M-BRANE PRESS

Behold, the M-Brane SF Double!

2011-06-07T15:22:00.000-07:00

A short video of me showing off the proof copy of the new Double, due to be live any hour now with the major online booksellers.

2020 VISIONS released in epub format on B&N

2011-05-17T16:54:00.000-07:00

It's a few months later than planned, but we finally have an .epub-format ebook version of Rick Novy's 2020 Visions available as a Nook Book at Barnes and Noble, and directly from M-Brane Press as well (details below). It's our hope that people who passed on the lovely print version of the book (also available at B&N as well as Amazon) were just waiting for a version that they could read on their Nook or iPad or a variety of other devices and will now go ahead and get a copy of this great book. 2020 Visions is a beautiful original anthology of very near-future speculative fiction (the "2020" in the title refers to the year) featuring stories by Mary Robinette Kowal, Alex Wilson, Jack Mangan, David Gerrold, Emily Devenport, Alethea Kontis, Ernest Hogan, Jeff Spock, David Lee Summers and many others. This is a very cool book, and for only $4.95 at Barnes and Noble, it should not be missed.

You can also buy it right here for only $3.95, using the Pay Pal button below (takes credit cards and e-checks if you don't have a Pay Pal account). One may wonder why we seem to be undercutting our own price at Barnes and Noble. We're really not--it's just that direct purchase from M-Brane means a bit more money more quickly that can eventually go to the authors when this book goes into profit. But if you're shopping at B&N anyway, then by all means get it there. By the way, if you purchase it here, allow anywhere from a few hours to a day or so for delivery: we're not rigged for direct download from this site, so we send a link to you by email.

One last special detail: Anyone who buys 2020 Visions in any format (print, Nook, Kindle) from B&N, Amazon or directly from M-Brane Press will get a free subscription to the electronic (PDF) edition of M-Brane SF, our very nice monthly magazine of short speculative fiction. If you purchase from B&N or Amazon or any other retailer, just forward a copy of your order confirmation or receipt to mbranesf at gmail dot com, and we will add you to the M-Brane SF subscription list.

DOUBLE PRE-ORDER SPECIAL BEGINS!

2011-05-01T13:17:00.001-07:00

The M-Brane SF Double, by Alex Jeffers and Brandon H. Bell, is finally within days of completion. This beautiful book is due for official release May 31. People who have followed my blogs or paid attention to me on Twitter and Facebook over the past year know that I have long dreamed of publishing a book that would honor the style of the old Ace Doubles from decades ago, those wonderful books where two short novels were published back-to-back (and upside down in relation to one another), so that the book has the effect of having two front covers. Over the last two years, I have had the joy of publishing monthly issues of M-Brane SF, a couple of gorgeous anthologies, a couple of lovely single-author short fiction collections, and the new fantasy periodical Fantastique Unfettered. I adore all of these things, but this new book, the Double, has become something of the new baby of the family, the special adored one, the focus of all attention (The rest of my operations will probably be glad when it's finally released! )

While I have worked hard on this project, the work I that have done is petty, insignificant, a mere trifle compared to that of the real talent behind it, the two great writers and the one great cover artist. These three came together to make my pet project not just real but actually a thing worth doing. I am going to introduce the two authors and their stories at length below, in the form of publishing here the actual intros that I prepared for the book. But first I want to acknowledge artist Jeff Lund for making two fine, matching covers for this book which each catch an essence from the stories they introduce but which also together create the whole look that I was after for this book. Of course everyone who knows me at all knows very well that Jeff is also my life partner, but his employment as the cover artist was by no means an easy inside job. He fought me for months on actually doing the work, insisting that he wasn't qualified for it. But I knew that he could do it--because I had seen so much great work from him before--and that he was the exact artist that I needed for this very special project. This post on my Live Journal , from many months ago, tells the story of getting the covers done in more detail.

