goodreads First Reads: The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan (Ends 11/27)
• Goodreads First Reads: River Road by Suzanne Johnson (Ends 11/27)
• Goodreads First Reads: All Men of Genius by Lev AC Rosen (Ends 11/27)
• Goodreads First Reads: The Inexplicables by Cherie Priest (Ends 11/27)
• Goodreads First Reads: The Rise of Ransom City by Felix Gilman (Ends 11/27)
• Steampunk Collection Sweepstakes (Ends 11/30)

#TorChat November 2012 Sweepstakes

Did you participate in today’s #TorChat? We hope you enjoyed it and look forward to your participation in next month’s chat on December 19th!

In the meantime, here’s your chance to win some amazing books! Two lucky winners will receive copies of River Road, The Rise of Ransom City, and King of the Dead. Leave a comment below to enter.

And again we’d like to thank Suzanne Johnson, Felix Gilman, and Joseph Nassise for joining us on Twitter today.

Sweepstakes closes to new entries on November 21st at noon.

And don’t forget to come and join us next month, on December 19th, at 4 PM Eastern!

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. You must be 18 or older and a legal resident of the 50 United States or D.C. to enter. Promotion begins November 14, 2012 at 4:30 p.m. ET. and ends November 21, 2012, 12:00 p.m. ET. Void in Puerto Rico and wherever prohibited by law. Please see full details and official rules go here. Sponsor: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

November #TorChat Lineup Revealed

This month, #TorChat focuses on the importance of setting, from real world places to imaginary spaces. Joining us on November 14th from 4 to 5 PM EST are Suzanne Johnson, Felix Gilman, and Joseph Nassise, to talk about the richly developed worlds they’ve populated in their books!

Tor Books (@torbooks) is thrilled to announce the November #TorChat, part of a monthly series of genre-themed, hour-long chats created by Tor Books and hosted on Twitter.

Setting is, arguably, just as important as the main characters in a novel. How an author creates and describes their world can give us chills, thrills, joy, and even tears. What does it take to create a realistic world, even one that comes populated with ghosts, demons, or monsters? We’ve invited three masters of the subject to chat with us on Twitter about how they do it. Joining us will be Suzanne Johnson, the author of River Road, the second book in the Sentinels of New Orleans series, featuring a beautiful, fragile New Orleans post-Katrina; Felix Gilman, the author of The Rise of Ransom City, a book that shows that steampunk is an ideal fit for not just Victorian England, but the American West; and Joseph Nassise, whose book King of the Dead features a protagonist who gave up his normal sight to see the true world that surrounds us – one filled with ghosts and things much worse. These three authors know how to set a scene, and they’re ready and willing to dish their secrets!

The chat will be loosely moderated by Tor Associate Publicist Leah Withers (@PhaeTo). We hope that urban fantasy, horror, and genre fiction fans in general, as well as aspiring writers, will follow the chat and join in using the Twitter hashtag #TorChat!

About the Authors

SUZANNE JOHNSON (@suzanne_johnson) is a magazine editor and features writer with more than fifty national writing and editing awards. A longtime New Orleans resident, she helped rebuild for two years after Hurricane Katrina. She currently lives in Alabama. River Road, her second novel, publishes on November 13th.

FELIX GILMAN (@felixgilman) has been nominated for the John W. Campbell award and the Locus Award for best new writer. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Thunderer, Gears of the City, and The Half-Made World, which was listed by Amazon as one of the ten best SF/F novels of 2010. His latest book, The Rise of Ransom City, publishes on November 27th.

JOSEPH NASSISE (@jnassise)is the author of the bestselling Templar Chronicles series and Eyes to See, the first novel the Jeremiah Hunt Chronicles. He lives in Arizona with his wife and four children. His new novel, King of the Dead, publishes on November 27th.

About #Torchat
#TorChat is a genre-themed, hour-long chat series created by Tor Books and hosted on Twitter. Guest authors join fans in lively, informative and entertaining discussions of all that’s hot in genre fiction, 140 characters at a time, from 4 – 5 PM EST on the third Wednesday of every month. Each #TorChat revolves around a different genre topic of interest, often of a timely nature, and strives to provide a new media opportunity for readers to connect with their favorite authors.

About Tor Books
Tor Books, an imprint of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, is a New York-based publisher of hardcover and softcover books. Founded in 1980, Tor annually publishes what is arguably the largest and most diverse line of science fiction and fantasy ever produced by a single English-language publisher. In 2002, Tor launched Starscape, an imprint dedicated to publishing quality science fiction and fantasy for young readers, including books by critically acclaimed and award winning authors such as Cory Doctorow, Orson Scott Card, and David Lubar. Between an extensive hardcover and trade-softcover line, an Orb backlist program, and a stronghold in mass-market paperbacks, books from Tor have won every major award in the SF and fantasy fields, and has been named Best Publisher 25 years in a row in the Locus Poll, the largest consumer poll in SF.

