I’ve had some great publicity this week in North Leeds Life magazine, which has run a feature on me and my writing. The focus of the article is on my international successes, particularly with the release of NU-GEN from the South African publishers Fox and Raven (buy it here) and the forthcoming print issue of Perfect World from the US’s TWB Press (ebook version here).
Here’s the article (if you’re eagle-eyed enough to read it):
Interviewing myself is an interesting (if solipsistic) experience. Following the writer Richard Smyth’s lead I’ve had a crack at it on The State of the Arts website (which also serialised my short story, ‘Cow and Calf’).
You can read it online here: http://www.thestateofthearts.co.uk/2014/08/04/aj-kirby-by-aj-kirby/
My new sci-fi novelette, Nu Gen, has today been published by Fox and Raven. You can get your hands on the ebook here.
And here’s a quick write-up:
“You know that faceless, nameless security guard you just riddled with bullets in your favourite shoot ‘em up? You don’t, do you? He matters to you not one iota. But he knows you. He’s been waiting, the pixels of him blending in with those of the digitally-generated furniture. And now he’s angry. He doesn’t want to be the concluding image of an all-Earth hero’s power play. He wants to be more; he wants to mean more. And not just in relation to the good guy, Mace Clark.
Meet Carruthers. By night he lurks amongst the Bine Towers which control knowledge and information. By day he frequents the worst kind of gin-joints along the gutter-like basement levels. And in between he dreams of revenge for the humiliation Mace Clark has rained down upon his head.
This action-packed, politically-charged text explores the shades of good and evil, and the dangers of propaganda and imagery. When communication becomes so short-hand as to boil a man down to a comedy meme, what is it we lose?”
I was interviewed, ladies and gentlemen, on the fantastic and foxy Fox and Raven website yesterday. Fox and Raven are the South African publishers of my new novelette – out Monday apparently – called ‘NU-GEN’.
You can read the full interview here: http://www.foxandraven.co.za/2014/07/11/interview-aj-kirby/
As you can see the interview also features a sneak preview of the wonderful cover design by Hannes Strydom (which must mean I’m free to feature it again on here!) The propaganda-art design fits fantastically with some of the themes of the story, and I’m thoroughly delighted with it.
So here you go:
The time is almost upon us… A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, which (conversely) is also in the future, I wrote a sci-fi novella named (and get ready for this, it’s a mouthful): ‘The Rabble-Rousing Rhetoric and Propagandist Imagery of the Nu-Gen Government Under Mace Clark’.
As I wrote back in December on these very pages, it was accepted for publication by a brilliant South African publisher named Fox and Raven. Take a look at their website here – http://www.foxandraven.co.za/ – it’s class.
After an in-depth editorial process, the book is finally on the brink of being released, and over the next few weeks I’ll be building up to this with some sneak previews of the cover etc.
But for now, here are three versions of the back-cover blurb to whet your appetite:
BLURB FOR NU-GEN 1
You know that faceless, nameless security guard you just riddled with bullets in your favourite shoot ‘em up? You don’t, do you? He matters to you not one iota. But he knows you. He’s been waiting, the pixels of him blending in with those of the digitally-generated furniture. And now he’s angry. He doesn’t want to be the concluding image of an all-Earth hero’s power play. He wants to be more; he wants to mean more. And not just in relation to the good guy, Mace Clark.
Meet Carruthers. By night he lurks amongst the Bine Towers which control knowledge and information. By day he frequents the worst kind of gin-joints along the gutter-like basement levels. And in between he dreams of revenge for the humiliation Mace Clark has rained down upon his head.
This action-packed, politically-charged text explores the shades of good and evil, and the dangers of propaganda and imagery. When communication becomes so short-hand as to boil a man down to a comedy meme, what is it we lose?
BLURB FOR NU-GEN 2
Sun City, blazing bright in the deep, dank future. Sun City, the seat of power of the Nu Gen government, led by Mace Clark, a man who has harnessed information and power, a man who is the image of a perfect leader if not the reality of one.
Sun City, where one man alone has the power to shatter the carefully-manufactured image which Mace Clark portrays. That man is Carruthers, and he is a drunk. And a failure. The butt of all jokes. And he doesn’t want to change the future.
Only to wreak his vengeance upon the man who shamed him.
Little does he know, the two might be one and the same thing.
BLURB FOR NU-GEN 3
Carruthers still feels the bullet shot into him by the hero Mace Clark ricocheting around him months after the event. It bites his heart, chokes his lungs, clips his spinal-cord. Prone in his hospital bed, and then in his chair, he watches Clark’s faster than a bullet progress up through the ranks until he becomes leader of the Nu Gen government and a bonafide hero.
Clark looks as though he should come with his own sound track: something inspiring. Carruthers, looks as though the music would play no more for him. And yet, between the two of them, the high-and-mighty Clark and the lower-than-a-snake Carruthers, they hold the key to the future of the BineTowers, of Sun City, and of the galaxy as we know it.
Cordite-quick and burning with tension, The Nu Gen Government is a science fiction novella which calls into question our construction of heroes and villains, which examines the role of imagery in the development of political personas, and which, finally, kicks like a good six-shooter.
paintthistownred 