M-Brane Press is offering a fine domestic (US and Canada) pre-order special for the M-Brane SF Double: The New People/Elegant Threat, Print Edition. Buy here, using the Pay Pay button below (takes credit/debit cards and e-checks if you don't have an actual Pay Pal account) for $14.95. For this price, you will get a copy of the beautiful print edition of this book (shipping included) plus this giant slew of electronic bonuses:

1) A permanent electronic (PDF) subscription to M-Brane SF, the monthly magazine of astounding science fiction. Your subscription will begin (and never end!) with a three-issue "starter pack" consisting of issues #25, #26 and the new #27--check out a free issue with the button over in the right side bar...

2) Electronic copies of Fantastique Unfettered #1 and #2 (worth the price right there). Fantastique Unfettered is our new "Periodical of Liberated Literature," a gorgeous magazine edited by Double author Bell...

3) Electronic copies of our fabulous anthologies Things We Are Not (queer sf) and 2020 Visions (near-future sf)...

4) An electronic copy of Ergosphere, the special twelfth issue of M-Brane SF, guest-edited by Rick Novy...

5) A giant mega-bundle of the entire second year of M-Brane SF, back issues #13 through #24.

(Again, US and Canadian orders only; sorry, we can't manage high overseas shipping costs at this low price, but the print book will become available in the UK, Europe and Australia after release.)

We are giving away nearly everything we have to give away with this special. That's how terrific we think it is, and how important we think it is that people get a copy of this book. But there's one catch: The special ends by the 5/31 publication date or as soon as 100 readers order this special. As soon as order #100 is received, we will will shut down the pre-order and the book will then be available only through B&N, Amazon, etc. (This isn't just an arbitrary number or a gimmick--processing pre-orders is a lot of work, and a 100 is about as many as we want to commit to in the next couple weeks). Readers who decide to jump on this good deal should do so right now by using the Pay Pal button. Allow us up to a day to send you by email the details of your purchase, including all your download links to your fat new cache of electronically preserved fiction. The print Double won't ship to you until 5/31, but you'll have more than enough to read in the meantime.

Here's the nice, easy-to-use Buy Now button, and please continue reading below to learn more about the authors and their novels...

$14.95 includes M-Brane SF Double (print), and everything mentioned above.

he fact that Alex Jeffers does not quite yet seem to be a common household name among readers of speculative fiction is a deplorable situation that I mean to do whatever little I can to correct. A writer of fantasy, science fiction and difficult-to-categorize literature, Jeffers has been one of my favorite writers that I have encountered over the last couple of years. He is a storyteller of remarkable imagination, a wordsmith of great talent and an editor’s dream of a writer with whom to work on a project.

I first learned of Jeffers when he offered a story for my GLBT science fiction anthology Things We Are Not (2009). I accepted “Composition with Barbarian and Animal”—a gorgeous, exotic, enthralling tale—for the book and counted myself lucky to have gotten such a nice item for my first attempt at editing an anthology. After I learned more about Alex Jeffers, I suspected that he was a writer perhaps a bit out of my league at the time (as the very small-time editor I was), and I doubted that I’d have a shot at publishing him again any time soon. But a short while later he surprised me with “Jannicke’s Cat” (M-Brane SF #10, November 2009). And it was then, while reading this achingly lovely story, that I learned of the singular world of Rahab, an oceanic place with but a few small islands where humans live in interstellar isolation from their cousins on other distant, out-of-reach planets. There befell a situation that resulted in the birth of no more females to the last generation of women on that world. Jannicke, an old woman at the time of the story, is one of the last of her sex, in a soon-to-be all-male world where the very survival of the species may be in peril.

Fast-forward many, many years: Science found a way where nature didn’t, and the humans—the men—of Rahab survive and flourish as humans always have, living their lives, dreaming their dreams, marrying and having families. But something else also remained the same as it had always been: most males were still born heterosexually oriented but they would live their lives never knowing a single living woman. This biological, existential conundrum and one possible solution to it are at the core of The New People. If, based on what I have just said, you have already formed expectations or made presumptions about what you will find in The New People, you are probably wrong. Jeffers surprises throughout both with the details of the story and the way his vividly rendered characters navigate through it.

