But perhaps as much attention has been paid – by those who’ve seen the physical editions at least – to the fab cover from cartoonist and illustrator Tom Gauld. In the UK, trendy bookish types like us know him from his pithy cartoons on the letters page of The Guardian‘s Review section every Saturday. In the US and even further afield, though, I suspect he is known to just a few connoisseurs of small press cartoon work. So we tracked him down last Friday afternoon and fired a few questions at the fellow. This is what came back… (All images can be clicked for larger versions, in case you were wondering.)

Q: What do you call yourself – graphic artist, cartoonist, professional doodler, etc?
I say “cartoonist and illustrator”.

Q: How did you get into “all this”?
I drew a lot as a child, and when I realised that you could draw as a job I decided that was for me. I studied illustration at Edinburgh College of art and the Royal College and since graduating in 2001 I’ve been drawing full time.

Q: Do you do lots of sketches and throw all the bad ones around the room or do you chew your pencil for days and then nail it first off?
I sit and doodle in my sketchbook and try to play around quite a lot about with ideas before going on to make a picture. My technique is relatively time consuming and its not easy to change things once they’re drawn so I try to think it all through at the beginning.

Q: What’s your typical working day, if there is one?
I’m at my studio from about 8.30am till 4.30pm. I work best in the morning so that’s when I do most of my creative work and in the afternoons I do more research and admin and internet time-wasting.

Q: Is it really annoying, when people say it’s just scribbling and colouring in, and when will you get a proper job?
Well it’s not really a proper job, and much of it IS just scribbling and colouring in. I don’t deny that it’s a nice way to make a living. A more common misunderstanding is that people say “Oh you must have such FUN coming up with all these FUNNY ideas! You must be laughing all day long!” whereas I’m either wracking my brain for a good idea or meticulously editing the idea to make it as funny or interesting as possible.

Q: Do you think there should be more cartoon-style novel covers?
I don’t think THAT many novels really suit this style, but when it’s done right it can be really great: I’d like to see more great ones. Chris Ware’s cover for Candide was one of the first I saw and one of the best.

Q: What would you kill to illustrate?
Kurt Vonnegut’s books.

Q: Anything you really hate/struggle with drawing?
People. I’m continually seeking a way of drawing people which satisfies me and works for my ideas and stories. I’m slowly getting better but I’m not there yet. Robots are so much easier.

Q: You’ve got a really distinctive style – do you ever experiment with other techniques, formats or materials?
I mess around a bit with other things (brushes, colouring pens, collage, Lego) and I find it can be very helpful for generating and exploring ideas, but I tend to find that when it comes to finished work I’m happy with the simplicity of my usual pen on paper style.

Q: Just how obsessed with robots are you?
I wouldn’t like to say obsessed, but I find them almost endlessly interesting. There is tragedy in their place between sentient beings and disposable products. And as I said, they are much easier to draw than real people.

Q: Isn’t it great how many times you sneak SF/genre tropes into your Guardian Review cartoons? (Sorry, that’s more of a statement.)
Yeah. Sci-fi and genre fiction have much better visuals than literary fiction. I’ve attached a cartoon about this.

Q: Which means you must read widely too – who are your favourite authors, any genre?
Off the top of my head Kurt Vonnegut, PG Wodehouse, John le Carre, Magnus Mills, William Golding, Geoges Simenon.

Q: Who in your field deserves more acclaim?
Anders Nilson is an amazing artist, I’m very excited about his forthcoming 600-page epic Big Questions.

Q: What would you be if you didn’t do this?
If I couldn’t draw for a living, I’d like to write or animate. If I had to do something completely different I’d be a baker.

Q: And will we ever see the Bumper Complete Book of Collected Tom Gauld one day?
Yes, well sort of. I’m just finishing up a graphic novel and once that’s out of the way I’m going to figure out a way to collect much of my previous work in some way or other.

Massive thanks to Tom. See his work online at tomgauld.com. And look, he even made us a new Angry Robot logo. <3

