New Publication Date for Seeds for the Swarm
A perfect storm of supply chain issues has required us to implement a delayed publication date for Sim Kern’s Seeds for the Swarm. The new publication date for this book is March 1 2023.
We are sorry to disappoint those who are waiting for the book and especially those who pre-ordered. We started this press shortly before the first pandemic lockdown, so we are no strangers to the emergency pivot. But this is the first time we have had to delay a book’s scheduled release. It is our hope that we will be able to send the book out a bit early, with some goodies for those who pre-ordered to enjoy.
In the meantime, if you haven’t seen the fabulous review for Seeds over at Strange Horizons, check it out! Be aware, though, that this review contains a very thorough description of the book’s plot, including spoilers. Here’s an excerpt for the spoiler shy:
The burden of the burning world falls with a peculiar weight on the shoulders of young people: they didn’t cause it, but they carry the curse of growing up in it. Aspiring to fix it is more than coming generations should be asked to do, but the myopia of suicidal capitalists and their tendencies has put that millstone firmly around their necks. In this context, the explosion of young people’s literature exploring humans’ relationship and responsibility to nonhuman life is a positive expression of the growing awareness of—and resistance to—that inheritance.
Sim Kern’s Seeds for the Swarm brings that impulse to a genre—dystopian teen fiction—that has dominated the speculative market since The Hunger Games (2008). Like Suzanne Collins before them, Kern marshals philosophical and social arguments in the course of their characters’ trials and adventures. The result is a fast-paced, challenging first novel that confronts the betrayal of adults in making such a mess of things for the future generations, and explores the multiple reactions of communities on the brink of extinction.
[…]
As the first of a planned trilogy, Seeds for the Swarm delves into fiercely needed and relevant conversations that are poised to deepen in the coming volumes. Kern doesn’t pull any punches on the environmental consequences of consumer capitalism, nor do they avoid the social and emotional impacts of living through an age of mass extinctions. The subject lends itself to nihilism, but Rylla’s commitment to family, friends, and justice provides a glimpse of hope that is badly needed in the coming fights, real and fictional. Perfect for teen readers struggling with their own feelings of despair in our own unstable world, it is also a welcome and provocative read for all fans of YA.
Amy Nagopaleen for Strange Horizons
Stelliform Fall Newsletter
This morning our fall newsletter went out. Check it out here for more information about our first fall release, Rebecca Campbell’s Arboreality, including how to get tickets to the upcoming launch.
Stelliform Press and several authors are on Can*Con programming (both in-person and virtual) and we’d love to see you next weekend for conversations around the blossoming solarpunk genre, genre fiction and social transformation, and of course amazing deals on Stelliform books.
For those of you who can’t make it to the event, or are online only, we’re extending a 20% discount code to our online store.
Happy Fall!
ARBOREALITY Giveaway, Sept 6-12
We’re giving away two print copies of Rebecca Campbell’s forthcoming novella Arboreality to two winners in Canada and/or the United States. Don’t miss a chance to read this stunning mosaic novella featuring short stories connected by a Salish sea setting and an inter-generational cast of characters.
If you’re ready to sign up, head to the Rafflecopter giveaway widget at the bottom of this post. If you need more info about Campbell’s book, read on.
About Rebecca Campbell’s Arboreality
“Campbell doesn’t shy away from the worst possibilities of apocalyptic ecological collapse … but offers a surprisingly hopeful and joyful vision of the future … This compassionate cli-fi mosaic is sure to please genre fans.”
— Publishers Weekly
“I have yearned for a story like this one — ordinary people finding slow, small ways to repair not the whole damaged world, but their own small corner of it … I couldn’t love it more.”
— Molly Gloss, author of Wild Life and The Hearts of Horses
“You’ll see the world differently after reading this slender book—I dare you to come away unchanged.”
— Amanda Leduc, author of The Centaur’s Wife
A professor in pandemic isolation rescues books from the flooded and collapsing McPherson Library. A man plants fireweed on the hillside of his depopulated Vancouver Island suburb. An aspiring luthier poaches the last ancient Sitka spruce to make a violin for a child prodigy. Campbell’s astonishing vision pulls the echoing effects of small acts and intimate moments through this multi-generational and interconnected story of how a West coast community survives the ravages of climate change.
