Tuesday 3 February 2009

Reading to be a Better Writer

I've just picked up a copy of The Starflight Handbook - A Pioneer′s Guide to Interstellar Travel. It's been on my wish list for a while so I was rather surprised when it plopped onto the doormat courtesy of my girlfriend (an early Valentines gift).

I don't know whether it will help with WIP but it'll certainly add an element of realism when I come to revise.

On the horizon is Seeds of Earth (Humanity's Fire) by Michael Cobley.

I've been looking forward to it since I heard about it a couple of months ago. The back cover sold me I can't wait to read this:

First contact was not supposed to be like this. The first intelligent species to encounter Mankind attacked without warning and swarmed locust-like through the solar system. Merciless. Relentless. Unstoppable. With little hope of halting the savage invasion, Earth's last, desperate roll of the dice was to send out three colony ships, seeds of Earth, to different parts of the galaxy. Earth may perish but the human race would live on ...somewhere. 150 years later, the human colony on the planet Darien has established a new world for Humanity and forged a peaceful relationship with the planet's indigenous race, the scholarly, enigmatic Uvovo. But there are secrets buried beneath the surface of Darien's forest moon. Secrets that go back to an apocalyptic battle fought between ancient forerunner races at the dawn of galactic civilisation...

Seeds of Earth is published by Orbit in the UK on the 5 March 2009.

4 comments:

  1. You have an awesome girlfriend! The Handbook is very good.

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  2. We'll be looking for a review of The Starflight Handbook!

    Helen Ginger
    http://straightfromhel.blogspot.com

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  3. Weird. The setup for Seeds of Earth is really similar to the background setup I have for Air Pirates. "Earth is destroyed. Three colony ships escape. This is the story of one of them..."

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  4. Thanks Mike - I’m sure she’ll agree with you :-)

    It seems both you and Adam are having synchronicity days today.

    I'll look forward to writing that review, Helen.

    Adam, that is weird. I had the same feeling several months back when one of the agent sites I visited commented that they'd had loads of queries where the protagonist was an amnesiac.

    It's a good job no too books are alike.

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