When Jeffers submitted The New People to me over a year ago, I was frankly stunned. Because he submitted it for consideration as a story for the normal run of the M-Brane SF magazine, taking me at my word that I had no upper limit on word count. Indeed I do not have a firm upper word count limit for the magazine, but a thirty thousand word novella that I suspected would be fantastic (before I’d even read a single word) seemed altogether too much to treat as a normal submission. So, what to do? I had already been chattering on the web about my dream of creating a new book in the old style of the Ace Doubles, but I was still pretty far away from committing to the actual doing of it, and I had no idea what I’d be able to get for its content. But as I started reading The New People, I realized that I had one half of my Double in hand already. It was the perfect situation all around: I had one story that would work beautifully for the new book, and it was a story that had long deserved but had never gotten a proper presentation to the public.

As with the story that forms the other half of this book, Jeffers’ tale is one stand-alone piece of what we must hope will one day come forth as part of a much larger story. Jeffers says he has in process a work called A Boy’s History of the World, which will incorporate all of his Rahab stories. This is something that ranks highly on my personal list of Books That I Wish Existed. But for now, I will content myself with the terrific pleasure of being the one to point toward this great open window into that world. Enjoy.

—Christopher Fletcher, Editor, M-Brane SF

Foreword to Elegant Threat by Brandon H. Bell..

have been telling readers about Brandon H. Bell since I first read his work in the slush-pile the first month I was producing M-Brane SF magazine. In the slightly more than two years since M-Brane SF #1, I have published Brandon’s stories twice more in the magazine and in a couple of anthologies (Things We Are Not and the M-Brane SF Quarterly #1), and I have been gratified to see, as his list of publishing credits steadily lengthens, that other editors are seeing what I see in this extraordinarily imaginative and intelligent writer.

The story you are about to read is a marvel, and the realization in print of a project that Brandon Bell has been working on for a long time. He has created a rich, lavish, fascinating and sometimes frightening Post-Singularity, interplanetary milieu. Some lucky readers have had a chance to peer into it a couple of times already: one of his first published short stories, “Best Gift” (Return to Luna, Hadley Rille 2008) was, as Bell describes it on his website, “a tale about Sterling Suits, Neo-Dromedaries, and the persistence of love, trust, and faith on the lunar surface.” The next glimpse into this strange world was in M-Brane SF #5 (June 2009), with the story “Abraham Discovers an Artifact Impenetrable to All Harm,” an enigmatic and startling story about an unusual family struggling to make their way in the universe at the edges of an impending war between humans and Post-humans. These stories were so fascinating that my only complaints were that they were too short and that there weren’t enough of them. But now, with Elegant Threat, we finally get to spend a longer time in Bell’s world.

Elegant Threat—the story of people who wrangle aquatic fauna from the harrowing tides of the moon Shanama against a backdrop of imminent conflict with the mysterious Post-humans and sectarian strife within their own ranks—was envisioned by its author as the first of a triptych of stories that will eventually comprise a much longer novel. But this story herein—a novella of about thirty thousand words—is also complete, self-contained and will satisfy readers even if the other portions are never seen (though all readers of this one will certainly clamor for the rest and Bell likely shall feel obliged to produce it soon enough).

Bell has deployed an interesting and unexpected literary device in telling this story. Its subtitle, On the Demise of Captain Fantomas Patton-Guerrero and Loss of La Amenaza Elegente, gives the reader a big clue up front essentially how the story is going to end, as does the very first chapter’s final line: “…La Amenaza Elegente dropped toward the planet, beginning its descent toward the place that would soon become its grave.” As with an ancient Greek tragic play or a Shakespeare drama, we go into it knowing that Captain Fantomas and his ship are doomed but the fascination lies in seeing how and why this disaster unfolds. And even though the ending is foretold from the earliest pages, the reader will not see coming the stunning sequence of events that bring about that ending. This way of telling the story, as if it is a recounting of an event that the reader may have heard of before, adds an alluring patina of history to it. But what really makes this story and this way of telling it succeed is the way that Bell draws such lovely, nuanced characters and makes the reader really care about them enough to hope that maybe somehow, against all odds, they will still avert tragedy even though we already know that the Amenaza is not going home again.

