Fusion: Digital SciFi Morphs into Print.

Fusion: this excellent collection of speculative fiction, first published in digital form, is now available in paperback with accompanying illustrations.

A collection of 25 stories of fantasy and science fiction from around the globe, each illustrated by digital artist Alice Taylor. This collection has been compiled from the winners of the Fantastic Books Publishing International Charity Short Story Competition 2012 and features 2 stories from our professional contributors Danuta Reah and Stuart Aken. 10% of the proceeds of this book will be donated to the WCRF (World Cancer Research Fund - Registered Charity Number - 1000739) who do sterling work in the field of global cancer prevention.

The cover has changed for the paperback edition, but the stories remain as fresh and individual as on the day I reviewed the book when it first came out. Click here for the review.

To purchase click the link below:

From Fantastic Books Publishing

From Amazon UK

From Amazon.com

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Coming Closer, the New Book in the Series!

A copy of my publisher's latest enewspaper, with some more news about Partings, and other things of interest. 

Enjoy

Congratulations to our Short SF Competition cash winners, Stuart Aken’s 2nd is here and exciting Kickstarter news!

This week we are celebrating the closing of the Fantastic Books Short Science Fiction Competition 2014. The cash winners have been notified and the editorial process has begun!

After many months, our judges have finally finished battling with the longlist and have awarded the following people the 5 cash prizes;

First prize: Dying Star by Marko Susimetsa
Second Prize: Steampunk Striker by Pierre Le Gue
Third prize: If We Start Killing by Ulla Susimetsa
Fourth Prize: Three Second War by Darren Grey
Fifth Prize: The Moon a Balloon by Rose Thurlbeck

The judging is done completely anonymously and it came as a very nice surprise to see no less than 4 Fantastic Elite Fiction authors in the top 5!

Our heartiest congratulations to everyone who made it to the longlist and we really must stress how impressed we were with the high quality of all the entries. It was a very hard job to decide who was in the anthology and who didn’t make it. Well done to everyone who entered, you are all Fantastic.

We have now opened our next competition. It is a horror story competition asking for stories of EXACTLY 666 words. It is a tough challenge but after seeing the quality of the entries for our competitions over the last two years, we know you can do it. We look forward to you scaring the pants off us!

Now, to other news. Stuart Aken has released the second novel in his ‘A Seared Sky‘ series. Partings continues from where Joinings left off and has a shiny new cover to ensure the final trilogy looks amazing. Our cover designer Heather Murphy has done a wonderful job integrating Stuart’s hand drawn maps into the cover and we couldn’t be more pleased.

Stuart’s books are available from ourFantastic Bookstore and also on Amazon.

And now to our next exciting project. Although lots of our own Kickstarter gifts are still to be sent out (the boxed sets are in production, the special edition boxed sets won’t begin production until October and the audio books will be ready by December at the earliest), there are still lots of folks who would love to see another Fantastic Books Kickstarter based in the universe of Elite: Dangerous.

Thanks to our friend Anthony Olver, who runs the Elite Archives, we are very proud to announce that a brand new Kickstarter will be launching on the 20th September to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the original Elite computer game!

The Elite Archives Kickstarter will use your pledges to fund the creation of a beautiful hardback book detailing the 30 year journey this game has taken including interviews, artwork, game tips and tricks, reviews, archive pictures and lots more. Anthony’s passion for the game shines through in everything he does and he has decided that the world needs to know about this amazing game and share his collection that he has painstakingly built up over the years.

This will be the first ever book detailing the history, lore, releases and more of this seminal space trading computer game. As massive fans ourselves, we felt very privileged to be approached by Anthony to publish this book and we are prepared to throw everything we have at making this Kickstarter a success. With us on board as publisher the book will benefit from professional editing, proofing, typesetting and cover design as well as joining the other 5 official Elite titles in our bookstore and on Amazon and other retailers.

The project goes live on the 20th September and will run for only 48 days. With the help of the Elite Community, Science Fiction fans, Gamers and Collectors alike we hope to push this project over the line quickly and have already formulated some great ideas for stretch goals. And for those of you who still remember our own Kickstarter project, Commander Dan has promised to make an appearance on video too!

