Thy Kingdom Come by Simon Morden - pre-order your copy now
Sunday, October 21, 2012
We've also taking pre-orders for our first full-length non-anthology: Thy Kingdom Come, a collection of apocalyptic short stories by Simon Morden.
The book has an interesting publication history. Thy Kingdom Come was first released ten years ago as a multimedia thingy (on CD). (You can read more about that on Mr. Morden's site.) But this is the collection's first publication "with pages", as he puts it.
Thy Kingdom Come contains twenty interconnected stories. Ten follow Marty, a young boy in Plainview, Nebraska, and his coming of age in a terrifying new world of conservatism and fear. The other ten are scattered around Europe, where religious fanatics are trying to hasten the Second Coming by using nuclear weapons.
As a bonus, Thy Kingdom Come also serves as something of an origin story to Mr. Morden's Philip K. Dick Award-winning Metrozone series. Familiarity with the Metrozone certainly isn't required, but readers familiar with the series will be delighted to have a peek into some of the world's dark corners.
It is a truly exceptional book - I've had occasion to review it a few times in the past - and, despite being ten years old, is as meaningful and as accurate as it ever was. It is an honour for us to bring it back to readers.
Of course, there's a catch - we're only bringing it back to 75 readers. (Whatever, you can snaffle the eBook directly from the author whenever you like.) But our vision was to create something really, really special to celebrate the books' 10th anniversary, and to bring a little attention to this 'lost' masterpiece.
A few people helped bring this vision to life.
The first, of course, is Simon Morden himself. Who agreed to the plan, but only if his share of the proceeds went to the British Red Cross. We grumbled, agreed and followed suit - so all the profits from this book go to charity. Mr. Morden also took another editorial pass at the book and added a new introduction.
The second is Robert Jackson Bennett. Mr. Bennett is both familiar with Bradburian small town coming of age tales and Apocalyptic fiction. He's also picked up a few awards of his own, including the Edgar and the Shirley Jackson Award. Mr. Bennett contributed a foreword for the volume, explaining his own reaction to the book and its themes.
Finally, Joey Hi-Fi. Joey (Mr. Hi-Fi sounds weird, sorry...) approached the book with the same rigour and craft that he brought to (now) classic covers like Zoo City and Moxyland. Every tiny detail in the cover is directly linked to one of the book's characters or key moments. As well as the beautiful dust jacket, Joey created a set of stunning black and white interior illustrations. We've tried to match the production of the book to the quality of the art (posh paper, ribbons, etc), but really, that's damn near impossible. (You can see previews of the cover and some of the other artwork here.)
Thy Kingdom Come is limited to 75 signed and numbered copies at £24.99 each. For the fun of it, we also ran off a set of Reconstruction Party badges that we'll be shipping out with every copy (there are also only 75; these will not be available separately).
We're currently setting up a London launch event at the end of November - details to follow.