Steven Erikson to publish SF novel in 2014

There's been a bit of a change-around in Steven Erikson's schedule for 2014. In a Tor.com Q&A last week he confirmed he's still very early in the writing of Fall of Light, the second novel in the Kharkanas Trilogy, and is still wrestling with a major structural issue which he isn't fully sure how to resolve yet. This has led to the expectation that Fall of Light won't make its June 2014 release date and may instead fall later in the year or even 2015.

However, Erikson will still be publishing a novel next year. Willfull Child (its unclear if the incorrect spelling is deliberate or not) is a comic SF novel that riffs on Star Trek. The blurb is as follows:

These are the voyages of the starship, A.S.F. Willful Child. Its ongoing mission: to seek out strange new worlds on which to plant the Terran flag, to subjugate and if necessary obliterate new life life-forms, to boldly blow the...

And so we join the not-terribly-bright but exceedingly cock-sure Captain Hadrian Sawback - a kind of James T Kirk crossed with 'American Dad' - and his motley crew on board the Starship Willful Child for a series of devil-may-care, near-calamitous and downright chaotic adventures through 'the infinite vastness of interstellar space'...

The bestselling author of the acclaimed Malazan Book of the Fallen sequence has taken his life-long passion for 'Star Trek' and transformed it into a smart, inventive and hugely entertaining spoof on the whole mankind-exploring-space-for-the-good-of-all-species-but-trashing-stuff-with-a-lot-of-hi-tech-kit-along-the-way type over-blown adventure. The result is this smart. inventive, occasionally wildly OTT and often very funny novel that deftly parodies the genre while also paying fond homage to it.

The novel has a listed release date of 5 June 2014 and an estimated page-count of somewhere around 300 pages. Erikson published a longer excerpt from the book on Tor last year.

Updated MALAZAN release dates

Amazon's latest information suggests that both of the next Malazan novels - Ian Cameron Esslemont's Assail and Steven Erikson's Fall of Light - have unfortunately been delayed.

According to Amazon, Assail will be released on 27 March 2014. The blurb is as follows:

The final chapter in the awesome, epic story of the Malazan empire.

Tens of thousands of years of ice is melting, and the land of Assail, long a byword for menace and inaccessibility, is at last yielding its secrets. Tales of gold discovered in the region's north circulate in every waterfront dive and sailor's tavern and now countless adventurers and fortune-seekers have set sail in search of riches. All these adventurers have to guide them are legends and garbled tales of the dangers that lie in wait -- hostile coasts, fields of ice, impassable barriers and strange, terrifying creatures. But all accounts concur that the people of the north meet all trespassers with the sword. And beyond are rumoured to lurk Elder monsters out of history's very beginnings. Into this turmoil ventures the mercenary company, the Crimson Guard. Not drawn by contract, but by the promise of answers: answers to mysteries that Shimmer, second in command, wonders should even be sought. Arriving also, part of an uneasy alliance of Malazan fortune-hunters and Letherii soldiery, comes the bard Fisher kel Tath. And with him is a Tiste Andii who was found washed ashore and who cannot remember his past life, yet who commands far more power than he really should. Also venturing north is said to be a mighty champion, a man who once fought for the Malazans, the bearer of a sword that slays gods: Whiteblade.

And lastly, far to the south, a woman guards the shore awaiting both her allies and her enemies. Silverfox, newly incarnated Summoner of the undying army of the T'lan Imass, will do anything to stop the renewal of an ages-old crusade that could lay waste to the entire continent and beyond. Casting light on mysteries spanning the Malazan empire, and offering a glimpse of the storied and epic history that shaped it, Assail is the final chapter in the epic story of the Empire of Malaz.

Meanwhile, Steven Erikson's Fall of Light, the second volume of The Kharkanas Trilogy, is now listed for 5 June 2014. No blurb is yet available.