Fantasy - Comic 2005

File Updated: 23/10/2005

Tangled Web UK: New Fantasy - Comic Titles 2005

Tom Holt Earth, Air, Fire and Custard Published February 2005 by Orbit at Ł12.99 ISBN: 1-84149-281 7
J. W. Wells seems to be a respectable establishment, but the company now paying Paul Carpenter's salary is in fact a deeply sinister organisation with a mighty peculiar management team.
Paul thought he was getting the hang of it (particularly when he fell head over heels for his strangely alluring colleague Sophie), but death is never far away when you work at J.W.Wells. Unlike the stapler – that’s always going AWOL. Our lovestruck hero is about to discover that custard is definitely in the eye of the beholder. And that it really stings.
Tom Holt’s exceedingly comic fantasies are populated with evil goblins, annoying sprites and people like us. However, it’s not always possible to tell the difference.
The earlier adventures of Paul Carpenter are to be found in The Portable Door and In Your Dreams.
Tom Holt's books are:
'Dazzling' Time Out
`Wildly imaginative’ New Scientist
`Frothy, fast and funny’ Scotland on Sunday
‘Brilliantly funny’ Mail on Sunday
‘A riotously funny read, told with a cracking and inventive wit and the best similes since Douglas Adams’ SFX
‘When Holt’s on form the world seems a much cheerier place’ SFX

About The Author
Tom Holt was born in London in 1961. At Oxford he studied bar billiards, ancient Greek agriculture and the care and feeding of small, temperamental Japanese motorcycle engines; interests which led him, perhaps inevitably, to qualify as a solicitor and emigrate to Somerset, where he specialised death and taxes for seven years before going straight in 1995. Now a full-time writer, he lives in Chard, Somerset, with his wife, one daughter and the unmistakable scent of blood, wafting on the breeze from local meat-packing plant.

at ABE

by Tom Holt at Amazon.co.uk

Tom Holt In Your Dreams Pbk published January 2005 by Orbit at Ł6.99 ISBN: 1841492191

Ever been offered a promotion that seems too good to be true? You know - the sort they’d be insane to be offering to someone like you. The kind where you snap their arm off to accept, then wonder why all your long serving colleagues look secretly relieved, as if they’re off some strange and unpleasant hook ...
It’s the kind of trick that deeply sinister companies like H.W. Wells & Co. pull all the time. Especially with employees who are too busy mooning over the office intern to think about what they’re getting into.
And it’s why, right about now, Paul Carpenter is wishing he’d paid much less attention to the gorgeous MeIze, and rather more to a little bit of job description small-print referring to ‘pest’ control ...

About The Author
Tom Holt was born in London in 1961. At Oxford he studied bar billiards, ancient Greek agriculture and the care and feeding of small, temperamental Japanese motorcycle engines; interests which led him, perhaps inevitably, to qualify as a solicitor and emigrate to Somerset, where he specialised death and taxes for seven years before going straight in 1995. Now a full-time writer, he lives in Chard, Somerset, with his wife, one daughter and the unmistakable scent of blood, wafting on the breeze from local meat-packing plant.

at ABE

by Tom Holt at Amazon.co.uk

Terry Pratchett The Art of Discworld Pbk published October 2005 by Gollancz at Ł10.99 ISBN: 0575077123

