About ten years ago, David Nickle and I collaborated on a comic adventure entitled The Claus Effect.  This was a first novel for both of us, and it did very well.  But, you know, you expect that over time these things fade.  So imagine my surprise and delight when David told me the other day that there's a considerable stack of Claus Effects available in downtown Toronto--specifically at the modestly-named World's Biggest Bookstore just north of the Eaton Centre.  This is both excellent news and fantastic timing, since TCE is, after all, a Santa Claus story--albeit a Santa Claus who's psychotic and bent on world destruction.  David and I had tons of fun writing this little epic, and now's your chance to read it in all its cynical glory.

Sometimes, books last.  Ten years on the shelves is pretty good.

I'll be GOH at Minicon, Minnesota's longest-running science fiction convention, over Easter weekend, 2009.  Past GOH's include luminaries such as Gordon R. Dickson, Poul Anderson, Theodore Sturgeon, Larry Niven and Jack Vance.  I'm honored to be in their company!

Minicon is an annual gathering of science fiction and fantasy fans sponsored by the Minnesota Science Fiction Society (Minn-StF). The convention is held each year in or near Minneapolis, Minnesota over Easter weekend.  The convention has been running annually (and sometimes twice a year!) since 1968.

Hope to see you there!

Britain's Sci Fi UK website has a smashing review of Pirate Sun.  It's worth quoting at length:

This series by Schroeder succeeds remarkably on two distinct levels. Actually, three levels if you count the hybrid fusion of its two modes as a separate success itself.

On the one hand, the series exemplifies all the many wonders inherent in the Big Dumb Object-or "extremely alien environment"-mode of SF. ...Schroeder has conjured up a mind-croggling "steel beach" to add to the genre's rich roster of such places, worked out its mechanics and cultures with masterful ingenuity, and then figured out what kind of adventure such a place would best support...

But on top of this, he has found a way to legitimately recreate the melodramatic thrills found most prominently in the literature from what editor and critic David Pringle calls "the Age of the Storytellers." The exploits of Chaison and Venera, and the gleeful yet bloody-minded pellmell tone and pace of the telling, hark back to Robert Louis Stevenson, Alexander Dumas and, of course, Edgar Rice Burroughs.

I just got the July, 2008 issue of Locus magazine, and lo and behold the results of the Locus Poll are out.  Queen of Candesce got an extremely respectable 830 points worth of votes, which places me in the company of authors like Ian McDonald, Charlie Stross, and Bob Wilson as one of their readers' favourite authors of 2007.  

I knew the magazine's reviewers liked that novel--and truth to tell, I've always gotten a great critical reception for my work.  But it's hard sometimes to judge how the readers--people who aren't in the book industry in one way or another--feel about my stuff.  This is a great boost.  To all of you who voted for me... thanks!

And, oh yes, there's only four weeks until Pirate Sun comes out!  So there's much more to come.

I'm actually engaged in writing several stories set in my world of Virga (the setting for Sun of Suns, Queen of Candesce, and the forthcoming Pirate Sun).  "The Hero" is the first--thanks to Jonathon Strahan for choosing it for Eclipse 2!

I'm in pretty amazing company with this anthology; here's the lineup:

The Hero, Karl Schroeder
Turing’s Apples, Stephen Baxter
Invisible Empire of Ascending Light, Ken Scholes
Michael Laurits is: Drowning, Paul Cornell
Elevator, Nancy Kress
The Illustrated Biography of Lord Grimm, Daryl Gregory
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, David Moles
The Rabbi’s Hobby, Peter S. Beagle
The Seventh Expression of the Robot General, Jeffrey Ford
Skin Deep, Richard Parks
Ex Cathedra, Tony Daniel
Truth Window: A Tale of the Bedlam Rose, Terry Dowling
We Haven’t Got There Yet, Harry Turtledove
Fury, Alastair Reynolds

I won't say anything about what "The Hero" is about, except to say that it does have to do with one of the major plotlines running through the first three Virga books; and it doesn't have any of the characters from those books in it.

I just found out that Book II of my Virga series, Queen of Candesce, is on the preliminary ballot for the 2008 Locus Award!  (I should have known this--aren't all the Locus Recommended Reading titles on the ballot?)  In any case, I'm quite proud of the company this puts Queen in, next to books by Brian Aldiss, William Gibson, Joe Haldeman, and Charlie Stross.  The downside to being on such a prestigious list is that my chances of winning are miniscule, but the ballot is of the Australian Rules type, where you can choose your top five works in order of preference.  (The ballots hold a kind of run-off election against each other that allows a candidate who's nobody's first choice, but everybody's second choice, to win.)  So, who knows, maybe Queen will be everybody's second-favourite book of last year!  (Venera would fall to the ground and gnash her teeth at that thought.)

One oddity of the ballot is that the web page makes it look like you have to be a Locus subscriber to vote.  You don't.  Anybody can vote, you just have to include some identifying contact information, which Locus will keep confidential.

There are a lot of categories for this award, including short story, novelette, best art book etc.  So zip on over and vote; it's painless and at the very least will let you settle in your own mind what your favourite works were last year.

Once again the SciFi channel is gracing me with a special honour:  Pirate Sun will be August, 2008's SciFi Essentials title. 

The SciFi Essentials home page describes the programme like this:

Each month we select a new book as a SCI FI Essential. That means it deserves to be counted among the finest works of the genre.

My novel Lady of Mazes was also a SciFi Essential, back in 2005. 

This month, by the way, the Essentials book is Paul Melko's Singularity's Ring, which is just fantastic.  This is a first novel that reads like the work of an accomplished master. Melko's a superhot talent, and I hope the Essentials seal of approval gives this book the attention it deserves.