03/29/05 TUE:
---Word from Temporary Culture:

Chris --

Hope this finds you well. I've just sent in the final corrections to
The Scarlet Fig by Avram Davidson, to be published by Phillip Rose on
the other side of the Atlantic, and I also have the finished copies of
the second book from Temporary Culture, Arabian Wine by Gregory Feeley,
details of which below:

The book is gorgeous, totally different from the Asimov's abridgment.
The Crowley blurb appears on a hand printed wraparound band (with
imprint and date, it constitutes a Crowley A item), totally
un-mass-produced and quirky.

Arabian Wine by Gregory Feeley

“A fine, funny trans-historical adventure, so well-furnished and
well-wrought it seems more true than the more boring truth. Read it
with a double espresso.”
— John Crowley

Venice, 1609. Matteo Benveneto, younger son of a merchant family, has
plans to revive the waning fortunes of the great trading city by
introducing Venetians and Europeans to an exotic drink from the
highlands of Arabia and the cities of the East: caofa, or coffee. His
friend Gaspare Treviso has ideas for steam-powered engines that offer
the prospect of military advantage against the Turks and immediate
practical benefits in pumping the leaky cellars of government
buildings.
A novel of coffee, ideas, and ambition, Arabian Wine offers a lush,
erudite, and sensual glimpse of a culture bound by tradition and poised
on the edge of explosive cultural and technological change. Energized
by coffee, Matteo tries to give Venice a push nearer that edge, and
finds himself under suspicion of treason and intrigue.

“an elegant, low-key historical fantasy [. . .] Aficionados of quirky,
understated speculative fiction will be rewarded” — Publishers Weekly
21 February

ISBN 0-9764660-0-7 $50.00, 208 pp., edition of 300 hardcover copies
signed by the author, bound in brown Brillianta linen with full color
dust jacket.

Publication date 31 March 2004.

“Arabian Wine is not so much a book as a little piece of renaissance
jewelry, densely ornate with amber and amethyst, small and perfect.
Open it, and it will reward you the way Venice does, with tiny passages
opening into broad squares, and sly jokes; moments of beauty and of
sadness.” — Maureen F. McHugh

“In this tale about the tragically brief pre-history of steam engines
and coffee in renaissance Venice, Gregory Feeley has written an
allegory as timeless as Machiavelli’s Prince and as timely as
yesterday’s headlines from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. He also paints
panoramas as telling and meticulous as any by Canaletto — especially in
his depiction of the Arsenal, the first assembly line of Western
Civilization. All in all, another top-notch historical fiction from a
writer who is fast becoming the Walter Scott of the twenty-first
century.”
— Thomas M. Disch

---Word from Golden Gryphon:
Greetings from the Gryphon:

"The Concrete Jungle," the novella in THE ATROCITY ARCHIVES, by Charles
Stross, has been nominated for a Hugo award! The story is original to THE
ATROCITY ARCHIVES, and First editions are still available if you order directly
from Golden Gryphon.

-----

The Listener at the Gate . . .
In Charles Stross’s world of “The Atrocity Archive,” Alan Turing, the
Father of Modern Computer Science, did in fact complete his theorem on
“Phase Conjugate Grammars for Extra-dimensional Summoning.” Turing’s work
paved the way for esoteric mathematical computations that, when carried
out, had side effects that would leak through some kind of channel
underlying the structure of the Cosmos. And out there in the multiverse
were “listeners” – and sometimes these listeners could be coerced into
opening gates: Small gates through which minds could be transferred and,
occasionally, large gates through which objects could be moved. In 1945,
Nazi Germany’s Ahnenerbe-SS, in an attempt to escape the Allied onslaught,
performed just such a summoning on the souls of more than six million. A
gate was opened to an alternate universe through which the SS moved men
and matériel – to live to fight another day, as it were. But their
summoning brought forth more than the SS had bargained for – an Evil,
patiently waiting all this time while learning the ways of humans, now
poised to lunch on our galaxy, on our very own Earth. Secret intelligence
agencies, esoteric theorems, Lovecraftian horrors, Mid East terrorist
connections, a damsel in distress, and a final battle on the surface of a
dying planet – in “The Atrocity Archive,” Charles Stross has written a
high-octane thriller, and readers need to buckle up and hold on with both
hands!

“The Atrocity Archive” is a 78,000 word novel, previously serialized in
the U.K. magazine Spectrum SF, and now published for the first time in an
archival-quality hardcover. This volume also contains a new, previously
unpublished novella, “The Concrete Jungle,” that features the further
adventures of Bob Howard, the reluctant hero in “The Atrocity Archive” – a
wisecracking, occasionally insubordinate, computer-hacker desk jockey,
whose just itching for some field ops. Bob works for “The Laundry,” a
British ultra-secret intelligence organization – and in “The Concrete
Jungle,” a power struggle erupts between management, and Bob is
unavoidably caught in the middle.

With an Introduction by noted British SF author Ken MacLeod, and an
Afterword by Charles Stross in which he explores the distinction between
the spy thriller and the horror story.

Now, you local library would want a book with a Hugo nominee in it, right?

The Atrocity Archives
by Charles Stross
cover art by Steve Montiglio
ISBN 1-930846-25-8 / $24.95 (Trade hardcover)
273 pages