11:42am Monday 4th January 2010
By David Barnett
Haworth-born science fiction author Eric Brown is set for a stellar year after a rollercoaster 2009 that saw him triumph against the odds in the face of the recession.
Eric, 49, had just signed a three-book deal with publisher Solaris early last year when the imprint’s parent company, the role-playing game giant Games Workshop, announced they were making plans to sell off that part of the business.
The first book in Eric’s trilogy, the SF thriller Necropath, had just been released, and the remaining two books were left in limbo as the recession bit deeply into the publishing industry.
A tense few months were resolved in September when Rebellion, the company which publishes the phenomenally successful UK comic 2000AD, home of Judge Dredd, bought Solaris.
Eric said: “The second two books were due to come out when it was announced that Solaris was up for sale.
“The fear was, of course, that if Games Workshop didn’t find a buyer then the books would remain in limbo or never see the light of day.”
When Rebellion stepped in, Eric received the good news – they would continue to publish him.
The second book in his series, Xenopath, came out shortly after and the third novel in the sequence, Cosmopath, was released to critical acclaim just before Christmas.
Not only that, but last week Eric signed on the dotted line for another novel with Solaris, which is entitled Guardians of the Phoenix.
He said: “This is a post-apocalyptic novel, set about a hundred years after most of mankind has been wiped out by a combination of global warming, nuclear war and biological plagues.
“A small community of survivors is travelling to Tangiers in the hope that they can extract water from beneath the Earth’s crust.
“There is also a legend that a spaceship full of colonists was being prepared to launch several decades earlier, but never did. The survivors are looking for the spaceship in the hope that there might be technology and people with the know-how to rebuild society.”
© Copyright 2001-2012 Newsquest Media Group
http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/trade_directory/