Readercon Schedule, Late Summer Events, & What's Next!

Hello all of you! First of all: the launch and first few months of having A Memory Called Empire out in the world have been amazing: really a thrilling, enormous, and wonderful experience. Thank every single one of you who has bought a book, come to an event, and/or talked about the book to your friends and community. Please do keep doing so.

READERCON

This coming weekend (7/11 - 7/14), Viv and I will be headed up to Boston for Readercon, which I’m very excited about — we go to this convention almost every year, but this year will be the first time either of us gets to be on programming. If you’re at the con, this is where you can find me (if I’m not in the bar…)

  • THURSDAY @ 9 PM - Reading (Salon C)

  • FRIDAY @ 3 PM - Panel: ‘The Horrors of Being Female’ (Salon 4)

  • FRIDAY @ 4 PM - Panel: ‘Why Does Space Get the Opera and Cyber the Punk?’ (Salon 3)

  • FRIDAY @ 8 PM - Panel: ‘The Etiquette of Criticism’ (Salon B)

  • FRIDAY @ 9 PM - Autographing (Autograph Table)

  • SATURDAY @ 2 PM - Panel: ‘I Don’t Know Why I’m On This Panel’ (Salon 4)

  • SATURDAY @ 3 PM - Panel: ‘You Know, It Kinda Grows on You’ (Salon B)

LATE SUMMER EVENTS & WHAT’S NEXT

On August 6, I will have the absolutely delicious pleasure of spending the evening with Max Gladstone at Housing Works Bookstore in Manhattan, talking about his totally brilliant new novel Empress of Forever and my Teixcalaan books. Expect us to get into the weeds on rulership, ethics, science fiction, and immortality.

Empress of Forever event.png

Max Gladstone & Arkady Martine at HousingWorks

AUGUST 6, 2019, 7 PM. Event is free! But click through and get yourself a ticket.

I also have a story coming out in a new anthology from Saga Press called The Mythic Dream - release date is September 3, and I am incredibly pleased, because when else do you get to write a space opera/cyberpunk remix of the Hymns to Inanna? My story is called ‘Labbatu Takes Command of the Flagship Heaven Dwells Within’, and it is both extremely on brand and, ah. Much filthier than my usual linguistic register, but hey, Inanna is the goddess of sex and war, okay?

TheMythicDream

THE MYTHIC DREAM. Out on September 3rd! Contains me, as well as stories by Amal el-Mohtar, Sarah Gailey, Rebecca Roanhorse, J.Y. Yang, John Chu, Ann Leckie, T. Kingfisher, Carmen Maria Machado … amongst others!

PRE-ORDER HERE

After that, things get slightly puzzling — I’m in the middle of applying to new jobs, having acquired my master’s in city planning, and we may or may not be moving, and oh also I’m about ten thousand words from the end of A Desolation Called Peace, AKA Teixcalaan #2. All is transition! All is liminal! Help, etc.!

But it’s great, too. I have many, many interesting plans for what comes next from here…

Conventions, Appearances, and Some Slight Foreshadowing

Exceedingly long time no blog. I blame — oh, a multitude of things, beginning with ‘I spent a week in Mexico City talking about risk communication with people from the World Bank’, followed by ‘having your wisdom teeth out at age 33 is horrible’ and proceeding to ‘spent the summer in New York City working for the Mayor’s Office and writing some short stories and Teixcalaan #2’. I am often sleepless but never bored.

However! I return to blogging to tell you of where you may witness me in person. And to bring you some … intimations. Oracular intimations.

Appearances & Conventions, Remainder of 2018

September 28-30: First off, we’ve got the Baltimore Book Festival, this coming weekend in the Baltimore Inner Harbor! I will be at the SFWA tent all three days, and I’m on (or moderating!) the following panels:

9/28 (Friday) @ 12 PM: ‘My Muse Is My Day Job’

9/29 (Saturday) @ 11 AM: ‘…In Space!'

9/30 (Sunday) @ 1 PM: ‘The Future of Cities, the Fantasy of Cities’ (M)

October 5-7: I’ll be at New York Comic Con! I have a signing and ARC giveaway session at the Tor booth at 11 AM on Saturday the 6th, and possibly I will exist at some other locations to be determined! Details when I’ve got them, but it should be a fun time — I’ve never done a comic con from this side of the table before.