Now, without further delay, please visit spectacular, deadly Shanama and witness the fate of La Amenaza Elegente.

—Christopher Fletcher, Editor, M-Brane SF

FU gets fantastic review

2011-03-28T06:44:00.001-07:00

I am reprinting here a great review of our periodical Fantastique Unfettered. But you may want to instead visit its original posting at the Future Fire site because links to a lot of the writers are intact over there.

Reviewed by Nader Elhefnawy

M-Brane Press, the publisher of small press science fiction magazine M-Brane SF, launched a fantasy counterpart to that publication last year, Fantastique Unfettered (or FU). Under the editorship of Brandon H. Bell, FU has as its stated purpose the publication of ‘well-written, compellingly readable, original stories of fantasist fiction,’ both short fiction and poetry, which is ‘unfettered by traditional copyright,’ so that all its content carries a Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license.

The authors appearing in the premier, Winter 2010 issue of the publication, which has eleven short stories and three poems in its 140 pages, offer a wide range of approaches and settings. Perhaps exemplary in this respect is the story to which the issue’s cover art is devoted, Michael J. Shell’s ‘The Death of a Soybean’, which presents an off-the-wall alternate version of the Manhattan Project and World War II. More a uchronia than an alternate history, ‘Soybean’ surreally scrambles the events of our timeline rather than exploring a counterfactual scenario, with Robert J. Oppenheimer just a Los Alamos security guard who happens to be eccentrically preoccupied with an idea called ‘nuclear fission,’ and a femme fatale lady physicist with the unlikely name of Maladi scheming, seducing and killing her way to fame, fortune and a place in scientific history.

Offering a nightmare complement to Shell’s noirish dream is Kaolin Fire’s ‘The Aetheric God’, in which a young technician named Asher who spends his days building steam-men for his employer ‘Chief Technician’ Father Isaiah. He spends his nights hiding in the cathedral’s library-desperately burying himself in its books to try and quiet ‘the voice of God within his head’ calling for Asher’s mutilation and destruction, a crisis that soon enough moves out of his head and into the physical world.

Going in a sharply different direction from either is Alan Frackelton’s ‘A Blessing From the Blind Boy’, the story of a disgruntled gaucho named Juan Hernandez who burglarizes the mansion of his ruthless landowner employer somewhere (and somewhen) in twentieth century Latin America, putting Hernandez’s young son Ramon in the center of a cycle of revenge, loss and longing.

In a lighter, more fanciful vein, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz’s ‘Breaking the Spell’ (a reprint from Philippine Speculative Fiction 4) has for its protagonist a little girl who becomes fascinated with the miniature world her father keeps under a bell jar. While her father’s fairy tales never ring true for her (she is ‘determined not to kiss a prince’), entry into that little world becomes the object of her own fairy tale quest.

However, in contrast with exoticism, the issue favors toward contemporary contexts, and compared with the world-changing (and rather nihilistic) events of Shell’s story, or the intense confrontation with the supernatural of Fire’s, subtler uses of speculative elements inside quieter, more personal stories. The descriptor that came to mind when I read Frank Ard’s story of a love triangle between a man, mer-man and woman ‘Small Fish in the Deep Blue’ is ‘slipstream.’ Others incorporate surreal intrusions into what might otherwise be a realist narrative, like in Mary J. Daley’s ‘The Book of Barnyard Souls’, in which a young farm girl named Kalee receives nightly visits from the souls of deceased animals; Natania Barron’s ‘Without a Light’, in which a sixth-grade teacher in a small town starts an affair with a mysterious colleague; Elizabeth Creith’s ‘Five Oak Leaves’, where a man encounters a young changeling girl living on the street.

