Advance Copy

David J. Williams' intriguing Mirrored Heavens is set in a 22nd century in which a space elevator has just been destroyed by a mysterious insurgent group called Autumn Rain. US counterintelligence agents Claire Haskell and Jason Marlowe are assigned to finding out more about Autumn Rain. Superpowers move to the brink of war and Haskell and Marlowe find themselves as much hunted as hunter in this action-packed thriller. The novel comes with glowing endorsements from Stephen Baxter and Nancy Kress, among others. I interviewed Williams recently, via email, to get his thoughts on the future...

Amazon.com: Can you share with Amazon readers where you are as you’re answering these questions?
David J. Williams: Sitting at my desk in my apartment in Dupont Circle, Washington D.C. Where, incredibly enough, the weather is mild enough to allow me to open the windows rather than cower in front of my AC. (Which is probably where I'll be by the time you read this.)

Amazon.com: What is your background, and how long have you been writing?
Williams: The vital stats: born in the UK, but have spent most of my life in the U.S. Former management consultant who's also moonlighted as a video-game writer--worked for Vancouver-BC-based Relic Entertainment, which put out the Homeworld franchise of video games.  And I've been writing since September 2000...though calling what I was doing back then "writing" is to take some liberty with the word.

Amazon.com: What was the spark or catalyst for writing Mirrored Heavens?
Williams: The short answer:  I was desperate to escape the corporate world, and knew I'd better think of something fast before I ended up wondering where the #$# my life went. The longer answer:  I found myself reading a lot of U.S. military planning papers (there's a lot more in the public domain than you might think), and was struck by the extent to which they were anticipating the shifting of the center of gravity of war into space. I started to think about Reagan's SDI initiative, and started to wonder what the world might be like when stuff like that actually becomes possible across the next several decades:  what happens when you really can construct a missile-shield that shoots down 99.9 percent of incoming warheads? What would that mean for strategy? What are the implications of the maturation of speed-of-light weaponry? That led to a future in which a new Eastern superpower arises to challenge the U.S.--and plunges the world into a second cold war that makes the first look like a warm-up act. 

Amazon.com: What are some of the challenges of writing nearly near-future fiction? Most writers either choose a period in this century or far future.
Williams: The biggest challenge is making everything as plausible as possible, while recognizing that you're still going to have folks crawling out of the woodwork nitpicking each and every aspect of your future.  There are people who will sit through endless tales about the singularity and aliens and FTL without batting an eyelid--but claim that Russia might still be a force to be reckoned with a century from now, and suddenly they're frothing at the mouth. But that's an inescapable component of writing about the near-future. It comes with the territory.   

Amazon.com: How does human civilization survive global warming to get to 2110?
Williams: Well, we almost don't. Things stagger downward for pretty much the entirety of the 21st century, until finally the United States and the Eurasian Coalition realize that they've got to put aside their differences and work together before it's too late. (Of course, that's when a new player with a very different agenda hits the scene...)

Amazon.com: What was the most fun about writing the novel?
Williams: They say that Balzac on his death-bed inquired about the health of his characters. That's what's most fun (and scary) about it--the fact that such a delusion is even possible. People who lived in my mind for years and years now live on my pages and in the minds of my readers. 

Amazon.com: What do you see happening in the real near-future of this planet, in terms of politics and globalization?
Williams: Nothing good. I continue to believe that getting into space in a serious way is the only way to break on out of the trap we're stuck in.

Amazon.com: What are you currently working on?
Williams: Building out my website. Which features all sorts of data relating to the Second Cold War and the hunt for Autumn Rain.  Check it out.

The thrills of this year’s star-studded BEA have taken their toll on our team (you know it’s been a rough week when even our most prolific blogger only manages a couple of posts), as has the absence of sunshine (why oh why do we live in this damp, dark city?). Next week folks will be back to regale you with tales from the show floor, including favorite author sightings, interviews, and must-have galleys, but I’m happy to send you into the weekend with my two fave highlights of the trip, including a King and a Prince.

