SF Masterwork of the Week: Take Back Plenty

We’re sure you’d agree that it would take a pretty extraordinary book to prompt no less an August personage than Brian Aldiss to say: ‘Greenland proves himself the Verdi of space opera. Awesome orchestration admirable arias!’

And if that book also prompted the respected and award-winning magazine Interzone to say, ‘A masterpiece. If you ever wondered why you began reading science fiction this book answers that question’, we’re sure you’d agree that we could probably remove the qualifier and state with some confidence that this was a genuinely extraordinary book.

And if we told you that that same book had scooped the major British SF awards in the year it was published, winning the BSFA and Arthur C. Clarke Awards, beating (among other fine novels) Iain M. Banks‘s Use of Weapons – regarded by many as having a fair call to be considered the finest British SF novel of the past 25 years – we think you’d agree that it’s high time we stopped talking about this book and started reading it!

It is carnival time on Mars, but Tabitha Jute isn’t partying. She is in hiding from the law, penniless and about to lose her livelihood and her best friend, the space barge “Alice Liddell”. Then, the intriguing Marco Metz offers her some money to take him to Plenty, and then the adventure begins.

We’re delighted to announce the addition to Gollancz‘s SF Masterworks series – and the SF Gateway! – of none other than Colin Greenland‘s highly acclaimed and award-winning novel, Take Back Plenty. It’s the first of the Tabitha Jute novels – the rest of which will follow as eBooks from SF Gateway – and you no longer have an excuse not to read it.

So what are you waiting for? It’s Friday, after all – treat yourself to a weekend read. We’re confident you’ll enjoy it . . . plenty.

Sorry. I’ll get me coat . . .