I heard about this a few days ago but had to contain my excitement to post it until the official announcement: Mike Cobley is the latest excellent SF&F writer to be signed to top UK (and now worldwide) SF publishers Orbit. Humanity’s Fire is a new epic SF series from the Shadowkings scribe, a vast galaxy-spanning future which appears shiny but has rot underneath. Editorial Director Darren Nash is extremely enthused at working with Mike and since I know Mike’s work to be excellent and Darren to have damned good taste in SF books I’m expecting great things.
I’m delighted at this news – I’ve known Mike for years and as well as being a great writer he puts a huge effort into letting readers know about his work; I still remember him creating posters of his book jackets himself for booksellers to put up, to say nothing of him happily standing at last year’s Glasgow Worldcon (often at our dealer room tables) signing copies for fans. It is also a nice touch to see him working with Darren since both were adversely affected by the shortsighted decision of Simon and Schuster to close the excellent SF imprint Earthlight which John Jarrold had built up into a great stable before handing over to Darren.
S&S still publish some good SF of course, but without a proper imprint to focus attention the support just isn’t there as it should be and they have lost damned good authors such as Jon Courtenay Grimwood and Chris Priest (and now Mike) to other publishers who do it properly, such as Gollancz and Orbit. Probably be 2008 before we see the first book, but I’m looking forward to it already.
Sat, Aug 19, 2006
Books, News