The sheer variety of exoplanets is making us rethink science fiction. The variety of alien terrains that heroic space adventurers will now be subjected to is likely to be more bizarre than anything we’ve yet encountered, or at least that is what David Kernot and I think.
Therefore, in celebration of the recent release of our book Extreme Planets, the first anthology of exoplanet tales featuring carbon planets, water worlds, super-Earths and lava planets, we would like to draw your attention to eight classic SF novels that feature some of the strange worlds ever imagined.
Check out our guest post on SF Signal.
Showing posts with label Extreme Planets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Extreme Planets. Show all posts
Tuesday, 1 April 2014
Sunday, 9 March 2014
Extreme Planets is Out
Extreme Planets is now out, and available from Amazon. Gardner Dozois says of the book in Locus, "The anthology does contain a lot of solid, entertaining, core SF"
Here is an extract from David Kernot and my contribution to the anthology, "Petrochemical Skies" set on a carbon planet.
David Conyers and David Kernot
Jenna Seno rechecked her astrogation calculations for the fifteenth time. The numbers came out the same and still she didn’t like them. She rolled her shoulders to relieve the tension in her back. It would be a long shift.
Despite her lack of practical experience, Jenna knew the info-courier, Banshee Stalker, could make the next hyperspacial jump but only if she used the gravitation field from the Iyangura class star system properly. From twelve light-years out, slingshotting them thirty-two light-years across the void to Hadrian Secondus was a risky move and a stark contrast to the slow three light-year-per-day pace through ‘safer’ space routes.
“Well, Seno?” Crandon ‘Towers’ Kerman, the Banshee’s captain, cracked his knuckles like he didn't have a care.
Jenna swallowed to free her tight throat. She didn’t know what he wanted her to say.
“Are you ready? Or do I need to baby-step you through your calculations again?”
Like her, Towers was strapped into an acceleration couch on the ship’s bridge, ready for any unexpected forces the jump might generate when they transitioned space-time points. He didn't seem bothered by the risky slingshot trajectory.
He wasn't being fair, but she pushed her inexperience aside. “Captain, if I make a mistake we’ll end up in the heart of the system’s star.”
He sneered. “Would you rather we took the long route, through deep space?”
“No, captain.”
“Want to lose six days and an expensive amount of energy generating our own slingshots? Our competitors will beat us to our client.”
Jenna closed her eyes. She wanted to scream. She hated that he was having fun with her.
One nagging thought compelled her not to agree with Towers; they could all die. She gathered courage and voiced her concern, “Captain, it _is_ safer to open a wormhole in a near absolute vacuum, deep into the void.”
He laughed. “Even near stars, Seno, there’s a vacuum.”
“I guess… I suppose——”
“Make the jump.”
She couldn’t be sure of her calculations, not yet, she only needed another minute. “What if we collided with any planets in Iyangura 281A?" A collision would be fatal. She wanted to mention the radial velocities if they came out of hyperspace too close to a planet.
“The Stalker’s hyperdrive automatically compensates for that.”
“But——”
“I said jump!”
Without waiting, Towers punched his authority codes into the bridge’s console, transferred her coordinates to the ship’s semi-AI via his biometrics.
Towers! Damn him! The man was a reckless fool.
They lurched.
Invisible forces pinned Jenna into her acceleration couch.
Anti-matter engines burned a point into the vacuum the size of an atom, until a massive gravitation singularity expanded from space-time and formed a wormhole. The _Banshee Stalker_ slipped into it and shifted: everything moved, like a bug swimming in a jug of water poured into a bigger jug, and then into an even bigger jug…
They fell, and Jenna tensed every muscle, closed her eyes from the vertigo. They accelerated away under high-g maneuvers toward who knew where. A vacuum hopefully but close enough to Iyangura 281A to appease Towers.
The wormhole opened on the opposite mouth and pulled the _Stalker_ through before it collapsed.
The other side greeted with a noise like hail on a roof. Ship sensors highlighted the hull bombardment exceeded ten thousands rock pellets. Their craft decelerated rapidly, and Jenna opened her eyes. On the bridge, virtual skin schematics lit the outside scene. They weren’t in a vacuum but conversely they didn’t fall into the million-degree heart of a sun. Visuals displayed a planet.
