Sunday, July 31, 2011

Space 1889 And Beyond -- Update


We are days, or perhaps only hours, from the official launch of the Space: 1889 And Beyond EBook series from Untreed Reads. Above is the approved final cover of the first book, Journey To The Heart of Luna, by best-selling author Andy Frankham-Allen who, as you probably remember, is also the story editor for the entire six-book series.

This first story takes place on Luna (obviously), but subsequent books cover the rest of Space: 1889's navigable inner solar system, following the same two core characters -- talented British inventor Nathanial Stone and the adventurous young American lady Annabelle Somerset, whom many of you old-timers will remember is the neice of the American inventor Dr. Cyrus Grant.  A number of recuring characters -- some helpful, some villainous, and many somewhere in between, will also people the stories, and I predict you will find this series to be a genuine moveable feast of steampunkishness.

Work on my own installment, A Prince of Mars, which constitutes the fifth book in the series, proceeds very well, and I expect to turn in the final manuscript tomorrow (two weeks ahead of deadline -- a genuine first for me!) Being able to write one of the stories has been a real treat, but writing the one story in this first series set on Mars has been spectacularly rewarding. Mars has always been my favorite Space: 1889 world, and this allowed me to revisit the place and add depth to some of the themes only touched on in the original game material. I won't give anything away, except to say that our plucky adventurers are almost entirely ignorant of Mars, but are armed with a trusty and well-thumbed copy of Conklin's Atlas of the Worlds -- and they discover along the way that, as with many travel books, Conklin's is not entirely accurate.

4 comments:

  1. Hey Frank, If you ever need a map artist I'm reasonable and available.

    Congrats on keeping the flame of 1889 going!

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  2. Excellent news. This may push me over the edge and buy a Kindle or Nook. Which machine will this series work best with?

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  3. Steff,
    Thanks, I'll keep you in mind and pass the word on to Untreed Reads.

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  4. J,
    I don't know which it is best on, but I bet that's more dependent on the machine's performance than the publisher's format. Untreed Reads, being exclusively an EBook publisher, releases in in formats suitable for pretty much everything. I've only seen Kindles in action myself, and I like them, but I haven't sampled enough of the competition to make an endorsement.

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