The forthcoming Bioshock board-game (!) has some pretty wicked-cool miniatures that look like they'd be fun to play with, separate of any virtue they have as tokens for their game.

BioShock Infinite: The Siege of Columbia PRE-ORDER [Plaid Hat Games]

A look at the miniatures from the Bioshock Infinite board game [Super Punch]

Sad news: Iain M Banks, beloved author of brilliant science fiction novels and (to my taste), even better thrillers, has terminal gall bladder cancer that has spread to his liver, pancreas and lymph nodes, and is unlikely to live for more than a year (and he may live for less time). He posted the news early today, in a statement that's bravely and darkly humorous, as befits his work and his reputation:

As a result, I’ve withdrawn from all planned public engagements and I’ve asked my partner Adele if she will do me the honour of becoming my widow (sorry – but we find ghoulish humour helps). By the time this goes out we’ll be married and on a short honeymoon. We intend to spend however much quality time I have left seeing family. and relations and visiting places that have meant a lot to us. Meanwhile my heroic publishers are doing all they can to bring the publication date of my new novel forward by as much as four months, to give me a better chance of being around when it hits the shelves.

There is a possibility that it might be worth undergoing a course of chemotherapy to extend the amount of time available. However that is still something we’re balancing the pros and cons of, and is anyway out of the question until my jaundice has further, and significantly, reduced.

Lastly, I’d like to add that from my GP onwards, the professionalism of the medics involved – and the speed with which the resources of the NHS in Scotland have been deployed – has been exemplary, and the standard of care deeply impressive. We’re all just sorry the outcome hasn’t been more cheerful.

I've never (to my recollection) met Banks, but I am a huge fan of his works. As I wrote some years ago in Wired, his novel Dead Air is the first truly post-mobile-phone thriller I ever read, one where all the suspense comes from characters being in constant contact and knowing what the others are about, rather than the uncertainty of not being able to reach one another. There's a scene in that book, where someone is trapped in a closet when the killer comes home unexpectedly, and is texting to a confederate outside, that is nothing short of genius. Where the traditional mystery would have put the confederate through the stress of wondering what might be going on, in a position of total ignorance, Banks delivers a complete, minute-by-minute SMS set of updates to the confederate, and shows that knowing is infinitely more scary than ignorance, if handled by a master. Which he is.

Growing up, my whole circle of friends doted on his debut novel, The Wasp Factory, whose toe-curlingly, wonderfully macabre gross-out climax still makes me go a little sweaty-palmed when I think of it. And his novel Complicity was the book that set me on the path to giving up cigarettes.

I haven't even touched on his science fiction novels, the incredible Culture series, but they are worthy of your attention, too. In short, the field is losing one of its greats, and Scotland is losing one of its great champions for independence, and the world is losing one of its great campaigners for justice.

I wish Iain and his family a calm and loving and graceful time, and thank him sincerely for the hours of pleasure and the years of insight he's given to me and all of us.

Iain Banks diagnosed with gall bladder cancer

(Image: Iain (Menzies) Banks, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from kyz's photostream)

Here's "Deus Ex Arca," a beautifully told, absurdist science fiction story about a terrible, wonderful box, by Desirina Boskovich. Desirina was one of my Clarion students about five years ago, and was extremely promising then. When I saw her name on a new story today, I was sure it would be beautiful, and wonderful, and haunting, and I was not disappointed.

Miss Amelia gazed in shock at where her table had been. “Well, I never,” she said. She bent over to pick up the box . . .

. . . and turned into a giant celery stalk.

Where there had been Miss Amelia, there was now something else, and that something else was a column of celery, measuring approximately five feet and five inches, its limpid green fronds rustling gently in the breeze.

The box sat beside it.

Lightspeed Presents... "Deus Ex Arca" by Desirina Boskovich

Finland's Head Hunter is selling a set of accessories that you can use to turn yourself (or a mannequin) into a terrifyingly credible Judge Death from 2000AD's Judge Dredd. It appears that the costume was made by DeviantArt member Warrior1944, who may or may not be "Peter Olsson, a huge Dredd fan from Sweden," though I'm not entirely sure of the relationship here. Looks like 2000AD is gearing up for some legal enforcement against Head Hunter, so if you're planning on getting this, you should probably hurry.

Head Hunter has promised four Dark Judges, and a short film to be produced in Finland, using all of them.

JUDGE DEATH 1:1 STATUE/SUIT (via Geeks Are Sexy)

This year's Hugo Award nominees have been announced, and it's a great slate! Congrats to all the authors, artists, fans and editors who are up for the award in San Antonio, Texas this Labor Day weekend.

Best Novel (1113 nominating ballots cast)
* 2312, Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)
* Blackout, Mira Grant (Orbit)
* Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
* Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas, John Scalzi (Tor)
* Throne of the Crescent Moon, Saladin Ahmed (DAW)

Best Novella (587 nominating ballots cast)
* After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, Nancy Kress (Tachyon Publications)
* The Emperor’s Soul, Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon Publications)
* On a Red Station, Drifting, Aliette de Bodard (Immersion Press)
* San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats, Mira Grant (Orbit)
* “The Stars Do Not Lie”, Jay Lake (Asimov’s, Oct-Nov 2012)

2013 Hugo Award Nominees Announced

Read the rest

I'm really impressed with the cover of the UK edition of Rapture of the Nerds, the novel I wrote with Charlie Stross. But it turns out that producing that cover was quite a journey. Designer Martin Stiff was kind enough to share his notes on the process, along with all the proto covers he produced for the UK publisher, Titan Books:

Designing book covers is the best job in the goddamn world. If you're lucky, like we are at Amazing15, you get to work with incredibly talented and lovely people, on some of the most fiendishly interesting projects you can't even begin to imagine without the aid of viralised nootropics.

When the incredibly talented and lovely Cath at Titan Books asked us to design the UK cover for Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross' The Rapture of the Nerds we braced ourselves. If you haven't read it, do it now. The book is a melting pot of brain-warping ideas, every time you think you get a handle on what it is, what it means, it shifts in your hands like an organic Rubik's cube.