Years ago I promised myself I would never start a series that wasn’t all there. I don’t mean a little bit mad, but incomplete. However, running a science fiction section means I have to keep up with a lot of what is new (a permanent game of catch-up, usually), so I read a lot of part ones that I am unlikely to see the rest of for a little while…

Personally, I’m up for minimal exposition and keeping the reader guessing, so long as you keep it the right side of confusing… but that’s a fine line and since some people like that less I guess it’s best to play it a little on the safer side.

Also, I do like the website, really nice piece of design. =)

Thanks for the review. You made several interesting points but just to clarify:

Yeah, Winter is the first of four books (Spring, Summer and Fall will follow at yearly intervals). Each book will be set in a differing Sector of the Demi-Monde.

ABBA is an acronym for Archival, Biological, Behavioural Acquisition and (in the alternative TimeStream the DM is set in) is a quantum computer the British use to platform their all-pervasive HyperOpia surveillance system. Hopefully in Book 2 there’ll be a glossary of Real World Terminology so it’ll be included then. That ‘abba’ is aramaic for ‘father’ is, or maybe isn’t, coincidental.

Regarding the amount of exposition in the first half of the book, this was the subject of extensive debate between myself and my editor and we looked at a couple of ways of making it more reader-friendly. The general feeling is that we struck the right balance, but we’ll see. The great thing is that new-world set-up is a one-off problem so with Books 2-4 it’ll be straight into the action. The other problem every writer of a multi-volume story must face is ensuring that all his plot hooks and eyes are in place and these can seem a little odd when first read. But hopefully…

My one regret is that you couldn’t truly suspend disbelief.I tried mighty hard within the framework of something utterly fantastic to make it plausible. The website http://www.thedemi-monde.com was constructed with just that purpose in mind.

Anyway, once again thanks for the review and I hope you find Book 2 as interesting.

Singularity Sky, Accelerando and his more ‘hard SF’ books are great and well worth the effort…

Completely in accord with both of you. I blogged (and tweeted) that I considered this to be a further ‘two-fingered salute’ from Orion to their readers. Their marketing department clearly has fundament-joint discrimination issues ;)

On the subject of gold farming, there is a fascinating documentary called Second Skin, which (amongst other things MMORPG related) visits some gold farmers, and shows their working environment. It’s really rather interesting.

I am glad that Doctorow’s other novels are potentially as compelling as the one that I have previously read, and aside from the fact that the title has pretty much already won me over (I’m easy to please), I look forward to checking this out soon.

Can’t understand why they don’t push that series more. SF/F fans are suckers for series and the Masterworks are hugely collectible. They should have a whole page devoted to them at least with tons of high quality cover pics. The books look really great on the shelf with the numbered spines all lined up. Show us that for crying out loud. It’s like they don’t want to sell them at all. My display looks way better than what they have or should I say had. Their new site design left them out completely it seems. Hope that’s a transition thing.

I haven’t seen many of the new covers but re-colored old covers does not sound very encouraging. The Childhood’s End cover is fantastic though so there is still hope. I wish they’d be more forthcoming with the details.

My point though was not that nothing exists in this space between genres (and let’s not forget, in a sense, fantasy and science fiction are the black and white… there are so many shades of grey in between*). I was more thinking about the size of superhero comics as a genre, and also as much about how in a broad sense sci-fi is the future and fantasy is the past (culturally, technologically etc.) but superhero comics are modern day, much like urban fantasy. You could label a lot of it urban fantasy, but a lot has too much by the way of science fiction… so… urban sf? ;)

The Final Fantasy games are a great example of what else occupies this space – largely fantasy in terms of magic, weapons and gods, but with a heavy emphasis on technology. Steampunk is another example, set in a victorian era but with advanced technology.

I was just thinking out loud really. =)

*(not sure what colour that makes horror… ;) )