pornokitsch

The Kitschies: Submissions & 2013 Judges

The Kitschies, presented by The Kraken Rum, are very proud to announce the 2013 judging panels. These ten individuals will be searching for the most progressive, intelligent and entertaining books containing elements of the speculative or fantastic.

Red & Golden Tentacle judges (Novel & Debut):

• Kate Griffin
• Nick Harkaway
• Will Hill
• Anab Jain
• Annabel Wright

Inky Tentacle judges (Cover Art):

• Craig Kennedy
• Sarah Anne Langton
• Barry Nugent
• Hazel Thompson
• Emma Vieceli

More detail on the judges and their backgrounds can be found here. We owe a huge thank you to last year's judges - Patrick Ness, Rebecca Levene, Ed Warren, Lauren O'Farrell and Gary Northfield. They worked extremely hard and did an exceptional job. Bex and I [Jared] have been judges for several years now and we are both saddened (and slightly relieved) to be stepping down.

Submissions for 2013 titles are now open. There are a few changes from previous years. Most notably, Inky submissions now need to come in separately (books will no longer be considered for Cover Art automatically) and the prize no longer requires physical copies of books - eBooks are welcome. Please read the submissions requirements carefully. Even if you have submitted in the past, we strongly suggest taking a few minutes to look them over.

And, as with previous years, the judges ask for the books to arrive "early and often", rather than in one giant crate in November.

We wish the best of luck to everyone!

The Lowest Heaven - Limited Edition

The Lowest Heaven is our new anthology of original fiction, published to coincide with the Visions of the Universe exhibition at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. It contains seventeen new stories of (vaguely) science fiction, each inspired by one of our closest celestial neighbours.

For added fun, the anthology is illustrated with photography and artwork from the archives of the Royal Museums Greenwich - and we've found some amazing (and eclectic) treasures. 

The whole thing is wrapped up in gorgeous art from Joey Hi-Fi. As well as the cover, he's designed a fold-out map of the Solar System that's included in the 100-copy hardcover limited edition. Joey talks about his work on The Lowest Heaven in a new interview over at the Royal Maritime Museum's Collections blog. 

The limited edition is on sale exclusively through the Royal Observatory - and you can pre-order your copy now.

As a quick reminder, the book includes stories from Sophia McDougall, Alastair Reynolds, Archie Black, Maria Dahvana Headley, Adam Roberts, Simon Morden, E. J. Swift, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Mark Charan Newton, Kaaron Warren, Lavie Tidhar, Esther Saxey, David Bryher, S. L. Grey, Kameron Hurley, Matt Jones and James Smythe.

The Lowest Heaven (in all its various formats) is released on 13 June. 

Items from the Royal Observatory’s collection of astronomical photography will also be on display as part of Visions of the Universe, alongside images from world-class telescopes and recent space missions. The exhibition opens in June at the National Maritime Museum.

Dark Societies and AMA

Anne's hanging out with Kitschies' finalists Frances Hardinge, Adam Roberts at Dark Societies tonight. Starts at 6.30 pm and costs £5 at the door (£3 if you're a member of the Post-Apocalyptic Book Club). Other panelists include Tom Hunter (Clarke Award), Rob Grant (Clarke Award and SCI-FI London) and author Jeff Norton. Should be a fun and provocative panel.

Later, I'll be doing an AMA with Justin Landon for Speculative Fiction 2012. Many of the contributors should be there as well, so should be a very good time. I've never used Reddit before, Justin's a terrible influence on me and I'll be up way past my bedtime (kicks off at midnight, UK time). Thankfully, this is the internet, so no one will ever see it. Right?

Late April and Early May(hem)

Holy cow.

April 22nd: Jesse Bullington, Paolo Bacigalupi and Lauren Beukes are doing a Google Plus Hangout Conversation 2.0 Webchatthing. I have no idea what it is or what will happen, but the idea of Lauren Beukes and Jesse Bullington in the same place (even virtually)? Good lord. I expect, nay, demand madness. If this takes off, next time they'll do the "C" authors. 