• map of usa and canada (eh? This is a publisher’s website!)
• usa and canada map (ditto)
• us and canada map (!)
• best horror novel 2010 (yeah, we published it!)
• nativity star of bethlehem (guiding the faithful to Angry Robot, perhaps?)
• angreey boods (I’ll get our proofreaders onto this)
• us & canda map (and this)
• old bethlehem streets at night
• hardcore future
• why are christmas celebrated (and why is people happy?)
• shepherd sleeping bethlehem
• legs in snow
• labeled map of usa (ok, stop it, now)
• beast wars tarantulas
• 12 angry days of christmas (Happy Bloody Christmas!)
• u.s. maps (I mean it!)
• sasta nook down (?)
• pretty little dead things torrent (now that’s just plain rude)
• city of ruin newton epub (eh? what that? who he?)
• disturbing unsettling books incest
• average income of dan abnett (because that’s just the sort of thing you’ll find at his publisher’s website…)
• moxyland buekes copyright date
• the manlyest book (covered in page-tight leather, and smelling of Old Spice)
• angry brutal sex
• what is a remic? (we’ve been wondering this, too)
• pictures of the bright star of bethlehem
• goodness makers of love browsers site
• what is the book moxyland about? (it’s about 320 pages)
• shooty deathkill in space (that’s someone looking for our Dan, then)
• how long did it take chris roberson to get to canada (not sure – what was his starting point?)
• tuesday morning hummingbird (wednesday morning cornflakes)
• u.s. and canada map (STOP IT!)
• lady & ruin
• drawing of a labeled canada map (!)
• what didn t the robots like on christmas day (the fact that the gifts eventually stopped)
• a fabuless name for a robot and it hast to be better than gordon and things (Keith?)
• dokxcvlzxf lxckzxlklzxkclkals (Is that an Aztec name?)
• population map of canada
• suitcase in art and city (is that a qualification? “I have a first class degree in history and a suitcase in art and city.”)
• what are books that dan abnett has written (Good. That’s what they are. Bloody good.)
• hitler i dream of ants (Himmler I dream of Jeannie)

Un:Bound Video
After a few teething problems, the team at Un:Bound have launched their pilot video magazine, Un:Bound Video Editions. There’s a lot crammed into the half-hour, including a behind-the-scenes at Tor, some author interviews, Alasdair Stuart being kind and mean at the same time, and yours truly, giving the first in a series of publishing tips.

Access the fun and mayhem here.

Un:Bound Video Trailer
Those crazy folk over at Un:Bound (a great genre book blog) have decided to create a video series call Un:Bound Video Editions (UBVE). The first edition goes live sometime tonight, but check out the trailer, below. (And who is that handsome chap in the glasses? No, not him – the other one…)

Nebula Awards
Awards season is once again upon us – not that it ever really goes away. We’re currently smack-bang in the middle of the nominations round for the Nebulas – the awards voted on by members of the SFWA. For clarity, these are the Angry Robot titles that are currently eligible for consideration:

Moxyland by Lauren Beukes

Sixty-One Nails by Mike Shevdon
The Road to Bedlam by Mike Shevdon

Slights by Kaaron Warren

Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero by Dan Abnett

Winter Song by Colin Harvey
Damage Time by Colin Harvey

Angel of Death by J Robert King

The Bookman by Lavie Tidhar

The Crown of the Blood by Gav Thorpe

Edge by Thomas Blackthorne (John Meaney)

King Maker by Maurice Broaddus

Nekropolis by Tim Waggoner

Book of Secrets by Chris Roberson

City of Dreams and Nightmare by Ian Whates

Servant of the Underworld by Aliette de Bodard

Kell’s Legend by Andy Remic
Soul Stealers by Andy Remic

We’re too good to you sometimes, you know…

(Oh, no, he doesn’t!) Stop that.

Vote for the Year’s Best
SFBook.com are having a vote – which of their Books of the Month do you think should win their Book of the Year? Every month they’ve chosen a title they enjoyed more than any other that month, and now they want you to tell them which is the best of the best!

3 out of the 12 are Angry Robot titles – pretty good when you consider we only published books in 6 months of 2010.

The Angry Robot books up for consideration are (with quotes from the SFBook reviews):

The World House by Guy Adams

The World House is a utterly original, quite crazy and simply brilliant piece of fiction.

The Road to Bedlam by Mike Shevdon

The Road to Bedlam is a rich, detailed and impressive sequel to one of the best novels of 2009 with a gripping plot, superb characterisation and is such an effortless joy to read.

Amortals by Matt Forbeck

Amortals is an action packed sci fi thriller full of fantastic tech and a great ending, highly recommended.

The books are up against some stiff competition, though – see the full list here, and go vote (on the front page)!

Podcast News
You can keep your gold and frankincense  - but we’re hanging on to the Mur! Our monthly Angry Robot podcast, hosted by the queen of podcasting, the Mighty Mur Lafferty. was originally scheduled for just 6 episodes. Mur has done such an awesome job, though, we’ve asked her to do some more for us, and she’s agreed! Now that’s what I call a Christmas present!

The launch of our Nano Editions (electronic short stories available from angryrobotstore.com) has attracted a lot of attention, with reports across the blogosphere, as well as industry journals The Bookseller, Publishers Weekly and Locus. Just as exciting for us, is the fact that the heavyweight genre favourite SFX Magazine contacted us, and asked us all about it.

