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You are here: Home / Archives for future

The Stranded by Sarah Daniels

July 27, 2022 By achuka Leave a Comment

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A gripping near-future thriller: love triangles, betrayals and fights for freedom in a world turned upside-down. Impressive debut.

Welcome to the Arcadia. Once a luxurious cruise ship, now it is home to the stranded. For forty years, they have lived, and died, on the water. A place of extreme haves and have-nots, gangs and make-shift shelters, its people are tyrannized by a country they can see but can’t get to. A country that says it doesn’t want them. Esther is a loyal citizen, working flat-out for a rare chance to live a life on land. Nik is a rebel, intent on liberating the Arcadia once and for all. Together, they will change the future…

Follow the author on Instagram:

 

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A post shared by Sarah M Daniels (@sarahdanielsbooks)

Filed Under: YA Tagged With: cruise, debut, future, ship, thriller

The Blue Book of Nebo by Manon Steffan Ros

January 24, 2022 By achuka Leave a Comment

ACHUKA Book of the Day 25 Jan 2021

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“A curiously sweet-tempered novel that finds the upside of global catastrophe.” KIRKUS

The book’s jacket is a lovely rich dark blue, almost black. Bible-black, Dylan Thomas said. But you can tell when a book is a Bible, without even looking at the spine for the title. You just know. My book doesn’t look like an important book, but all books are just words strung together.
[from the opening chapter]

Dylan was six when The End came, back in 2018; when the electricity went off for good, and the ‘normal’ 21st century world he knew disappeared. Now he’s 14 and he and his mam have survived in their isolated hilltop house above the village of Nebo in north-west Wales, learning new skills, and returning to old ways of living. Despite their close understanding, the relationship between mother and son changes subtly as Dylan must take on adult responsibilities. And they each have their own secrets, which emerge as, in turn, they jot down their thoughts and memories in a found notebook – the Blue Book of Nebo.

Manon Steffan Ros not only explores the human capacity to find new strengths when faced with the need to survive, but also questions the structures and norms of the contemporary world.

She is twice winner of the Drama Medal for playwrights at the National Eisteddfod of Wales and won the Prose Medal in 2018. In June 2017, she won the prestigious Tir na n-Og Award for the third time, in the primary school category, presented by the Welsh Books Council to honour the year’s best Welsh-language book. This novel has been translated from the original Welsh by the author herself.

Follow the author on Instagram (don’t you just love the jacket illustration on this foreign edition – though I have to say the UK cover is fabulous also):

 

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A post shared by @manonros

Filed Under: BookOfTheDay, YA Tagged With: dystopia, future, Welsh

The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne by Jonathan Stroud

April 20, 2021 By achuka Leave a Comment

ACHUKA Book of the Day 21 Apr 2021
Times Children’s Book of the Week 17 Apr 2021

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“Stroud does not compromise. Scarlett is unpleasant, hard to love; Albert is irritating, weak. Yet through skill and good writing we begin to love and understand this odd couple, mini-me John Waynes, and by the end we’d pay a ransom (or at least the paperback cover price) to see them again. Luckily for us there is a new one trotting over the horizon . . .” The Times

Set in a broken, future England, where gunfights and monsters collide, this is the exciting first title in a phenomenal fantasy teen series by the bestselling children’s novelist. England has been radically changed by a series of catastrophes – large cities have disappeared and London has been replaced by a lagoon. The surviving population exists in fortified towns where they cling to traditional ways, while strangely evolved beasts prowl the wilderness beyond. Conformity is rigidly enforced and those who fall foul of the rules are persecuted: some are killed, others are driven out into the wilds. Only a few fight back – and two of these outlaws, Scarlett McCain and Albert Browne, display an audacity and talent that makes them legends.

