New Jim Butcher series coming...

...to a bookshelf near you. Orbit books have announced that they've signed a new four book deal to publish Jim Butcher's Codex Alara which claims to be something more in the vein of traditional fantasy epics rather than the swashbuckling urban fantasy of the Dresden Files that makes you feel like you've just run a marathon, or tried to watch every episode of Cracker ever produced... in 10 minutes. It will be interesting to see how his style carries across and the Gnu will certainly post some kind of summary once it arrives and is suitably digested.

In the meantime, here's the description from the Orbit site:

"The Codex Alera is a series of epic fantasy novels set in a world where courage and ingenuity may yet triumph over magic and power. For a thousand years, the people of Alera have united against the aggressive races that inhabit the world, using their unique bond with the furies - elementals of earth, air, fire, water, and metal. But now, Gaius Sextus, First Lord of Alera, grows old and lacks an heir. Ambitious Lords manoeuvre to place their Houses in positions of power, and a war of succession looms on the horizon.

Far from city politics in the Calderon Valley, young Tavi struggles with his lack of furycrafting. At fifteen, he has no wind fury to help him fly, no fire fury to light his lamps. Yet as the Alerans’ most savage enemy - the Marat - return to the Valley, his world will change. Caught in a storm of deadly wind furies, Tavi saves the life of a runaway slave. But Amara is actually a spy, seeking intelligence on possible Marat traitors to the Crown. And when the Valley erupts into chaos - when rebels war with loyalists and furies clash with furies - Amara will find Tavi invaluable. His talents will outweigh any fury-born power - and could even turn the tides of war."

Great free(ish) book sites

For those who are fed up watching their pay packet go down the Amazon drain whilst their house fills up with books please have a look at these two excellent sites:

www.bookmooch.com/
A nice free book exchange site - minus the posting cost of course. Imagine it - a constant stream of fresh literature without suffocating under the weight of pulped wood.. but if you can't find what you're after, there are always the links to amazon onthe site and our friends and Book Mooch get a little summat for their troubles. Nice.

Here's some of their blurb:
"BookMooch is a community for exchanging used books.

BookMooch lets you give away books you no longer need in exchange for books you really want.

Give & receive: Every time you give someone a book, you earn a point and can get any book you want from anyone else at BookMooch. Once you've read a book, you can keep it forever or put it back into BookMooch for someone else, as you wish.

No cost: there is no cost to join or use this web site: your only cost is mailing your books to others.

Points for entering books: you receive a tenth-of-a-point for every book you type into our system, and one point each time you give a book away. In order to keep receiving books, you need to give away at least one book for every three you receive."

www.bookcrossing.com
Ok, this one requires a little bit of effort. If you don't fancy the idea of treasure hunting your books across the world (though, lets face it, we could all do with burning some additional calories) then this one might not be for you. However, if you are after a novel way to get your hands on... a novel... then get going!

Here's a synopsis from the site :

"At BookCrossing, you can register any book you have on the site, and then set the book free to travel the world and find new readers.

Leave it on a park bench, at a coffee shop, at a hotel on vacation. Share it with a friend or tuck it onto a bookshelf at the gym -- anywhere it might find a new reader! What happens next is up to fate, and we never know where our books might travel next. Track the book's journey around the world as it is passed on from person to person."

Radio 4 SFF audio heads up

Anyone who's not glued to the box/the match/some darn SFF book this weekend, you might want to hit pause, suspend disbelief and find something to use as a bookmark and tune in to Radio 4 tomorrow, Sat April 12th at 1430 for the new show of Journey into Space that kicks off this weekend. The Gnu spotted this one listed on SFFaudio (great blog and being added to the roll in about 3 seconds time) which also links to the wikipedia entry for those not familiar with this classic of the fifties.

