Ashes of Candesce will hit the shelves on February 14, but meanwhile,Tor.com has an excerpt you can read online! I hope you like it.

Ashes brings together all the disparate plot threads from the first four books, and wraps them all up in one epic adventure. You'll encounter all the main characters from the previous books, and some surprising new ones. And, we finally get to see more than just a glimpse of the strange posthuman world that lies outside Virga.

The Virga series has been a great ride, and I hope you enjoy reading the cataclysmic ending as much as I did writing it.

Yes, it's finally (almost) here: the graphic novel version of Sun of Suns! And I'll be doing the full reveal and talking extensively about the project this weekend at SFContario, at the Ramada Plaza Hotel in downtown Toronto.

Sun of Suns is set in the world of Virga, the ultimate hyper-technological-post-singularity-cannons-and-swordfights-pirate-infested steampunk playground of the imagination. There's much to say about the new project, and I'll be unveiling the artists, our writer and editor and their work on Saturday night at 6:00 p.m. For now, you'll have to get by on this teaser image. 

Hope to see you there!

Tor has unveiled the cover art for my next Virga novel, Ashes of Candesce, and this time, Stephan Martiniere has outdone himself.  I've always been delighted with his covers--as a matter of fact, not two hours ago I was in a framing store arranging to have the Lady of Mazes cover piece framed--but THIS!  This is by far the most gorgeous cover he's done for one of my books.  But what makes it such a personal and emotionally moving experience for me is that, as with his image for Queen of Candesce, this is a particular, specific scene from the book that he's represented here--and he's captured my vision perfectly.  I got all choked up when I saw it; and then I danced around in delight for ten minutes.

And who exactly is that, standing at the top of the stairs?  And where is she?  You've met her before, and very recently, in the series.  The light that floods the scene is not that of Candesce, the sun of suns, nor is it the light of any sun we've yet seen in these books--but the sun that's casting that light is very important to one of our main characters. --And that's all I'll say about it for now.

I could not be happier.  Thank you, Stephan, for this stellar piece of art, and thanks, Tor, for believing in this series.

My German editions of the Virga books have been spectacular, and the third in the series, Segel der Zeit, is no exception.  You can order it now from Amazon.de, since it'll be released in only a couple of weeks. These mass-market editions are gorgeous, and I can't wait to get my comp copies!

The short list for the 2010 Sunburst Award has been announced, and once again I'm on it!  Here's what they have to say about The Sunless Countries:

Immediately captivating, this is equal parts great world-building and strong characterization. Wonderfully original settings and visual detail light up this richly imagined world. Leal, her friends and her enemies are vividly drawn and sympathetic. Particularly impressive is Schroeder's ability to make this, the fourth book in the Virga series, as accessible to readers as the first.

The complete list of shortlisted works:

• Charles de Lint, The Mystery of Grace (Tor, ISBN: 0765317567)
• A.M. Dellamonica, Indigo Springs (Tor, ISBN: 0765319470)
• Cory Doctorow, Makers (Tor, ISBN: 0765312794)
• Karl Schroeder, The Sunless Countries (Tor, ISBN: 0765320762)
• Robert Charles Wilson, Julian Comstock (Tor, ISBN: 0765319713)

The short-listed works in the young adult category for the 2010 Sunburst Award are:

• Megan Crewe, Give Up the Ghost (Henry Holt, ISBN: 0805089306)
• Maureen Garvie, Amy By Any Other Name (Key Porter, ISBN: 1554701422)
• Hiromi Goto, Half World (Penguin, ISBN: 0670069655)
• Lesley Livingston, Wondrous Strange (HarperTeen, ISBN: 0061575372)
• Arthur Slade, The Hunchback Assignment (HarperCollins, ISBN: 1554683548)

In three weeks Cities of the Air hits the stands.  In some ways it's nothing new:  Cities is Tor Books' omnibus edition of the first two Virga books.  You might wonder why we're doing this when the paperback editions of these books are already available.  But with Pirate Sun coming out in trade paperback in the fall, if you haven't familiarized yourself with Virga yet, you can do it by just picking up Cities.  Together, Cities of the Air and Pirate Sun form the full story arc for the first part of the series.  If, after reading them, you've still got a taste for the weightless world I've constructed, The Sunless Countries is out now in hardcover, and Ashes of Candesce will be coming next year.

