Tuesday, September 17, 2019

War Of The Maps


I've just sent the amended copy-edit of War of the Maps back to the publishers; the next stage will be combing through the proofs, and after that it will become the actual object. As the cover suggests, it's set square in prime science fiction territory: the very far future, after the Andromeda galaxy has collided with the Milky Way, and the Sun has evolved into a white dwarf. But as Adam Roberts pointed out in a recent essay, 'SF worldbuilding is part of the system of a science fiction text; but the point of SF is not its system.' Worldbuilding aside (and if you want to know a little about that, here's a link to the research paper that set me to thinking about the world of War of the Maps), what is this novel about? I'll skip the recent trend for reducing novels to bullet-point lists of fashionable tropes, and mention instead the novel's themes: the limits of heroism and how heroes are defined by the villains they pursue, and the razor-edge boundary between duty and obsession. This particular pursuit drives our hero to leave behind everything he knows and takes him into the heart of a war against a transformative alien invasion. That's all I can tell you about right now, except that the UK publication date is March 19th 2020. And if you like the sound of it, you can already preorder it here.


3 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Can't await!

September 21, 2019 1:15 am  
Blogger Philip said...

This looks like great fun! Your teaser is terrific and I'm really looking forward to the release of your new book next year. It's often frustrating here in the U.S. to wait for the additional time for your works to show up here, so I may have to bite the bullet and order via the U.K. BTW, I read the paper you referenced, and it's fascinating. I'm wondering if you'll try to deal with the material strength issue...though really no need, any more than Niven bothered to address the similar issue in Ringworld.
Best,
Phil

September 28, 2019 4:22 pm  
Blogger Nemo J Batkastle said...

Do I sense something in the same vein as the Confluence Trilogy?

October 14, 2019 1:41 am  

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