I shoe-horned myself into a spot in the bustling Simon & Schuster booth to chat with the fabulous Susan Moldow (publisher of Scribner) about our beloved Nixonland, a new John le Carre for fall (I’m going to give it a shot this weekend), and a new short story collection by my favorite-of-all Stephen King (check out the just-released jacket!). But that was not the best scoop on King, nor was the news about the impending release of the second Dark Tower graphic novel, or the announcement of the comic series based on The Stand (although that one is pretty good). The best scoop on King was revealed with a wink and a whisper: “He’s working on a new novel. An epic. 900 pages in and he thinks he’s halfway done.” Music to this fan’s ears. I could have floated home--but then I would have missed the Prince party.

And what a party it was. It has been 8 days and 19.5 hours since I walked into Prince’s house (I KNOW!) and I still remember what it smelled like. And because the gift bags included Prince's designer perfume and scented candle, now my house (and I) too can smell that good. Celebrating the September release of his first book, 21 Nights, the party of my year took place on the palatial grounds, hosted A-list celebs (including Cameron Diaz, P. Diddy, Dave Navarro, Seth Rogen), and featured an out-of-this-world performance by the artist formerly known as the Artist Formerly Known as Prince. I won’t risk irritating non-Prince fans with the play-by-play (although fans can write in—I’ll tell you anything you want to know), but suffice it to say that it was surreal and, well, awesome.

From the glimpse we got at the show, the book is going to knock fans’ purple socks off—a gorgeous package featuring the lush photography of Randee St. Nicholas (see a sneak peek below), poetry and lyrics by Prince as well as a CD (available only with the book) of Prince’s live after-show sessions. And as someone who witnessed a live session, I can tell you the CD alone is worth its weight in gold. --Daphne

We're all back from BookExpo America, the year's big book convention in Los Angeles this past weekend, and trying to dig ourselves out from under. The nets are full of how-was-the-show post mortems (or, judging by the dour mood of some of the reports, pre-mortems); selected keywords include "geriatric," "fearful," "modest," "subdued," and "Ernest Borgnine." I have been saying it was "great," but I'm more of a small-picture guy, and I met a lot of good people and found out about good new books--I'm always amazed and heartened to see a giant warehouse full of book weirdos like me and to see a season's worth of new writing that just might be great.

You spend much of your time there telling everyone else you meet how your show is going, which often boils down to which celebrity authors you have seen on the weirdly democratic convention floor or at the more hierarchical dinners and parties (where the celeb/civilian lines are still not policed they way they are in daily life), so here's my partial list of sightings: Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Slash, Salman Rushdie, John Hodgman, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ron Jeremy, Rick Pitino, Lewis Black, Anne Rice, Gloria Allred, Neal Stephenson, Neil Gaiman, plus the two big talking-with-dogs debut novelists, Garth Stein and David Wroblewski, standing next to each other. Most in character: George Hamilton, gliding through the convention looking like a South American oligarch-in-exile; Kevin Nealon, there to promote his new book on fatherhood while beleagueredly trying to stuff a diaper bag in the back of his baby's stroller; and James Patterson, who sat across the cafeteria from me with three colleagues and, no doubt, in the time it took me to consume my miserable tuna sub, "authored" his next bestselling manuscript.

No invite for me to the instantly legendary Prince party (where the pint-sized megalomaniac of funk went onstage in his backyard at 2 am), but I did have a good time at the HarperCollins affair on the New York set on the 20th Century Fox lot (no, not that New York set). There I met one of my favorite new author acquaintances, James Lecesne (he recently made his YA debut), who was reminded of the bad years when he had moved from New York to LA for a development deal at Fox that went nowhere. At his lowest points he'd leave his office and head for those fake NY streets, which at least felt a little like home.

