my books – Science Fiction Worlds of Jeffrey A. Carver

20 Nov 2024

The Rapture Effect Reborn

posted in: audiobook, audiobooks, my books, new editions, print editions, The Rapture Effect | 0

My novel The Rapture Effect, originally published some years ago, is now out in all-new clothes! I gave you a look at the new cover a few weeks ago, but here it is again:

The first print edition since the Tor hardcover and paperback
Buy at | Amazon |

An all-new narration for audiobook by Stefan Rudnicki
Buy at | Apple | Chirp | Spotify |
Discounted for a limited time!

New cover and interior reformatting for the ebook
Buy where you like | The Rapture Effect |

The ebook is available pretty much everywhere, the audiobook is gradually rolling out in various stores, and the print edition is available now from Amazon and will soon make it into other stores, as well.

In case you have no idea what this book is about, here’s the description:

War between the stars…

It was started by an AI. Few humans even knew there was a war at all. But now people are dying—and the AI wants it to stop. But a war is easier to start than to stop, and the computer can’t alter its course without outside help. When the Gnostic Control System searches for co-conspirators, it chooses its friends carefully.

Pali: a brooding public relations director.
Ramo: a flamboyant senso-dancer, who prefers a musical jamdam to serious conversation.
Sage: a systems designer for whom the AI rapture-field is realer than life.
And three of the alien Ell: Harybdartt, who would rather die with dignity than betray his people; Lingrhetta, who tries to unravel the meaning of human dance and music, pain and love; and Moramaharta, the binder, who must persuade his fellow decision-makers to risk everything for the sake of a fragile bridge of understanding across the stars.

A thought-provoking novel from the award-winning author of Eternity’s End and The Chaos Chronicles, and recipient of the Frank Herbert Lifetime Achievement Award for science fiction writing.

“A lively dance of ideas… well-worth the trip ticket.” —Roger Zelazny

Hint: Any of these editions could be an excellent gift for the holidays!

24 Oct 2024

Spiffy New Editions for The Rapture Effect

posted in: audiobooks, cover art, my books, new editions | 0

I’ve been working on a new print edition of The Rapture Effect—the first print release since the original Tor publication. Following The Infinity Link, The Rapture Effect was my second long novel, about an interstellar war being waged by an AI, which now wants to find a way to stop it. The new print version is nearly ready, along with a reformatted ebook edition. Even better, principal recording has wrapped on a new audiobook—narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. This should really rev your engines. The old audiobook currently in the Audible store is not at all what it should have been, and it will soon be going away. The new version will get wide distribution.

To celebrate all this, I hereby present a brand-new cover*, with wonderful graphics magic by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff. She found a way to weave a whole new fabric from a collection of images I sent her way. I hope you like it. Yes, this is a cover reveal!

All this should be breaking free in the next few weeks. Check back for updates.

*BTW, I love the old cover, with art by David Mattingly. But it’s had a good, long run, and its sales mojo has sort of run out of steam. It will be retired with honors.

9 Oct 2023

Etsy Sale – $10 Off Book Orders

posted in: books, Bookshop, Etsy, my books, my Etsy shop, specials | 0

Etsy is running a special, starting now, for two days only: $10 off any order $40 and over. Use the code YES10. This applies to any Etsy order. That means it applies to any of my autographed print books on Etsy, and Etsy is eating the $10! Haven’t you been thinking, The holidays will be here before you know it, and what better gift than autographed science fiction? You know you have. Here are a few possibilities, any of them personalized upon request:

Complete set of autographed Star Rigger Books
Complete set of The Chaos Chronicles (to date)
Set of first-edition Tor hardcovers of the first four Chaos novels
Signed hardcovers of The Reefs of Time and Crucible of Time
À la carte selection of titles such as Eternity’s End, The Infinity Link (first edition), the Starstream novels, and Battlestar Galactica. I even have a grab-bag treasury of original mass-market paperback editions.

The possibilities are endless! Help me empty my basement shelves!

One catch: the sale is available only to customers in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. Free shipping in the U.S. Extra outside the U.S.

Through Wednesday Oct. 11.

