Someone Comes to Town is a fantastic example of a fairy tale for grownups, a weird and wonderful piece of 21st century fantasy.
All About:
Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
Pavol Hvizdos, a Slovak speaker, has translated three of my books into Slovakian — Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, and Overclocked. The translations are Creative Commons licensed for your remixing and sharing pleasure.
I can’t tell you how awesomely cool it is to have readers spontaneously undertake major translation projects just for the fun of it. I believe that sharing my books under CC licenses inspires my readers to promote them, and this is the proof that it works. w00t!
Last night’s episode of Criminal Minds on CBS opened with a quote from my novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town — keen!
(Thanks to everyone who wrote in about this!)
I’m pleased as punch to say that my novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leave Town has been shortlisted for the Sunburst, Canada’s national science fiction award. The Sunburst jury honored me with the award in 2004 for my short story collection A Place So Foreign and Eight More and this is a double-helping of delight.
Someone Comes to Town… comes out in a new trade paperback edition this week, too!
Aust Gate, the excellent science fiction bookstore in Oxford, England is offering free UK shipping on signed copies of the paperback of my novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, which comes out next month. Just contact the store with your order and inscription information, and I’ll sign and inscribe all the orders on June 19. They’ll also take orders for my other books, and I’m happy to sign/inscribe those too. Just get your order in before June 19!
Review:
Gene Wolfe
SOMEONE COMES TO TOWN, SOMEONE LEAVES TOWN is a glorious book, but there are hundreds of those. It is more. It is a glorious book unlike any book
you’ve ever read.
Gene Wolfe, author
Review:
Publishers Weekly
It’s only natural that Alan, the broadminded hero of Doctorow’s fresh, unconventional SF novel, is willing to help everybody he meets. After all, he’s the product of a mixed marriage (his father is a mountain and his mother is a washing machine), so he knows how much being an outcast can hurt. Alan tries desperately to behave like a human being�or at least like his idealized version of one. He joins a cyber-anarchist’s plot to spread a free wireless Internet through Toronto at the same time he agrees to protect his youngest brothers (members of a set of Russian nesting dolls) from their dead brother who’s now resurrected and bent on revenge. Life gets even more chaotic after he becomes the lover and protector of the girl next door, whom he tries to restrain from periodically cutting off her wings. Doctorow (Eastern Standard Tribe) treats these and other bizarre images and themes with deadpan wit. In this inventive parable about tolerance and acceptance, he demonstrates how memorably the outrageous and the everyday can coexist.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
I’m delighted to note that Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town was selected for Locus Recommended Reading List for 2005 in their best novels category!
A reminder: I’m doing a a reading and signing tomorrow (Monday) night at London’s Stanhope Centre, near Marble Arch, at 6:30PM. Books will be on sale and light refreshments provided. Hope to see you there!
