I just got the news. I have to email all of the book’s contributors when I get home tonight, but The Starry Rift has been picked up by The Junior Library Guild in the US.  This is terrific news!!  The publisher is delighted, I’m delighted. It’s great.  And it follows on from last week’s announcement about The New Space Opera selling into France.  Good times, indeed.

I’d love to tell you that I’ve been too busy to post, but I’ve mostly been distracted and apathetic, which doesn’t sound good. I got a lot done before I went to Saratoga Springs for World Fantasy, had a great trip, came back, and really didn’t much want to think overly about things science fictional. Looking back over the post-WFC stuff here, you can see that I keep saying I’m going to focus on things. I just…haven’t.

So, what have I been doing? Well, I’ve pretty much finished re-watching The West Wing, which has been great. I’m at the end of Season 6, and probably ready to move on. There are a few DVDs, including the new version of Blade Runner, about to hit the shops, so I might watch something else over the Christmas break. I’ve also been reading, though not what I should. I read the opening story in an anthology which shall not be named (so don’t even ask), and it stopped me dead in the book. Rather than fight it, I went off and bought some new books.

On CHARLES Brown’s recommendation, I’m reading K.J. Parker’s Devices and Desires, the first book in the ‘Engineer’ trilogy. I rather wish I’d waited to buy the spiffy US edition, but am hooked nonetheless. I’ll definitely be hitting the bookstores shortly to buy volumes two and three. I also picked up Iain Banks book about scotch, Raw Spirit, which is both a hoot and a great read about Scotland. It got me all fired up about single malt scotches again (as did a meeting up with Russell Farr for coffee last weekend, where we actually got to sit down and chat for a while). All of a sudden I was checking out Laphroaigs, Lagavulins, Ardbegs, Oband and even Caol Ilas. There’s some magic out there, if it suits your palate, as it does mine.

And then, to prove that book-wise it’s definitely an Orbit kind of month, Marianne finished her latest Charlaine Harris book and moved on to the next Jim Butcher ‘Harry Dresden‘ novel (I love the Orbit UK packaging on these), and the advanced reader copy of Iain M. Banks’ next Culture novel, Matter, arrived from Nicola Pitt and the good folks at Orbit here in Australia. A great Christmas present, and definitely what I’m going to be reading over the next few days.

What else? Well, following the news, I’m guessing we can expect Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Hobbit after all. He’s set to produce, New Line will fund and distribute. No mention yet of who will direct, but what’s the bet?

Oh,and just a plug. With the exception of galleys, all of the books mentioned as being bought recently all were purchased at Mt Lawley’s Planet Books, which  gets my vote as easily the best bookstore in Perth, and very easily the best source of new science fiction and fantasy in the State.

Ian McDonald has quietly announced that the good folks over at Gollancz will publish a collection of his ‘River of Gods’ stories, tentatively titled Cyberabad Days, in late 2008.  This is incredibly cool for a bunch of reasons.  First, Ian is one of the best short story writers working in the field today, and his ‘Cyberabad’ stories are some of his best and most important work. Second, it will reprint “The Dust Assassin”, his story from The Starry Rift which is simply eye-peelingly good.  And it will include a new novella, “Vishnu at the Cat Circus”. This will be one of the major collections of the year, and is a book I’m seriously looking forward to. I can’t wait for it!

Some things are always cool, and some things have their moment in the sun. I suspect steampunk is going to sit somewhere in between. Steampunk – that gonzo form of Victoriana which reached its height with Tim Powers’ The Anubis Gates, James P. Blaylock’s Homunculus, and K.W. Jeter’s Infernal Devices (all published within a few years of one another in the 1980s) – holds special appeal for my inner geek, and always will. It’s like the zeppelin thing. Who can resist?

Anyhow, I have the feeling that steampunk is only now going to have its moment in the sun – something that’s underscored by the pending arrival of two new anthologies. Next March Jeff and Ann VanderMeer will edit The Steampunk Anthology for Tachyon Publications. It collects previously published stories by James P. Blaylock, Neal Stephenson and so on, and should provide a pretty clear statement on what steampunk is and has been up till now. The VanderMeers are very smart and skilled editors, and this fourth ‘movement anthology’ for Tachyon should be the best of the lot.

The second book, Nick Gevers’ Extraordinary Engines, is an all-original anthology from Solaris Books that is due in the Fall. The tentative line-up for the book looks terrific and if all of the authors named deliver stories it should be a top notch book that would standard as a perfect complement to the VanderMeer anthology. Nick definitely knows a good story when he sees one, so I can’t wait to see the final book!

LA Times critic Ed Parks has published his end-of-year round up for the newspaper, Favorite SciFi Books of 2007, and Eclipse One is the lead-off title! Parks discusses Andy Duncan’s remarkable “Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse” (1) and is enthusiastic about the book as a whole. He also says great things about another Night Shade book, Liz Williams Precious Dragon, which you should all check it immediately.

(1) Entry corrected to change my hamfisted late night conflation of “Ugly Chicken goes in Reverse” to the correct title. Gack.  Thanks Jeff!