The Discworld: a world bursting with magic, a land of contrasts and extremes that floats through space on the backs of four elephants standing on a giant turtle. In the bustling metropolis of Ankh-Morpork, the oldest city on the Disc, you can find every luxury and perversion known to man or dwarf and a lair few yet to be properly invented; in the ancient empire of Klatch there are fifteen words for assassination. The kingdom of Lancre may be small, but in this case size definitely isn’t everything; in the dark country of Uberwald, things do go bump in the night.
The inhabitants of Discworld are even more unforgettable than the places. There are witches and wizards - Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick (now a Queen, of course), and those in training (willingly or otherwise): Agnes Nitt,Tiffany Aching; Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully, the Librarian, Rincewind, the Bursar: all play their part.
There are great heroes, like Cohen the Barbarian and his Silver Horde, Sam Vimes, Captain Carrot and the men* of the City Watch ... and there are the ordinary folk like Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, Foul Ole Ron, the Igors. And there’s Death, and his increasingly extended family.
The Discworld might have started out in the imagination of its Creator, Terry Pratchett, but over the past 30 or more books, it has taken on a life of its own. Here, artist Paul Kidbv, steered by the author’s words, takes his own voyage through the Disc, revealing, in glorious colour and intricate black and white, the cornucopia of characters that have won the hearts of millions of adoring readers the world over: Here is The Art of Discworld.
`A very handsome book ... Pratchett’s insider ‘gossip’ about characters coupled with Kidby’s line drawings gives considerable insight into the collaborative process between writer and artist’ Locus
About The Author
Terry Pratchett is Britain's bestselling living novelist and lives behind a (very upmarket) keyboard in Wiltshire, where he answers letters in a desperate attempt to find time to write. He used to grow carnivorous plants, but now they've taken over the greenhouse and he avoids going in.
He says he doesn't want to get a life after all, because it feels like he's already trying to lead three. He is having a new conservatory built for the carnivorous plants, because they deserve it.

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by Terry Pratchett at Amazon.co.uk

Adam Roberts Star Warped Published May 2005 by Gollancz at Ł6.99 ISBN: 0 575 07688 7

Dum Dum Dum, Duhm D'dum, Duhm D'dum
A long time ago (blah blah) a really quite good SF film
was released. The special effects look pretty shoddy
now but it did have some quite good actors in it.
And Mark Hamill.
A second and third film that were actually the fifth and
sixth films followed and they weren’t quite so good but
they were still quite fun [especially when the teddies got
blasted by the Imperial stormtroopers]. Then, just when
we thought they’d forgotten, the first, second and third
films followed and they were [let’s be honest now] fairly
dreadful though by now the special effects were much better.
A Gollancz parody was inevitable, And here it is.

An epic told in six chapters. An epic of good versus evil.
Of dark versus light. Of hairy co-pilots and short green
gurus. Of bizarre hair styles, brass bras and camp robots.
An epic that starts in the middle. And that’s the original …
The Universe is ill. The Universe is lazy. You know how it is. It’s not as young as it was. It’s expanded a bit. Perhaps it will take up jogging in the evenings when the current series of The X-Wing Factor has ended.
But the Imperial Empire of the Imperium is not happy with the health of its subjects. There must be more exercise, less junk food, not so much salt in the diet. And binge drinking is right out
So a terrible plan is hatched. And in the dark reaches of space [which to be honest is most of it) a terrifying weapon in the War Against Lassitude is constructed. The size of a moon sized moon. A horrifying amalgam of leisure technology and brutish will: the Death Spa.
But a rebellion against the Imp Emp Imp is growing. A rebellion that will take young Luke Seespotrun on an odyssey across the galaxy and to a meeting with the Dark Lord of the Psmyth, Dark Father (no relation).
A3R Roberts is one of the new class of Artificial Rubbish Synthesising Engine droids. Sent back from the future to defeat mankind’s rebellion against the machines by getting its leaders to sit down and read books all day rather than training in small unit tactics and learning how to strip down an AK 47 in the dark. He cannot be reasoned with and he absolutely will not stop. Oops, sorry wrong films.

