Life can exist anywhere. And anywhere there is life, there is home.
In the swirling clouds of Venus, George-Étienne and his children are one of a few families of la colonie living on floating plant-like trawlers, salvaging what they can in the fierce acid rain and crackling storms. Outside is deadly for the unprepared or unwary, but the planet’s atmosphere is far from the only threat a family can face.
For the surface of Venus carries its own secrets, too. In the depths, there is a wind that shouldn’t exist. For George-Étienne and the House of Styx, harnessing it may be worth risking all.
“This electrifying planetary adventure features a hardscrabble family that earnestly addresses issues of addiction, gender, sexuality, and disability while surviving storms of all sorts in the hostile clouds of Venus. Highly recommended.” – Library Journal (Starred Review)
“A stunning new sci-fi family drama that admirably shoulders the burden of two heavy genres and distills them into an exhilarating and heart-breaking journey of discovery.” – SciFiNow
“Künsken’s vivid worldbuilding is a knockout… This is a must-read.” – Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
We’re so delighted to see three of our titles nominated for an Aurora Award!
The Quantum War by Derek Künsken and A Broken Darkness by Premee Mohamed are nominated for Best Novel, and These Lifeless Things by Premee Mohamed is nominated for Best Novelette/Novella.
Nominated by members of the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association, this year’s Aurora Awards are made up of 12 categories with five nominees each. The winners will be announced at an online awards ceremony on 13 August 2022, hosted by When Words Collide. Visit here to see the full list of nominees!
We’re thrilled to be wishing Derek Künsken’s The Quantum War a very happy book birthday!
The latest instalment in the completely brilliant Quantum Evolution series, it’s packed with stunningly vivid worldbuilding this beautifully nuanced space adventure series is a must read for any sci-fi fan.
The war rages onward and the Union’s premier fighter pilots, the Homo Eridanus, start encountering deadly resistance from strange pilots on the Congregate side.
Among wreckage, they find that new Congregate pilots are, in fact, Homo quantus, with strange wiring and AI connections.
At the same time, the Puppets come to the Union with offers of an alliance for a dangerous price: the rescue of the geneticist Antonio Del Casal who is a captive on Venus, with over a hundred Homo quantus.
Only one person might be able to break through the Congregate defenses at Venus, and he’s a con man.
“An audacious con job, scintillating future technology, and meditations on the nature of fractured humanity.” — Yoon Ha Lee
“Technology changes us—even our bodies—in fundamental ways, and Kunsken handles this wonderfully.” — Cixin Liu
“I have no problems raving about this book. A truly wild backdrop of space-opera with wormholes, big space-fleet conflict and empires…. What could go wrong?” — Brad K. Horner
We’re incredibly excited to say the third of our Solaris Satellites has launched! Pollen From a Future Harvest by Derek Künsken is out today!
The Solaris Satellites series brings new, exciting voices to the page, with each novella available in limited signed edition paperback, eBook and audiobook, plus a digital or print season pass giving readers release day access to all three 2021 novellas.
Major Chenesai Okonkwo is an Auditor for the Sub-Saharan Union.
Her mission: to find out if the Sixth Expeditionary Force’s newly discovered time gate has been compromised. Is the Union’s revolutionary discovery already doomed, eleven years in the future?
But there is another, more personal mission. The possible murder of her husband remains unsolved. But are the two things connected? Can she navigate the world of aliens, spies, politics and time paradoxes to find the truth, and save her people’s future?
Discover the beginnings of the Quantum Evolution with The House of Styx, the start of a groundbreaking new series set 250 years before The Quantum Magician .
Life can exist anywhere. And anywhere there is life, there is home. In the swirling clouds of Venus, the families of la colonie live on floating plant-like trawlers, salvaging what they can in the fierce acid rain and crackling storms. Outside is dangerous, but humankind’s hold on the planet is fragile and they spend most of their days simply surviving.
But Venus carries its own secrets, too. In the depths, there is a wind that shouldn’t exist. And the House of Styx wants to harness it.
“Künsken has, to my mind, already established a place as one of the best pure hard science writers of the current generation, and this book is further evidence of that. — Rich Horton, Locus
Künsken’s vivid worldbuilding is a knockout…This is a must-read. — Publishers Weekly, starred review
“This electrifying planetary adventure features a hardscrabble family that earnestly addresses issues of addiction, gender, sexuality, and disability while surviving storms of all sorts in the hostile clouds of Venus. Highly recommended.” — The Library Journal, starred review
We are delighted to reveal the out-of-this-world cover for The Quantum War by Derek Künsken!