Tor Books has been very happy with my Virga books, so much so that they've decided to release a new, omnibus edition of the first two.  Sun of Suns and Queen of Candesce will appear together in one volume, entitled Virga:  Cities of the Air.  This book will hit the stores on July 6, 2010, but you can pre-order it now from Amazon.

Yes, there is in fact already an omnibus edition of these books--it's Virga 1.2, from the Science Fiction Book Club (advertised in the right-hand sidebar of this page, with cover art by Dave Seeley).  That edition is only available to book club members, though; the new omnibus will be from Tor and will be in bookstores everywhere (and, presumably, in ebook form too).  We hope to have further omnibus editions to round out the series.

Nice review at Sci Fi Wire, full of words like "rich" "hectic" "dangerous" and "exciting."  Not to mention "enigmatic" "exotic" and "bizarre."  A book full of "perilous intrigue" that contains "revelations about Virga's place in the 'foam of worlds.'"

But the reviewer (Paul Di Filippo) is careful to make the point that while Sunless Countries fills in the blanks on the map provided by the other books, it can also be read on its own:

It might very well serve as a good gateway for newbies into the fascinating Virga cosmos, an enormous, air-filled fullerene balloon in the Vegan star system containing worldlets of varying size that center around the "sun of suns," Candesce. It's a Boschian landscape, full of rich cognitive estrangement, and Schroeder gets the most out of his conceptual playground, with taut prose and wild plotting.

In short, a very happy, enthusiastic review for the fourth book of "the Virga trilogy." 

What do you do when you've created an open-ended universe of unmatched richness and potential?  You keep exploring it!  I'm very far from exhausting the possibilities of my world Virga, and here's The Sunless Countries to prove it.  This novel is connected to the previous three in the series, but doesn't require that you've read them.  It introduces new characters in a new setting while retaining enough links to the other books for fans of those stories.  It really is all one grand epic tale, but I've tried to keep the action local in each book, and that's definitely the case here.

Meet Leal Hieronyma Maspeth.  She's a history tutor at the University of Sere, in the nation of Abyss.  Leal's a curious mixture of discipline and unbridled imagination:  she works hard to get ahead in her cut-throat academic world, but nonetheless dreams of being swept away by the dashing sun lighter, Hayden Griffin, who has recently come to Sere to build a new sun for some other country.

As events conspire, she will end up meeting Griffin, but nothing is like she imagined it would be.  In particular, she never dreamt that something ancient and terrible might awaken in the darkness beyond Sere's streetlights--perhaps a fabled worldwasp, come to wreack vengeance on humanity for some long-forgotten slight.  Nor could she have anticipated that, in Abyss's current anti-intellectual backlash, she would end up being the only person who even knows what a worldwasp is, much less how to deal with it...

The Sunless Countries will be appearing on bookshelves within the next few days.  I've just received my first copy (and, by the way, on the actual book, the bands of colour on the top and bottom aren't lime green like they are in the above picture; they're indigo/purple, to go with the overall design).  In a couple of days, you too can meet Leal, and the worldwasps...

James Graves has been thinking about my Virga books, and the TV series Firefly.  He's got a fabulous post over on his blog about how you could make everything in Firefly make perfect sense--in scientific and logical terms--if Whedon had just set the series in Virga to start with.  He even recasts the episodes in the new setting, and judges individually which ones it would improve.  Ha!

In some ways this doesn't surprise me at all.  After all, I deliberately created Virga as a scientifically possible setting for classic space opera storytelling.  That's what Virga is is for.  So, I'm not that startled that Firefly could be recast in this setting:  you could in fact redo many many classic stories and series within a Virga-like setting.  For those of us who still wish there could be a space-opera-like future, well, this is the place where it can happen.  That's why I designed it.