For those too lazy to click through, here's the basics:

"Journey Into Space was a BBC Radio science fiction programme, written by BBC producer Charles Chilton. Three series were produced, which have been translated into 17 languages and broadcast worldwide.In the UK it was the last radio programme to attract a bigger evening audience than television"

^{And according to the listing, it's still written by the original writer, Charles Chilton.}

Time to kill?

If you're reading this instead of doing... whatever it is you should be doing... then pop over to 365 Tomorrows for a bit of literary SciFi indulgence.
So what is it? Well, in its own words: "365 tomorrows is a collaborative project designed to present readers with a new piece of short speculative ‘flash’ fiction each day. Using the broad palette of science fiction, our vision of the future creates a diverse pool of stories with something for everyone to enjoy."

Mmm bite size SciFi fun with forums, podcasts, competitions.. what more could you ask for? An archive with hours and hours of reading materials? done!

Good stuff.

Futurama geekfest

Always one for a little extreme geekism of a weds lunchtime, the Gnu stumbled upon an insanely good entry on everything2.com which is so cool it deserves a post all of its own.

Now some of you may have seen enough episodes of the mildly implausible futuristic Simpsons-come-Star Trek sci-fi soap that is Futurama to know that it is... shall we say... a bit of a challenge to keep any grasp from season to season as to what happened when to whom.. and how many of the characters Zoidberg has eaten for example.

So Sam 512 gets full kudos for mapping the entire and ultra-confusing chronolgy of events in the whole Futurama series. Now, do not underestimate this feat - there are a lot of shitty versions out there that claim to be accurate but this guy has really wrapped his brain around multiple dimensions simultaneously in such a way that I'm not sure the whole world won't turn inside out.

If you don't believe me, take a look for yourself.

Karen Miller - interview on "Book Swede"

As the Gnu continues (**the shame**) to plow its way through Karen Miller's second in the King Maker, King Breaker duology we are still very pleased to see that there are more titles coming from this author in the summer and only hopes that the mountain of fantasy titles next to one's bed, under one's desk and in the big crisp box from Amazon that is still unopened lessens somewhat to enable us to jump on Empress as soon as it arrives hot foot from which ever online store can ship it fast enough. (Let's hope it's straight to paperback... hardbacks take up more space than is strictly necessary... if the Gnu's humble abode sported hardbacks there would be enough to build a sizable extension... to put books in)

For those who have less patience that the Gnu, there's a great review on the Book Swede's blog. Enjoy!

Douglas Adams - ahead of the game

Today we are raising a small trumpet to our pursed Gnu-like lips to herald the 30th anniversary of Mr Adam's Hitchikers Guide books and radio series. No doubt there will be further hurroo later in the year about the milestone but Wired brought it to my attention and there it will stay.

The best thing about this article is the connection it draws to H2G2, a project Adams championed in league with that ageing behemoth, the BBC. Wired asks if this was the predecessor of Wikipedia and if, with a little more energy behind it, it might have superceded Wiki in the online, open source, user-generated world?

Given that H2G2 appears to have less than 100 entries covering "Life, the Universe and Everything" - a somewhat reductionist reflection on the world and all the wonders held therein - it would probably have needed more of a marketing boost that the Beeb are prepared to invest in any untried and untested concept.

Still, all hail Mr Adams. Just like so many of the great writers and thinkers we've lost recently, especially in the SFF world, he remains our favourite "all-around smart-arse" and a man ahead of his time.

D&D gets political...

Today we are mostly loving Wired's celebrity D&D characters, though we're not sure that Mr Bush should have scored quite so highly on level...? Paris Hilton is pretty spot-on due to her utter pointlessness and lack of contribution to the human race (outside of lower quality news reporting and teenage YouTube obsessions) but we reckon that Dawkins would make the ultimate fighter... the Gnu could take him though, you understand...

The reality of SciFi

For those oddballs among you who like a bit of reality with your SciFi, here's an excellent blog entry from the New York Times

Personally the Gnu's head is firmly entrenched in a bucket of sand when it comes to all things rational however this will make interesting fodder the next time I bump into a particle physicist.