About The Author
Adam Roberts is a lecturer at the University of London. He has an MA from Aberdeen and a PhD in English and Classics from Cambridge. Adam has been a Lecturer of English at Royal Holloway, University of London since 1990. His areas of specialisation are:
1) Nineteenth Century. He is Deputy Director of RHUL’s MA in Victorian Media and Culture.
2) Postmodernism. Deputy Director of the RHUL MA in Postmodernism, Literature and Contemporary Culture and
3) Science Fiction.
He is also the Deputy Dean of Arts.
Adam has edited and published a number of academic books: Robert Browning (Twayne 1996) (ed.); Robert Browning (OUP: The Oxford Authors 1998); Romantic and Victorian Long Poems: a Guide (Ashgate 1999) (ed.); Tennyson (OUP: The Oxford Authors 2000) (assoc. ed); The Oxford Readers Guide to Dickens (OUP 1999); Fredric Jameson (Routledge: Routledge Critical Thinkers, September 2000); Science Fiction (Routledge New Critical Idiom 2000).
Adam’s previous SF novels include Salt (for which he received an Arthur C. Clarke award nomination), he followed that up with On and last year published Stone. Polystom is Adam’s Roberts’ fourth novel.
He currently lives in Staines with his wife and baby.

at ABE

by Adam Roberts at Amazon.co.uk

Adam Roberts The Va Dinci Cod Published April 2005 by Gollancz at Ł6.99 ISBN: 0 575 07719 0

In his own blood, the dying man had written a single sentence in splashy, red letters. It was very much a red letter statement:
The Catholic Church Had Me Murdered
For long seconds Donglan stared at the mysterious message. ‘That, Doctor Donglan,’ said Tash, ‘is why we have called you in at this time. That mysterious message.’
‘It may,’ said Robert, ‘be an anagram.’
‘We wondered about that,’ said Tash. ‘Can you decipher it?’
Donglan smiled. ‘Of course. It is my speciality,’ he said. He tried to add ‘I am an anagram master’, but instead said ‘I amanana manna’ and ‘I am anamanna’ and stopped.

Five utterly baffling mysteries that will change what you believe about the world. And fish. And the wisdom of ever reading another book:
• An eminent, renowned museum curator lies dead in his own gallery, with a three foot cod stuffed down his throat ...
• A brilliant young man, a renowned anagrammatologist, good-looking, gsoh, own flat, good job, non-smoker, very high standards of personal hygiene, single, he’s not gay, and he’s not antisocial, he meets lots of women really, just nobody seems quite right ...
• A beautiful, renowned young French police cryptologist who studied for her cryptology degree at Royal Holloway* - a university without a department in cryptology ...
• A book full of rehashed conspiracy theory cods (Oh! My! God!) wallop becomes a global bestseller.
• Another book that should be called The Eda Vinci Cod gets called The Va Dinci Cod instead. An anagram is it? Err no.
The true reasons for the success of Don Brine’s books are a secret that not even the Knights Templar, the CIA or the Church of the Resplendent Latter Day Apostles Who came Down from Space to Smite the Liberals (Alabama) are privy to.
Less-than-interestingly if you transcribe Don Brine into the Cyrillic alphabet and read it in a mirror and then transcribe it back out of the Cyrillic it reads as a transliteration of the Hebrew for Adam Roberts. If you squint a bit.
Adam Roberts, get this, actually does teach at Royal Holloway. But not cryptology. Perhaps not even English.

*Hilariously, Royal Holloway have asked us to point out that every one is very excited by the Masters degree programmes in cryptology offered by their ‘world leading’ research centre in information Security. Whatever that means.

About The Author
Adam Roberts is a lecturer at the University of London. He has an MA from Aberdeen and a PhD in English and Classics from Cambridge. Adam has been a Lecturer of English at Royal Holloway, University of London since 1990. His areas of specialisation are:
1) Nineteenth Century. He is Deputy Director of RHUL’s MA in Victorian Media and Culture.
2) Postmodernism. Deputy Director of the RHUL MA in Postmodernism, Literature and Contemporary Culture and
3) Science Fiction.
He is also the Deputy Dean of Arts.
Adam has edited and published a number of academic books: Robert Browning (Twayne 1996) (ed.); Robert Browning (OUP: The Oxford Authors 1998); Romantic and Victorian Long Poems: a Guide (Ashgate 1999) (ed.); Tennyson (OUP: The Oxford Authors 2000) (assoc. ed); The Oxford Readers Guide to Dickens (OUP 1999); Fredric Jameson (Routledge: Routledge Critical Thinkers, September 2000); Science Fiction (Routledge New Critical Idiom 2000).
Adam’s previous SF novels include Salt (for which he received an Arthur C. Clarke award nomination), he followed that up with On and last year published Stone. Polystom is Adam’s Roberts’ fourth novel.
He currently lives in Staines with his wife and baby.