In Anna Manthiram’s ‘Boris’, a meditation via fortune cookie-like clothing tags on the titular character’s involvements with various women; Christopher Green’s ‘Holding Hands’, in which a Vietnam veteran encounters a girl he left behind at thirteen many years later in his wife’s ballet studio; or Michael J. Deluca’s ‘The Driftwood Chair’, in which a man roams the beach trying to cope with the loss of a love; it is possible to blink and miss the speculative touch.

By and large the sensibility is ‘literary,’ and the quality is high (the two, of course, not always the same thing), virtually all the stories assembled here working, though to different degrees and in different ways. ‘Death of a Soybean’ succeeds on the strength of its pacing and strangeness, Fire’s ‘The Aetheric God’ on the nightmarish force of the telling. The poems offer similar grandiosity, particularly Bruce Boston’s rich, dark, chaotic ‘The Time Traveler Leaves History Behind’ and Alexandra Seidel’s glittering ‘In Babel.’ Daley’s touching ‘Barnyard Souls,’ is the most emotionally resonant story in the volume, though the pieces by Frackleton and Creith also succeed on this level.

That combination of quality and variety means that Fantastique Unfettered #1 offers something for many different tastes, in what seems to me a very promising start for the new publication.

This review is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, (c) Nader Elhefnawy. You are free to republish this review anywhere you like, so long as you give attribution to the author and to The Future Fire and keep this license text intact in any copy.

M-Brane SF Quarterly #2 has been released

2011-03-20T11:14:00.001-07:00

My real job--the one that provides my paycheck--got rather unexpectedly busy over the last couple weeks, causing me to fall behind on normal updates in the M-Brane world, such as the release of M-Brane SF Quarterly #2 last week (thank you to the writers who have done more to spread the word on this so far than I have). This is the second volume of a print book series collecting the fiction from three electronic issues of M-Brane SF. Also, this book contains some items not included those issues: two spectacular stories by Zachary Jernigan and an interview with him. It's such a lovely book, way worth the $9.95 on Amazon. M-Brane SF makes a couple dollars profit on each sale, and all of this money goes right back into continuing the zine and our other publishing projects, so picking up a copy is a good way to support us and also to find some really fine fiction.

TWAN gets nice write-up at new Rise Reviews site

2011-01-01T11:46:00.001-08:00

The new site, Rise Reviews has launched with a slew of reviews of indie press books, including our very own Things We Are Not (2009), the anthology of queer speculative fiction. Curated by managing editor Bart Leib (co-founder of Crossed Genres) and a staff of well-qualified reviewers, Rise Reviews' mission is to provide a review space for publications that pay writers less than pro rates but which pay at least something. This is welcome thing especially after Tangent Online moved recently to drop coverage of non-pro publications.

As the editor and publisher of Things We Are Not, I was very flattered that reviewer Kelly Jennings had a lot of good things to say about the stories and that she also really got where I was coming from philosophically with the project. Also, since we haven't sold any copies of it in recent memory, I admit that I hope this new attention on the book will attract some more readers--readers that I hope will also pick up from Amazon some of our other titles as well, like Cesar Torres' The 12 Burning Wheels, Derek J. Goodman's Machina, Rick Novy's 2020 Visions, and Hadley Rille Books' The Aether Age. All qualify for Free Super Saver Shipping on orders of $25 or more, you know!

FU #1 RELEASED

2010-12-23T19:50:00.000-08:00

The inaugural issue of our beautiful new fantasy quarterly Fantastique Unfettered is officially released in print today. Edited by Brandon H. Bell (Aether Age co-creator and M-Brane contributor), FU is a "Periodical of Liberated Literature," all of its content released under a Creative Commons license. As such, we think it is probably unique, and we know of nothing else quite like it. As a physical object, FU #1 is a delight to hold in one's hands. It's lovingly designed and full of terrific artwork to compliment the really amazing writing (11 items fiction and three poems).

