The Pretender: Saving Luke Giveaway!
There are Pretenders among us, geniuses with the ability to become anyone they want to be. In 1983 a corporation known as The Centre isolated a young Pretender named Jarod and exploited his genius for their research. Then, one day, their Pretender ran away…
Steven Long Mitchell and Craig Van Sickle, the duo behind the 90’s hit NBC TV series, The Pretender, are back again with the second installment of the new Pretender book series. The Pretender: Saving Luke is the sequel to the critically acclaimed first book, Rebirth and picks up right where that book left off with more Jarod being awesome and Miss Parker being hot — and hot on his heels. Throw a little Sydney and Broots in there for some existential angst and charming confusion respectively and you’ve got another winner on your hands.
The good folks at The Centre Universe have come back to us to help them spread the word and we have 5 autographed trade paperback copies of Saving Luke to give away.
You know the drill: re-tweet this tweet:
The Pretender: Saving Luke Giveaway: http://t.co/174R0cPsmD pic.twitter.com/oJPhCSv9GZ
— Worlds Without End (@WWEnd) July 1, 2014
or comment here in the blog to enter the contest – easy peasy. Do both and double your chances! We’ll have a random drawing and announce the winners next Monday so tweet away and don’t forget to tell your friends.
The Pretender: Saving Luke
by Steven Long Mitchell & Craig W. Van Sickle
Now comes the exciting climax to the first fully original, mystery thriller novel, The Pretender: Rebirth – the return of Jarod, Miss Parker, Sydney and the nefarious, clandestine activities of The Centre, in The Pretender: Saving Luke.
Jarod uses his dazzling mind and unequaled abilities to save a kidnapped boy and thwart a deadly plot threatening the innocent lives of hundreds while he continues his search for the truth about his identity and hides from those who want to recapture him.
Leading the Centre hunt for Jarod is the sexy, complex, bitch-on-wheels, Miss Parker. Theirs is a pursuer/pursued relationship bound together by emotional ties, mutual scars and an unspoken passion for each other.
Alongside Miss P. is Sydney, Jarod’s surrogate father figure and Centre psychologist who nurtured his genius for the Centre’s disreputable purposes. But Jarod’s patience with Sydney roils with anger over lack of answers to Jarod’s past and the identity of his natural birth parents.
Authors Steven Long Mitchell and Craig W. Van Sickle, have encored with a return tome sure to please not only returning fans of the original TV series but also new readers unfamiliar with the world of The Pretender.
There are Pretenders among us…
Our thanks to Steven and Craig and everyone at The Centre Universe for the opportunity to bring this new chapter to our fans! Best of luck to everyone.
Introducing the David Gemmell Awards
Today we’re happy to announce the addition of the David Gemmell Awards to the Worlds Without End database! The two awards, established in memory of fantasy author David Gemmell, consist of the Legend Award for Best Fantasy Novel in the traditional, heroic, epic or high fantasy genres, and the Morningstar Award for best such first novel by a new author.
This is one of our first attempts at adding lesser known awards that nevertheless highlight very good talent. The Gemmell Awards are only eight years old, but have already added novel material to our database. As one perusal of the lists will show you, their list includes novels that have not received recognition from the major awards, and may take you down a path you never knew existed.
It’s been a while since we added some new awards to our database. To be honest, we had a few that were higher up on our list (and they are still coming!), but, when we realized that many of our members had already added the novels that this list requires, we realized we had a quick win on our hands. Let us know what you think of this new addition and don’t forget to check your reading stats page to see how you fare for this award. We just got the last dozen or so books for the award added to the site so you may have some tagging to do. Get to reading!
2014 Locus Award Winners!
The 2014 Locus Award Winners have been announced! They are:
- Abaddon’s Gate, James S.A. Corey (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
- The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman (Morrow; Headline Review)
- The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two, Catherynne M. Valente (Feiwel and Friends)
See the complete list of winners in all categories in the official press release.
Our congrats to the winners and nominees. It was a very nice lineup. What do you think of these winners? Anything you’d have done differently?
2014 Mythopoeic Award Finalists Announced!
The Mythopoeic Society has announced the finalists for the 2014 Mythopoeic Award.
- The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo (William Morrow)
- The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (William Morrow)
- Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone (Tor)
- Sleepless Knights by Mark H. Williams (Atomic Fez Publishing)
- The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker (Harper)
Our congrats to all the finalists! What looks good to you on this list?
2014 John W. Campbell Memorial Award Winner!
The winner of the John W. Campbell Award for 2014 was announced at the Campbell Conference Awards Banquet, held June 13-15, at the University of Kansas. The winner is Strange Bodies by Marcel Theroux. Our congrats to the winner and all the nominees. This is quite an achievement for Mr. Theroux who beat out some of the biggest names in the business. It was an impressive short list to say the least.
