Oh, good! I've been looking forward to this since I heard Jo read a bit last year.

Yay!!!

And look at that great cover!

Whence comes the cover art?

look at that great cover!

Rafael did good work . . .

Bill -- it's part of Raphael's "School of Athens" a giant fresco at the Vatican of all the philosophers of the ancient world, as imagined in the Renaissance of course. The whole cover was assembled by the brilliant Jamie Stafford-Hill, and it is my favourite cover for any book of mine ever. They're using a different bit of "School of Athens" for _The Philosopher Kings_.

I specially like that bit because the kids gathered around look mixed gendered to my eye, and also because it's kids gathered around old men, and because they're wearing brightly coloured kitons, all just like in the book -- it really could have been done to illustrate the book. By Raphael. I love it.

Jo Walton @6, I guess you know you've hit the Big Time when you can get Rafael to do your cover art. <grin, duck, and run>

Congratulations! I eagerly await the release of the e-edition.

Wellp, yet another Jo Walton book I MUST HAVE as soon as possible!

Hold it: you time travelled back to the Renaissance and got Raphael to do your cover painting?

& am I allowed to ask at what point in Marsilio Ficino's life does this... experience... take place, and what effect does it have on him in our history?

And is Ikaros plucked out of our time and sent to Atlante on December 6, 1273?

Brad,

I think that we'll need to have a spoiler thread for the book, but maybe wait a day or two so more people can join?

Squeee! How on Earth did I not know about this book? Amazon, I have no idea what you think you're doing with those Kindle rec lists if you can't be bothered to show me this.

I read a few chapters early this morning, and the narrators are fascinating. I would gush some more about each of them, but I'll wait for the spoiler thread.

That really is a great cover, Jo. (Great cover, excellent story!)

This is a super book. Even for a Jo Walton book, this is a super book.

And I love the cover.

Oooh, this sounds amazing. And may I join the chorus of congratulations on the wonderful choice by Jamie Stafford-Hill of cover art.

So so so wanting this. May have to hit Borderlands this afternoon.

As it happens, Amazon sent me an advert for 2014 best sellers in fantasy and SF. My initial reaction, maybe unfair, is that this was all Kindle self-published extruded fantasy product.

On the other hand, this is a book I shall be watching for. What's more, it's likely worth a Hugo nomination, when it is eligible.

(The reason I feel my suspicion of extruded fantasy product may be unfair is that I did see signs of real-book publishing in the promoted books, even though I had never heard of the authors, and the outlined plots seems unduly banal. "Best-seller" is a label that only tells you about the rather dreary tastes of the majority of readers.)

Meanwhile, I am getting promotional emails for a public-speaking course. I look back of all the stuff I have done over the decades, going back to the Battle of Waterloo in a school history class, and this also leaves me thinking I am a resident of a different world.

Dave Bell writes in #17:

As it happens, Amazon sent me an advert for 2014 best sellers in fantasy and SF. My initial reaction, maybe unfair, is that this was all Kindle self-published extruded fantasy product.

As I'm sure Dave realizes, Jo's book is anything but extruded fantasy product. One expects E.F.P. to trot out the same old tropes in the usual ways. From the descriptions in Patrick's posting one can see that this book's premise is a crazy mix of pieces not usually seen together, including some SF tropes, so it would be an atypical fantasy novel even if it were awful (which it is definitely not!).

At this point in Jo's career, we might even say that it is typical for her to write atypical novels.

Coincidentally, Gail and I recently watched a 3-D movie of the Vatican Museums. That paid a lot of attention to the 'world-famous Raphael Room' and, of course, to the 'School of Athens', which focuses on Plato and his younger disciple Aristotle (I was particularly amused that Raphael chose to portray Michelangelo as Heracleitus).

I am expecting to receive the book on Thursday. I should be very dopey on Friday.

Jo is an author whose work I deeply love, and I am looking forward to this. I am especially looking forward to this because I teach Plato, and I would not want to live in Plato's republic (though I generally annoy my students by saying that I would have voted to execute Socrates).

I was particularly amused that Raphael chose to portray Michelangelo as Heracleitus

Plato is Leonardo. Euclid (or maybe Archimedes), the bald guy using the compass on the tablet for the edification of his young students, is the architect Bramante.

Bill Higgins, #18: "At this point in Jo's career, we might even say that it is typical for her to write atypical novels."

A point made at greater length in this kinda-awesome post today on the newly-fledged Barnes and Noble science-fiction blog: The Amazing Jo Walton Has Written a Book for Every Genre Reader.

Yes, after I read the synopsis above out loud to my family, my son's reaction was "Are all her books like that?"

My answer was, "No, all her books are completely different from each other. There's the nineteenth-century novel of manners where everybody is a dragon. Then there's the novel about being a teenager and what happens after you've saved the world through magic but been crippled in the process, which is also about what it feels like to be an outsider and the consolations of science fiction and fantasy..."