We're using a new printer and distribution system for this first edition of FU, and its availability will probably trickle through the system gradually over the next few days, but it is available right now on the Barnes & Noble site with a sweet discount. Our cover price is $9.95, but it can be had on B&N for $7.01. We can't even sell it that cheaply directly, so we are encouraging everyone to get over there and grab it up. We do not have ebook versions available yet, but will have news of that forthcoming reasonably soon.

Please visit the FU site for more information on the magazine, its content and philosophy.

2020 VISIONS: We'd like to sell another 100 copies this month

2010-12-06T13:22:00.000-08:00

Hi, readers! We know that many, many publishers are vying to get on your holiday shopping list in these final weeks before the end of the year, but may we suggest considering some of the lovely treasures and values available from M-Brane Press? Just published is the stunning 2020 Visions, edited by Rick Novy:

Some storytellers use the distant future as the setting to make fantastic extrapolations and to explore compelling ideas. In this volume, however, the writers look forward a mere decade and present stunning scenarios, reveal exciting possibilities and warn against the harrowing pitfalls that may lie just a few steps ahead of us. What will life be like ten years from now? Sixteen extraordinary writers offer their own mind-bending answers to that questions, their spectacular 2020 Visions...

Authors include Mary Robinette Kowal, Cat Rambo, Alex Wilson, David Gerrold, Jason Ridler, Alethea Kontis and many other geniuses. This is a really good book, y'all. I'd say so even if it wasn't an M-Brane Press title. The premise is very...well, timely, and this is just such a great group of writers. Each story is amazing.

We'd like to sell at least a 100 more copies of it before Christmas. That's really not that many, but it's a reasonable goal and would make us very happy to reach it. We suggest purchasing it from Amazon, where one can take advantage of free shipping on orders of $25 or more. But the book is only $13.95, so to reach that $25 threshold, one might consider adding another M-Brane title. We've created a little shopping list here on Amazon to help out with that.

You might also consider picking up some fine titles (also available on Amazon) from our good friends at Hadley Rille Books (one of the most interesting publishers in the speculative fiction lately)...in particular The Aether Age! For more information on the amazing The Aether Age, please visit the Aether Age site.

2020 VISIONS released!

2010-12-01T20:28:00.000-08:00

The fabulous anthology of near-future sf, edited by Rick Novy, has finally, after a few little production snags, become available to the reading public. It's available as a trade paperback for $13.95 on here on Amazon. Those of you who pre-ordered copies can expect them to ship to you within a few days. Readers who did not pre-order should grab it on Amazon right away and take advantage of "Free Super-Saver Shipping!" on orders of $25.00 or more by also buying this week's other major release, The Aether Age (if I may make a suggestion).

I'm very proud of 2020 Visions and the fine work that editor Rick and all the great authors did for it. It's a very good anthology, and I think people will be duly impressed. Same goes for the amazing Aether Age, so just go ahead and get them both while you're at Amazon!

AETHER AGE goes on sale today!

2010-11-29T06:43:00.000-08:00

After a year and a half of anticipation, from the summer of 2009 when we dreamed up the Aether Age universe in online discussions, the book is finally done and available for purchase. We'd love to see some excellent sales of it today--which happens to also be the fifth anniversary of our publisher, Hadley Rille Books. So go to Amazon to buy your copy of The Aether Age, and consider also picking up another of Hadley Rille's many fine titles (just search "Hadley Rille Books" on Amazon, and you'll find a lot of cool books). And consider, also, picking up a copy of the recently-released M-Brane SF Quarterly #1.

See the Aether Age trailer.