James has done a lot of work on this particular mashup, and deserves our applause for it.  He's certainly got mine--and he's got me thinking about how I might be able to write a few new short stories that riff on this stuff.

Hey James--thanks!

Available now and for a limited time, Dave Seeley is selling signed prints of his wondrous cover for The Books of Virga.  Needless to say I have one myself, and it's quite striking, with very deep colours and dark blacks.  And yes, the expression on Venera's face is priceless.

Dave is selling these prints over at his online store.  As you'll see when you get there, he's got a world of other great art for sale as well.  I'd been hoping to get Dave to do some cover art for me for years, and was delighted last fall when this opportunity came up.  I think he's captured the madcap pace of Sun of Suns as well as the conniving personality of Venera Fanning quite well. 

And yeah, I want one of those racing bikes.

I'm just emerging into that phase of the Virga series when the books can be reviewed as a whole; and of course this won't seriously happen for another couple of years, when Ashes of Candesce is finally out.  But it's starting, and a very nice, and highly favourable review of the series as a thing in itself is now online at the Porter Square Books blog.

You can read the review yourself if you're interested; I was just very proud to read the following bit (talking about Queen of Candesce):

Following the machinations of Venera and her enemies really did remind me of Frank Herbet’s Dune; it is a rare treat to read about smart people outsmarting other smart people.

So I'm in my office going through the page proofs of The Sunless Countries, worrying that the pacing is off, and I decide to procrastinate by doing some ego-surfing--and what should I find but a review of TSC!  A favourable one!  And he doesn't even mention the pacing.

Schroeder evokes the slow, crushing drift into ideological nonsense in a distressingly compelling way, & puts Leal [Maspeth] in the heart of it; should she collaborate with the Eternists to try to salvage some representation of science & history (even if she has to teach it as heretical, along side accepted dogma) or should she make a meaningless stand?

Wow.  This is like getting a newspaper from next week.  It also suggests to me that the current practice of sending out Advanced Reading Copies this early needs to be reconsidered, because that practice is predicated on it taking reviewers months to get their reviews out.  I could literally tweak the book right now to solve some of the issues the reviewer, Mordecai, raises.  Luckily he hasn't found many.

Very timely and useful.

Weird, though.

The SFBC has made the first two volumes of the Virga saga, Sun of Suns and Queen of Candesce, available together in an omnibus edition (link to Canadian site; the US site is here but doesn't have a direct link to the VIRGA page).  The SFBC is a venerable and highly respected institution in science fiction and fantasy publishing; they previously made my first novel, Ventus, available.  

The price for members of this edition is $15.99, but if you join you can have it for $0.20.

By the way, one of one my favourite features of this edition is the wonderfully over-the-top cover by Dave Seeley.  Dave and I tossed many ideas back and forth, and he consulted with me at each stage of the process.  That is indeed the vitriolic Venera Fanning, riding bike-back with Hayden Griffin in the skies of Slipstream. 

It's February, and time to confirm once again that Locus Magazine really really likes me.  Pirate Sun is one of the twenty novels they recommend out of the hundreds published in 2008.

So, every one of my Tor novels has made this list--six in a row.  I guess this means that, as far as Locus is concerned, I'm one of the top twenty SF novelists working in English.  (I can hear the chant now:  "We're number 20!  We're number 20!)

This recommendation appears to have nothing to do with, and no influence on, sales; but I can't exactly complain, can I?  The list is chosen by a pretty heavy-hitting set of reviewers and editors, all of whom are experts in the field.  Collectively, they read pretty much everything that comes out every year.  So it's hugely flattering that they've given me this rare vote of confidence not just once, but with every book I've written.

Hmmm... maybe, then, I should write another novel.  What to call it?  Perhaps... Ashes of Candesce? ...

Thanks to the commitment of Hayakawa Publishing and the hard work of translator Naoya Nakahara, you can now read Sun of Suns in Japanese.  I'm delighted to have this edition in my hands--and there's more announcements of foreign sales to come!