24 Sep 2023

A New Look for The Infinity Link

posted in: my books, my Etsy shop, new editions, print editions | 0

The Infinity Link was my first BIG book, and by big, I mean big in size, as well as ambition and scope. It was my first hardcover, in a handsome edition from Bluejay Books in 1984, and reprinted in mass market paperback by Tor a year later. Both editions featured a gorgeous wraparound cover painting by David Mattingly, and that same cover, thanks to the generosity of the artist, has been gracing my Starstream Publications ebook edition since 2015. I still love it—I have a huge, framed poster of the Tor paperback rendering. The novel itself is one that I’m still very proud to have written. Here’s the cover blurb:

Mysterious travelers…impossible love…

The year is 2034, and at the Sandaran Research Center, a young woman named Mozy participates in a cyberlink experiment via tachyon beam. So intimate is the connection that she falls hopelessly in love with her distant partner, David Kadin, a man she has met only through the link. Upon learning that the project is to be terminated—and wanting desperately to fulfill her dreams—Mozy makes a daring decision.

Her choice catapults her into a flight of astounding discovery—one that puts her squarely in the path of a potential war, communication with the whales of Earth, and secret first contact with visitors from the stars. Are the aliens enemies or friends? No one knows, and now it may fall to this young woman alone to discover the truth. Caught in a telepathic link with the Talenki voyagers, Mozy’s personal odyssey becomes entwined with the fate of all of Humanity.

Combining visionary speculation with passionate human characters, The Infinity Link is an epic work of transcendent science fiction and an exploration into the very nature of humanity. From the Nebula-nominated author of Eternity’s End and recipient of the Frank Herbert Lifetime Achievement Award for science fiction writing.

Times change, and the original cover now seems of a different era. So as I prepared the book for its first new print edition in many years, I decided it was time for a new cover. My designer (Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff) and I worked long and hard on it, to get the look that I wanted. And here it is!

That’s the look of the ebook edition, as well as the trade paperback newly available on Amazon, and soon to be available everywhere. The images are by Kran Kanthawong and Branislav Ostojic via Dreamstime; Maya combined and merged and tweaked and created the type layout. The print version gave us fits, because it turned out to be really hard to get the vibrancy of that blue rendered in the Amazon KDP print-on-demand process. We never fully succeeded. The print edition looks good, I think, but it doesn’t jump off the paper in quite the same way the ebook jumps out of the glowing screen.

For those who are fond of the older version, copies of the original, first-edition hardcover are still available—autographed—through my Etsy shop. (A great gift idea for the upcoming holidays?)

5 Sep 2023

New Sale on Audiobooks!

posted in: audiobooks, my books, sales, The Chaos Chronicles | 0

Can we talk books for a minute? Chirpbooks is currently featuring The Infinite Sea in audiobook, price knocked down from $14.99 to a mere $.99. Can you even buy a pack of gum for that little? I don’t know. I do know that this is a great chance to pick up a few of my audiobooks for a great price.

Several other books in The Chaos Chronicles are also on sale for a limited time, including the series starter, Neptune Crossing. Click the link and you’ll see them all! Insanely good narration by Stefan Rudnicki. If you jump now, you can get it before the promotional email goes out! That ought to be worth something.

If you prefer Barnes & Noble or Spotify, several of them are on sale there, too. Prices may vary.

But they won’t last forever!

13 Mar 2023

New Print Edition: Down the Stream of Stars

posted in: my books, print editions, Starstream novels | 0

We’ve been back from the tropics for a week, and are now awaiting the arrival of a snowy, blowy nor’easter. To take our minds off that, let’s celebrate the arrival of a new print edition: Down the Stream of Stars, sequel to From a Changeling Star.

Like all of my books, this is one of my favorites. It’s cosmic in its setting, but it features an eight-year-old girl and a doglike lupeko named Lopo, flying with their families on a colony starship. They are about to fall into peril, because of the terrifying Throgs who inhabit the n-space of the starstream. They might get some help from a robot named Jeaves, as well as the sentient beings who fell into the starstream in the moment of its creation, but the danger is quite real.

This book was originally published back in the day by Bantam Spectra, and was called one of the best science fiction novels of the year by Science Fiction Chronicle. The original cover art is featured here, with the generous permission of the artist, Shusei.

The files were almost ready when I left for Puerto Rico, but I had to wait for a proof copy to arrive, so I could check it over and discover the formatting errors I made when setting it up. I did that, and now you can buy it on Amazon (affiliate link). Soon it’ll be in other stores, as well as in my Etsy shop, if you’d like an autographed copy.

