Cover art for Steven Erikson and Robert Holdstock

Tor Books in the USA have unveiled a rough mock-up of the cover art for Steven Erikson's next novel. Willful Child is a comic SF novel which riffs on Star Trek.

The blurb is as follows:

A wickedly entertaining spoof SF space adventure by Steven Erikson, a life-long 'Star Trek' fan and author of the multi-million copy selling 'The Malazan Book of the Fallen' series.

These are the voyages of the starship, A.S.F. Willful Child. Its ongoing mission: to seek out strange new worlds on which to plant the Terran flag, to subjugate and if necessary obliterate new life life-forms, to boldly blow the...

And so we join the not-terribly-bright but exceedingly cock-sure Captain Hadrian Sawback - a kind of James T Kirk crossed with 'American Dad' - and his motley crew on board the Starship Willful Child for a series of devil-may-care, near-calamitous and downright chaotic adventures through 'the infinite vastness of interstellar space'...

The bestselling author of the acclaimed Malazan Book of the Fallen sequence has taken his life-long passion for 'Star Trek' and transformed it into a smart, inventive and hugely entertaining spoof on the whole mankind-exploring-space-for-the-good-of-all-species-but-trashing-stuff-with-a-lot-of-hi-tech-kit-along-the-way type over-blown adventure. The result is this smart. inventive, occasionally wildly OTT and often very funny novel that deftly parodies the genre while also paying fond homage to it.

Steven Erikson's next Malazan novel, Fall of Light, is due for release in 2015. His collaborator Ian Cameron Esslemont will release his new Malazan novel, Assail, on 17 July this year.

Meanwhile, Gollancz are adding Robert Holdstock's seminal fantasy novel Mythago Wood to its Fantasy Masterworks range, with a striking new cover image.

Mythago Wood was originally published in 1984 and has attracted considerable critical acclaim since its release, least of all by me.

Gollancz confirm details of three ELITE novels

Gollancz have confirmed the details of the three novels they are publishing to tie-in with the launch of the new space trading/combat game Elite: Dangerous.

Elite: Dangerous is the fourth game in the Elite series, which launched in September 1984 with the eponymous original game. The original Elite was accompanied by The Dark Wheel, a novella written by fantasy author Robert Holdstock (author of the mighty Mythago Wood sequence). Gollancz, Holdstock's publisher when he sadly (and prematurely) passed away in 2009, snapped up the rights to three Elite novels by contributing more than £13,000 to the game's funding campaign on Kickstarter.

The game - and the novels - are set at the dawn of the 34th Century. Humanity has expanded across dozens of worlds and star systems in a radius of several hundred light-years from Earth. There are three primary power groups in explored space: the Federation, centred on Earth; the Empire, centred on Achernar; and the Independent Alliance, a banding-together of small powers to resist the strength of the greater ones. Alien life is almost completely unknown, save for a mysterious insectoid species known as the Thargoids. Brutal enemies in Elite, completely missing in Frontier and pacified in First Encounters, it is rumoured that the Thargoids will return in force during the events of Elite: Dangerous.

Elite: Wanted is a collaboration between Gavin Smith (author of the splendid Veteran and War in Heaven) and Stephen Deas (author of the Memory of Flames fantasy sequence) featuring a duel between two starship crews. The Song of Stone has a bounty-hunter vessel on their trail, the feared Dragon Queen. The story flips between the two crews as they fight a battle of wits to keep ahead of the enemy.

Elite: Nemorensis, by Simon Spurrier (a writer for X-Men comics and the Warhammer franchise), is Bonny and Clyde in space, featuring two lovers who steal a spaceship, go on the run and end up becoming celebrities through the chaos they cause across known space.

Elite: Docking is Difficult by Gideon Defoe (the writer of the Oscar-nominated film The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists) is a humorous take on life in the 34th Century, in particular the dream of a young man to become 'Elite', the best of the best. Unfortunately, he has to cope with being broke and young first.

All three books will be available a e-editions on 15 May. Hardcover editions will be accompany the release of the game later this year.

No release date for Elite: Dangerous itself has been set. However, the game is currently being tested online by hundreds of players and it seems well on course for release before the end of this year.