If you want to order a copy of Taiyo no Naka no Taiyo, you can do so from Amazon Japan, or direct from Hayakawa's website.

It's always been a major ambition of mine to be read in Japan.  I can't tell you how honoured I feel that it's finally happened.

I'm excited to announce that my next book is ready and will be published this summer.  The Sunless Countries is the fourth book in the Virga trilogy (let me explain).  It continues and expands upon the story begun in Sun of Suns, but is sufficiently stand-alone that you can still view the first three books as a single unit.  --That is, there's an arc and a set of characters that begins and completes in books one to three; Sunless Countries branches off from there, but contains some familiar faces, for instance Hayden Griffin.

There's a couple of reasons why I'm doing the series this way.  Firstly, I hate having to buy every book in a series in order to keep up with the whole storyline.  That makes it all one big book, so why not just publish it in one volume?  Missing a book in such series is rather like missing an episode of Lost.

So The Sunless Countries is its own thing.  Doing things this way lets me approach each book afresh, and I think you'll find it shows.  Start with Sunless countries if you want; it's just as good an introduction to Virga as the previous novels. 

The other main factor in my deciding to do it this way is that... well, this world is just so damn rich!  When I wrote Sun of Suns I discovered that there was much more to this setting than I could possibly encompass with a single novel, or even a single plotline.  One element that I hadn't fleshed out to my satisfaction was the nature of the world outside Virga.  With The Sunless Countries, we're finally doing that.

Finally, I'm continuing my ongoing experiment of telling a slightly different kind of story with each of these books.  The Sunless Countries focuses on Leal Hieronyma Maspeth, a history tutor in the sunless nation of Abyss.  When the famous sunlighter--Hayden Griffin--comes to town, she's both attracted to him as a real hero, and repelled by his association with the local, corrupt government. 

Yet at the same time that Griffin arrives, so does something else--a great voice issuing from the darkness, crying words that no one in Abyss, or Virga, wants to hear...

Gardner Dozois has posted the table of contents for his 26th Annual Year's Best SF collection.  He's selected my short story "The Hero" as one of the featured stories, which puts me in fine company indeed. 

"The Hero" is the first short story I've set in the world of Virga (setting for my last three novels) and it's a pretty intense little romp through some of the stranger places in that world.  It was published originally in Eclipse Two, edited by Jonathon Strahan; in fact, it leads off that collection.  "The Hero" is peripherally connected to the grander plot of the novels, but as with the books themselves, it's also a stand-alone piece that doesn't require familiarity with the rest of the series.

Needless to say I'm thrilled--enough so that I've started on a couple more Virga short stories.

Queen of Candesce is already available in hardcover and in audiobook format as well.  The paperback edition is on its way.

If you've been holding off buying QofC because it's only in hardcover, I heartily encourage you to give this edition a look.  While Pirate Sun has been selling like hotcakes and is getting a very good critical reception, Queen of Candesce is my personal favourite of the Virga books to date (is an author allowed to say stuff like this?  My editor may kill me).  Rollicking adventure aside, QofC is set in a unique environment even for Virga:  the inbred, decadent wheel-world of Spyre.  It also features Venera Fanning, who has been one of the most fun characters I've ever written about.  Not only that, I think it's the funniest book I've written.  It continues the saga of Virga, opening the world, characters, and situation out in new directions.  If you enjoyed Sun of Suns, you'll love Queen of Candesce.

And for all of you who complain that I don't promote my work enough:  so there!

You can try out Metatropolis, the shared world anthology from Audible.com, before buying.  There's a sample from my own story, "To Hie from Far Cilenia", or if you want you can listen to Jay Lake's excellent story, "In the Forests of the Night" in its entirety.  

Audible and I have been collaborating on other projects as well.  In fact, you can now download the first three Virga books, unabridged, in audiobook format from Audible.  I've been having a rollicking good time listening to them myself--it's quite an experience when your own words come back to you through someone else's voice!