“‘What I didn’t know to begin with was quite who my characters were going to be. It was going to be some slightly jaded middle-aged bloke – I can’t think why I pegged it on that figure! – and for a long time I was writing about this guy who hung out with these kids and it didn’t quite work. So in the end I pushed him overboard and made Scarlett McCain my key figure. As soon as she took centre stage I knew it was the way to go.’”
Quote from the author, include in this recommended BfK feature

Filed Under: Blog, BookOfTheDay, Books, YA Tagged With: dystopia, future

The Hill by Ali Bryan

March 8, 2021 By achuka Leave a Comment

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“Hits all the right apocalyptic notes. A great pick for forward-thinking feminist teens.” BOOKLIST
“Lyrical writing and deep worldbuilding make for an immersive reading experience.”KIRKUS REVIEWS

In the near future, a group of girls survive by their own wits and follow the laws of the Manual on the Hill, a reclaimed garbage dump they call home. The cardinal rule? Men and boys spell danger. After a Departure Ceremony releases the eleven oldest girls back to the Mainland, Wren becomes their new leader, and she’s desperate to do a good job.So when one of the girls goes missing only a few hours into her new position, Wren makes the fateful decision to leave the Hill in search of the girl-only to encounter boys for the first time in her life. Is it a coincidence, then, that the Hill is attacked while she’s gone? In order to survive and lead her community, Wren must sort fact from fiction, ally from enemy, and opportunity from threat.

The Hill is a feminist dystopian novel that explores gender, power, and the search for truth in a world defined by scarcity, distrust, and gender politics. Gritty and compassionate, Bryan’s unforgettable novel shines a light on the consequences of consumerism and environmental neglect while reminding us what it takes to be a girl in this world.

Filed Under: YA Tagged With: dystopian, feminist, future

A Trip to the Future by Moira Butterfield ill. FagoStudio

October 22, 2020 By achuka Leave a Comment

This sci-fi approach to non-fiction will take readers on an exciting journey into the future, using cutting-edge science from today to imagine the world of tomorrow. From floating cities to colonies on far-off planets, each spread will take the reader further and further from home. Stunning full-page spreads create an immersive feel, while the text paints a picture of the possibilities ahead – and some surprising achievements already made! Did you know that you can already eat 3D printed food? Or that a group of scientists are trying to build a lift to the Moon? A Trip to the Future is a book for the engineers and scientists of the future!

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Filed Under: NonFiction Tagged With: future, science

Trade wary of children’s market boom

May 6, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

booksellerEditors, agents and booksellers have told The Bookseller they worry that authors are failing to reap the benefits of growth in the children’s book market.

With 2014 being a record year for children’s books—sales of which grew 9.1% year on year to a value of £336.5m, according to Nielsen BookScan—a large number of new imprints and agencies have been created. Some publishers, such as Janetta Otter Barry, formerly of Quarto, are setting up their own companies and many in the industry are launching their own literary agencies.

However, Imogen Cooper, freelance editor at Chicken House and director of the Golden Egg Academy, said although the recent increase in the number of children’s imprints and agents “may seem to some like a great thing”, for authors there may be a downside.

“It’s a tough market, and the danger is that too many books are published, many badly edited and of poor quality,” she said. “As we all know, if an author’s first book fails, it’s very difficult to build a career. Are we in danger of strings of one-book wonders because authors are accepted too early, without the skills they need to have acquired? Manuscripts and authors need time and a great deal of editorial support, together with marketing know-how and industry contacts, to launch a career.”

Cooper pointed out that even if the number of children’s books being printed increases there are only “so many” book suppliers and “getting a book into Waterstones or Amazon is a tough business, even if you have the big guns of the tried and tested publishers”.

full article via Trade wary of children’s market boom | The Bookseller.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: future, market, publishing, sales

Digital publishing: the experts’ view of what’s next | Books | theguardian.com

January 13, 2014 By achuka Leave a Comment

Alison Flood of The Guardian asked several ‘industry luminaries’ to look forward into the immediate future of digital publishing. Here’s what Kate Wilson of Nosy Crow had to say…