The third instalment in the bestselling Quantum Evolution series, The Quantum War is out in paperback and eBook 12th October 2021.
Art by Justin Adams. Design by Sam Gretton.
Excited? Well here’s the blurb:
The Union-Congregate war rages onward and the Union’s premier fighter pilots, the Homo Eridanus, start encountering deadly resistance from strange pilots on the Congregate side. Among wreckage, they find that new Congregate pilots aren’t human, but Homo quantus, with strange wiring and AI connections.
At the same time, the Puppets come to the Union with offers of an alliance for a dangerous price: the rescue of the geneticist Antonio Del Casal who is a captive at Venus, with over a hundred Homo quantus.
The only one who might be able to break through the Congregate defences at Venus is a con man who has given up his profession.
The Quantum War by Derek Künskenis out in paperback and eBook 12th October 2021.
Want to read new work by Derek sooner? Pre-order his upcoming novella Pollen From A Future Harvest (out in May) or groundbreaking novel The House of Styx (out in hardcover April)!
Rebellion Publishing is thrilled to announce Solaris Satellites, a new series of SFF novellas delivered directly from the publisher to the reader. Solaris Satellites will begin by releasing three novellas per year, bringing new and exciting voices of genre fiction to the page. These novellas will be available as limited signed edition paperbacks and eBooks from Rebellion Publishing, in addition to audiobooks from Penguin Random House Audio.
The series starts strong with work by Premee Mohamed (Beneath the Rising), Derek Künsken (The House of Styx), and Wayne Santos (The Chimera Code) coming in 2021.
“Novellas are where the genre is at right now: a neat little package, with more room to breathe than a short but without the hulking commitment of a novel (or series!). Some of the cleverest, most exciting stories of the past few years have been novellas, and we’re thrilled to be adding more of them to our schedule.”
Commissioning editor David Thomas Moore, who the project was conceived by
These Lifeless Things by Premee Mohamed
Eva is a survivor. She’s not sure what she survived, exactly, only that They invaded without warning, killed nearly all of humanity, and relentlessly attack everyone who’s left. All she can do to stay sane, in the blockaded city that’s no longer home, is keep a journal about her struggle. Fifty years later, Eva’s words are found by Emerson, a young anthropologist sent to the ruins to study what happened. The discovery could shed light on the Invasion, turning the unyielding mystery of the short war into a story of hope and defiance.
“This novella has had a long journey to publication, and I’m thrilled that it’s found a home with Solaris and David Moore, who appreciates weirdness and unerringly finds ways to help it shine!”
Premee Mohamed on the novella
Premee Mohamed is an Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta. Her short fiction has appeared in a variety of venues, including Analog, Escape Pod, Augur, and Nightmare Magazine. Her debut novel, Beneath the Rising, is out now from Solaris Books, with the sequel A Broken Darkness due out in 2021. She can be found on Twitter at @premeesaurus and on her website at www.premeemohamed.com.
The Difficult Loves of Maria Makiling by Wayne Santos
Maria is, in no particular order: a concept artist at one of Canada’s biggest videogame studios, the goddess of Mount Makiling in the Philippines, and in love. And right now, being in love is her biggest problem. Because when Maria falls in love, tragedy and death follow—and always have. For hundreds of years. If she wants to break the cycle, it’s going to take everything a goddess, her newly-befriended, anime-obsessed demon-horse, and Canadian national treasure Margaret Atwood have to make it happen.
“The Difficult Loves of Maria Makiling is a weird, tangential story about love, diaspora dilemmas and demon horses. I was never certain it would find a home, but I’m pleased and amazed that Rebellion are crazy enough to unleash it on the world.”
Wayne Santos on the novella
Wayne Santos has been an ad copywriter, a TV scriptwriter, a magazine contributor, an editor, and a freelance writer for too many things on the Internet to count. He is the author of the science fiction/fantasy novel, The Chimera Code and is a multi-disciplinary geek with a double major in science-fiction and fantasy, specializations in novels, comics, anime, TV and film, and a minor in video games. Follow Wayne on Twitter @waynepsantos.