2020 VISIONS pre-order continues; publication slightly delayed; option to buy it with M-BRANE QUARTERLY

2010-11-15T13:58:00.000-08:00

We expected today to be release day for 2020 Visions, the incredible anthology of near-future sf edited by Rick Novy (more info here). My own "real life" schedule, however, afforded us some unexpected opportunities for delay. Anyway, it's going up to the printer tomorrow, which means we'll likely see it for sale on Amazon and probably some other places by end of the month. While any further delay is a disappointment, there is a silver lining or two: we will extend the pre-order special and add another attractive way to obtain this book (rest of this post is to be read in TV pitch-man tone):

1) Order 2020 Visions NOW! using this Pay Pal button below for only $13.95 [ FREE SHIPPING!] and get for FREE a one-year subscription to the electronic edition (PDF) of M-Brane SF, the spectacular zine of awesomeness!!

But that's not AALLLLL....!!!

2) Order 2020 Visions this way instead (button below) and get not only the free subscription to M-Brane SF but also a print copy of the astounding M-Brane SF Quarterly #1, the trade paperback collection of the last three months' of the zine's stories, plus some bonus items. ALLLL yours for $19.95!! That's like getting two great books for the price of...about one and a half.

The image is of the full cover (front, back and spine) of 2020 Visions; art by Jonathon Fowler, design by James Fowler.

2020 VISIONS US pre-order begins

2010-10-13T19:11:00.000-07:00

Sometimes storytellers use the far future as the setting to make fantastic extrapolations and to explore compelling ideas. In this volume, however, the writers look forward a mere decade and present stunning scenarios, explore exciting possibilities and warn against the harrowing pitfalls that may lie just a few steps ahead of us. What will life be like ten years from now? Sixteen extraordinary writers offer their own mind-bending answers to that question, their singular 2020 Visions…

Editor Rick Novy has gathered together an incredible array of writers and stories to look ahead to the future ten years hence:

Mary Robinette Kowal “Birthright”
Sheila Finch “The Persistence of Butterflies”
Randy Henderson “A Shelter for Living Things”
Jason S. Ridler “Showing Light”
Ernest Hogan “Radiation is Groovy, Kill the Pigs”
David Lee Summers “The Revelation of Thought”
Jeff Spock “Teh Afterl1fe”
Emily Devenport “If the Sun’s at Five O’Clock, It Must be Yellow Daisies”
Cat Rambo “Therapy Buddha”
Jack Mangan “Dead Rookies”
David Boop “Organ Cloning While You Wait”
Spencer Ellsworth “The Black Plague of Our Generation”
Gareth L. Powell “The Bigger The Star, The Faster It Burns”
Alethea Kontis “Pocket Full of Posey”
Alex Wilson “Nervewrecking”
David Gerrold “Time Capsule 2120: Actual Comments from Lunar Tourists”

(The picture above is a proof of the cover image by artist Jonathon Fowler, inspired by Alex Wilson's "Nervewrecking." We'll show the completed version with titling and back-cover text soon.)

Publication of 2020 Visions is set for November 15. We are offering a pre-order special for the print edition starting immediately: $13.95, shipping included, plus a complimentary one-year electronic subscription to M-Brane SF Magazine. Apologies to readers outside the US, but we can't offer this special outside the US at this price due to shipping costs, though the book will be available in other normal channels after publication. US domestic readers may use the Pay Pal button below to place their order (one does not need a Pay Pal account to use Pay Pal; credit cards and e-checks may be used by way of Pay Pal).

Hella Cheap PDF sale! Limited time!

2010-08-25T22:35:00.000-07:00

For a limited time--so limited it could end at any moment--we are offering cheap PDF-format copies of our book titles and cheap 12-issue subscriptions to the PDF edition of the magazine M-Brane SF. These prices are stupid-cheap: $2.00 for the books and $4.00 for the zine subscription. We are doing this as part of Gud Magazine's "First Come First Sale."

Available books are Cesar Torres beautiful collection The 12 Burning Wheels; Derek J. Goodman's stunning quartet of novelettes and novellas, Machina; our LGBT science fiction anthology Things We Are Not; and Ergosphere, the special twelfth issue of the zine guest-edited by Rick Novy. Additional information about these books is located elsewhere on this site. The buttons below will take you to Pay Pal to order the book selections and the magazine subscription. Allow a day or so for me to process your order (book PDFs and the zine will be delivered by via web links that will be sent to you in email).

