Now Announcing Brain In A Jar Books

[garygibsonsf]

(if you're new to reading this thread, skip ahead to entry number 4, which has the info on Brain in a Jar. This first post here is older, and has to do with one specific book that was first released a year or two ago.)


Hi folks. I've written on this forum before about Judgement, which was a sort-of-kind-of collaboration between myself (pro sf author) and a friend from a few years back. I've been selling it through Smashwords for $2.00 here, but I've decided to change it to a 'set your own price' item - you can download it for free, or pay for it if you want (which is always nice after the hard work we put into it).

The price of the book - if you choose to pay for it - is now at a suggested $4.99, which I think is very reasonable for a book with two writers with pro sales large and small behind them.

There's a website for the book and for Fergus Bannon, my collaborator, here (Neurosurgical Intervention for Beginners) and I've previously posted about Judgement here. If you want to know anything about me, follow the links in my signature.

[garygibsonsf]

Just a word to say that using Kindle's new promotional system, I've put Judgement up on US Kindle, for free, for just one day. And it's ALREADY No 1 in Kindle's free SF charts, less than an hour after I started the promotion! So if you want to check it out, feel free to download it and review it if you like it. But you'll have to hurry.

(By the way, is there any way I can change the title of this thread? Anyone know?)

[Dr. Drib]

Click on the "Report" button and tell one of the moderators what title you'd like the thread's title to be changed to.

As a courtesy, provide a link to the thread.

As well, a dozen chocolate chip cookies helps to sweeten the deal.


Don
(Moderator)

[garygibsonsf]

Announcing the launch of a new ebook publisher of reprint novels and short stories, Brain In A Jar Books.

Brain In A Jar is the brainchild (sorry) of Gary Gibson, a pro author of science fiction who, just before New Year’s Eve in 2011, had a minor epiphany when he realised he knew a number of writers with work that had been ‘resting’ for quite a while. ‘Resting’ meaning, some of their work was no longer in print. So he set out to do something about it, in this new era of ebook publishing. The result is Brain in a Jar Books. BIAJ is going to be publishing a number of ebooks by various authors – most Scottish – throughout 2012. Authors include: Mike Cobley, Angus McAllister, Duncan Lunan and Fergus Bannon. The vast majority of work being published by BIAJ has already appeared elsewhere, either in original hardback or paperback editions, or in various pro sf short story markets such as Asimov’s and Analog.

Here’s a quick look at what you can expect to be seeing coming from Brain In A Jar throughout the first half of 2012.

The first BIAJ publication is Iron Mosaic, by Mike Cobley – a collection of short fiction by the author of the Shadowkings and Humanity’s Fire trilogies, currently still available in hardcopy format by Immanion Press (who kindly granted us permission to release this ebook edition). The book was first published in the mid-2000s, before Mike won the contract to write the Humanity’s Fire series of space operas about to be published in the US by Orbit. His stories have appeared in a wide variety of publications, ranging from Interzone to Back Brain Recluse to the Other Edens anthologies from the Nineties. For the moment, the ebook of Iron Mosaic will (for contractual reasons) be available only in the UK, and it’s already available for £2.00.

Forthcoming in the next few months is The Cyber Puppets, by Angus McAllister. Angus is the author of (amongst others) The superb Krugg Syndrome and The Canongate Strangler. The Cyber Puppets was originally scheduled to be published by Big Engine several years back – only for that company to go out of business just two weeks before the book was due to be released.

Also forthcoming later is With Time Comes Concorde, and other stories, by Duncan Lunan. Duncan is the author of non-fiction works such as Man and the Planets, a runaway non-fiction bestseller when it was first published in the 70s. Since then, he’s published fiction as well as a huge number of non-fiction articles for leading US sf publications such as Analog and IASFM. With Time Comes Concorde will collect four linked novellas first published in Analog and IASFM.

Finally, there’s going to be a collection of short stories and essays by Fergus Bannon, whose novel Judgement has already been selling very well indeed on Amazon - and which was the original subject of this thread. I can’t tell you how pleased I am to see it getting the attention it deserves. If you want some indication of the quality of work I'm going to be bringing to you, you could do a lot worse than check it out. Judgement is of course coming into the Brain In A Jar fold, which includes a redesign to fit in with the house style (see the website for details).

And that’s just the start, really. The books will all be priced between 99 pence and £4.99. There's a dedicated blog/website at www.braininajarbooks.wordpress.com, where you can view all the book covers for forthcoming publications and find out any news on what's coming up later this year, as it happens.

