The Lowest Heaven - Launch Day!
Thursday, June 13, 2013
The Lowest Heaven is out today!
Our latest anthology is published to coincide with the Visions of the Universe exhibition at the National Maritime Museum, and the book is officially released this evening at the Museum's late night event.
Tonight's shindig features readings from several of the contributors, telescope workshops, comics from The Phoenix, music, comedy, poetry, alcoholic wizardry from Bompas and Parr and, of course, one of the most amazing exhibitions of astrophotography ever assembled. (Tickets are free, but booking is necessary.)
Many of The Lowest Heaven's contributors will be attending, including Sophia McDougall, Alastair Reynolds, Simon Morden, E.J. Swift, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Mark Charan Newton, Lavie Tidhar, Esther Saxey, David Bryher, James Smythe, Matt Jones, Marek Kukula and the (elated) editors.
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 South African illustrator Joey Hi-Fi.
Tonight we'll be selling the limited edition - 100 hardcover copies, exclusive to the Royal Observatory. These are individually numbered and will be signed by all of the attending contributors (see above for the star-studded list). The hardcover has full-colour, full-page art, with dust jacket and boards designed by Joey Hi-Fi. Joey also designed a special treat: a fold-out chart of the Solar System that is bound in to every copy of the limited edition.
The paperback and ebook editions will both be released in July.
Early reviews of The Lowest Heaven:
"Visually beautiful with an incredibly high quality of fiction. Highly recommended." - The List
"The whimsical, the hard-core science stories and the outright strange; overall it is a well-crafted ensemble and the solar system theme never seems like a constraint... Starburst has no hesitation in recommending it to any serious reader of science fiction." - Starburst Magazine
"This back and forth between the actual and the fantastic underpins The Lowest Heaven's exploration of space, both as we know it and as we can only imagine it.... There can be no questioning the value of this artful anthology: it's as inspiring as it is inspired." - Tor.com