April 24th: Lavie Tidhar interviewed by Edward James for the BSFA. Free entry, but there's a chance that Lavie will rewrite your brain with his Lovecraftian madspeeching. Starts 7pm, the Argyle Public House off Leather Lane. 

April 24th: If you prefer your mindmelting pictorial, Tom Gauld is signing You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack (I am) at Gosh.

April 27th: Children's Illustration Day at Foyles, with Nobrow Books and their new imprint, Flying Eye. One of many events run by this amazing publishing (and their foxy new children's line).

April 29th: Lauren Beukes' UK launch for The Shining Girls at Forbidden Planet. 

April 30th: Lauren Beukes, Warren Ellis and Benjamin Percy at the Brixton Ritzy for The Kitschies, talking Storytelling without limits. Not sure what that means, I'll ask the modera...oh. Should be a great night. (Sold out, sorry.)

May 1st: Write the Future. A one day mini-con run by the Arthur C. Clarke Award. One hell of a line-up, with Lauren (again!), Ben North (HarperCollins), Matt Webb (Berg) and many other bright folks talking about bright stuff. (Day tickets for £15 off if you use the code 'futurekitsch'!)

May 2nd: Dark Societies at Waterstones Piccadilly. Another all-star line-up, with Adam Roberts, Frances Hardinge, Tom Hunter, Robert Grant and Anne (woo!) talking about awards and dystopias (the two aren't necessarily related, but who knows). 

May 2nd (uh oh): Teenytinysaurs launch event. Gary Northfield and the rest of the Fleece Station crew will be celebrating the dinotastic launch of this amazing new book at Bookseller Crow. There may be another event at the end of May, which is the only reason that I'm not frantically investing in black market cloning. But if you like dinosaurs or fun or art or tiny things or, uh, joy... 

May 2nd (laaaaate): Speculative Fiction 2012 AMA on Reddit. Justin Landon and I - plus (hopefully) many of the book's contributors - field questions about blogging and speculative fiction and, er, anything. No idea what should/will happen at this, so please, UK readers, stay up late and give us whatfor. 

May 3rd: Stay in. Watch Gilmore Girls.

Peeking even further ahead...

May 12th: Peter Cushing: A Centenary Celebration at the Cinema Museum with Jonathan Rigby and Bernard Broughton, to launch Cushing's complete memoirs and generally revel in the wonderfulness.

May 14th : Rachel Caine and Sarah Rees Brennan. There will be blood. Also, sultry love. Also, angst. Also, two extremely popular YA authors... Promises to be a very fun night.

May 15th: Lindsey Davis at Waterstones Leadenhall Market (12.30 pm). Signing (with one month margin of error) The Ides of April.

May 16th: Launch of Tripwire with one hell of crowd, including Michael Moorcock, Christopher Fowler and Mike Carey. Also at Foyles. 

May 20th: Jon Klassen THE DUDE WHO WROTE THE BOOK ABOUT THE BEAR AND HIS HAT is signing in Edinburgh. I wish I were Scottish. I would make him sign everything and then draw me a bear. And then sign that. WHILE WEARING A HAT.

May 28th: Joe Hill's exclusive London event (Foyles) to launch NOS4R2. (Pricy, but a good chunk of the ticket price counts towards the purchase of the book. Which, if you're going, you'll be buying anyway...)

Everywhere but here...

Where you can find Pornokitschiness elsewhere.

Friday is for folding knives, and we're up to chapter six of the K.J. Parker reread on Tor.com. Caution: contains plague, assassination and other cheeriness. All the posts from the beginning can be found here - you can join in at any time.

If you're on the mailing list for The Book Smugglers, your last email from them contained a vintage ramble from yours truly, waving the banner for bloggers as part of the build-up for Speculative Fiction 2012. If you're not on their mailing list (sign up!), I'll re-run it as we get close to publication. Wibbling is fun.