[garygibsonsf]

Another day, another release. Paisley-born Gus McAllister is the author of one of my favourite sf novels - The Krugg Syndrome, which first appeared back in the 80s, a delirious romp set in the Sixties about a young legal student who gets a bang on the head, and wakes up in hospital absolutely convinced that rather than being a callow human youth, he is in fact a scout for an approaching fleet of war-like alien trees bent on invasion. It's a classic fish out of water story about a young man desperately trying to figure out how the world works, while labouring under the delusion that he's really an alien tree trapped in a human body...or is it a delusion...?

Fast forward a few years, and Gus is the author of several more novels, including The Canongate Strangler (published in the Nineties by Dog & Bone) and, finally, The Cyber Puppets, a spoof on soap opera dramas such as Dallas combined with some Dick-ian reality-twisting revelations.

The Cyber Puppets was originally slated to be published by Big Engine in the early years of this century, only for the publisher to go bankrupt days before the book was due to be printed and distributed. Since then it's done little more than sit on Gus's hard drive while he gets on with the hard work of writing required legal texts for students throughout Scotland. Until I approached him and said 'hey, about some of those books you've written that aren't yet available as ebooks...'

You can currently find it on Kindle, everywhere, and without DRM (it goes without saying) for the low, low price of £2/$3. Here's the US link: http://amzn.to/zjhylX . And the UK link: http://amzn.to/wPWB9t .

[garygibsonsf]

More BIAJ releases.

First up is Escape from Hell! by Hal Duncan.

Hal Duncan is a Scottish author of science fiction and fantasy. His first novel, Vellum, was nominated for the World Fantasy Award and went on to win the Spectrum and Tähtivaeltaja Awards. It has since been translated into half a dozen languages. It was followed by a sequel, Ink, shortlisted for the 2011 Tähtivaeltaja Award.

He has published numerous short stories, several of which have been anthologised, including The New Weird, edited by Jeff and Ann Vandermeer, and Paper Cities, edited by Ekaterina Sedia, as well as two poetry collections, Sonnets for Orpheus and The Lucifer Cantos. A further volume, Songs for the Devil and Death, collected a number of poems from each of the prior collections.

"A hitman, a hooker, a homosexual kid, and a hobo suicide make the ultimate prison break...escape from Hell itself! But when news of their attempted escape gets out, the souls of the damned are transformed into a rioting mob, and all Hell truly does break loose. It's Escape from New York meets Jacob's Ladder, by one of fantasy's rising stars."

This forty-thousand word novella is the first in an intended trilogy. The sequels will be titled Assault! On Heaven! and Battle! For the Planet! Of the Dead!

REVIEWS
'...a gripping and stylish read from one of the most talented new fantasy writers to emerge in a long time.' THE GUARDIAN

Second is The Unusual Genitals Party and Other Stories, a collection of short fiction and articles by the inimitable Fergus Bannon. Some of you may have noted Blue Tyson posting about this recently in Deals etc. when it was briefly free to download on Amazon.

Six stories and two essays by the author of Judgement.

A race of intelligent microbes that leave one last message before becoming extinct; A student party gatecrashed by an alien symbiote; A gangster who finds there's nothing quite so profitable as the near-future world of academie; A man who commits a suicide so perfect, even God can't save him; A battle between two astronauts sent on a suicide mission to save the world.

Also included is the classic non-fiction essay Everything You Never Wanted To Know About Neurosurgery Because You Were Too Well-Adjusted to Ask.

And lastly, and most recently, the sixth BIAJ release With Time Comes Concord, by Duncan Lunan, a collection of two novellas and several short stories, including the nebula-nominated title story first published in Asimov's.

Four linked novellas and several short stories all dealing with time travel, by the author of the bestselling non-fiction book Man and the Planets. The two novellas were first published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and Analog, and this is the first time they have appeared since then.

Duncan Lunan became a full-time author in 1970, initially writing science fiction, but now also undertakes a wide range of other writing and speaking as a researcher, tutor, critic, editor, lecturer and broadcaster.

His earlier publications include three nonfiction books, contributions to 20 other books, over 700 articles and thirty short stories, including a number of science articles for Analog magazine. In 1989 he edited “Starfield: science fiction by Scottish writers”, the first ever anthology of SF and fantasy by Scots, and as manager of the Glasgow Parks Dept. Astronomy Project, 1978-79, Duncan designed and built the first astronomically aligned stone circle in Britain for over 3000 years.

And that's it! All except for Escape from Hell! are priced at about £1.99/$2.99, are available internationally, and have no DRM.