Debris shot skyward, a mix of giant boulders and fine dust flung outwards. Smaller rocks peppered them like machinegun fire. The visual displays showed the wormhole opening had pulverized a mountain-sized mass on the surface.
The Stalker spiraled downwards into the kilometer-wide crater, which sparkled like a diamond. Jenna closed her eyes again and contained another scream, hoped their disintegration would be instantaneous and painless.
Here is an extract from David Kernot and my contribution to the anthology, "Petrochemical Skies" set on a carbon planet.
Petrochemical Skies
David Conyers and David Kernot
Jenna Seno rechecked her astrogation calculations for the fifteenth time. The numbers came out the same and still she didn’t like them. She rolled her shoulders to relieve the tension in her back. It would be a long shift.
Despite her lack of practical experience, Jenna knew the info-courier, Banshee Stalker, could make the next hyperspacial jump but only if she used the gravitation field from the Iyangura class star system properly. From twelve light-years out, slingshotting them thirty-two light-years across the void to Hadrian Secondus was a risky move and a stark contrast to the slow three light-year-per-day pace through ‘safer’ space routes.
“Well, Seno?” Crandon ‘Towers’ Kerman, the Banshee’s captain, cracked his knuckles like he didn't have a care.
Jenna swallowed to free her tight throat. She didn’t know what he wanted her to say.
“Are you ready? Or do I need to baby-step you through your calculations again?”
Like her, Towers was strapped into an acceleration couch on the ship’s bridge, ready for any unexpected forces the jump might generate when they transitioned space-time points. He didn't seem bothered by the risky slingshot trajectory.
He wasn't being fair, but she pushed her inexperience aside. “Captain, if I make a mistake we’ll end up in the heart of the system’s star.”
He sneered. “Would you rather we took the long route, through deep space?”
“No, captain.”
“Want to lose six days and an expensive amount of energy generating our own slingshots? Our competitors will beat us to our client.”
Jenna closed her eyes. She wanted to scream. She hated that he was having fun with her.
One nagging thought compelled her not to agree with Towers; they could all die. She gathered courage and voiced her concern, “Captain, it _is_ safer to open a wormhole in a near absolute vacuum, deep into the void.”
He laughed. “Even near stars, Seno, there’s a vacuum.”
“I guess… I suppose——”
“Make the jump.”
She couldn’t be sure of her calculations, not yet, she only needed another minute. “What if we collided with any planets in Iyangura 281A?" A collision would be fatal. She wanted to mention the radial velocities if they came out of hyperspace too close to a planet.
“The Stalker’s hyperdrive automatically compensates for that.”
“But——”
“I said jump!”
Without waiting, Towers punched his authority codes into the bridge’s console, transferred her coordinates to the ship’s semi-AI via his biometrics.
Towers! Damn him! The man was a reckless fool.
They lurched.
Invisible forces pinned Jenna into her acceleration couch.
Anti-matter engines burned a point into the vacuum the size of an atom, until a massive gravitation singularity expanded from space-time and formed a wormhole. The _Banshee Stalker_ slipped into it and shifted: everything moved, like a bug swimming in a jug of water poured into a bigger jug, and then into an even bigger jug…
They fell, and Jenna tensed every muscle, closed her eyes from the vertigo. They accelerated away under high-g maneuvers toward who knew where. A vacuum hopefully but close enough to Iyangura 281A to appease Towers.
The wormhole opened on the opposite mouth and pulled the _Stalker_ through before it collapsed.
The other side greeted with a noise like hail on a roof. Ship sensors highlighted the hull bombardment exceeded ten thousands rock pellets. Their craft decelerated rapidly, and Jenna opened her eyes. On the bridge, virtual skin schematics lit the outside scene. They weren’t in a vacuum but conversely they didn’t fall into the million-degree heart of a sun. Visuals displayed a planet.
Debris shot skyward, a mix of giant boulders and fine dust flung outwards. Smaller rocks peppered them like machinegun fire. The visual displays showed the wormhole opening had pulverized a mountain-sized mass on the surface.
The Stalker spiraled downwards into the kilometer-wide crater, which sparkled like a diamond. Jenna closed her eyes again and contained another scream, hoped their disintegration would be instantaneous and painless.
Tuesday, 15 January 2013
Extreme Planets Line-up
Here it is, the blurb and line-up to Extreme Planets.