And, for vintage rambling in the ear, I'm on The Readers podcast, supposedly talking about Jenni Fagan's The Panopticon - a The Kitschies' Golden Tentacle finalists and one of my favourite books of 2012. More importantly, Ms. Fagan is also a guest on the podcast, so you can (please) skip my bits and listen to the lady herself. (I'm curious how much of me actually made it in, what with the sneezing, sirens and occasional tirades about Among Others.)

And, for vintage rambling on dead tree, Anne and I are in Adventure Rocketship. You can pre-order your copy now. It has China Miéville, Lavie Tidhar, Liz Williams and Anne writing about Ladyhawke. If that last bit doesn't sell you on it, I don't know what will.

Two upcoming events:

Pandemonium: Stories of the Smoke - one month countdown

Stories of the Smoke, the anthology of Dickensian science fiction, is about to dissipate. Smoke was published in celebration of the Charles Dickens bicentennial and all the stories are themed around London. Past, present and (very far) future.

The Pandemonium shtick is that our ebooks are on sale for one year only and, for Smoke, that year closes at the end of April. This doesn't mean it will mysteriously disappear from your ereader (purchased copies will remain yours forever), but it does mean that Smoke will no longer be available for purchase!

Here's what makes up this lovely anthology:

• Introduction: "The Nightmare City" by Christopher Fowler
• "Inspector Bucket Investigates" by Sarah Lotz
• "Uncle Smoke" by Archie Black
• "A Dance of Life and Dust" by Aliette de Bodard
• "Victory Year" by Alexis Kennedy
• "The Collection" by Esther Saxey
• "An Unburdening of the Soul" by David Thomas Moore
• "Necropolis" by Jonathan Green
• "The Knowledge" by Rebecca Levene
• "Londoner" by Jenni van der Merwe
• "The Unkindness of Ravens" by Glen Mehn
• "The Pickwick Syndrome" by Kaaron Warren
• "The Hound of Henry Hortinger" by Michelle Goldsmith
• "Aye, There's the Twist" by James Wallis
• "The City of the Absent" by Charles Dickens
• "A Brief History of the Great Pubs of London" by Lavie Tidhar
• "Bullseye" by Sarah Anne Langton
• "Cuckoo" by David Thomas Moore
• "Martin Citywit" by Adam Roberts

As with all our books, Smoke is a not for profit project, with proceeds going to English PEN.

The collection is illustrated by Gary Northfield, who did an amazing job channeling the tragicomic vibe of great Dickensian illustrators like Phiz and Cruikshank. Gary even used an old school dip pen, 'cause he's awesome.

Smoke is a corker of an anthology, the Pandemonium title that's gained the best critical reviews. The Guardian said it was "consistently entertaining, with several stand-outs", and called attention to the stories by Rebecca Levene and Sarah Lotz. Locus singled out Lavie Tidhar's story as one of their recommendations for the year. Dreampunk called it a "literary feast - a fantastic sampler of cutting-edge storytelling". 

Other reviews have called it "strong" (A Fantastic Librarian), "wonderfully crafted" (The Eloquent Page), "a major success" (Stuff & Nonsense), "well-written" (Disinformed) and, perhaps our favourite summary: "recommended to anyone that's looking for something a little different" (Paperless Reading). There's more on Goodreads too. 

Stories of the Smoke is available for £3.99 from the following retailers:

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Kobo

Introducing Dreamlands, the new genre imprint from HBO

NEW YORK --  In a long anticipated move, the premium cable network HBO (Home Box Office), a subsidiary of Time Warner, Inc. (NYSE:TWX) has moved into the world of publishing. The new imprint, known as "Dreamlands", will become the home of best-selling fantasy authors George R.R. Martin, Neil Gaiman and Charlaine Harris, as well as cross-over talents Michael Chabon, Karen Russell and Jennifer Egan.

"We owe a lot of this to George [Martin] and Neil [Gaiman]," says Vice President of HBO Properties, Chester Blumenthal. "Neil told fans that George R.R. Martin was quote-unquote not their bitch, and, at HBO, we had a lightbulb moment. What if George were our bitch?"

