News 2002
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News 2002
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An Apology from Alec Abernathy for the Unacceptable Tardiness of His First Novel (30 September 2002) Dear friends and readers, the day has now passed upon which my Aardvark Attack! was due to be loosed upon the world, with nary a sign of rampaging radioactive mammals to be seen. The fault for this is entirely to be laid at my door. Foolishly, I thought I understood the nature of truth, that it might be sprayed over the pages like the paint of a Jackson Pollock, but now I find it to be more akin to a Picasso, subtly shifting before the eye, impossible to pin down. Hence the delay. To make up for this somewhat, I have begged the publisher to make available on the Silver Age Books website a small extract from the first chapter, describing a typical morning of my father’s during World War II – or at least it was typical, up to the point where the adventure began, with a simple telephone call. Please enjoy this extract, and await the rest patiently, I beg you. It will follow soon, and, with luck, assuage your appetite for wanton destruction and uneven science. Read on, for Douglas Abernathy’s Morning. – Alec Abernathy A Journal of the Earthquake Year! (28 September 2002) True to his word, Howard Phillips has set about producing new material for the website – though I have still to see a single word of either his long-promised detective thrillers or his zombie novel. I won’t complain, though, when he has commenced work on yet another work of mercurial genius – A Journal of the Earthquake Year – a novel to be written in real time over the next year, as entries in his diary. New entries, he promises, should appear every day or so. Such a muse as that which guides Howard will not bend to the rigours of publishing reality, and so we must give the recalcitrant fool his head. – SWT IMPORTANT NOTICE! WWW.SILVERAGEBOOKS.CO.UK TO STOP WORKING (5 September 2002) For anyone accessing this site via www.silveragebooks.co.uk, it’s time to amend your favourites! By the end of this month, it will no longer work (hopefully it won’t lead instead to anything indecent, but here’s fair warning that it might). Instead, this site will be accessible via www.silveragebooks.com, or directly at www.silveragebooks.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk. – SWT Asleep at the Wheel! (1 September 2002) What the hell’s been going on here? I go on holiday for a fortnight, only to return and find out that Aardvark Attack! still isn’t out, Gilligan’s our top-selling author, and the most popular search term by which people find this site is “hermaphrodite”, followed closely by Ramon Tikaram… an image to conjure with! I clearly need to take things in hand! Only the eyes dart! We need new content! – Howard Phillips Interview With Steven Gilligan! (9 August 2002) We’ve been fortunate enough to secure an interview with the one and only author of Elsewhere, Mr Steven Gilligan. We had to shoo away the rats that were scrabbling at the worn heels of his shoes and prise the whiskey bottle from his dirty fingers, but a few cups of coffee and a chilli cheese dog set his mouth a-racing! Click on the link to read the interview with Steven Gilligan. – SWT Viral Marketing! (9 August 2002) We at Silver Age Books have decided to try a bit of viral marketing, and to that end we asked the author of Elsewhere to sing his favourite song for us. See it here, a little film we like to call: Coffee in the Morning. – HP Publisher Props (19 June 2002) Small press publishing has a pretty bad reputation – not surprising when it gives rise to novels like Quiet, the Tin Can Brains are Hunting! – but people like PS Publishing show us just how well it can and should be done. Plus, their website reminded me that we should have a links page by now – and by some uncanny coincidence, one has just appeared, here. – SWT There are Now a Billion Silver Age Books! (19 June 2002) Well, nearly. There are four in print, one at the printers, with another three or four boiling away on word processors around the country. Four in print, you say? Well, yes – Professor Challenger in Space, Quiet, the Tin Can Brains are Hunting!, Elephant, and I can exclusively reveal the fourth – There Are Now a Billion Flowers, from the magisterial pen of John Benjamin Greenwood. This is the secret book SW Theaker coyly referred to in his note on 25 May 2002… Though printed in secret, with every chance of it bringing the wrath of the courts down upon the Silver Age, the author of this slim volume of melancholy tales has, upon being presented with a copy, given his consent for it to be made available to the wider public. We gambled the whole company on a crazy roll of the cosmic dice, but you, the readers, get to collect the winnings. – Howard Phillips Encounter with the Myreli! (7 June 2002) Howard was quite correct in his criticisms last week, but I have now completed my work upon Gilligan’s opus, and it will return from the printers very shortly. In the meantime, to keep all Gillaphiles