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NOVEMBER 2007
Dear Readers,
 I have recently returned from the World Fantasy Convention, which was held in Saratoga Springs, a very nice spa town in upstate New York. Truthfully, I could have used the restorative benefits of a mineral bath by the end of the weekend. I was so punchy from endless talking that while waiting in line at the local coffee shop on Sunday morning, the word "vigorous" just popped out of my mouth.
The person in front of me wasn't the least bit comforted by this outburst. She looked at me quite worriedly. You see, I had been thinking about fantasy, but of a different sort. It wasn't Drogo of George Martin's Song of Ice and Fire I had been thinking about, although "vigorous" is indeed a word that would describe him. It wasn't even Jews with Swords—the original working title of Michael Chabon's new Del Rey novel, Gentlemen of the Road—that consumed me. It was in fact Team Vigorous of my Random House fantasy basketball league, the team with which I was locked in mortal combat that week. Other than fantasy and science fiction, the thing that most consumes me is fantasy basketball, which isn't fantastical at all. It is in fact more real than the abstract statistical integers that define it. When Agent Zero drives the lane with a spin move, elevates to the basket and scores with an subtle finger roll, it isn't a mere two points recorded for Tower of Power (my team); when he delivers 36 points, 12 assists, and 5 steals, it isn't just a good night for me, it is a line as stylish and defining as "The sky was the color of a television tuned to a dead channel," which many of you will recognize as the work of William Gibson.
The numbers reflect a poetry of motion as fluid and beautiful as any accepted masterpiece. In a very similar way, the written word of a fantasy novel represents a world as palpable as any real object. Is the Humanx Commonwealth a fantasy simply because it was imagined? Is our favorite character in a novel unreal because he or she exists only in our minds and on the page? I would say no. Those things are as real to me as anything in the world. So much for fantasy.
But I've gone way too long here. We've got some great stuff this month. Alan Dean Foster delivers Patrimony, the latest Pip and Flinx adventure, and we've got Josh Conviser's great spy-fi novel Empyre. Be sure to read his essay in this month's In Depth section.
Enjoy yourself,
Fleetwood
frobbins@randomhouse.com
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DEL REY NEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
AUTHORS ON TOUR
Pulitzer Prize winner MICHAEL CHABON will be appearing as listed for readings/signings of his new hardcover, Gentlemen of the Road. Please note all events are ticketed.
11/15 @ 7:00 PM
Samson Family Jewish Community Center in Milwaukee, WI
11/29 @ 7:00 PM
Teton County Library Foundation in Jackson Hole, WY
1/14 @ 7:00 PM
Temple De Hirsch Sinai in Seattle, WA
1/15 @ 7:00 PM
Pierce College in Puyallup, WA
JOSH CONVISER,
author of Echelon, will be appearing as listed to promote Empyre, his latest novel.
11/15 @ 7:00 PM
Borders Books & Music In Santa Barbara, CA
12/8 @ 3:00 PM
Borders Books & Music In San Luis Obispo, CA
12/13 @ 7:00 PM
Borders Books & Music In Goleta, CA
12/20 @ 5:30 PM
Explore Booksellers In Aspen, CO
MICHAEL REAVES will appear November 16th at 7:00 PM at Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego, CA to promote Star Wars: Death Star, co-authored with STEVE PERRY.
CONVENTION NEWS
Del Rey editors and authors recently attended the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, New York. Among those present for the festivities were Charles Coleman Finlay, Morgan Howell (aka Will Hubbell), Alan Dean Foster, Daryl Gregory, Douglas Anderson, Peter Brett, and editors Liz Scheier, Chris Schluep, and Fleetwood Robbins. A merry time was had by all!
Liz Scheier breaks bread—er, soup—with soon-to-be-published
Del Rey author Peter Brett. 
Alan Dean Foster, longtime Del Rey author and creator of the Pip & Flinx novels, chats with new Del Rey author Daryl Gregory, whose novel Pandemonium will be out in spring 2009.
Upcoming convention news: Harry Turtledove will be GoH at RAD CON 5, February 15-17, 2008 in lovely Pasco, Washington.
MANUSCRIPTS DELIVERED
Gregory Frost has delivered Lord Tophet, the second half of the critically acclaimed Shadowbridge duology. Lord Tophet will publish in the summer of 2008.
Bruce Sterling has delivered his long-awaited novel, The Caryatids.
ACQUISITIONS
Del Rey senior editor Liz Scheier has acquired the rights to Blood Magic, a paranormal romance by Dating Can Be Murder author Jennifer Apodaca, to be published in early 2009.
Respected comic book publishers Dabel Brothers Publishing and Del Rey have joined forces! Del Rey will be distributing graphic-novel editions of the Dabel Brothers' comics. The first three projects to be announced are full-color comic adaptations of Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files, Dean Koontz's Frankenstein: Prodigal Son, and Wild Cards, edited by George R.R. Martin. For more information, go to www.dabelbrothers.com.
Del Rey's Keith Clayton has acquired rights from Marvel Entertainment to four books based on the character of Iron Man. Two will tie in to the Marvel Studios film releasing May 2, 2008: the official movie novelization and a behind-the-scenes book of the making of the film. The other two books will be original Iron Man novels, to be released at a later date.
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An excerpt from the Afterword to GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD by Michael Chabon.
The original, working—and in my heart the true—title of the short novel you hold in your hands was Jews With Swords.
When I was writing it, and happened to tell people the name of my work in progress, it made them want to laugh. I guess it seemed clear that I meant the title as a joke. It has been a very long time, after all, since Jews anywhere in the world routinely wore or wielded swords, so long that when paired with "sword" the word "Jews" (unlike say "Englishmen" or "Arabs") clangs with anachronism, with humorous incongruity, like Samurai Tailor or Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. True, Jewish soldiers fought in the blade-era battles of Austerlitz and Gettysburg; notoriously, Jewish boys were stolen from their families and conscripted into the Czarist armies of 19th Century Russia. Any of those fighting men, or any of the Jews who served in the armed forces, particularly the cavalry units, of their homelands prior to the end of WWI might have qualified, I suppose, as Jews with swords.
But hearing the title, nobody seemed to flash on the image of doomed Jewish troopers at Inkerman, Antietam or the Somme, or of dueling Arabized courtiers at Muslim Granada, or even, say, on the memory of some ancient warrior Jew like Bar Kochba or Judah Maccabee, famed for his prowess at arms. They saw, rather, an unprepossessing little guy, with spectacles and a beard, brandishing a sabre: the pirate Mottel Kamzoyl. They pictured Woody Allen backing toward the nearest exit behind a barrage of wisecracks and a wavering rapier. They saw their Uncle Manny, dirk between his teeth, slacks belted at the armpits, dropping from the chandelier to knock together the heads of a couple of nefarious auditors.
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