Robert Holdstock has passed away

I was very sad to hear the news that fantasy author Robert Holdstock passed away this morning from complications relating to an E. coli infection. He was only 61 years old. Robert was best-known for the Mythago Wood cycle of novels, starting with Mythago Wood and Lavondyss, as well as a number of stand-alones and the recent Merlin Codex series. His most recent novel, Avilion, was a continuation of the Mythago Wood cycle and he was in the early stages of planning and writing a sequel.

I met Robert on several occasions, most recently at this year's Gemmell Awards and this year's Gollancz party, just two months ago, when we talked about The Dark Wheel, the novella he wrote that accompanied the original BBC Micro release of Elite in 1984 and was almost certainly the first work of science fiction I ever read. Robert's last public appearance was at an event celebrating the classic computer game (now in its 25th year) and he read an extract from the novella accompanied by a choir from the Nottingham Trent University playing 'The Blue Danube' (the theme tune for the game).


Robert Holdstock was an awesomely talented author, one of our most important modern writers of fantasy and a tremendously decent guy. He will be missed a lot. Condolences to his family. The world of fantasy fiction is definitely a poorer place today.

Comments and tributes from SFFWorld, Michael Moorcock, Ansible, Locus, Kate Elliott, SF Signal, OF Blog, John Jarrold, Speculative Horizons, Graeme's Fantasy Book Review, Nextread, Neil Gaiman, Darren Nash at Orbit, the British Fantasy Society, Ian McDonald, M. John Harrison, Paul J. McAuley, Mark C. Newton and Alastair Reynolds. More responses on his blog.

Lavondyss by Robert Holdstock

In the 1950s, young Tallis Keeton forms an unusual bond with the woodland that lies beyond her house, Ryhope Wood. But she cannot enter the wood until she learns the true name of the meadow that separates it from her home. As she struggles to achieve this, she realises her brother Harry is lost in the woodland, and to find him she must seek out the realm of ice and fire in the heart of the wood, the realm known as Lavondyss...


Lavondyss is a stand-alone companion novel to Robert Holdstock's earlier Mythago Wood. Although set after the earlier novel and exploring (tangentially) the fate of one of its characters, the book does not require foreknowledge of the first novel. Instead, it focuses on 13-year-old Tallis and her quest to find a way into the forest using rituals, masks and the power of myth and story.

Lavondyss is a brain-melting, complex novel that juggles a huge number of ideas and themes. Mythago Wood is an exemplary exploration of the ideas of mythology and where those images that resonate so strongly with us come from, but it's very much a high school diploma compared to Lavondyss' Ph.D in metamorphic imagery. Despite only being about 450 pages long, it took me weeks to read this book as I had to analyse and re-read almost every single paragraph to make sure I was grasping what the author was saying. Getting to the end and consulting the book's entry in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, I'm still not entirely sure I did 'get' it in the end, but looking at other online reviews it appears that this reaction is not uncommon. Lavondyss is an astonishingly dense and layered novel that I suspect will require multiple re-reads before a true comprehension emerges. In this regard, it is reminiscent of the Book of the New Sun, complete with its own not entirely reliable narrator (a 13-year-old girl's understanding of the world and what is going on not being entirely reliable).

The book is rich in images and ideas, but it also works as an exploration of character, through Tallis, her father and Wynn-Jones (a character mentioned briefly in the first novel, but here fleshed out), and the nature of obsession also plays a role. Holdstock's powers of description remain impressive, and although there's less exploration of the actual woodland (we're nearly halfway through the book before a visit to the wood's interior takes place), Holdstock's formidable abilities to create a woodland environment and make it so real you can almost smell it remains intact.

Lavondyss is darker than its forebear, digging even deeper into the real roots of mythology, Celtic and otherwise, into the blood and earth and sacrifice that our ancient ancestors indulged in. It is not an easy or always a pleasant read, but it is always a fascinating and thought-provoking one.

Lavondyss (****½) is a rich, mind-bogglingly complex and dense novel that sucks you into its tangled branches. It is a hell of a difficult read, but is ultimately highly rewarding. It is available now in the UK (either by itself or as part of an omnibus with Mythago Wood) and in the USA.

The Gollancz Party 2009

For the third year running, I attended the Gollancz Autumn Party in London last night. Whilst the party is arranged by Gollancz, they tend to have a fair number of other publishers and authors along as well, and it's a great opportunity to meet people and authors and get the latest gossip.