at ABE

by Adam Roberts at Amazon.co.uk

Adam Roberts The McAtrix Derided Pbk published May 2005 by Gollancz at Ł6.99 ISBN: 0 575 07667 4

Writing as the Robertski Brothers
A Parody
Or is that just what THEY want you to think?
Gordon (or ‘Nemo’ as he’s known in the internet chatrooms) finds himself rudely awakened to the reality of his mundane existence. Far from being a workaday Database Coordinator, he is the inadvertent slave of Evil Machine IntelligencesTM’ who are keeping his body sealed in a virtual-reality pod whilst distracting his mind with an elaborate virtual world. He, like the bulk of humanity (but not you, because you’re reading this book which is about this world being a virtual world and how could that happen?), is trapped in the McAtrix.
But his awakener (the virile though small-framed Smurpheus) wants to do more than just free Nemo from this illusion. He thinks Nemo may be special. He thinks that Nemo just might be the No One, the nonentity whose ego is so insignificant it can confront the celebrity-obsessed McAtrix on its own terms and bring it down.
Gordon tries to get interested in Smurpheus’ plans for the liberation of the whole of enslaved humanity, but the truth is he’s more concerned with trying to summon the courage to ask the gorgeous latex-clad Thinity out …

Are you looking for Nemo? Or are you looking for No One?
Let’s face it, these days, when thrilling, ideas-driven SF epics turn into lame action movies at the flick of a sequel and books like The Soddit by A.R.R.R. Roberts become bestsellers, it’s hard to be sure.
Is this life, this bizarre matrix we’re all caught up in, beyond parody now? Ooh no we don’t think so .. .
Smurpheus pointed to a low table beside his chair. On the table were two small glasses, each roughly the size of a half-pint cup. One of the glasses contained a red fluid, and the other a blue. `You must choose one of these drinks’ said Smurpheus. `Drink the blue drink and you wake up in your bed, where you can think this whole meeting was a dream, and get on with your life. Drink the red one, however, and you’ll find out for yourself precisely what the McAtrix is.’
Gordon looked at the two glasses `What’s the red drink?’ he asked. `Cranberry juice,’ said Smurpheus.
`Right. And the blue one?’ ‘Toilet duck.’

About The Author
Adam Roberts is a lecturer at the University of London. He has an MA from Aberdeen and a PhD in English and Classics from Cambridge. Adam has been a Lecturer of English at Royal Holloway, University of London since 1990. His areas of specialisation are:
1) Nineteenth Century. He is Deputy Director of RHUL’s MA in Victorian Media and Culture.
2) Postmodernism. Deputy Director of the RHUL MA in Postmodernism, Literature and Contemporary Culture and
3) Science Fiction.
He is also the Deputy Dean of Arts.
Adam has edited and published a number of academic books: Robert Browning (Twayne 1996) (ed.); Robert Browning (OUP: The Oxford Authors 1998); Romantic and Victorian Long Poems: a Guide (Ashgate 1999) (ed.); Tennyson (OUP: The Oxford Authors 2000) (assoc. ed); The Oxford Readers Guide to Dickens (OUP 1999); Fredric Jameson (Routledge: Routledge Critical Thinkers, September 2000); Science Fiction (Routledge New Critical Idiom 2000).
Adam’s previous SF novels include Salt (for which he received an Arthur C. Clarke award nomination), he followed that up with On and last year published Stone. Polystom is Adam’s Roberts’ fourth novel.
He currently lives in Staines with his wife and baby.

at ABE

by Adam Roberts at Amazon.co.uk