So when the project goes live in two days time, look out for ‘The Elite Archives Book: A 30 Year History of Elite’ on Kickstarter and make sure you spread the word by liking and sharing all our posts about it. Thanks!

By working together on projects that people are genuinely passionate about we can create anything. Just imagine.

Come join the family, you’re welcome!

Just imagine,

The Fantastic Books Team

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The Rattle Bag, Ed. by Seamus Heaney & Ted Hughes, Reviewed.

Poetry in anthology form is always subject to criticism by readers who feel aggrieved at the works excluded. Even at 475 pages, this work necessarily omits some well-known works and even some respected poets. But it gives a flavour of the genre as it’s developed over the centuries.

The editors arranged the verses alphabetically so that an air of randomness pervades the volume. There’s no attempt at thematic or topical arrangement. Surprise is the intention: the joy of stumbling on work new to the reader.

Much here is familiar, popular, or representative. But there are also extracts of less well-known pieces, examples of lesser poets, forgotten wordsmiths, and those whose words were originally expressed in foreign tongues.

Is it balanced? I’m no expert: I took up a book, which has been on my shelves since its issue in 1987, simply because I’ve recently become interested in expressing myself in poetry. This was an exercise in discovering what’s possible in the form, an enquiry into what works, and what doesn’t. And, under such scrutiny, it’s natural that my assessment will be deeply personal.

My conclusion? Poetry can be anything, from the formal rhymes of schemes devised to test the poet’s skill, to prose chopped arbitrarily into sections that look somehow appropriate on the printed page. It can voice attitude, wonder, despair, or any of the emotions known to man. And it’s noticeable that it is men who are most represented here; the women characterized by a token scattering of the famous.

I confess, there were works here that I hardly started; their opening lines so obscure or lacking personal connection that I declined to sample them further. There were others that I read more than once, their accessibility or emotional impact such that they made contact with the human experience of this reader.

For lovers of poetry, this volume is either a collection of works already known or a showcase of the craft. But for those seeking insight into a world new to them, those dipping the toe or testing the flavour, it’s an interesting adventure. If, like me, you’re curious about the making of a poem, the structure of a verse, the range of topic or theme applicable, then this will answer some of your questions, and I recommend it.

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The Faber Book of 20th Century Verse, Reviewed

I approached this collection as a reader who rarely looks at poetry, though I did recently enjoy an anthology of Roger McGough’s excellent verse and I’ve always had a deep admiration for Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood. However, as a writer of prose fiction, I’m aware that poetry has a good deal to offer the author. In order to work, it has to condense ideas into few precise words, it employs metaphor and simile to great effect and it frequently ignores the usual rules of narrative prose.

This particular anthology, published in 1953 and reprinted in 1978 with significant amendments, purports to embody the poetry of a century to that point. I found it irritating that many poets were represented by excerpts from longer works, these tasters giving an idea of style without any indication of the full import of the work. There was, for me, much that was impenetrable: so many of the poems referenced previous works with which I’m unfamiliar. Because of this, I was unable to enjoy large sections of the offering.

It was interesting to be re-acquainted with one or two poets I’d studied for my school exams: John Betjeman’s Upper Lambourne coming alive again so many years after I dissected it in class for ‘O’ level GCE under the inspiring guidance of a gifted English teacher. And the mawkish sentimentality of Thomas Hardy’s poetry re-appearing from my days of ‘A’ level studies undertaken at night class during a year’s discovery of some otherwise excellent works.

I enjoyed some of the verse from the First World War poets and a few of the other offerings. And I was introduced to such luminaries as Ezra Pound, A.E. Houseman and T.S. Eliot, for which I’m grateful. But I discovered that my poor opinion of James Joyce remained unaltered. And D.H. Lawrence was a better novelist than he was a poet.

All in all, an unsatisfactory collection for me. But I’ll attempt more in the future. I have a couple more anthologies on the shelf and I’m determined to give this form a real chance to impress me. Unfortunately, this particular collection failed to do that job.