happy, I’ve made a sample from the novel available among our Tales of the Silver Age – Encounter with the Myreli! – SWT Elsewhere Late! (1 June 2002) Every day this week I’ve had to deal with queries from enraged Gilliganites, demanding their pre-ordered copies of Elsewhere... my apologies to all of them, but as you might have expected, it’s entirely the fault of our publishing editor, Stephen Theaker, no doubt happy to delay the publication of the latest Silver Age author to surpass his measly sales achievements... Apparently he’s still putting the final touches to it. Fingers crossed that Aardvark Attack does not meet the same fate. – Howard Phillips The Biggest Secret of the Silver Age! (25 May 2002) Rumour around the office has it that a secret Silver Age volume has been printed, with contraband copies being made available on a strictly under-the-counter basis. But Howard Phillips is playing his cards close to his chest, and I’m not going to reach inside his shirt to find them. – SWT The Trunk of Elephant Blows Loud and Long! (22 May 2002) Harsh Grewal’s 80-page special, Elephant, is now available for purchase. Be warned, though, these stories are not the usual light-hearted tales of galactic devastation and alien robot torture that readers of the Silver Age will be accustomed to! These are stories of pain and tragedy of a more down-to-earth kind, of human lives full of sadness and regret, of people struggling to survive themselves. I’m as proud of this as of anything we’ve published to date. – SWT Alpha.one Abandoned... (16 May 2002) Everyone’s favourite author of far-out fantasy, Steven Gilligan, may now be reaping the benefits of the super sales success of Elsewhere, but as he basks in the Birmingham sunshine, sipping tequilas purchased with the fruits of the marketing manager’s work, has success gone to his head? The question might well be asked, since he has decided to break his contract to write his much-vaunted second novel – he informed the publisher today that Alpha.one will never be written! Disaster, surely? But no, the only reason for abandoning that idea, is because he has one better! But this time, we’ve been asked not to jump the gun, and so there will be no formal announcement of this title until the cat is well and truly in the bag... – Howard Phillips Sales of Elsewhere Run Wild!! (13 April 2002) Steven Gilligan’s freshly published fantasy novel, Elsewhere, looks set to be the biggest selling title yet, with pre-orders for it outstripping our other novels by a factor of four or five. I’ve read it, and no one is going to be disappointed! – Howard Phillips Keighley News Feature on Theaker! (15 March 2002) The Keighley News ran an article today on SW Theaker’s visit to Oakbank School, under the headline, “Novelist back at Oakbank to give his tips to pupils”. A teacher, Suzanne Doyle, was quoted as saying, “We are really pleased to have Stephen visiting. It’s great of him to come back and share his success with the pupils and explain how he has achieved what he has.” Read the full story on the Keighley News website. – Howard Phillips Back to School – World Book Day! (14 March 2002) On World Book Day, I had the honour of being invited to visit Oakbank School to share some of my experiences as a novelist. Thanks to all the pupils, the teachers, and especially the librarian, Karen Hamer, for making me feel so welcome. It was terrific to meet so many budding writers and enquiring minds! Now I feel like a real writer, having finally been asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” – SWT SFX Reviews Quiet – It’s One Rank Below Bradbury! (12 March 2002) The fabulous UK science fiction magazine, SFX, has reviewed Quiet, the Tin Can Brains are Hunting! in this month’s issue! It is a delightful and amusing review, citing the “indefensible plot”, and describing the book as “a Stainless Steel Rat adventure with important organs missing” – that is to say, they identified the very reasons why we love it! However, when I realised that it had received just one star less than Ray Bradbury’s latest I wondered into what strange dimension I had fallen… – Howard Phillips Enter: the Tales of the Silver Age (5 March 2002) As briefly mentioned below, we’ve now launched a home on the Silver Age site for various bits and pieces of new writing – the grandly titled Tales of the Silver Age. In there you’ll find samples of our novels, short stories, films and comic strips! Our focus remains the publication of paperback novels and collections, but this gives us somewhere to put all the interesting bits and pieces that don’t fit anywhere else… – Howard Phillips A New Adventure Begins for Milon the Assassin! (17 January 2002) Reaction to Cartonia Orange 7, a novella which sneaked into the Juvenilia section a few weeks ago, has been so good that work has commenced on a follow-up, Cartonia Red 3, and it’s the first thing to appear in our new Tales of the Silver Age section. The mighty pen of John Greenwood has started things rolling with Chapter 1: The End – SWT |
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