The concept moved rapidly into development, with Time Warner's analysts quickly giving it their blessing. After the success of shows like True Blood and Game of Thrones, agents were becoming increasingly demanding and new intellectual properties were becoming "extortionately priced". Plus there were concerns that authors would have "other interests".

"They get used to the high-life," Blumenthal explained. "Neil's got his million Twitter followers, his rock star girlfriend. Distractions. Charlaine's got her stamp collection. Distraction. Mike [Chabon] has this weird thing about having hanging upside down, like a bat. I don't know what that's about - distraction. And then there's George. Great guy. The best. But priorities. Stop editing anthologies about f**king Venus and do the dragons thing, will you?"

The result? Dreamlands.

HBO promises that the new imprint will combine the fast-pace of television production with the imagination of genre fiction. A proprietary distribution system will leverage all the normal channels - including Barnes & Noble and Amazon - plus a ground-breaking "red button" technology that allows the channel's viewers to order new works directly from their television. "We've got 30 million paid subscribers in the United States alone," Blumenthal added. "If only one tenth of one percent of them decides to buy a book, that's already a bestseller."

And the "distraction" problem? Using a tactic pioneered by David Simon's The Wire, the authors will be kept in a "bull pen" until they finish their work. "Six years to wrap up a book?" Blumenthal chuckled. "Not on our watch. Listen, their current publishers - great folks, really - they couldn't handle these guys. So we shook out the sofa, chucked some change at them and now they're our responsibility. We're HBO. We got Meryl Strep to stop her fight club and Ricky Gervais to put his pants back on. Getting writers to write? Piece of cake."

"This is a bold new territory for me," tweeted Neil Gaiman. "Please help Kickstart my move to the new office." 

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ABOUT HOME BOX OFFICE, INC.

Home Box Office, Inc. is the premium television programming subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. and the world's most successful pay-TV service, providing the two television services - HBO® and Cinemax® - to approximately 100 million subscribers worldwide. The services offer the most popular subscription video-on-demand products, HBO On Demand® and Cinemax On Demand® as well as HBO GO® and MAX GO®, HD feeds and multiplex channels. Internationally, HBO branded television networks, along with the subscription video-on-demand products HBO On Demand and HBO GO, bring HBO services to over 60 countries. HBO programming is sold into over 150 countries worldwide.

Speculative Fiction 2012: Contributor List

Over on Staffer's Book Review, Justin Landon has unveiled the lineup for Speculative Fiction 2012 - the first in an annual series that collects the best online reviews, essays and commentary.

It is one hell of a list.

We're really pleased that all these great people bought into the big, goofy vision and are letting us include their work.

We've also announced the 2013 editors: Ana and Thea from The Book Smugglers. They're two amazing bloggers: passionate, honest, intelligent and, best of all, not us. The goal with Speculative Fiction is that the editorship rotates every year. It isn't possible to capture the blogosphere in a book, but at least this way, we get a new, fresh perspective every year. 

Speculative Fiction 2012 will be released on 25 April. All profits from the book will be donated to Room to Read, an international charity focused on literacy and gender equality in education.

(How great is that Sarah Langton cover?!)

Announcing... The Lowest Heaven

Ahem.

We are delighted to announce The Lowest Heaven, a new anthology of contemporary science fiction published in partnership with the Royal Observatory Greenwich to coincide with Visions of the Universe, their major new exhibition of space imagery. 

