Invisible Sun by Charles Stross

[TomMazanec]

Well, even I gave up on the Chtorr series...

 

[Galactic Bus Driver]

Try talking to any Patrick Rothfuss fan...

...or those waiting for the publication of The Winds of Winter (which isn't even planned to be the final novel in A Song of Ice and Fire).

Pfft...

Those guys have nothing on Melanie Rawn and the final installment of her Exiles trilogy. We've been waiting since '97 for that one.

 

[TomMazanec]

Freitas' Nanomedicine is another...

 

[Ursa major]

What is it with this book!? [...] WHAT IS GOING ON?

A few days ago (but I've only just noticed) Charles Stross posted the following handy summary regarding the situation on his blog:

due out on September 28th in both the US and UK, is Invisible Sun, the last book in the Empire Games trilogy (and the last novel in the Merchant Princes setting).​

​

Invisible Sun was previously due out in January, and a lot of folks are asking me why their pre-order has been cancelled and bookstores are saying it's out of stock. This is mostly due to Amazon and/or other wholesaler databases: if a book is delayed by more than 6 months they cancel advance orders with no explanation, or show it as out of stock.​

​

What happened was a perfect storm, for a book originally due for publication in 2017. First, my editor David Hartwell died suddenly and unexpectedly. David was the main impetus behind the entire Merchant Princes series, and he commissioned the new trilogy: his death not only deprived me of a friend but disrupted the project and threw Tor's entire editorial workflow into chaos for a while. Then, in 2017 my father became unwell and died (a week after his 93rd birthday). Work staggered on, and then in 2018 my mother had a series of strokes and ended up in a nursing facility: her health declined and she died in mid-2019 (a week after her 90th birthday). Losing your editor and both parents in the space of 3 years is not a productivity-enhancing experience, to put it mildly, and my mid-crisis attempts to get the capstone of a million-word saga to gel were not good. But I finally completed work on a fifth re-write of Invisible Sun and sent it to my agent for delivery ... in February 2020, just as COVID19 came along. COVID didn't actually kill anyone I was directly working with, but it disrupted my publishers—editorial are all working from home these days—and shut down their printers for a few months. Hence the delay.​

​

But despite all the deaths, despair, and pandemic, Invisible Sun is now with the production department at Tor and it will arrive on September 28th, unless a dinosaur-killer asteroid gets us first. (And it's the longest book in the series by quite a margin: I had a lot of plot threads to wrap up, and only a limited stockpile of nuclear weapons this time round!)​

 

[TomMazanec]

Thanks.
Four years is awhile (but still short of Gerrold’s Chtorr delay).

 

[TomMazanec]

The Moon was in the Seventh House and Jupiter aligned with Mars.
Finally got it on my Kindle.
Says reading time 9 hrs 18 min so I got a fair amount.
Just too bad this will be the end.

 

[Ursa major]

due out on September 28th in both the US and UK

In the UK, the book isn't out until tomorrow (the 30th), which is why the author wrote on his blog yesterday (in the currently active entry):

I will start a new blog entry for Q&A (including spoilers) about the entire Empire Games trilogy, but not before the book drops in the UK (i.e. Thursday).


Spoilers in comments on this thread will be deleted.

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

I've chewed through the entire Merchant Princes series to date in the last couple of months, so really looking forwards to this!

 

[Danny McG]

Suggest you write to your MP, or Congressman, or whatever, to express your outrage

Eddie Cochran phrased it better

 

[hitmouse]

Eddie Cochran phrased it better

yes. But it his advice only works in the summertime.