Zeno Literary Agency Ltd.

Ian McDonald‘s superb novel THE DERVISH HOUSE has scooped yet another accolade. The author adds this year’s John W. Campbell Award to the BSFA Award and the nominations the novel has received for both the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Hugo.

Even though Zeno has only been in business for three years, this is the second time a Zeno client has won this coveted prize… in fact, it’s the second time a client called Ian was won it! (See here) – not a back track record, eh?

Huge congratulations to Ian and to publishers, Pyr and Gollancz, who have done such a wonderful job with the novel. Note the UK mass market edition is due out on July 29th.

Two Zeno clients have just been short listed for major genre awards …

First up, as previously announced here, Ian McDonald‘s novel THE DERVISH HOUSE has already been short-listed for the BSFA Award (which he won!) the Arthur C. Clarke award (which he didn’t) and the Hugo Award for best novel (which he still might).

Yesterday came the news that THE DERVISH HOUSE is one of those novels short-listed for this year’s John W. Campbell Award – a major industry award given annually in the US for the best SF novel and which was recently won (in 2009) by another Zeno client, Ian R. MacLeod.

Also announced yesterday was the short list for this years Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, given for the best short short in the genre in a given year. Many congratulations to Lavie Tidhar, whose story THE NIGHT TRAIN,  published at Strange Horizons, has deservedly  made it onto the short list. You can read the story by following the link above.

Winners will be announced for both awards in July at this year’s Campbell Conference Banquet in Lawrence, Kansas – further details can be found here.

Zeno Agency is delighted to announce that film and television rights to Ian McDonald‘s award winning novel THE DERVISH HOUSE have been optioned by Warp Films. The deal was negotiated by Zeno’s John Richard Parker who says, ‘As with all Ian’s books THE DERVISH HOUSE is very much cinematic as well being  an imaginative tour de force. I have always believed it has the qualities that  make it eminently suitable for film and I am sure that with Warp’s enthusiasm for the project and their fantastic track record, all the ingredients are in place to put together something very special indeed.’

Warp Films have had notable successes recently with SUBMARINE and FOUR LIONS and Executive Producer Peter Carlton says ‘We’re delighted to have the chance to adapt THE DERVISH HOUSE for the screen, set in that most iconic of cities, crossroads of east and west, past and future, Istanbul. It starts with an explosion on a tram and ends in a race to stop a terrorist plot, but in the meantime Ian somehow weaves together speculative share trading, nanotechnology and Islamic microcalligraphy, to name but a few strands in this visual feast that has a narrative sweep and ambition all too rare in contemporary fiction.‘

Zeno clients triumphed at the BSFA awards, which were held at this year’s Eastercon, at the Hilton Metropole in Birmingham over the Easter weekend.

First up was Aliette de Bodard, who was on hand to collect the award for Best Short Fiction for her story The Shipmaker, which appeared in Interzone issue #231. I managed to snap this pic of her being dwarfed by David Weber, who was on hand the present the award. (The homeless man to the rear is Paul Cornell prior to the removal of his comedy charity beard – for which he raised an impressive amount of money for, ironically, Shelter!)

No sooner had the applause for Aliette died down than our own Ian McDonald took to the stage to accept for the award for Best Novel for THE DERVISH HOUSE (not ‘The Dervish Nights’ as the convention newsletter later reported!), his 2010 novel published by Gollancz in the UK and by Pyr in the US.

A further layer of coolness was added to these wins when we later learned that both Ian and Aliette have been nominated for this year’s Hugo Awards – this news adding to Aliette’s previously reported Nebula nomination for the same story, and Ian’s Arthur C. Clarke Award nomination.

Huge congratulations to both authors.

There were lots of other Zeno authors at Eastercon – I got to meet our latest clients Anne Lyle and David Tallerman, albeit all too briefly, and the mass signing of Angry Robot authors at Waterstones in the centre of Birmingham was almost a mini ‘Zenocon’ of its own. Present were Aliette, Colin Harvey, John Meaney – or was it Thomas Blackthorn? – and, in a rare UK appearance, one Lavie Tidhar (pictured here next to a banner proclaiming his novels in all their steampunky glory.)

Elsewhere at the con, at readings, on panels and if truth must be told, in the bar, one could find Freda Warrington, Susan Boulton, Michael Cobley and last but by no means least Ian R. MacLeod.

I did a panel called ‘Writing 102: Finding an Agent‘, which was well attended and along with Gollancz Editorial Director Gillian Redfearn, Gollancz author Stephen Deas and author Martin Owton, we fielded a number of excellent questions from the audience. Hope those who were there found it helpful.

Over at the LOCUS web site, there’s a fascinating Roundtable discussion going on all about the works of our client Ian McDonald (whom we reported recently had been nominated for this year’s Arthur C. Clarke award) with a number of learned folks taking part – including Ian’s US Editor, Pyr’s Lou Anders, authors Cat Rambo and Rachel Swirsky, editor and translator Fabio Fernandes and our very own web guru, moonlighting as a learned genre commentator Paul Graham Raven.

Roundtable: Ian MacDonald’s Developing Economies Stories

We’re delighted to announce that two Zeno authors are on the short-list (of six) for this year’s coveted Arthur C. Clarke Award…

• Ian McDonald – THE DERVISH HOUSE, published by Gollancz.
• Tim Powers – DECLARE, published by Corvus

Not a bad hit rate for us! Ian has been on this shortlist in previous years and THE DERVISH HOUSE, listed in countless year’s best lists, is  already winner of the SciFi Now award for best novel is a book on everyone’s lips as a definite contender for this year’s Hugo.

