Friday, December 17, 2010

Free Reading: The Blue Portal by Eric Brown

Here is an excellent Christmas gift from Solaris Books:
Free e-book of Eric Brown's The Blue Portal. You can download this short e-book from Solaris's blog site: When Gravity Fails or from Apple's iBookstore.

The Blue Portal is an extract from the beginning of Eric Brown's upcoming novel The Kings of Eternity (published on 1 Apr 2011).

1999, on the threshold of a new millennium, the novelist Daniel Langham lives a reclusive life on an idyllic Greek island, hiding away from humanity and the events of the past. All that changes, however, when he meets artist Caroline Platt and finds himself falling in love. But what is his secret, and what are the horrors that haunt him?

1935. Writers Jonathon Langham and Edward Vaughan are summoned from London by their editor friend Jasper Carnegie to help investigate strange goings on in Hopton Wood. What they discover there - no less than a strange creature from another world - will change their lives forever. What they become, and their link to the novelist of the future, is the subject of Eric Brown’s most ambitious novel to date. Almost ten years in the writing, The Kings of Eternity is a novel of vast scope and depth, full of the staple tropes of the genre and yet imbued with humanity and characters you’ll come to love.

Solaris Books has been publishing some other excellent science-fiction books of Eric Brown's. Here are the two that they've published in 2010:

Engineman (14 Oct 2010)

Once they pushed bigships through the cobalt glory of the Nada-Continuum. But faster than light isn’t fast enough anymore. The interfaces of the Keilor-Vincicoff Organisation bring planets light years distant a simple step away. Then a man with half a face offers ex-engineman Ralph Mirren the chance to escape his ruined life and push a ship to an undisclosed destination. The Nada-Continuum holds the key to Ralph's future. What he cannot anticipate is its universal importance – nor the mystery awaiting him on the distant colony world. Engineman is a thrilling action adventure by the author of Helix and Kethani. Also in this volume are nine stories set in the Engineman universe, including the Interzone award winning 'The Time-Lapsed Man.'

Guardians of the Phoenix (16 Dec 2010)

Global warming has taken its terrible toll. The seas have dried up and deserts cover much of the Earth’s surface. Humankind has been annihilated by drought and the nuclear and biological conflicts following the Great Breakdown. Desperate bands of humans still survive. Some live far underground, away from the searing temperatures and ongoing conflicts on the surface; others scrape a living in the remains of shattered cities above ground. In Paris, Pierre lives like an animal among the sand-drifted ruins of the once great city. Near death, he faces a choice: join the strangers heading south in search of water, or remain in the city and perish. Guardians of the Phoenix tells the story of the last survivors on planet Earth, their desperate fight for survival and their last hope to save the world.

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