BOOKS for $2.00!

THE MAGAZINE: $4.00 for 12 issues

FORTHCOMING BOOKS

2010-06-10T16:23:00.001-07:00

Information pending on:

The Aether Age (with Hadley Rille Books)
2020 Visions, edited by Rick Novy)
The M-Brane Double #1, by Alex Jeffers and Brandon Bell)

Order MACHINA

2010-03-04T12:15:00.001-08:00

"We so rarely give thought to the machines that surround us, but just because we ignore them does not mean they don't have stories to tell. Monolithic factory machines might just hide a divine presence, robots from a forgotten war lay in wait in the sewers for a time when they can rise again, creatures of steel and steam patrol the skies, and a metal giant made for destruction learns emotions from a teenage boy. In these four tale, Derek J. Goodman shows us just what mysteries the mechanical world may hold."

M-Brane Press presents Derek J. Goodman's collection of sf novelettes and novellas Machina. The book starts with the spectacular "Dea Ex Machina," which has been adapted as an opera for an upcoming production by the Crucible in Oakland California, and also includes the amazing steampunk novella "The Twister Sisters"; the loving homage to 1980's-era sci-fi and teen movies "Those Were the Days," and the stunning manga-influenced boy/machine love story "As Wide as the Sky, and Twice as Explosive."

Mark Streshinsky, the librettist and director of Machine, the opera based on Derek's story, provides an introduction to the collection. The cover art is by Dan Galli.

The book will become available in print and as an ebook from Amazon on April 1, but we are offering several direct-from-M-Brane pre-order deals starting immediately.

1) Buy Machina in print (trade paperback, 236 pages) for $12.95 (shipping included!). Get a complimentary one-year subscription to the PDF edition of M-Brane SF!

2) Buy the electronic version of Machina in either PDF, .prc(mobi), or .epub formats for $4.95. Get a complementary one-year subscription to the PDF edition of M-Brane SF!

3) Buy Machina together with Cesar Torres' The 12 Burning Wheels (both in trade paperback) for only $14.95! Or with Ergosphere, ten stunning stories from the pages of M-Brane SF, for $15.95! Shipping included, as well as a complimentary one-year subscription to the PDF edition of M-Brane SF!

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Cesar Torres' THE 12 BURNING WHEELS

2010-02-04T12:57:00.001-08:00

Writer of weird and spectacular fiction Cesar Torres has created an astounding 12-item cycle of stories that he calls The 12 Burning Wheels, and somehow it has happened that I have the great privilege of bring these stories into print under a single cover.

1) The print edition of The 12 Burning Wheels will sell for on Amazon for $7.99 plus shipping, but order it now from M-Brane SF for only $7.99, shipping included. Purchase includes a free subscription to the PDF edition of M-Brane SF.

2) Buy the print editions of The 12 Burning Wheels and the queer anthology Things We Are Not (TWAN) for only $18.99, shipping included. This is a serious deal, since TWAN by itself sells for almost that. This option, too, includes a free subscription to the M-Brane PDF.

3) Buy The 12 Burning Wheels and the print edition of Ergosphere (aka M-Brane #12, edited by Rick Novy) for only $15.99. The M-Brane subscription is included with this option as well.

Here is the Pay Pal link for them (a drop-down menu accommodates the three options). One does not need a Pay Pal account to use Pay Pal: one may use credit and debit cards, and checks by way of their e-check system.

4) This book is also available in these electronic formats: .prc/MOBI (readable on the Kindle), PDF (readable and printable on a computer and many other devices), and EPUB (readable on most devices, including the Nook). Purchase of these formats also includes a complimentary subscription to the PDF edition of M-Brane SF. Here is the Pay Pal link for them (a drop-down menu accommodates the three options). Only $3.99!