Every genre reader? She hasn't really covered the Marryat/Forester/O'Brian sea story yet, but I'm looking forward to the day . . .

What can I say? I get bored writing the same kind of book. It's not any particular virtue, and it's not really a good way to build a career, because people like to know what they're getting -- I'm very lucky Patrick likes my writing, no matter what it's about or what style it's in. But all it is, is that I can only write the books I can write. I try to write the other kind, but it doesn't work, by definition.

So my books are different. And now I am thinking of all the zillions and zillions of sub-genres I've never written anything in. Well, there's time yet.

Rea -- It's not that, but I do two Patrick O'Brian things in The Philosopher Kings. One of them is a voyage around the Aegean in a sailing ship.

Jo #24: You need to explain, with Nietzsche, Warum ich so gute Bücher schreibe ('Why I write such wonderful books').

Jo, may you long continue to find it too boring to write the same kind of book!

According to Amazon in the UK, the ebook date is 22nd January. And they are really confusing about the dates for the print editions of this and The Philosopher Kings. I am not sure if the UK and US print editions have different publication dates or not.

In the pre-Kindle era, Amazon used to be pretty good at predicting the books I liked. so much so that I began to think they had a camera scanning my bookshelves. All that's gone. Maybe I download different books for my Kindle reader, but the Amazon system has gone down the way of mistaking crass popularity of ultra-cheap ebooks as a marker of quality.

While we may all wonder at times at the nomination lists for the main SF awards, such as the Nebula and Hugo, and popularity does help, I think the results are a better guide to the good stuff than anything that Amazon does. If Amazon ever was about books, it is not any more. It has gone from a virtual bookshop to being a virtual, and rather disorganised, department store. And, if they ever had well-paid, enthusiastic, sales staff, that feeling has gone. Like so much of the modern world, people have become fungible.

Tor Books knows better.

And so we get another Jo Walton book, and the loneliness we suffer fades for a time.

Patrick writes:

A point made at greater length in this kinda-awesome post today on the newly-fledged Barnes and Noble science-fiction blog: The Amazing Jo Walton Has Written a Book for Every Genre Reader.

While I have frequently had occasion to think of Jo Walton as amazing, this is the first time I have been confronted with The Amazing Jo Walton.

LADIES and GENTlemen,
GIRLS and BOYS,
STEP right UP!
YOU'RE invited
ONE and ALL
To SEE
Today
UNDER the BIG TOP
By exCLUsive arrangement
A reMARKable artist
Of WORLD reNOWN!
Come SEE
The ONE
The ONLY
The!
AMAZING!
JO!
WALTON!

THRILL
As she ASCENDS
To the HIGH wire!
BEFORE your EYES
This aSTONishing performer
Will--
HERE in the BIG TOP--
WRITE!!!

Yes
LADIES and GENTLEMEN,
GIRLS and BOYS,
Once AGAIN
With ONLY a TWO-Eighty-SIX comPUTer
And a TINY piece
Of
MS! DOS!
WORD! PROCESSING! SOFTWARE!
ProTECTing her
From a
TERRifying!
BLANK!
PAGE!
The aMAZing!
JO!
WALTON!
Will
HIGH above the TEEMing CROWD
TYPE!
a STORY!
As she HAS
So MANY times BEFORE
A-MUSing and ENterTAINing
Many MILLions
Of READERS,
AMONG them
The CROWNED HEADS
Of the INternet!

STEP right UP,
My friends,
You MUST not MISS
This LITerary SPECtacle!
See it TODAY
See it NOW
Under the BIG TOP!
You'll tell your FRIENDS!
You'll tell your FAMILY!
And ONE day
You'll PROUDly tell your GRANDchildren:
"I!
SAW!
JO!
WALTON!
WRITE!!!"

i hope that it's a positive sign of unexpectedly strong sales that B&N just emailed to say shipping will be later than they had said (since they had said today when i ordered yesterday) — one to five business days. i am required to buy a real book since my husband wants to read it too (and we're hoping our daughter as well — she's kind of a big Apollo fan, as a cellist.

Bill -- I've got a 386 now!

And actually, last year, the INCREDIBLE astonishing POWERFUL wonderful Lindsey Nilsen has SINGLE-HANDEDLY hacked Linux, DosBox and Protext so that they now all play together, and I have an AMAZINGLY TINY thumb drive that slots into a USB slot of any normal Linux computer and runs Protext, so I can write on a modern computer LIKE A NORMAL PERSON, well almost. And that's what I'm using to write NECESSITY.

It's so great having Protext on this computer. If somebody says "Hey Jo, can you quickly write a sonnet about Shakespeare vs Godzilla" I can just do it right away, no messing about moving chairs and then transferring files on floppies.

1. Jo in #30: I know you have more modern stuff now. But in the circus of my imagination, you are still using your 80286.

