Ok, it’s out. Some of—most of—my very earliest published work, brought to closure after four decades during which I was off doing other things.
I’ve given the background elsewhere, and for a long time I didn’t even consider bringing the material back to light. Not least because, for much of that time, the technology that enables a scaled backlist operation like The Brooligan Press didn’t exist.
Also, I took some persuading that anyone would be interested. As I write in the Introduction, “(the novels) offer a vision of the future that’s very much of its time, with the passage of years turning many of its futuristic elements into anachronisms. These stories were written on the threshold of the digital age, the Last Hurrah of an analog future where information would be forever on tape, and humanity’s vast knowledge would be held in physical libraries.”
Overhauling the website and sourcing fresh cover images for the Early Stuff section raised enough of a response for me to give serious consideration to getting the material back into print, not least to give it a continuing life in the present day. The Babylon Run was perhaps the most accomplished of the three—much as you’d expect after a two-book runup—yet it’s the one that has never had any kind of a release beyond a very few friends.
So here it is. The trilogy in full. Available both as the ebook that I’d originally planned and as a mighty 600-page trade paperback. With each you get a download link for a PDF of the original publication of The Last Rose of Summer, the ur-text from which everything sprang.
What more could you ask? Well…
To follow very shortly, there’s this: a standalone paperback of The Babylon Run in the same pocketbook format as the 1982 Sphere editions of Dying of Paradise and The Ice Belt, designed to complete the set.
No separate ebook for this one. I’m currently awaiting copies for final checking and when they’re in, and assuming all’s well, I’ll make the title available and add the relevant links.