James from Speculative Horizons, me and Graeme from his Fantasy Book Review.

Of course, the nature of these things is that a lot of stuff is said 'off the record', so there are some limits on what I can report. I met Peter F. Hamilton for the first time, and he reported that The Evolutionary Void will hopefully be finished by Christmas and released next year, and is already looking at the projects to follow on from that. He is very happy that the new American editions of the Night's Dawn Trilogy are in three volumes rather than six, as apparently convincing booksellers to keep six books on the shelf simultaneously is much harder than a trilogy. He was a good guy to talk to as well.

I also grabbed a chat with Rob Grant, author of the extremely funny Colony, Incompitence and Fat and co-creator of Red Dwarf. He's working on a new novel and is apparently in talks to have Incompitence turned into a stage play (in Switzerland, if I recall correctly), which is quite ambitious as anyone's who read the book will agree.

I also spoke to Robert Holdstock, appropriate having just read Mythago Wood and ploughing through the dense-but-rewarding semi-sequel Lavondyss at the moment. I hadn't realised before a few days ago that Robert was also the author of The Dark Wheel, the novella that accompanied the original release of the all-time classic computer game Elite, released in 1984, so we had a good chat about that. His next book will be a follow-up to his recently-released Avilion. I also got a chance to meet legendary SF critic David Langford for the first time, who was a great guy and very funny.

Chris Wooding, James and myself in a London holstery.

I also touched base with some other authors I'd met before: Joe Abercrombie, Alex Bell, Tom Lloyd, Adam Roberts (basking in the afterglow of not being nominated for the Booker Prize) and Chris Wooding, plus some of the reviewers and editorial teams from DeathRay and SFX magazines.

There was a bit of a blogger's mini-convention going on, with MinDonner from Sandstorm Reviews, James from Speculative Horizons, Graeme from Graeme's Fantasy Book Review, Gav from NextRead and Liz and Mark from My Favourite Books all in attendance.

All in all, a good time was had, much alcohol was drunk, and 2010 looks like being a great year for SF&F releases from Gollancz and the other British genre publishers.

Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock

Convalescing in France after WWII, Steve Huxley hears of the death of his father, who for many years has been obsessed by the woodland bordering their home. Returning home, Steve finds that his brother Christian has now also been 'infected' by their father's obsession, developing a tendency to roam Ryhope Wood for days or even weeks at a time, searching for...something. As Steve delves into his father's research, he learns the secrets of the woodland and what affect his own desires are having on it.


Mythago Wood, the first book in the Mythago Wood Cycle, was first published twenty-five years ago (when it promptly won the World Fantasy Award) and has become a highly-regarded work over the intervening period. It's not an epic fantasy, but neither is it the kind of twee and fairy-riddled work the synopsis or its reputation as a 'woodland fantasy' suggests. Instead, it's a powerful and effecting look at mythology and language, invoking the origins of pagan rituals and the development of history into myth. It's also a very human story of a father whose all-consuming obsession destroyed his marriage and damaged the relationship with his sons, whilst the two brothers' relationship forms the core of the novel.

Holdstock's Ryhope Wood is vividly described. You can almost feel the twigs snapping under your feet as the story proceeds deeper into the heartwoods, and the sense of dislocated time is conveyed very well. Holdstock also manages an impressive balancing act by having the odd properties of Ryhope Wood described in almost scientific terms, but the central sense of magical mystery remains intact and compelling.


Another interesting side of the story is that whilst Holdstock mentions the traditional English mythological figures of Robin Hood and Arthur, he also makes use of a great deal of Celtic and Welsh imagery which are less familiar, but equally fascinating, to the casual reader.

If the book has a weakness, it's the near-total lack of scepticism on the part of any of the human characters about what is going on. Whilst it's refreshing not to have to deal with a corny, "But this can't be happening!" spiel every five pages, the total lack of surprise on the part of the central character to much of what occurs does feel a little odd. In addition, a major character abruptly bows out of the narrative just before the end, in a move that feels like it was meant to establish groundwork for the semi-sequel, Lavondyss, rather than entirely make sense within the confines of this novel.

These are extremely minor concerns. Mythago Wood (****½) is a rich and textured novel about myth which is thought-provoking and densely atmosphere. The novel is available in the UK in a new anniversary edition and also as part of an omnibus. It is also available now in the USA.