Category: News & events

This is the striking new cover for a reissue of The Holy Machine which will be available from early December from Corvus.   Corvus hope, as I do, that it will draw the attention of people who enjoyed Dark Eden, but haven’t yet come across this, my first novel.  There’s more information about the book here, and some thoughts on its history here.

As well as paperback and ebook, The Holy Machine is also available as an audiobook, narrated by John Banks.

This is the completely new and I think very beautiful cover for the US edition of Dark Eden, to be published on April 1st 2014 by Broadway (part of Random House).   Further details, preorders etc here.

It’s good to see both Dark Eden and The Peacock Cloak appearing in lists of recommended summer reading.  Dark Eden in the Guardian, Peacock Cloak in the Financial Times.

Rights to Dark Eden have now been brought by (in this order) US, Turkish, Russian, French and Polish publishers.  Details here on my agent (John Jarrold’s) website.

It’s actually quite appropriate that, after the UK and the US, the first publisher to take Dark Eden on should be Turkish, because in the back story to the book, the planet Eden was first discovered by five people, two of them British, two American, and one (Mehmet Haribey) Turkish.    That’s the reason Mehmet is a common name in Eden, along with Michael, Angela (or Gela), Dixon and Tommy.

I haven’t even finished the rewriting, and it won’t come out until mid-2014, but the cover has already been designed: a new revised edition of my second novel Marcher, from Newcon press.  More info here.   Here’s the beautiful cover by Ben Baldwin:

I’m absolutely delighted that Dark Eden has won the Arthur C Clarke award.  I’m feeling a bit dazed today (though very happily so), and sleepiness is starting to catch up with me, so I won’t attempt to write much about it now.   (There are few thoughts here written earlier in the day for the Atlantic Books website, and the award ceremony itself is on video here.)

I will say though that I have been extremely touched by the number of people who have contacted me one way or another to say ‘well done!’  It’s not so often in life that you get a whole bunch of people warmly wishing you well all at once.  It feels absolutely great!   And it really is much so easier to write when you feel that people are cheering you on.

 

I’ve just learnt that Dark Eden has been shortlisted for the Clarke Award.    I’m very pleased!

The Peacock Cloak was officially launched in Bradford on Friday.   This is just a reminder that it will be launched again, along with Ian Whates’ Growing Pains, at Forbidden Planet, Shaftesbury Ave, London, this Saturday (April 6th), at 1 – 2pm, just to make sure both books are properly afloat.  Details here.

I’ve posted some reviews of The Peacock Cloak here.

Broadway Books (part of the Crown Publishing Group) has acquired US rights in DARK EDEN and its sequel (MOTHER OF EDEN aka GELA’S RING).   I’m very pleased!

Full press release:

PRESS RELEASE  – MAJOR US DEAL FOR CHRIS BECKETT

 Julian Pavia at Broadway Books (part of the Crown Publishing Group) has acquired US rights in the science fiction novels DARK EDEN and GELA’S RING by Chris Beckett from Michael Carlisle at Inkwell Management and Vanessa Kerr, Rights Director at Grove Atlantic in London, for a high five-figure sum in US dollars.

 DARK EDEN was published by Atlantic’s Corvus imprint in 2012 and is shortlisted for the BSFA Award for Best SF Novel of the year, as well as being mentioned in several national papers as 2012’s best SF novel.  The sequel, GELA’S RING, will be published by Corvus in spring 2014.  The agent who did both world rights deals with Atlantic was John Jarrold.

 ‘Ravi Mirchandani is in New York and both he and Michael Carlisle have obviously worked their magic in regards to this offer,’ said John Jarrold.  ‘Chris and I are delighted.  He is a major author, whose talent is now being recognised both inside and outside the UK.’

Contact John Jarrold for further details.