But what about the books? As much as it feels like every book ever printed makes it's way through my tiny cubicle, there is always plenty to discover on the Expo floor. Here are a few promising items I came across for the first time:

Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America by Paul Tough (September): a very promising pairing of author and subject. Tough keeps showing up in the right places (Harper's and This American Life, plus the wonderful but short-lived mid-early-Internet experiment he helmed called Open Letters), and his first book is about a man social services folks like my wife talk about in nearly godlike terms. The obvious comparison would be Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains, about Dr. Paul Farmer, but I'm sure the stories are too good and too different for the comparisons to go too far beyond that.

The Romantic Dogs by Roberto Bolano (November): I guess New Directions doesn't post their upcoming releases on our site (or theirs) very far ahead of time: I can't find this listed yet on either site, but I swear a nice woman in their booth told me all about it (and I have a lovely bilingual broadside of one poem, "Godzilla in Mexico," to prove it). It's Bolano's first collection of poetry in English, timed to appear at the same time this fall as his giant final novel, 2666 (which you will become sick of hearing me talk about between now and then). I'm a broken record about Bolano, so of course I'm excited about this, especially since he thought of himself foremost as a poet, not a novelist. But the poems are described as more raw and direct, less ironic than the novels and, well, I do like that irony. We'll see... (Here's an early glimpse.)

Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States by George R. Stewart (July): Speaking of broken records, you've likely heard me before on the lost-classic glories of New York Review Books, and this is a reprint of a typically idiosyncratic and cult-beloved World War II-era reference about just what the title says. With an introduction by Matt Weiland, which makes it a nice companion to the State by State anthology that Weiland and Sean Wilsey are bringing out in September (and that you'll hear more about in this space before long).

Berlin, Book Two: City of Smoke by Jason Lutes (August): I did actually know this was coming, but heard more about it at the show. About 10 years ago Lutes, after his acclaimed comics debut, Jar of Fools, concocted a perversely ambitious followup that he is patiently and brilliantly seeing through: an epic story of artists and revolutionaries in Berlin between the wars, drawn in his meticulous and humane style. Once in a very long while he publishes installments in the almost obsolete indie serial format, but this is only the second of three book-length collections, and the first in eight years. Hooray!

An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories, Vol. 2, edited by Ivan Brunetti (September): Sticking with the art comix--Stephen from Yale University Press, whom I'd never met but who saw my name tag and knows what I like (what perfect world is this that I live in?!), buttonholed me to let me know about the second volume of comics (here's the first) collected by the supremely grumpy and funny artist Ivan Brunetti. His taste is fantastic, the production quality is exquisite, the cover is by Dan Clowes. What more is there to say?

Shopping for Porcupine: A Life in Arctic Alaska by Seth Kantner (came out in April): Kantner's Ordinary Wolves is one of my favorite novels of the last few years: the one-of-a-kind coming-of-age story of a young man raised in a sod igloo in Alaska by his back-to-the-tundra dad, which went beyond the novelty interest of its subject to be a wonderfully observed and constructed book. It was the kind of story that just had to be autobiographical--and was--and Shopping for Porcupine is a sort of nonfiction companion to it: essays on Kantner's life and his wilderness, heavily illustrated with photographs (including old family photos of their sod-igloo days--that's his dad on the cover).

I Am Death by Gary Amdahl (just released): Another book from Milkweed Editions, pressed into my hands at their booth with convincing enthusiasm. Convincing enough that I read the second of its two novellas, "Peasants," on my flight back home from dry LA to wet Seattle yesterday. Enthusiasm confirmed: it's a bitterly funny, spiraling story of office politics gone mostly (and badly) wrong (in whose plot, coincidentally, an annual booksellers convention figures, along with a Jimmy Buffett concert, corporate cartography, and a foam sword). Not only the plot but the individual sentences ratchet forward in relentless and surprising ways: it felt fresh, fresh, fresh, even as it reminded of some mix of Stanley Elkin, Richard Yates, and, obviously, The Office. It left me both elated and filled with self-loathing: what a lovely way to end a short business trip.

Stay tuned this week for more BEA reports and some on-the-floor auhor interviews.