DECLARE is an interesting addition to the Clarke shortlist, not least because it was first published in the US back in 2000, when it won both the World Fantasy Award and the International Horror Guild award.  It has taken a lamentably long time for British publishing to see the value in Powers’ work, but with the backing, support and vision of Corvus, DECLARE is now available directly to UK readers, with other books in the pipeline.

Award administrator Tom Hunter said ‘For me this list is a great indication of just how deep, rich and complex the literature of science fiction can be. I think this list is a definite keeper, as they say, and my hope is that twenty-five years from now people will still be coming back to it as a representation of everything that’s best about the diversity and strength of our genre‘

There are all sorts of exciting goings on around here at the moment… We’ve had the staggeringly wonderful news that Ben Aaronovitch‘s novel RIVERS OF LONDON (a.k.a. MIDNIGHT RIOT over in the US, where Del Rey have just published)  will appear at number eight in this week’s Sunday Times Bestseller list for hardcover fiction – a truly amazing achievement for Ben, who, we’re told, is the first début that Gollancz have ever had on this list. Extra big pats for our Ben!

No less vigorous pattage for Mister Ian McDonald, whose novel THE DERVISH HOUSE (also a Gollancz title – and Pyr in the States) has been nominated for the 2010 BSFA award for best novel. The shortlist is impressive, but Ian is widely regarded as a favourite. We’d be very surprised if this was only shortlist this wonderful novel makes this year. Also on the shortlist for the best short fiction is our own Aliette de Bodard, for her story The Shipmaker, which appeared in issue #231 of Interzone – congrats to both authors.

THE DERVISH HOUSE has also made this year’s LOCUS Recommended Reading List, which serves as a guide for the very best material our field has to offer. Here are the Zeno authors whose work has been listed…

Novels, Science Ficition – THE DERVISH HOUSE by Ian McDonald
Novels, Fantasy – THE DESERT SPEAR by Peter V Brett
Novels, Fantasy – HESPIRA by Matthew Hughes
First Novels – THE BOOKMAN by Lavie Tidhar
Collections – JOURNEYS by Ian MacLeod
Novellas – CLOUD PERMUTATIONS by Lavie Tidhar
Novellettes -BUTTERFLY AND THE BLIGHT AT THE HEART OF THE WORLD by Lavie Tidhar (Daily Science Fiction 9/3/10)
Short Stories – SECOND JOURNEY OF THE MAGUS by Ian R. MacLeod (Subterranean Winter ’10)
Short Stories – TONIGHT WE FLY by Ian McDonald (Masked)
Short Stories – THE NIGHT TRAIN by Lavie Tidhar (Strange Horizons 6/14/10)
Short Stories -THE SPONTANEOUS KNOTTING OF AN AGITATED STRING by Lavie Tidhar (Fantasy 5/17/10)

… a pretty good haul by anyone’s standards! More pats to all those who made the list, but particularly to Lavie Tidhar who scored a quite remarkable FIVE mentions!

The publication of THE DERVISH HOUSE draws near both here in the UK (Gollancz) and in the US (Pyr) and there is quite a buzz developing around this forthcoming Ian McDonald masterpiece.

Over at the Pyr-o-mania Blog, Lou Anders points folks to the Small World Podcast, where Ian can be heard talking about THE DERVISH HOUSE.  Check it out!

‘The Dervish House combines Islamic mysticism, political and economic intrigue, a terrorist threat, and a nanotechnology with the potential to transform every human on the planet. The Dervish House takes place in Istanbul in 2027. The Dervish House is seven days, six characters, three interconnected story strands, one central common core—the eponymous dervish house, that pins all these players together in a weave of intrigue, conflict, drama, and a ticking clock of a thriller.‘

Proof copies of the forthcoming Gollancz edition of Ian McDonald’s staggeringly brilliant new novel THE DERVISH HOUSE to be published in late July…

‘In the CHAGA novels McDonald brought an Africa in the grip of a bizarre ailien invasion to life, in RIVER OF GODS he painted a rich portrait of India in 2047, in BRASYL he looked at different Brazils, past present and future. Ian McDonald has found reknown at the cutting adge of a movement to take SF away from its British and American white roots and out into the rich cultures of the world. THE DERVISH HOUSE continues that journey and centres on Istanbul in 2025. Turkey is part of Europe but sited on the edge, it is an Islamic country that looks to the West. THE DERVISH HOUSE is the story of the families that live in and around its titular house, it is at once a rich mosaic of Islamic life in the new century and telling novel of future possibilities.’

… and as if that wasn’t enough, we also received today two copies of US the mass market edition of Freda Warrington‘s ELFLAND, published by Tor with a cover rosette that loudly and proudly advertsises the fact that the book is the winner of the RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best fantasy Novel of 2009. Congratulations to Freda!

‘This dreamlike, nuanced and sensual novel is reminiscent of the best of early Charles de Lint and is compulsively readable. Rose is a memorable, unique and wholly sympathetic protagonist, and the supporting cast is equally well drawn. The story of Rose and Sam is compelling, enchanting and utterly enthralling. This is simply one of the best fantasy novels of the year.’ — RT Book Reviews