The Open Page: Book & Print News – 4/15/08

1) Pierre Pevel’s bestselling French fantasy series, published by Bragelonne, will be translated and published in English in the UK by Gollancz. The first book in the series, Les Lames du Cardinal, published in France last year, will be released in 2009 from Gollancz as The Cardinal’s Blades. Set in an alternate version of seventeenth century Paris, Cardinal Richelieu’s best soldiers and spies must face the threat of large, ancient dragons in the country’s south, unlike the small pets and livestock dragons anyone has dealt with before. Pevel has won the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire and the Prix Imaginales for Best Novel and written for French television. Les Lames du Cardinal is also available in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the Czech Republic and Russia.

2) Best Title for an Up-coming Novel: My Sister Natalie: Snake Goddess of the Amazon, by William Browning Spencer, coming out next year from Subterranean Press. 

Best Jargon Description of a Novel: Elizabeth Bear describes her up-coming novel, All the Windwracked Stars, as "my periapocalyptic noir Norse steampunk technofantasy.” The book will be out in October from Tor.

3) Crown Publishers/Random House is publishing an alternate history thriller series, The Flag of Orpheus, from television’s Heroes creator Tim Kring, co-written with novelist Dale Peck. The first novel, entitled Shift, will be out in fall 2009 and revolve around key points of late 20th century history, including the counter-culture of the 1960’s. But wait, there’s more: each novel will also be launched as an alternate reality game online. Which, combined with the fact that Kring is a scion of Hollywood, means he got a $1 million advance per book for three novels, for a total of $3 million. But let’s try not to hold that against him, especially if he promises to bring stars from Heroes to the 2009 SFF conventions.

4) James Tiptree, Jr. Award: This year’s Tiptree prize, given to works of SF and fantasy that explore gender roles, is Sarah Hall's dystopian feminist SF story, The Carhullan Army, published last year in the UK by Faber and Faber, and just published this year in the US by HarperPerennial as Daughters of the North. Jurors this year were Charlie Anders, Gwenda Bond (chair), Meghan McCarron, Geoff Ryman, and Sheree Renee Thomas. The award, which comes with $1000 prize money, will be celebrated May 25, 2008, at WisCon 32 in Madison, Wisconsin.
 
5) Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: The prestigious prize for American authors has gone to the magic realism fantasy novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Riverhead Books.) The novel is about Oscar, a heavyweight Latino “ghetto nerd” writing a fantasy novel, and about his family’s magical curse that develops through Dominican history.