TITAN ACQUIRE NEW NOVEL AND NOVELLA FROM AUSTRALIAN SF WRITER T R NAPPER
George Sandison of Titan Books has acquired World English Rights for two new works from Dr. Cyberpunk himself, Australian author T. R. Napper. His second novel, The Escher Man, and a new (untitled) novella. The agent was John Jarrold.
In The Escher Man, one man peels back the layers of implanted memories to save his family in this taut, explosive and thrilling high-concept SF novel. Perfect for fans of William Gibson’s The Peripheral, the classic film Total Recall, Ursula Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Endel ‘Endgame’ Ebbinghaus is a violent man, a street-level enforcer for a drug cartel. Or is he? In The Escher Man, nothing is as it seems. Friends, enemies, the past and the present, all become blurred in a world where memory manipulation has become the weapon of choice for powerful corporations.
From the gaudy, glittering demimonde of Macau, to the war-torn, steaming streets of northern Vietnam, Endel must fight to save his family, his life, and the fading memory of the man he once was.
Set five years after the events of T. R. Napper’s debut, 36 Streets, this stand-alone novel offers new readers a thrilling ride, while giving returning fans some familiar faces and an expanded universe. A reader can absolutely come to this without having read 36 Streets, but someone who has read it and wants more will also get their wish.
Praise for 36 Streets:
“Raw and raging and passionate. This is cyberpunk literature with a capital fucken L. Get it while it’s hot.” – Richard Morgan, author of Altered Carbon
“Quintessential cyberpunk, hard-nosed, sharp edged and gleaming.”—Adrian Tchaikovsky, award-winning author of ‘Children of Time’
“[36 Streets] has things both novel and serious to say about the psychological effects of intrusive media. This is a kick-the-door-down account of how past traumas — personal and national — may one day be weaponised for social control.”—The Sunday Times
“Brutal, brooding, brilliant . . . an angry vision of violence wrapped around a complex meditation of memory, trauma and hegemony. This is cyberpunk with soul.” Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, author of The Salvage Crew
“Not since Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl have I been so utterly enthralled by a science fiction novel. 36 Streets is a cyberpunk tour de force – richly textured, nuanced, and shot-through with emotional depth. I could practically feel the sweaty, grimy, bloody, tropical heat oozing from the pages. One of the standouts of the year.”—Richard Swan, author of The Justice of Kings
“High-octane, immersive SF at its best. 36 Streets is sure become a classic in the field.” Kaaron Warren, Shirley Jackson Award-Winner
“Napper has made a remarkable character in the form of his protagonist Lin Thi Vu, subverting to some degree the conventions of the world of male power and violence. It’s a great achievement. The set pieces, the interludes, of performed mastery with weapons and skill, are well poised and set the scene with ritualised violence.” Stephen Teo, author of Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition
“An engrossing, intriguing action-packed duty tour of a tech-thick, violence-infused, neon-scorched near future gangland Vietnam, where unwinnable games run hot and wild. Highly recommended.” Cat Sparks, author of Lotus Blue
“Beautiful, shimmering, ghostly science fiction.” Anna Smith-Spark, author of Empires of Dust
T R Napper’s new (untitled) novella is a thrilling, propulsive story of escape as two small-time crooks go on the run to save an AI in its infancy. Johnny Mnemonic meets Mad Max in this fast-paced, gritty, and deeply human story that spans the breadth of the Australian continent, and explores the depths of its dark heart.
T. R. Napper is a multi-award-winning science fiction author. His short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Interzone, the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and numerous others, and been translated into Hebrew, German, French, and Vietnamese.
Before turning to writing, T. R. Napper was a diplomat and aid worker, delivering humanitarian programs in Southeast Asia for a decade. During this period, he received a commendation from the Government of Laos for his work with the poor. He also was a resident of the Old Quarter in Ha Noi for several years, the setting for his debut novel, 36 Streets.
These days he has returned to his home country of Australia, where he works as a Dungeon Master, running campaigns for young people with autism for a local charity.
In 2020 he won the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novella. “The Weight of the Air, the Weight of the World,” and the ACT Notable Awards Fiction Category for “Neon Leviathan.” In 2017 he won the Aurealis Award for Best Short Story for “Flame Trees”, (Asimov’s Science Fiction, April/May 2016; and another of his stories “A Strange Loop” (Interzone, January/February 2016) was included in Neil Clarke’s Best Science Fiction of the Year.
Napper was awarded a creative writing doctorate in 2019 for his thesis The Dark Century: 1946 – 2046. Noir, Cyberpunk, and Asian Modernity.
Bestselling novelist Richard Morgan has been fulsome in his praise of Napper’s debut short fiction collection, Neon Leviathan (2020):
“Haunting and iridescent – combines the paranoid weirdness of the best Philip K Dick, the chilly but cool-as-fuck future gleam of cyberpunk, and an achingly beautiful literary inflection reminiscent of mainstream heavyweights like Murakami or Ishiguro. T. R. Napper’s futures feel at once gritty and vertiginous and close-focus human in the way only the best SF can manage. Whatever roadmap he’s working from, I can’t wait to see where he’s taking us next.”