October 11-13: I’m going to Denver for the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association conference, to chat with booksellers about A MEMORY CALLED EMPIRE. I’ll be on a panel on SFF on Friday the 12th, if you happen to be there…

November 1-4: And lastly, I’ll be at World Fantasy in Baltimore the first weekend in November. Programming isn’t out yet, but I’m hoping to be able to give a reading or be on some interesting panels!

foreshadowing

In the next week or so, you’ll see me talking about a new project on Twitter — one which grew out of an adventure in microfictional cities that was inspired by Cassandra Khaw. You’ll have an opportunity to be involved in it — in several ways — but to begin with, here’s a city, and here’s an opportunity to ask a question that will help shape this project:

It is possible, the citizens of Nahal claim, to live a whole life without ever setting foot on the land: humans were never kind enough to the earth, and it deserves some peace, bothered only by a crowding of ships in faint view, a city in exile waiting to come home to ground.

Now ask, if you would — imagining that you are consulting an oracle — any question you wish, thinking of Nahal. Your questions will be answered, in one sense or another.

new website, exciting publication news, and con appearances in Europe

Well, let's just do this all at once, shall we?

Hi. I'm Arkady, I write speculative fiction when I'm not writing Byzantine & Armenian academic history or planning cities, I (currently) live in Baltimore with my wife Vivian Shaw -- it's weird having a fixed address, but I've got one now, and I rather like it -- and I have just sold my first novel, along with its sequel, to Tor Books, where Devi Pillai will be my editor.

I'd tell you the title of the novel if I knew what it was. Title of novel status: assailing Fortress Tor Marketing with a trebuchet loaded with water balloons. The titles go sploosh and dissipate rapidly. In hopes of loading the trebuchet with something a little more substantive I'm currently rereading Kalpa Imperial: the greatest empire that never was by Angélica Gorodischer, which has been gorgeously translated into English by Ursula Le Guin. I recommend it even if you aren't trying to find a title for your space opera about imperialism, the colonized mind, institutional memory, and plot-bearing poetry contests.

I do have some lovely press for it already, though, and that I can share: http://www.tor.com/2017/07/26/arkady-martine-debut-space-opera-announcement/ It should, god willing and the creek don't rise, be published in 2019.

I am currently engrossed in the first round of edits for said novel, which means that the fact that I am also leaving for two weeks in Scandinavia tomorrow evening is hilariously both wonderful and terrible: going to Scandinavia! Sweden -- for my very own Byzantium and SFF conference, Reception Histories of the Future! Finland -- for WorldCon 75, the first WorldCon I've ever been to!

but my edits! (I expect I will be editing on planes.)

Schedule of where you might find me:

UPPSALA, SWEDEN (AUGUST 4-6) - Reception Histories of the Future: a conference on Byzantinisms, Speculative Fiction, and the Literary Heritage of Medieval Empire

Friday August 4th

  • Opening Lecture
  • Panel - Space Empires: Roman or Post-Roman? AKA Rhomaioi and Barbaroi in Space

Saturday August 5th

  • Panel: Histories of the Future: Apocalypse as a Future-State, Ends of the World, and the Fall of Empires
  • Discussion: What has Athens to do with Jerusalem - or Byzantium to do with the 21st Century?

Sunday August 6th

  • Panel: Empire and its dissidents: reading the speculative fiction of empire and conquest through postcolonial eyes (moderator)
  • Panel: After the decline and fall - decadence in SFF

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN (AUGUST 7, 8:30 PM) - An evening at the Nobel Museum - What stories does science tell? From psychohistory to planet-busting superweapons.

  • In which I get to moderate an amazing panel of SFF authors, including Kameron Hurley, Elizabeth Bear, Scott Lynch, Fran Wilde, and Jo Walton.

HELSINKI, FINLAND (AUGUST 9-12) - WorldCon 75

Thursday August 10

  • Panel: Fanfic As A Writing School (10 AM)
  • Panel: Reimagining Worlds With Speculative Poetry (9 PM)

Friday August 11

  • Panel: Fantasy Warfare Not Based In Medieval Methods (10 AM)

And after that I'm just wandering around the con, having a lovely time!