About Rebecca Campbell
Rebecca Campbell is a Canadian writer of weird stories and climate change fiction. She won the Sunburst award for short fiction in 2020 for “The Fourth Trimester is the Strangest” and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award in 2021 for “An Important Failure.” NeWest Press published her first novel, The Paradise Engine, in 2013.
Sign up for the Giveaway via Rafflecopter
We’ve provided multiple ways to win. Click the widget below to sign up. Winners will be contacted via email and announced on social media.
Welcome Weird Fishes!
Today is the publication day for Rae Mariz’s underwater fantasy novella Weird Fishes. This is a heartfelt deepsea adventure featuring Ceph, a sentient cephalopod, and Iliokai, a lonely sealfolk mermaid who together seek to stop the ocean’s currents from slowing. We are also excited to share with the world a brilliant cover by Toronto artist Julia Louise Pereira.
Where Can I Buy Weird Fishes?
Weird Fishes is available wherever books are sold. We have paperback copies printed on recycled paper, and digital copies that are always on sale at stelliform.press. You can also order Weird Fishes from your favorite indie bookshop. If online booksellers are your thing, the novella is available here:
- Bookshop.org
- Weightless Books (for DRM-free ebooks)
- Barnes and Noble
- Alibris.com
- Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com.au, Amazon.se (etc.)
Come to the Weird Fishes Book Launch
We’re having a book launch to celebrate this wonderful story. Author Rae Mariz will read from the novella and then be interviewed by award-winning writer and reviewer Maria Haskins. Tickets are free, or pick up a print or ebook at a discount. We hope to see you there!
WEIRD FISHES Giveaway, August 10-14
The publication date for Rae Mariz’s mind-bending underwater fantasy novella Weird Fishes is coming up fast. Our print copies, printed on recycled paper, are on their way and we’ve got a few review copies to give away. Get in on our Rafflecopter giveaway by signing up for our newsletter, sharing the news about Weird Fishes, or any of the other sign up options through Rafflecopter. If you’re already excited about the book and want to skip down to the giveaway, scroll to the bottom of this post. If you need more info about the book and its author, and the fantastic reviews it’s gotten already, read on!
What are Readers Saying about Weird Fishes?
Publishers Weekly gave Weird Fishes a starred review:
“Mariz combines dense, realistic science with lush, fantastic description … The relationships at the heart of this tale manage to be both completely human and utterly unbeholden to the above-water dynamics readers might take for granted. The resulting novella feels entirely fresh and inventive. Fans of Caitlin Starling and Maggie Tokuda-Hall will be especially wowed.”
Julia Rios, the creator of Mermaids Monthly magazine, loved the book:
“Weird Fishes is a vibrant, beautiful exploration of oceans teeming with lives and cultures unknown to humans. This book is a must for anyone who loves the sea!”
Nina Munteanu, author of author of Water Is… and A Diary in the Age of Water was captivated by the novella’s environmental message:
“Weird Fishes is a lyrical and heartfelt adventure that celebrates how the ocean connects us all and reminds us that we need to take good care of Her.”
About the Book
AN UNDERWATER TALE OF FRIENDSHIP AGAINST MONSTROUS ODDS
When Ceph, a squid-like scientist, discovers proof of the ocean’s slowing currents, she makes the dangerous ascent from her deep-sea civilization to the uncharted surface above. Out of her depths and helpless in her symbiotic mech suit, Ceph relies on Iliokai, a seal-folk storyteller, who sings the state of the sea and has seen evidence of clogged currents as she surfs the time gyres throughout the lonely blue. Navigating the perils of their damaged ocean environment, and seemingly insurmountable cultural differences, Ceph and Iliokai realize that the activities of terrestrial beings are slowing the spiralling currents of time. On a journey that connects future and past, the surface and the deep, the unlikely friends struggle to solve a problem so big it needs a leviathan solution.
About the Author
Rae Mariz is a speculative fiction storyteller and cultural critic. Her writing inhabits the ecotone between science fiction and fantasy, and features characters finding family with others who live in the gaps between. She’s the author of The Unidentified and co-founder of Toxoplasma Press. Find her work at raemariz.com and on Twitter @raemariz.