--Tom

It's grim days indeed for the dragon Temeraire--removed from military service, his captain sentenced to death for treason and the dastardly Napoleon pushing on toward London. Novik's latest novel, Victory of Eagles, chronicles these harsh times in this fifth book in the series.

But while things might be dark in her fantasy world, Novik's real world is nothing but sweetness and light. There are six million copies of the series in print, Peter Jackson has acquired the film rights, and Victory of Eagles is being released in July in hardcover. Novik will also tour behind the novel--another first.

And, I'm happy to report that Novik will be giving us a report from the road for an Amazon exclusive!

Here's a little sneak peek, the first paragraph of the novel:

The breeding grounds were called Pen Y. Fan, after the hard, jagged slash of the mountain at their heart, like an axe-blade, rimed with ice along its edge and rising barren over the moorlands: a cold, wet Welsh autumn already, coming on towards winter, and the other dragons sleepy and remote, uninterested in anything but their meals. There were a few hundred of them scattered throughout the grounds, mostly established in caves or on rocky ledges, wherever they could fit themselves; nothing of comfort or even order provided for them, except the feedings, and the mowed-bare strip of dirt around the borders, where torches were lit at night to mark the lines past which they might not go, with the town-lights glimmering in the distance, cheerful and forbidden.

Note: Both the Friday graphic novels and video features will return next Friday.

Harry Potter fans, mark your calendars for September 23! That's when you can go back and celebrate where the magic started with the special 10th anniversary edition of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. This new edition will feature exclusive bonus material from J.K. Rowling as well as new cover art by Mary Grandpré. The new cover "depicts 11-year-old Harry looking into the Mirror of Erised, which Harry comes across in his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and learns that the mirror shows you what you most desire."

And from Grandpré: "It's a real treat for me to get another chance to visually bring Harry back to his fans in not only a new scene, but in a new light. Going back to draw the first cover for the anniversary edition was an opportunity for me to show another side of Harry... a vulnerable side. Having come to know and love Harry the way we all have, after experiencing the whole series, I think we can appreciate him even more on an emotional level."

--BTP

I've never understood why the 1990's sketch comedy series, The State, lasted just two seasons on MTV.  According to the good folks at Wikipedia, the show was never canceled, but an ill-advised move to another network doomed the comedic troupe.  Still, if Reno 911 was made into a movie, The State certainly had more left in the tank.  What gives?

*steps off soapbox*

So when I received a galley of cast member Michael Ian Black's upcoming book, My Custom Van, I relished the opportunity to peek inside the dome of the man behind Capt. Monterey Jack.  With a collection of fifty raunchy and hilariously offbeat essays, Black fearlessly probes the questions no one considered to ask with mini-dissertations like A Meditation on Salami, Vampires - Good for the Economy?, and an examination of rodent egotism, A Series of Letters to a Squirrel.   

Akin to Jon Stewart's Naked Pictures of Famous People, the dry wit in My Custom Van will force many unexpected laughs as you'll rarely know where you're going next.  What you can expect is plenty of blue material (leave the kids at home), outrageous observations, and a sweet blueprint on how to truly pimp out a custom van.  (SPOILER ALERT:  It includes naked wizards)

My Custom Van hits bookshelves on July 15th.

--Dave

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today 2 talk about 21 Nights, the just-announced debut book from Prince. Available September 9, 2008, it's a multi-media volume filled with poetry, lyrics, and 124 full-color images from photographer Randee St. Nicholas, who had an all-access behind-the-scenes pass ("on stage, backstage, and into his sleeping quarters") into the public and private life of the multi-award winner. The book highlights the energy of last year's record-breaking sold-out 21 concerts in 21 nights at London's O2 Arena, and will come packed with Indigo Nights, an exclusive 15-song CD featuring one brand-new song and 14 live versions of Prince classics and recent favorites that captures Prince's "speak-easy, after-hours, raw, after-show sessions of pure unadulterated jams."