2. UK readers may wish to substitute "Roll up!" for "STEP right UP!"

3. My l'esprit de l'escalier wishes that I had worked "CLAD in BLUE" into the thing.

Jo Walton @ #30: It's glorious that you've hung onto a well-tuned text editor for so long that it can now be emulated. And this, in turn, suggests that you will be able to write comfortably on any future computers, up to and including the Qeng Ho in-flight systems. Three cheers for Lindsey Nilsen, Programmer-Archaeologist.

I feel much the same way about Emacs, which has been serving me faithfully since 1997 (and serving others for 25 years before that, in various incarnations).

Dave Bell, #27: "I am not sure if the UK and US print editions have different publication dates or not."

They do. As I said in the first paragraph of the OP. The UK print edition of THE JUST CITY will appear, I've been told, in July.

The UK ebook edition will be out this month. I can't speak to the confusion of January dates there.

Beyond that I can't answer questions, since I am neither Amazon UK nor am I Corsair/Constable-&-Robinson/Hachette (Jo's UK publisher, and hooray that she finally has a UK publisher.)

Patrick, I'm afraid that Amazon are being confusing.

They go to a great deal of trouble to maintain distinct data for ebooks in the different markets.

Apart from obvious things such as the paperback/hardback split, the distinctions for printed books are hellishly blurred on their website. They will sell me a printed book right now. The only clue as to the source is buried in the details, and is the name of the publisher.

If I were a representative of Corsair/Constable-&-Robinson/Hachette I would be somewhat pissed off by this. What's the point of running a distinct publication date, and planning publicity, when Amazon pull stunts like this?

Oh, we know that there have been importers of physical SF&F for a long time. It's mostly been a small market for the cogniscenti and, when they muscled in, Amazon were clear enough about what they were doing, even if they didn't really care.

Now, they're not even trying to be polite about it. And, with the EU looking closely at the dodgy deals they have done over corporate taxation in Europe, one wonders what one has been dealing with for all these years.

Jo, 30: Yes, please, I do suddenly need that sonnet.

Also, if I'd read this when I was ten, I would have learned Greek. Just in case.

Also also, someday when I have time, I'm going to make you a bookmark-sized sample of Simmea's book-and-scroll embroidery. I need to find the right blue, but other than that I know what it looks like.

TexAnne: That would be awesome. Also, the sonnet will be appearing on my LJ in a bit -- it's for Vericon.

Dave Bell, #34: "Patrick, I'm afraid that Amazon are being confusing", etc etc.

Dave, you can say whatever you like about Amazon on Making Light, but I have no idea why you're addressing this bill of complaints about Amazon to me.

I already reminded you once that I am not Amazon UK and I am not Jo's UK publisher. I told you that I couldn't speak to the issue of UK print or ebook publication dates.

Do I need to also remind you that I am a senior employee of a large publishing conglomerate with a complex legal relationship to Amazon? Do you really imagine that I'm going to engage you in a public conversation about your complaints against Amazon UK? Or are you, as I suspect, pulling this stunt solely so you can make me uncomfortable and highlight my constraint?

I'm sure you have many legitimate complaints against various businesses. But right now, in this conversation, you are being an asshole to me and I'd like you to knock it off.

Jo, congratulations on the publication of The Just City and thank you for another immersive and fascinating story. I just experienced a massive androgogical experiment recently (Hacker School) and particularly love reading thought experiments around pedagogy!

Relatedly: I believe I did retweet once: "RT if you're still angry about the Library of Alexandria." If you have related feelings you may find this book particularly interesting.

Sumana: How could anybody NOT still be upset about the library of Alexandria?

Sumana @ 38 and Jo @ 39: Indeed.

(Also: I bought my copy last night as a reward to myself for being good and finishing off the last of a year's worth of sorting and filing papers, so yay! I got to start reading it already!)

Oo #39: I'm still upset about the sack of Constantinople in 1204 as well. Those Frankish barbarians were insufferable.

I've read it and enjoyed it quite a bit.

Might people want a spoiler thread?

Nancy @42:

There already is one here. Has been since the 16th.

PhiLOLsopher joke on the School of Athens.

As the update to the original post clarifies, the UK ebook edition is now scheduled for February 28 rather than January 15.

Reminder: Tor isn't the UK publisher; I'm just passing on what they've told Jo.

Sumana Harihareswara @ 38: I retweeted that, too.

Jo Walton @ 24: "I get bored writing the same kind of book. It's not any particular virtue..."

May I call bullshit in the most respectful--indeed, somewhat awestruck--way? That you don't write the same kind of story (other than good) over and over is one of the rarest virtues in an artist and one I cherish above almost all others.

Most of us have one story, if that. You are narratively ample and we are the richer for it.

Reporting from snowier-than-usual Chicago at the American Library Association conference... My Real Children by Jo Walton was just named one of selections for the 2015 Reading List of adult genre fiction.