- Lexicon by Max Barry (Penguin)
- Proxima by Stephen Baxter (Gollancz)
- The Circle by Dave Eggers (Knopf)
- We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler (Marian Wood / Putnam)
- Hild by Nicola Griffith (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
- The Cusanus Game by Wolfgang Jeschke (Tor, 1st English edition)
- Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Orbit)
- The Disestablishment of Paradise by Phillip Mann (Gollancz)
- Evening’s Empires by Paul McAuley (Gollancz)
- The Red: First Light by Linda Nagata (Mythic Island Press)
- The Adjacent by Christopher Priest (Gollancz)
- On the Steel Breeze by Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz)
- Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)
- Neptune’s Brood by Charles Stross (Ace)
Uprising Giveaway Winners!
Time to give out some more books! For out Uprising contest we had 109 re-tweets and 7 blog comments. Here are our 3 lucky winners:
Congrats to our winners! If you are one of our prize winners please send us your full name and snail-mail address to “info [at] worldswithoutend [dot] com” so we can send your prize right away. Be sure to mention Uprising in your email so we know which prize you’re claiming.
Our thanks to Abaddon Books and Sarah Cawkwell for the great contest and prizes and to everyone who participated! We’ll be back with another giveaway soon so watch this space!
Futurestates.tv: As You Were by Trevin Matcek
So there’s this cool project called Futurestates that I’ve never heard of and I’m trying to figure out why. It’s a series of short SF films about the near future that has been around for years and I’m just now grokking to it. From the source:
What will our society look like 10, 20, or 50 years from today? For four epic seasons, FUTURESTATES has taken us on a journey to explore possible futures through the prism of today’s global realities. Written and directed by veteran and emerging indie filmmakers, and developed and produced by the Independent Television Service (ITVS) with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, this groundbreaking series of science fiction shorts invites the public to envision the future.
So far, I’ve watched As You Were by filmaker Trevin Matcek. The story is about a soldier who, after losing an arm and leg in a futuristic drone battle, is fitted with advanced robotic limbs. Returning home for the first time in years, he struggles to reconnect with his family and a society suspicious of robotics. Matcek covers a lot of ground in 22 minutes and I could have gone for twice that length to really let him flesh out his story. Definitely worth the short time investment and a fine intro to the series.
The other shorts in the series look really good too. I’ve started in on Code Academy already and dipped a toe into a few others just to get a feel for the series. There’s a lot of variety in these films and the quality looks good across the board. I’m excited that I can go back and catch all the films I missed from previous seasons on their You Tube channel. If you’re tired of the mindless action SF movies we usually get out of Hollywood you should check out this series.
Horror Manga 101: Uzumaki – the Spiral
Can the simple shape of a spiral be cause for alarm? Can it be a sign of a curse? A manifestation of a haunting? Or is it a gateway signature to something else entirely? These are the lingering questions that draw us, hypnotically, like the swirling lines of the spiral itself, every deeper into the mystery that is Uzumaki.
Here is what VIZ says about Uzumaki:
Kurôzu-cho, a small fogbound town on the coast of Japan, is cursed. According to Shuichi Saito, the withdrawn boyfriend of teenager Kirie Goshima, their town is haunted not by a person or being but by a pattern: uzumaki, the spiral, the hypnotic secret shape of the world. It manifests itself in everything from seashells and whirlpools in water to the spiral marks on people’s bodies, the insane obsessions of Shuichi’s father and the voice from the cochlea in our inner ear. As the madness spreads, the inhabitants of Kurôzu-cho are pulled ever deeper into a whirlpool from which there is no return!
Uzumaki: The Spiral.
I’d heard that this was a manga to pay attention to. How right that advice is.
Book Giveaway: Uprising by Sarah Cawkwell
For this book giveaway we have a new book by English author Sarah Cawkwell. Uprsising, book one in her Heirs of the Demon King series, is fresh out from Abaddon Books and they want us to help them spread the word. To that end they’ve offered up 3 copies to our lucky followers.
For your chance to win all you have to do is re-tweet this tweet:
RT to win a copy of Sarah Cawkwell's Uprsising: http://t.co/kd6EXfc3CP …comment on blog to double your chances. pic.twitter.com/BlKuobjlYU
— Worlds Without End (@WWEnd) June 3, 2014
…or comment here in the blog. Do both and double your chances! How easy is that? We’ll have a random drawing from our re-tweeter pool and announce our three winners next Tuesday so tweet away and don’t forget to tell your friends.
Mathias Eynon’s dreams were small. A dabbler in magic, he expected to live in obscurity in his home in the Welsh hills, not drawing attention to himself. But fate has other plans for him. It is the Year of Our Lord Fifteen Ninety, and a revolution is quietly brewing, here and further abroad. Richard V has overstayed his rule, some say; others whisper that the whole line of Demon Kings must be burned out.
Mathias – son of a man executed for the practice of magic – is set to become a symbol, and a leader. And to do that, he needs champions. A wise woman sends him to the corners of the known world – to the frozen lands of the north, to the pirate-haunted ports of Spain, to the mountains of the German Empire, to the burning sands of the Holy Land – to bring back masters of the four magic arts. With Richard’s Witch Hunters on his heels, he sets out to gather his allies.
Our thanks to Abaddon Books and Sarah Cawkwell for the excellent prizes and best of luck to everyone. Help us spread the word and be sure to come back next Tuesday to see if you’ve won!