As Space X's Starship rocket takes to the skies this October, Space Cat Press unveils our own out-of-this-world series of launch events. Our first title, Desert Moonfire: The Men Who Raced to Space is now on sale. To mark its lift-off, we invite you to a book fair, a FREE writing workshop and a book launch featuring model rockets, moon cake, and an explosive story! All this and our first open submission window coming up.
Does the world need another movie about a middle-aged white man riding a spaceship into the dark to save the world? AD ASTRA is a conspicuously old-fashioned film. Yet its weary dystopian mood belies the gripping space adventure tropes. The movie’s true subject is how the Right Stuff of Space Race heroism morphed into the Toxic Maculinity of our own age. As Brad Pitt pursues long-lost father Tommy Lee Jones to the ends of the solar system, the male heart-to-heart has never been more one-way or awkward.
SEMIOSIS is an extraordinary First Contact novel where humans are the alien invaders. It isn’t the first to feature intelligent plant life but this is no 'Day of the Triffids'. Burke's talking plants will rewire your synapses. Unpredictable, urgent, occasionally bloody, the story is page-turning yet its characters and themes embed themselves deeply. Like snow-vine thorns.
Space Cat Delivery So here I am, clutching a pair of scissors, with our first box of Desert Moonfire: The Men Who Raced to Space. The box is heavy. And it holds seven years of work, on and off, between other writing projects and life-stuff. And even more exciting, it's Space Cat Press' first title. … Continue reading News: Delivery Day at SCP
‘The Bookman’ by Lavie Tidhar, is quite simply, tremendous fun. It’s a rollicking steampunk adventure that mashes together fantasy, sci-fi and Gothic with a smattering of ancient mythology. Only here can you find characters called Orphan and Gilgamesh jostling for space alongside Isabella Beeton, Karl Mark and Tom Thumb. And then there's the mysterious Bookman, a terrorist who favours exploding books. Yes, the book is mightier than the sword.
Space Cat Press has been in orbit for two months now and what a blast it's been! We've put up five reviews, three blogs on space exploration in popular culture, marked two space anniversaries, and enjoyed an amazing day out at Edge Lit 2019. Now the countdown begins to our first book release. Desert Moonfire: The Men Who Raced To Space will be on sale from the 21st of September. Catch our series of upcoming launch events.
Aliette de Bodard’s magical urban fantasy, set in a ruinous fin de siècle Paris, casts quite a spell. This sprawling narrative of displaced people navigating a war-torn city blends horror and wonder with all too human dilemmas. As I peel away from the final pages, I am still held fast by House Hawthorn’s spikes. Still possessed by the charred shadow of a water-dragon’s passing.
Robin Trigg’s chilly crime novel, NIGHT SHIFT, borrows its name from Antarctica’s six months season of darkness. ‘The cold hit me like a hammer. But never had I taken such an unpolluted breath.’ More intense than the icy embrace of this wilderness are the claustrophobia and close-quarters social dynamics facing the crew of Australis mining base. Newly appointed Security Chief, Anders Nordvelt, makes up the magic number of 13 hands. What could possibly go wrong?
Strap in tight and bite down on that Geode leaf. James Worrad’s space-opera, THE SCALPEL, delivers one helluva mind-bending trip through the galaxies. Every chapter opens new concepts, any one of which could power a whole novel. If you’re thinking you're in a Star Wars bar-room brawl with more inventive swearing and carnivorous dogs called Jaqruzzils, let me tell you, things get a whole lot weirder.
Disturbing, engrossing, enormous fun. No wonder Tade Thompson’s 'Rosewater' won the Arthur C Clarke Sci-Fi award for 2019. I haven’t read such a compelling invasion story since HG Wells’ 'War of the Worlds' scared the bejasus out of us.
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