Two decades ago astronomers confirmed the existence of planets orbiting stars other than our Sun. Today more than 800 such worlds have been identified, and scientists now estimate that at least 160 billion star-bound planets are to be found in the Milky Way Galaxy alone. But more surprising is just how diverse and bizarre those worlds are.
Extreme Planets is a science fiction anthology of stories set on alien worlds that push the limits of what we once believed possible in a planetary environment. Visit the bizarre moons, dwarf planets and asteroids of our own Solar Systems, and in the deeper reaches of space encounter super-Earths with extreme gravity fields, carbon planets featuring mountain ranges of pure diamond, and ocean worlds shrouded by seas hundreds of kilometres thick. The challenges these environments present to the humans that explore and colonise them are many, and are the subject matter of these tales.
Thank you to everyone who supported and submitted to this anthology, including Julie Czerneda and Sean Williams. I'm very proud of what we achieve here, and I'm looking forward to its release.
Two decades ago astronomers confirmed the existence of planets orbiting stars other than our Sun. Today more than 800 such worlds have been identified, and scientists now estimate that at least 160 billion star-bound planets are to be found in the Milky Way Galaxy alone. But more surprising is just how diverse and bizarre those worlds are.
Extreme Planets is a science fiction anthology of stories set on alien worlds that push the limits of what we once believed possible in a planetary environment. Visit the bizarre moons, dwarf planets and asteroids of our own Solar Systems, and in the deeper reaches of space encounter super-Earths with extreme gravity fields, carbon planets featuring mountain ranges of pure diamond, and ocean worlds shrouded by seas hundreds of kilometres thick. The challenges these environments present to the humans that explore and colonise them are many, and are the subject matter of these tales.
The anthology features 15 tales from leading science fiction authors and rising stars in the genre:
- “Banner of the Angels” by David Brin and Gregory Benford
- “Brood” by Stephen Gaskell
- “Haumea” by G. David Nordley
- “A Perfect Day off the Farm” by Patty Jansen
- “Daybreak” by Jeff Hecht
- “Giants” by Peter Watts
- “Maelstrom” by Kevin Ikenberry
- “Murder on Centauri” by Robert J. Mendenhall
- “The Flight of the Salamander” by Violet Addison and David Smith
- “Petrochemical Skies” by David Conyers and David Kernot
- “The Hyphal Layer” by Meryl Ferguson
- “Colloidal Suspension” by Geoff Nelder
- “Super-Earth Mother” by Guy Immega
- “Lightime” by Jay Caselberg
- “The Seventh Generation” by Brian Stableford
Thank you to everyone who supported and submitted to this anthology, including Julie Czerneda and Sean Williams. I'm very proud of what we achieve here, and I'm looking forward to its release.
Wednesday, 2 January 2013
Scorecard 2012
Every year I like to compile a summary of my writing,
editing and publishing for the year that was. 2012 unfortunately wasn’t as
productive as past years for me, at least not in terms of publications. It was
the year of collaborations too. That said I do have A LOT of projects under
development that I can’t talk about yet, but hopefully I will soon.
I had two new stories published in 2012, “Expectant Green” with John Kenny, a science fiction novella appearing in Jupiter 35 and “The R’lyeh Singularity” with Brian M. Sammons appearing in Cthulhu Unbound 3, from Permuted Press which was released as an e-book. This anthology I also co-edited Brian and featured Cthulhu Mythos novellas from Cody Goodfellow, D.L. Snell and Tim Curran, as well as our contribution. I’ve been informed the print version will be released in 2013.
I had two new stories published in 2012, “Expectant Green” with John Kenny, a science fiction novella appearing in Jupiter 35 and “The R’lyeh Singularity” with Brian M. Sammons appearing in Cthulhu Unbound 3, from Permuted Press which was released as an e-book. This anthology I also co-edited Brian and featured Cthulhu Mythos novellas from Cody Goodfellow, D.L. Snell and Tim Curran, as well as our contribution. I’ve been informed the print version will be released in 2013.
On the reprint front, “Winds of Nzambi”, a Cthulhu Mythos
horror novella concerning the Portuguese slave trade in the Congo which I
co-wrote with David Kernot, appeared in two ‘Best of’ collections, The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and
Horror 2011, edited by Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene, and Award Winning Australian Writing 2012. My other reprint was “The
Swelling” which appeared in Innsmouth
Magazine Collection Issues 1-4 making it one of my most reprinted stories.
