Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

Sci-Fi Bulletin are proud to host the cover reveal for Matthew De Abaitua’s debut novel for Angry Robot, If Then, which will be published on 1st September in the US and Canada, and 3rd September in the UK and the rest of the world.

“If Then ties two ends of the world together: a lost battle of the First World War and its consequences over a hundred years later in the lives of a post-collapse Sussex town,” De Abaitua explains. “Raid71’s powerful cover brings these two devastating moments together, with a melancholic but cool precision.”

In the near future, after the collapse of society as we know it, one English town survives under the protection of the computer algorithms of the Process, which governs every aspect of their lives. The Process gives and takes; it allocates resources, giving each person exactly what it has calculated they will need. Human life has become totally algorithm-driven, and James, the town bailiff, is charged with making sure the Process’s suggestions are implemented.

But now the Process is making soldiers. It is readying for war — the First World War. Mysteriously, the Process is slowly recreating events that took place over a hundred years ago, and is recruiting the town’s men to fight in an artificial reconstruction of the Dardanelles campaign. James, too, must go fight. And he will discover that the Process has become vastly more sophisticated and terrifying than anyone had believed possible.

Matthew De Abaitua lived and worked as Will Self’s amanuensis in a remote cottage in Suffolk, after he graduated with an MA in Creative Writing.

His short story ‘Inbetween’ was included in the bestselling anthology Disco Biscuits and adapted as a short film by Channel 4. His first novel The Red Men (Snowbooks 2007, Gollancz ebook 2013) was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. In 2013, the first chapter was adapted as a short film ‘Dr. Easy’ by directors Shynola (produced by Film4 and Warp) as a precursor to a feature film, currently in development. ‘Dr. Easy’ currently has had 237k views on Vimeo.

Matthew currently lectures on Creative Writing at Brunel University and Writing Science Fiction at the University of Essex.

Find out more about the cover artists here

Click on the cover for a larger version