Each story in The Lowest Heaven is themed around a body in the Solar System, from the Sun to Halley’s Comet. The stories are illustrated with photographs and artwork selected from the archives of the Royal Observatory, while the book’s cover and overall design are the work of award-winning illustrator Joey Hi-Fi.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction by Dr. Marek Kukula (Royal Observatory Greenwich)
• "Golden Apple" by Sophia McDougall (The Sun)
• "A Map of Mercury" by Alastair Reynolds (Mercury)
• "The Happiest Place on [Expletive Deleted] Venus" by Archie Black (Venus)
• "The Krakatoan" by Maria Dahvana Headley (Earth)
• "An account of a voyage from World to World again, by way of the Moon, 1726" by Adam Roberts (The Moon)
• "WWBD" by Simon Morden (Mars)
• "Saga's Children" by E.J. Swift (Ceres)
• "The Jupiter Files" by Jon Courtenay Grimwood (Jupiter)
• "Magnus Lucretius" by Mark Charan Newton (Europa)
• "Air, Water and the Grove" by Kaaron Warren (Saturn)
• "Only Human" by Lavie Tidhar (Titan)
• "Uranus" by Esther Saxey (Uranus)
• "From This Day Forward" by David Bryher (Neptune)
• "We'll Always Be Here" by S.L. Grey (Pluto & Charon)
• "Enyo-Enyo" by Kameron Hurley (Eris)
• "The Comet's Tale" by Matt Jones (Halley's Comet)
• "The Grand Tour" by James Smythe (Voyager I)

Items from the Royal Observatory’s collection of astronomical photography will also be on display as part of Visions of the Universe, alongside images from world-class telescopes and recent space missions. The exhibition opens in June at the National Maritime Museum.

We're happy... no... elated. Amazing writers, astounding partner, incredible photography, Joey Hi-Fi and simply some of the best science fiction we've ever read. This collection is definitely more literary than operatic, although there are some cheeky nods to the classics of the genre, these are contemporary, character-focused stories, with more than bit of edge to them. Science fiction's oldest inspirations, our closest celestial neighbours - just as relevant today as they ever were. 

(Also, robots, rockets and space monsters. Because.)

The Lowest Heaven is out on 13 June 2013 as a trade paperback and an eBook available on all the usual platforms. A signed limited edition will be available exclusively from the Royal Observatory Greenwich and direct from our website.

The Kitschies: Storytelling Without Limits

Three of the biggest names in mind-bending fiction team up to talk about storytelling. Join Lauren Beukes, Warren Ellis and Benjamin Percy at the Brixton Ritzy on 30 April for an evening of discussion, debate and a bit of tentacular fun.

All three authors are storytellers that span genres and formats alike - from novels to comics to films to documentaries to short stories to journalism to Twitter to children's cartoon series, these are writers that work without boundaries.

How does the platform change the story? How do you move a story from one media to another? What are the challenges and strengths that come with each? Also, what are you working on, what's your inspiration and do you sign body parts?

Storytelling Without Limits features a unique show-and-tell, as well as a discussion between the three writers. A Q&A and signing opportunities to follow.

Tickets: £6 (you can buy them online or at the Ritzy)

Tuesday, 30 April
Doors open at 7, fun kicks off at 7.30

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Lauren Beukes (South Africa) is a novelist, TV scriptwriter, documentary maker, comics writer and occasional journalist. She won the Kitschies' Red Tentacle and the 2011 Arthur C Clarke Award for her novel Zoo City. She helped create South Africa's first half-hour animated TV show, URBO: The Adventures of Pax Afrika, and has written kids animated shows for Disney UK and Millimages in France. Her new novel, The Shining Girls, is out in April from HarperCollins.

Warren Ellis (UK) is an award-winning creator of graphic novels whose work includes Fell, Ministry of Space, Planetary, Transmetropolitan and Red, and the author of the novels Crooked Little Vein and Gun Machine. He has also written for many of Marvel Comics' top series including the Avengers, Iron Man and the X-Men. 

Benjamin Percy (USA) has won a Whiting Writers Award, a Plimpton Prize and two Pushcart Prizes. He is the author of the novel The Wilding and two short story collections, Refresh, Refresh and The Language of Elk. His work has appeared in Esquire, GQ, Time, The Wall Street Journal, The Paris Review and Best American Short Stories. His new novel, Red Moon, is his first UK release - coming this May from Hodder & Stoughton.

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Photo from Warren Ellis (www.warrenellis.com)