A good short story is always a pleasure to read. They’re self-contained TV episodes, rather than three-hour movies; afternoon snacks, rather than three-course meals; stolen kisses, rather than three-year relationships.

You can read the full interview here.

And the reviews for our titles keep pouring in. Here are a couple for Matt Forbeck’s SF thriller, Amortals:

Writer Eddy Webb says:

Matt is at the top of his game in creating a fun and engaging story. If you like action thrillers, this is a good book to pick up.

Read the full review here.

And the other big SF mag – SciFi Now describes the book as:

A nightmarish vision of a future without death

and goes on to say:

Forbeck’s ability to create a world is undisputed. His Washington DC of two centuries hence is a gritty an dark place. A few of his observations… are really quite incisive, and his main protagonist, Dooley, is instantly likeable as the prototypical cyberpunk antihero.

There’s no online review, but pick up a copy of the latest issue from your local retailer.

We really are too good to you, you know, but we think you’re worth it!

Come back on Wednesday for the first treat!

___

(If you’re reading this blog entry after December, 2010, it’s not going to make much sense as the Advent Calendar image will have been removed. Unless you’re reading this in a post-2010 December (assuming we’ve done something similar), in which case – whoa! coincidence, or what!)

I grew up in Cliftonville, a decaying Edwardian seaside resort down on the pointiest bit of the pointy end of Kent. Nearest big town was Margate, our less gentile slum-on-sea neighbour, home to Kiss Me Quick Hats, tooth-glomping rock, and the occasional discreet stabbing in the penny arcade. In summer it’s full of sunburnt scumbags, in winter it’s shut. (TS Eliott wrote large sections of The Waste Land sitting in a seaside shelter there. That title says it all.) Thank whomever you pray to, therefore, for the local library.

I was always a reader, and by the time I hit eleven and Big School I had already found and devoured Tolkien. For some reason, having only found The Two Towers in stock I’d started the trilogy with book two and read to the end, and only later read all three in order. I’d been blown away by Helm’s Deep – to such an extent that to this day I still have immense problems not ripping that whole buns-and-fireworks debacle out of the front of The Fellowship.

When I hit twelve, I’d finally finished ploughing through all of that and had started looking around for more. Just then, the library gave out a series of handy free bookmarks. Simple things they were, befitting the pre-computer age, just typed and duplicated lists of interesting books in different categories cut from larger sheets of thin white card. I nabbed the SF & Fantasy one, and started investigating. On one side, there were some genuine classics. Tolkien was there, with both The Hobbit and LOTR, and that was probably why I picked the thing up in the first place. Also listed there were Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Wells, James Blish, Edmund Cooper, Pohl & Kornbluth.

But on the back, under the heading “Further Out”… Ballard, Dick, Angela Carter, Vonnegut, Moorcock, Anthony Burgess, William Burroughs. Holy fuck. I still can’t believe they did that, but I’m so glad they did. The list looked more inviting, somehow, than that on the front. So I checked out High Rise and the short story anthology Low-Flying Aircraft. Devoured them. Came back in a couple of days for Cat’s Cradle, which I must have read in some kind of trance, because I’d dreamt details of it for fifteen years without ever recalling its title, till I finally rediscovered it in my late 20s. And then Angela Carter’s very erotically tinged Passion of the New Eve, which earned me a raised eyebrow from the woman behind the counter I still remember today. I read everything they had of those other authors, and when I finished Behold the Man, there on page 2 of that fine novel was another list, this time of all of the interconnected Eternal Champion books, from Corum to Cornelius, and I was off again…

It took me most of a decade to finally get around to checking out more of the books on the other, traditional side of that bookmark. Still never read much Asimov to this day. That’s not the point though. For me, all it took was a list saying, in essence, “You liked that one? You like cool stuff, huh, kid? Well lookee here, there’s more. Why not try these…”

On the back of every Angry Robot book (almost), there’s a panel that says just that. This week, Keith over at Adventures Fantastic blog commented on this, saying:

“The thing that impresses me about Angry Robot providing these lists is that the books aren’t just by them. To recommend your competitor’s books takes a lot of class.”

That’s very kind, but we don’t do it for that reason. We do it because, well, how can we not? We’ve all recommended books to each other, given a tiny portion of the passion a book engendered in us to someone else as a gift. This is just an extension of what you’d get if we saw you for a beer and the conversation turned to that wonderful exchange of Cool Stuff We’ve Been Digging that results.

So anyway, because it’s Thanksgiving and Keith had me thinking about it again this week, I just wanted to say Thank you! to That Nameless Librarian way back then. You set me off on a wild adventure that continues to this day.

So, pull up a chair, crack open a tub of your favourite ice-cream, and enjoy…

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