5 Feb 2023

Lost Carver Masterwork Discovered!

posted in: early writings, my books, personal news | 4

Title: The Mysterious Midnight Ride. Completion date: circa 1961. Age of the author: ~12. Circumstances of discovery: cleaning office.

Here it is, folks. You’ve been clamoring for the archivists to uncover this work (seriously, a few of you have), and now it’s before you. My first story set to paper, when I was in 6th grade. My co-conspirator in this was my childhood best friend, Mike, now better known as classical music composer R. Michael Daugherty. I say co-conspirator rather than coauthor, because while we devised the story together, we each wrote our own version. I wonder if his has survived. I seem to recall that he wrote in the first person; mine is in third person. That’s about all I remember about it.

Herewith, I present you with The Mysterious Midnight Ride, complete and unexpurgated!

23 Nov 2021

Autographed Books for the Holidays?

posted in: Bookshop, my books, my Etsy shop, sales, specials, The Chaos Chronicles, The Reefs of Time | 0

Everyone loves autographed books! Especially sets of books. I know just where to start: The Star Rigger Bookstore…

…where you can buy complete, autographed sets of the entire Chaos Chronicles (to date) in evocative Starstream Publications trade paperback editions… or the first four books in first-edition Tor hardcovers. Or signed hardcover sets of The Reefs of Time and Crucible of Time. Or autographed copies of Eternity’s End, in the shiny new trade paperback, or the first-edition Tor hardcover. And much, much more. All (most?) at amazing, mark-down prices. (Truly amazing—that they are marked down, I mean.)

Don’t see what you want? Shoot me an email. There’s a good chance I’ve got it and just haven’t listed it yet.

In case you’re wondering, StarRiggerBooks is me, using Etsy as a platform. So you’ll get the same personal service, satisfaction almost guaranteed, by using the Etsy order form. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t know how to give impersonal service. I am my only underpaid employee. And I defy you to find a marketing algorithm anywhere in this store. Go ahead and look! Seriously. Look.

To all you USians traveling for Thanksgiving, travel safely and enjoy your holiday, I hope with family and treasured friends.

30 Sep 2020

New Look for Eternity’s End Ebook!

posted in: cover art, ebooks, Eternity's End, my books, Star Rigger Universe | 2

Back some years ago, when Tor published the first edition of my Star Rigger novel Eternity’s End, they commissioned cover art from Stephen Youll, one of the leading artists in the SF field. Stephen had a great vision for the book, and the Tor cover looked like this:

Later, when I brought out my own ebook edition, I had a much smaller budget. I bought some stock art I liked and enlisted writer/artist Pat Ryan to put it all together for me. I was quite pleased with the result, which looked like this:

I used that cover for many years, and it served me well. But I never forgot the original, which I loved for the way it popped off the page, and also actually reflected the story inside. As I started to think about a new paper edition of the book, I also thought about that painting. I got in touch with the artist, and Stephen was excited at the chance to have the art used again. He cut me a deal, and I proudly took a high-res jpg of the art to Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, who’s been doing my cover layouts. She outdid herself in the type design and gave me this new ebook and print book cover, and this week I have released it into world! (Click on it to see it full size.)

And if you’d like to see the full, glorious, wraparound art, without any text, here it is (click image to biggify).

Sometimes I really love my job.

8 Feb 2020

SUNBORN Scorches New Print Edition!

posted in: my books, print editions, Sunborn, The Chaos Chronicles | 1

Sunborn, the fourth book in The Chaos Chronicles, has blazed forth in a new treebook edition, a solid trade paperback designed to go nicely with Reefs and Crucible and all the others! The complete set will look great on any shelf! It’s available right now from Ingram, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon, which means you can ask your local bookstore (or library) to order it, or you can buy it online. (As of this moment, it’s discounted at B&N. I don’t know why, or how long it will last.)

With this, all the published books in The Chaos Chronicles are available in print as well as ebook. (Still planned: a reformatting of Neptune Crossing, which is in a larger trim size than the others. It was the first one I put back into print, at 6×9 inches, and I later decided to go with the 5.5×8.5 inch size for the new books.)

Coming soon: an all-new audiobook of Sunborn! It’s already recorded and uploaded. It might take a couple of weeks to become available. Don’t change that dial!

Stars are dying. Bandicut and his friends must learn what threatens the Starmaker Nebula—and confront a billion-year-old adversary of life as they know it…

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