Pollen From A Future Harvest by Derek Künsken
Major Chenesai Okonkwo is an Auditor for the Sub-Saharan Union. Her mission: to find out why if Sixth Expeditionary Force’s newly discovered time gate has been compromised. Is the Union’s revolutionary discovery already doomed, eleven years in the future? But there is another, more personal mission. The possible murder of her husband remains unsolved. But are the two things connected? Can she navigate the world of aliens, spies, politics and time paradoxes to find the truth, and save her people’s future?
“Pollen came from the question of ‘what might evolve around a time travel device?’ It was also my first novella and my first mystery. I loved it so much that Pollen became the spark and foundation for my novel The Quantum Magician.”
Derek Künsken on the novella
After leaving molecular biology, Derek Künsken worked with street kids in Central America before finding himself in the Canadian Foreign Service. He now writes science fiction in Gatineau, Québec. His first space opera novel, The Quantum Magician was a finalist for the Aurora, the Locus and the Chinese Nebula Awards. The House of Styx, the start of a new space opera duology has received starred reviews from Publishers’ Weekly and the Library Journal. Pollen From a Future Harvest is his first novella and also part of the Quantum Evolution universe. Find out more at DerekKunsken.com or follow Derek on Twitter @DerekKunsken.
Life can exist anywhere. And anywhere there is life, there is home.
In the swirling clouds of Venus, the families of la colonie live on floating plant-like trawlers, salvaging what they can in the fierce acid rain and crackling storms. Outside is dangerous, but humankind’s hold on the planet is fragile and they spend most of their days simply surviving.
But Venus carries its own secrets, too. In the depths, there is a wind that shouldn’t exist.
And the House of Styx wants to harness it.
Buy the eBook with us from our online bookshop and get an article by Derek, The Science Behind the Quantum Magician, for free.
The House of Styx will be available in hardback April 2021, pre-order it from your favourite bookshop today!
Calling all Derek Künsken fans, we are very excited to confirm that the Quantum Evolution series will in fact be a quartet! The third instalment titled The Quantum Warwill be out from Solaris in autumn 2021, followed by a fourth book The Quantum Temple in 2023.
Derek discusses the upcoming novels with Paul Semel in an interview:
“I’ve been working through my thoughts on The Quantum Evolution series, and think that the third book will be The Quantum War, which will be about the Congregate-Union war and the nature of the involvement of the Homo quantus. It should be out in 2021.
The (previously unmentioned) fourth novel would be The Quantum Temple,and will be the story focusing on the Homo quantus exploration of the permanent wormhole network that humanity has discovered, and Belisarius’ quest to resurrect the Hortus quantus.”
We are also delighted to be publishing the novella Pollen from a Future Harvest by Derek, in 2021, along with more exciting short fiction in the next few years.
But until then, get ready for The House of Styx, the start of a brand new series, Venus Ascendant, set in the clouds of Venus 250 years before The Quantum Magician.
Out in eBook August 20th (and hardback April 2021) pre-order The House of Styx with Rebellion Publishing and receive The Science Behind the Quantum Magician for free; an article revealing the scientific thinking behind the Quantum Evolution books.
The sequel, The House of Saints, will be coming out in 2022.
We are thrilled to share the cover for The House of Styx, the first in a new blockbuster science fiction series by Derek Künsken, publishing in eBook August 2020 and hardback April 2021.
Life can exist anywhere. And anywhere there is life, there is home.
In the swirling clouds of Venus, the families of la colonie live on floating plant-like trawlers, salvaging what they can in the fierce acid rain and crackling storms. Outside is dangerous, but humankind’s hold on the planet is fragile and they spend most of their days simply surviving.
But Venus carries its own secrets, too. In the depths, there is a wind that shouldn’t exist.
And the House of Styx wants to harness it.
Derek Künsken has built genetically engineered viruses, worked with street children and refugees in Latin America, served as a Canadian diplomat, and, most importantly, taught his son about super-heroes and science. His short fiction has appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Beneath Ceaseless Skies and multiple times in Asimov’s Science Fiction. His stories have been adapted into audio podcasts, reprinted in various Year’s Best anthologies, and translated into multiple languages. They have also been short-listed for various awards, and won the Asimov’s Readers’ Award in 2013. He tweets from @derekkunsken, blogs at BlackGate.com, and makes his internet home at DerekKunsken.com