Kate Wilson, Nosy Crow managing director

“The ebook market for children has been slow to grow, but ebooks aren’t the only way that children can read on-screen. As well as publishing print books and ebooks, we make highly interactive, award winning apps, so we are particularly interested in the opportunities to use digital devices to blur the edges between storytelling and games. In a way, this is something that great children’s books like Where’s Spot and The Very Hungry Caterpillar have done for young children for decades, but technology makes it possible to take playfulness further. Our next app, Jack and the Beanstalk, releasing in the next few weeks, is our most ‘gamified’ book app yet: the reader helps Jack complete tasks to him get back down the beanstalk with different objects. The happiness of the ending depends on the reader’s level of success in the tasks. It’s different each time and rewards success with more story.

“We think that educational use of tablets will increase: more than 40% of primary schools in the UK are using iPads now, with many adopting a ‘one-iPad-per-child’ approach. Several apps encourage children as creators too, and personalisation is one of the trends that we’d expect to see.

via Digital publishing: the experts’ view of what’s next | Books | theguardian.com.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: apps, children, digital, ebooks, future, publishing

5 Ways to Fix Book Publishing – The Daily Beast

July 16, 2013 By achuka Leave a Comment

The idea that there should be centralized, massively consolidated, bureaucratic organizations known as the major trade houses, with multiple layers of editors, vast publicity departments, and books fed to them by an entity known as literary agents, only to take repeated losses and rely on a few stars to help them break even, is bound for extinction.

Is the current publishing model salvageable? Or is it time to scrap everything and start over? If book publishing is to survive, something drastic will have to occur. The technology already exists to make publishing a democratic venture, driven from the bottom up rather than the other way around.

The discussion of the crisis of publishing persists mostly at a pedestrian level. The alternatives offered are minor fixes, taking existing production, distribution, and consumption methodologies for granted. We don’t need to figure out how to maximize sales with the latest e-reader. We need to reconceive the concepts of writing, editing, and reading, and subject every institutional component to radical critique. It isn’t a question of which reading device is best, or how publishers will make up for the loss of Borders, or how they can squeeze more money out of the present distribution model.

The crisis of publishing is really the crisis of writing and reading. The publishing industry today generally obstructs the free flow of energies between readers and writers. It is a broker for celebrity authors, taking the entire literary culture on a downward slope because the definition of “commercial” is constantly being dumbed down. Hence, cookie-cutter books, formulaic sensations, highly publicized advances, the anachronistic book tour, and literary stars with all the trappings of their brethren in the movie and fashion industries. Rather than pushing more of the product that publishers already offer, the nature of the product itself must change. Yes, there is a crisis in publishing, but this is good because it means that the public isn’t buying the hype.

The discussion of the crisis of publishing persists mostly at a pedestrian level.
The structures of distribution are not written in stone—why must there be so many intermediate layers that the final product must survive to make itself visible?

With that in mind, the author of this piece in The Daily Beast, Anis SHivani, I proposes 5 key principles for a major restructuring of the publishing industry:
1 Decentralisation
2 Autonomy
3 Responsiveness
4 Smallness
5 Risk

Visit the page for his explanation of these five principles…

via 5 Ways to Fix Book Publishing – The Daily Beast.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: future, publishing, size

Guardian Review

May 11, 2013 By achuka Leave a Comment

After Tomorrow by Gillian Cross, reviewed by Linda Buckley-Archer

aftertomorrow

Cross, who has won both the Carnegie and the Whitbread, is an expert storyteller: her plotting is seamless; her prose is supple and economical; she creates characters you care for, and depicts a world so plausible you can smell it. If I have a gripe with this engrossing tale, it is that the ending came too soon; small things are resolved but bigger things aren’t. I’d have loved an epilogue or the promise of a sequel. The issues Cross raises will stay with you.

via After Tomorrow by Gillian Cross – review | Books | The Guardian.

Filed Under: Blog, Books, YA Tagged With: dystopia, dystopian, fiction, future, Gillian Cross, review, YA, young adult

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