Ken Follett WW2 novel reissues

Ken Follett is not really one of "my" authors but I've read some of his stuff in the past and there are a few books of his I've been meaning to read.

I noticed a new edition of his early bestseller The Eye of the Needle in Waterstones last week and it appears that Pan books are doing new editions of a number of his World War 2 era thrillers. The other two books that will follow are Hornet Flight and Jackdaws.

Here are the covers for the three books.



I particularly like the theme of using the various maps in the background. Follett also has a couple of other novels from this era, namely The Key to Rebecca and Night Over Water. Perhaps new editions of those books will follow.

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick

Philip K Dick has been and remains one of my all-time favourite writers. He wrote novels that on the face of it were clearly science fiction, but on closer examination were clearly a genre of their own. He was most preoccupied with asking what it that makes us human and more to the point, what is reality anyway?

The Man in the High Castle is regarded as one of his best books and won the Hugo award when first published in 1962. It describes an alternate America that lost WW2. America is divided into three separate entities. The East cost is under German control, the West coast is under a more benevolent Japanese influence and in between are the Rocky Mountain States that are semi-autonomous.

Then there is a book within the book, a banned novel called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy which describes a world where Germany and Japan the war.

Most of the events in the book take place on the West coast and as normal with PKD concern the "little" people who are just trying to make ends meet and get on in life.

Last year Amazon UK put up the cover of a new "masterworks" edition for publication in 2010. I loved the artwork and emailed the artist Chris Moore (see http://www.chrismooreillustration.co.uk/index.php) to thank him for doing such a good job. I love the depiction of the German supersonic transport, much like Concorde but just different enough to clue you in to the alternate world.

At the moment the book has a publication date of 17 September 2009.

The Art of Star Trek - finally!

Normally when a big-budget Hollywood movie arrives in cinemas it is accompanied by numerous glossy tie-in books. This year alone there were a multiple "making of" and "art of" books accompanying movies such as Terminator Salvation and Watchmen.

Star Trek however didn't get a tie-in. I understand that (rightly or wrongly) the perception was that a Star Trek book wouldn't sell and booksellers wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.

Then the movie opened. And was a hit. A massive, massive (photon torpedo) hit. And I'm sure Paramount and various booksellers were feeling a bit annoyed that there was no glossy tie-in. so we should not be surprised that a glossy "art of" book will finally appear when the DVD comes out in November. It's written by Mark Cotta Vaz who has done a number of these kind of books before. Hopefully there will be lots of pre-production art and photos of the new Enterprise.

Star Trek: The Art of the Film will be published by Titan books in the UK and USA on 17 November 2009.

Final Alistair Maclean reissues

HarperCollins have been gradually releasing new editions of Alistair Maclean's thrillers and next month they get to his final five books. Cover images are now available for Partisans, Floodgate, San Andreas, The Lonely Sea and Santorini. They can be seen below and are very much in line with the cover designs featured on the books reissued earlier.



The Lonely Sea was Maclean's only collection of short stories and according to that cover image this edition will contain two new stories.

Maclean was out of print for a number of years so these are welcome reprints. May I humbly suggest HarperCollins reprint another author from their back catalog, namely Craig Thomas.

More Gerald Seymour covers

I've scanned in a few more covers for my Gerald Seymour page...

Here we have the 1991 TV tie-in cover for Red Fox featuring John Hurt and Jane Birkin plus the David Scutt covers for A Song in the Morning, Condition Black and The Heart of Danger.

Gerald Seymour 1990 paperbacks

And now here are six of the 1990 reprint paperback covers. Most of the covers for this series were by David Scutt.

The books shown below are The Glory Boys, Kingfisher, Red Fox, The Contract, Archangel and Field of Blood.

Gerald Seymour hardback scans

Recently I have been updating my Gerald Seymour web page and I thought I'd add a few scans of his early UK hardbacks.

Here are The Glory Boys, Kingfisher, Red Fox, The Contract, Archangel and In Honour Bound.

Gollancz SF Classics

I made a great find in my local remaindered bookshop today. They had a bunch of Gollancz science fiction reissues for just £1 each.

Back in 2007 Gollancz reprinted eight novels under a "Future Classics" banner. The novels were notable for not having the author's name or title on the front cover. They also had unusual features such as "fur" on Stephen Baxter's Evolution. I already have six of them so today I added a shiny Revelation Space by Alistair Reynolds to the collection. I've actually already read this one but for £1 I had to get this edition.

You can see all eight "Future Classics" covers at http://www.orionbooks.co.uk/custom-list.aspx?file=future_classics.

Next to that copy of Revelation Space were five books from the earlier 2006 collection of SF masterworks. I picked up The Sirens of Titan, Cities in Flight, Ubik, Lords of Light and Flowers for Algernon. I only had one of the ten books from that series so I was happy to add these to the collection.

These books have non-shiny covers, rounded corners and introductions from contemporary authors such as Stephen Baxter on Cities in Flight. I had regretted not getting this edition of Philip K Dick's Ubik with the spray can so it was a great find!