Games

Thousands of years ago, the Culture encountered an Outside Context Problem. A perfectly black sphere materialised out of nowhere next to a trillion-year-old sun from another universe. It did nothing and vanished. Now it has returned, and both the Culture and a hostile alien race known as the Affront are desperate to uncover its secrets. Excession was originally published in 1996 and is the fourth novel in Iain M. Banks's Culture series. As with all of the Culture books, it is a stand-alone novel sharing only the same background and setting, with minimal references to the events of other books and no characters crossing over. A plot summary of the novel makes it sound like Banks's version of a 'Big Dumb Object' book, a novel where the characters are presented with an enigmatic alien entity and have to deal with it (similar to Rendezvous with Rama or Ringworld ). However, this isn't really what Excession is about. Instead, the novel operates on several different l...

Some upcoming cover art, courtesy of Jussi at Westeros.org once more: First up, the American cover for Blood of Dragons , the fourth volume in The Rain Wild Chronicles by Robin Hobb. This book is due for publication in the UK and USA in April 2013: Next up is the American cover for Great North Road , Peter F. Hamilton's new massive SF epic. This book will be out in the USA in December this year (and September in the UK): The final UK cover art for Iain M. Banks's The Hydrogen Sonata , the latest excursion to The Culture . This book will be out in the UK and USA in September this year: Rounding things off is the UK artwork for The Dirty Streets of Heaven , the first in Tad Williams's new urban fantasy series. This book will be out in both the UK and USA in September as well:

Forbidden Planet are hosting an interesting event at the British Library in London on 9 June. SF heavyweights Iain M. Banks and Kim Stanley Robinson will be discussing a large number of topics related to SF and their work. For more info, including tickets, check out Forbidden Planet's website.

A host of cover art for forthcoming books. First up is The Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson. This 30,000-word novella is a limited edition from Tachyon Press and sees a young woman use her forbidden magical skills to save the life of a dying emperor. The book appears to be set in Sanderson's unified Cosmere super-setting, but not on one of his established worlds. The book is due in December. Next up is the American cover art for The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks, his ninth novel in The Culture setting. This book is due in October. The American audience is also getting new covers for the Witcher books by Andrzej Sapkowski. The Last Wish and Blood of Elves are being rejacketed and should be available soon, and will later in 2012 be by The Time of Contempt , which is finally hitting the stands after years of delays due to rights issues. Finally, there's the American cover art for Joe Abercrombie's Red Country (dropping the 'A', at least on this early...

Iain M. Banks is returning to The Culture setting in his new novel, The Hydrogen Sonata . It will be published on 4 October this year in the UK by Orbit Books.