--BTP

I've bowed to no one in my advance hype for Roberto Bolano's masterpiece-in-waiting, 2666, but the Literary Saloon beat me to the story in my own backyard by noticing that the book has appeared on our site with a release date of November 11 (I've checked with Farrar Straus and that is indeed the right date). And he further discovered that there will be two parallel editions: a single-volume, 912-page hardcover, and a three-volume paperback boxed set. What can I say: I'll probably get both, even if the publisher doesn't send them to me. And I bet I'll read the paperbacks. But why stop at 3 volumes? I adored the six-paperback galley set of Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games that Harper sent out last winter:

The Saloon also linked to some of the continuing chatter about The Savage Detectives, including an essay from translator (and coffee drinker) Natasha Wimmer and a roundtable discussion at Bookninja. --Tom

I am, as I think I have noted in this space before, a geek for the Paris Review interviews. In my college library I procrastinated my way through all of those old Writers at Work collections when I should have been studying up on the Yugoslav economy or some such immediate assignment, and I still keep an eye on the newsstands to see which authors have been brought into the Art of Fiction canon in the latest issue (this issue, by the way, it's Kenzaburo Oe). So when I got an advance copy of Nathaniel Rich's upcoming debut novel, The Mayor's Tongue, with an unexplained photocopy of an interview (The Art of Fiction XXI) with the writer Constance Eakins folded inside, well, I felt that someone had found my alley and parked right there. It's a fun pastiche, down to the spine-shading to make it look like the Xeroxes I've made of my favorite exchanges over the years, and you can see it for yourself on the still-building site for the book .

Who is Eakins? It appears on first glance that he's not one of the main characters of The Mayor's Tongue, but rather a main character for one of the main characters (who idolizes him). In the interview, he comes across as some sort of a combination of Chuck Norris, Gore Vidal, and Thomas Pynchon:

Interviewer:
Did you write this morning?

Eakins:
I did. I wrote twenty-three pages. That's what it's come to. I used to write ten thousand words a day and sometimes even more, in my golden years. But now it's just a paltry seven thousand or so. Things move so slowly sometimes I feel that I am living in reverse. This is the trouble with being in one's thirties, and past one's prime.

Interviewer:
Do you write by longhand?

Eakins:
Yes, but I often go back to typewriter when my arm can't keep up with the jet engine that is my image-narrative-thought-machine.

Interviewer:
What do you mean by "image-narrative-thought-machine"?

Eakins:
Brain.

And the book itself? I haven't gone past the first page, but Rich's well-placed use there of the phrase "excessively affricative" does give me hope that it will live up to the promising blurbs from Gary Shteyngart ("Here is a young writer who is not afraid to give literature a kick in the pants") and Stephen King ("a novel brimming with brio"), and makes me, even more than the fake interview, want to keep reading. --Tom

P.S. I just noticed that Nathaniel Rich also happens to be a senior editor at the Paris Review, which explains how he got the layout just right...

I wrote last month about Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader for a Day, one of my Best of the Month picks, and I was neither the first nor the last to describe it as a real-life, Chicago version of The Wire. This week I checked into the Freakonomics blog on the New York Times site for the first time in a while and saw that Venkatesh, who first came to popular notice when his work on the (lousy) economics of crack dealing was featured in that megaseller, has been guest-blogging about watching the fifth and final season with some self-described "real thugs" of his acquaintance.

Which is all just wonderful (and apparently they love the show), except that we are currently in obsessive catchup mode with The Wire at my home. We've Netflixed our way into the middle of season three, and now with season five live on the Home Box Office I've had to avert my eyes at any discussion of what's going on--and, as you'll notice if you're averting your eyes, there's a lot of that discussion these days. Even seeing a proper name pop out of a headline will tip you off that a character has survived a few more seasons, and just from the fragments of sentences I've let slip past my guard I've already spoiled major plot developments, which I now have to spend the next many months not revealing to my wife as we work our way through the episodes. So all I can say as I point you toward Venkatesh's Wire blogging is that it is there; I won't allow myself to find out anything more. And don't tell me! --Tom