My illustrations appeared on the cover of Jupiter 38: Pasithee and Jupiter 36: Spond. “The Masked
Messenger” co-authored with John Goodrich that appeared in Andromeda Spaceways last year, received an honourable mention from
Ellen Datlow in Best Horror of the Year
Volume 4. Midnight Echo 6 which I
co-edited last year received another honourable mention in the Australian
Shadows Awards. I also interviewed Iain M. Banks for Albedo One Issue 41.
Anthologies that I have been editing this year are Undead & Unbound (horror) with Brian
M. Sammons, Extreme Planets (science
fiction) with David Kernot and Jeff Harris, and Cthulhu’s Dark Cults II (Cthulhu Mythos). None are yet released. I’m
also editing a sourcebook for the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game.
Publications coming out next year are all in anthologies and
include “The Road to Afghanistan” (What
Scares the Bogeyman?), “Romero 2.0” with Brian M. Sammons (Undead & Unbound) and “Playgrounds
of Angolaland” (Eldritch Chrome).
That’s it. Thanks especially to David Kernot, Brian M
Sammons, Jeff Harris, Cody Goodfellow, Paul Drummond, Jeffrey Thomas, CJ Henderson,
David Brin, Julie Czerneda, Glynn Own Barrass and the team at Albedo One for
their support this year.
Sunday, 30 September 2012
Extreme Planets Cover Illustration
Extreme Planets is slowly coming together. Most of the stories have been selected and are now being edited. The news I can share is the cover, by the very talented Paul Drummond:
Here is the blurb for the anthology:
A Science Fiction Anthology of Alien Worlds
Edited by David Conyers, David Kernot and Jeff Harris
Cover Illustration by Paul Drummond
Two decades ago astronomers confirmed the existence of planets orbiting stars other than our Sun. Today more than 800 such worlds have been identified, and scientists now estimate that at least 160 billion star-bound planets are to be found in the Milky Way Galaxy alone. But more surprising is just how diverse and bizarre those worlds are turning out to be.
Extreme Planets is a science fiction anthology of stories set on alien worlds that push the limits of what we once believe is possible in a planetary environment. Visit the bizarre moons, dwarf planets and asteroids of our own Solar Systems, and in the deeper reaches of space encounter super-Earths with extreme surface gravity, carbon planets featuring mountain ranges of pure diamond, and ocean worlds shroud with seas hundreds of kilometres thick. The challenges these worlds present to the humans that explore and colonise them are many, and are the subject matter of these tales.
Here is the blurb for the anthology:
A Science Fiction Anthology of Alien Worlds
Edited by David Conyers, David Kernot and Jeff Harris
Cover Illustration by Paul Drummond
Two decades ago astronomers confirmed the existence of planets orbiting stars other than our Sun. Today more than 800 such worlds have been identified, and scientists now estimate that at least 160 billion star-bound planets are to be found in the Milky Way Galaxy alone. But more surprising is just how diverse and bizarre those worlds are turning out to be.
Extreme Planets is a science fiction anthology of stories set on alien worlds that push the limits of what we once believe is possible in a planetary environment. Visit the bizarre moons, dwarf planets and asteroids of our own Solar Systems, and in the deeper reaches of space encounter super-Earths with extreme surface gravity, carbon planets featuring mountain ranges of pure diamond, and ocean worlds shroud with seas hundreds of kilometres thick. The challenges these worlds present to the humans that explore and colonise them are many, and are the subject matter of these tales.
Tuesday, 17 January 2012
New Extreme Planets Website and D.L. Snell Market Scoops Interview
David Kernot, co-editor of Extreme Planets anthology has set up a website specifically for the book. We'll be posting updates, news on the book, links to interesting sites about exoplanets and sources for ideas for submissions, and anything else that interests us.
The first news item is my interview with D.L. Snell for Snell's Market Scoops, on what we are looking for in submissions.
More news on the website.
The first news item is my interview with D.L. Snell for Snell's Market Scoops, on what we are looking for in submissions.
More news on the website.
Saturday, 10 December 2011
Submissions Sought: Extreme Planets
I'm editing a new anthology with David Kernot and Jeff Harris, Extreme Planets. It is a science fiction anthology about extrasolar planets that will be published by Chaosium. The submission guidelines are found here, and updates will be posted on my website.
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