A Town Called Pandemonium - Pre-order your copy now
Saturday, October 20, 2012
We're now taking pre-orders for the latest Pandemonium anthology, A Town Called Pandemonium.
A Town Called Pandemonium is a double experiment: it is a shared world and a Western. The original brief was more "Unforgiven" than "Wild, Wild West", but, despite our intentions, the town evolved to have a slightly unnerving style that is all its own.
The best word is probably "secretive". Pandemonium is a small town with vast depths. This mostly seen in its cast of characters, all of whom are amazingly realised.
The ten authors were all astoundingly creative, enthusiastic and (as is necessary in a shared world) flexible. We couldn't be more proud of the fruits of their labour:
- Will Hill - "The Sad Tale of the Deakins Boys"
- Sam Sykes - "Wish for a Gun"
- Scott Andrews - "Grit"
- Chrysanthy Balis - "Belle Deeds"
- Joseph D'Lacey - "The Gathering of Sheaves"
- Sam Wilson - "Rhod the Killer" (extract available here)
- Jonathan Oliver - "Raise the Beam High"
- Archie Black - "4.52 to Pandemonium"
- Den Patrick - "Red Hot Hate"
- Osgood Vance - "Sleep in Fire"
The ultimate vision of Pandemonium is that of Adam Hill, the book's illustrator. Given a stack of stories and a century of influences, he's brought the little town of Pandemonium to life in the perfect way: a balance of the surreal and the dramatic, the personal and the epic, contemporary and classic. It is hard to explain (that's what illustrators are for, right? The 1,000 words that you could never otherwise string together...), but Adam nailed it. He brought together the ten fragments of Pandemonium into a cohesive whole and framed the entire collection in a single vision.
We opened up pre-orders to our mailing list on Thursday night, and I'm pleased to say that this is our fastest selling anthology yet (by far). We're holding back a number of copies for the launch on 29 November (come along!), but it looks like we'll be sold out after opening night.
The ebook, for Nook and Kindle, will be out at the end of the November. Adam's done some amazing work, so although the print edition looks gorgeous in grayscale, the eBook gets a slightly tweaked sepia style that's very, very cool.
A Town Called Pandemonium is limited to 100 numbered hardcover copies at £14.99. You can pre-order your copy through the Pandemonium website.
Pandemonium publications are not for profit. A share of all proceeds from A Town Called Pandemonium will be donated to our selected charity partner, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, to support their continuing work in recognising and promoting excellence in science fiction.