The Week in Review

Welcome to the week in review! Every Friday, we comb through the links and images we found and shared this week, and pull the very best for this post. Consider it concentrated genre goodness from all around the web.

• Deviant Art user (and Whovian!) crazyfoalrus built his own TARDIS control room in his home. This is absolutely insane, and I desperately want one in my apartment.

• In Clarkesworld Magazine, author Lev AC Rosen has a heartfelt plea for genre fiction to include more queer characters: “I’m not saying every story needs a queer character. Or that it’s a writer’s responsibility to do more than tell a great story. But I do think it’s time for all of us—straight folks included—to think more about where queer characters fit into SFF.”

• Want to tour the United States without ever leaving your couch? Now you can, with this list of 50 young adult books, one for each state.

• Mary Robinette Kowal, the author of Shades of Milk and Honey and Glamour in Glass, is auctioning off a manuscript of her next novel, Without a Summer, for Hurricane Sandy relief. Check it out, and donate to a good cause. A lot of folks up here still need help.

• It’s time to start voting for your favorite books of 2012! Start with the Goodreads Choice Awards, a list of great 2012 titles to choose among, including several Tor titles, like Scalzi’s Redshirts and Card’s Shadows in Flight.

• Also announced are the nominees for RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Awards. In the science fiction category, we have Scalzi’s Redshirts; in fantasy, Tina Connolly’s Ironskin and Mary Robinette Kowal’s Glamour in Glass; and in epic fantasy, Elizabeth Bear’s Range of Ghosts. Congratulations to all the authors nominated!

• Publishers Weekly and Booklist have also come out with the Best SF/F of 2012 lists, and they share a common book: Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s The Weird!

• Finally, you can now download free wallpaper of The Gathering Storm ebook cover.

And, just to make Friday that much sweeter, here’s a list of sweepstakes and sales we have going on!

• Goodreads First Reads: Forge of Darkness by Steven Erikson (Ends 11/18)
• Goodreads First Reads: The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan (Ends 11/27)
• Goodreads First Reads: River Road by Suzanne Johnson (Ends 11/27)
• Goodreads First Reads: All Men of Genius by Lev AC Rosen (Ends 11/27)
• Goodreads First Reads: The Inexplicables by Cherie Priest (Ends 11/27)
• Goodreads First Reads: The Rise of Ransom City by Felix Gilman (Ends 11/27)
• Steampunk Collection Sweepstakes (Ends 11/30)

Goodreads First Reads: The Rise of Ransom City by Felix Gilman

Enter for a chance to win a copy on Goodreads!

About The Rise of Ransom City: This is the story Harry Ransom. If you know his name it’s most likely as the inventor of the Ransom Process, a stroke of genius that changed the world.

Or you may have read about how he lost the battle of Jasper City, or won it, depending on where you stand in matters of politics.

Friends called him Hal or Harry, or by one of a half-dozen aliases, of which he had more than any honest man should. He often went by Professor Harry Ransom, and though he never had anything you might call a formal education, he definitely earned it.

If you’re reading this in the future, Ransom City must be a great and glittering metropolis by now, with a big bronze statue of Harry Ransom in a park somewhere. You might be standing on its sidewalk and not wonder in the least of how it grew to its current glory. Well, here is its story, full of adventure and intrigue. And it all starts with the day that old Harry Ransom crossed paths with Liv Alverhyusen and John Creedmoor, two fugitives running from the Line, amidst a war with no end.

Enter for a chance to win here!

(Ends November 27)

Also, don’t forget to check out our other sweepstakes!

Steampunk Collection Sweepstakes

Sign up for the Tor/Forge Newsletter for a chance to win the following collection:

About our newsletter: Every issue of Tor’s monthly email newsletter features original writing by, and interviews with, Tor authors and editors about upcoming new titles from all Tor and Forge imprints. In addition, we occasionally send out “special edition” newsletters to highlight particularly exciting new projects, programs, or events.

If you’re already a newsletter subscriber, you can enter too. We do not automatically enter subscribers into sweepstakes. We promise we won’t send you duplicate copies of the newsletter if you sign up for the newsletter more than once.

Sign up for your chance to win today!

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. You must be 18 or older and a legal resident of the 50 United States or D.C. to enter. Promotion begins November 1, 2012 at 12 a.m. ET. and ends November 30, 2012, 11:59 p.m. ET. Void in Puerto Rico and wherever prohibited by law. For Official Rules and to enter, go here. Sponsor: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.