Reminder: MACHINA pre-order deals

In case readers missed it earlier, I want to point out that we are still offering some excellent pre-order deals for Derek J. Goodman's Machina over there on the books info page. Pre-order purchases of either the print or ebook versions will include subscriptions to the electronic M-Brane until April 1. The price for the print book includes shipping.

Pre-order Goodman's MACHINA!

"We so rarely give thought to the machines that surround us, but just because we ignore them does not mean they don't have stories to tell. Monolithic factory machines might just hide a divine presence, robots from a forgotten war lay in wait in the sewers for a time when they can rise again, creatures of steel and steam patrol the skies, and a metal giant made for destruction learns emotions from a teenage boy. In these four tales, Derek J. Goodman shows us just what mysteries the mechanical world may hold."

In a few weeks, M-Brane SF will publish Derek J. Goodman's collection of sf novelettes and novellas Machina. The book starts with the spectacular "Dea Ex Machina," which has been adapted as an opera for an upcoming production by the Crucible in Oakland California, and also includes the amazing steampunk novella "The Twister Sisters"; the loving homage to 1980's-era sci-fi and teen movies "Those Were the Days," and the stunning manga-influenced boy/machine love story "As Wide as the Sky, and Twice as Explosive."

Mark Streshinsky, the librettist and director of Machine, the opera based on Derek's story, provides an introduction to the collection. The cover art is by Dan Galli.

The book will become available in print and as an ebook from Amazon on April 1, but we are offering several direct-from-M-Brane pre-order deals starting immediately. These will also appear on the books page.

1) Buy Machina in print (trade paperback) for $12.95 (shipping included!). Get a complimentary one-year subscription to the PDF edition of M-Brane SF!

2) Buy the electronic version of Machina in either PDF, .prc(mobi), or .epub formats for $4.95. Get a complementary one-year subscription to the PDF edition of M-Brane SF!

Select format

PDF MOBI (.prc) EPUB

3) Buy Machina together with Cesar Torres' The 12 Burning Wheels (both in trade paperback) for only $14.95! Or with Ergosphere, ten stunning stories from the pages of M-Brane SF, for $15.95! Shipping included, as well as a complimentary one-year subscription to the PDF edition of M-Brane SF!

Choose an option...

MACHINA/12 BW $14.95 MACHINA/ ERGOSPHERE $15.95

Order page for books started/ Thoughts about "Doubles"

I cobbled together another page today in an attempt to get the far-flung information about our stand-alone books in one place. It's under construction, and I will eventually need something designed more like a proper "store," but this will do for now. The highlight right now is the pre-order information for Cesar Torres' The 12 Burning Wheels, due out later this month. It also contains the info for Ergosphere and Things We Are Not. News about Machina and Aether Age is not there yet, but will come soon. Machina will, in fact, be going up for pre-order sometime around 3/1.

Recent Twitter chatter suggests that I may be thinking about a future book or books designed in in the manner of the old Ace Doubles. As you probably recall, those were books containing two short novels, each with their own front covers and designed in such a manner that the two stories were presented back to back and upside down in relation to one another. You'd finish one story, then turn the book over and open the "back" cover and start reading the other story. Ace stopped this format back in the early 1970s, but more recently Vintage put out an edition of Samuel Delany's Babel-17 and Empire Star in a similar style. The author had always wanted those two items to appear together as one of the Ace series, but it never happened.  When I prepare a book for print-on-demand, the entire interior of the thing needs to be a single document, so to do two stories together in that tete-beche style, one of the two stories needs to be laid out upside down and start on the last page of the book and proceed from there toward the middle of it. Making a page go upside down was eluding me and my software for a long time. But it seems that I may have figured out a way. So, who knows, maybe there will be an "M-Brane Double" forthcoming!

MACHINA update

Check out this post on Derek Goodman's blog about the forthcoming collection Machina.  You can get a look at its terrific cover art.  I'll have more information about this book in the reasonably near future.