After reading from his new “mystery project” Skyward on every stop of the Oathbringer tour, Brandon Sanderson has officially announced that the YA science fiction novel will be available come late 2018. He also shared how the idea, which took five years to come together, was inspired by pivotal “a boy and his dragon” books like Anne McCaffrey’s The White Dragon and Jane Yolen’s Dragon’s Blood, but with a twist. With Skyward, Sanderson has mashed up that archetypal fantasy friendship with flight school stories like Top Gun and Ender’s Game, so that “a boy and his dragon” became “a girl and her starfighter.”
The official pitch, from Sanderson himself:
Defeated, crushed, and driven almost to extinction, the remnants of the human race are trapped on a planet that is constantly attacked by mysterious alien starfighters. Spensa, a teenage girl living among them, longs to be a pilot. When she discovers the wreckage of an ancient ship, she realizes this dream might be possible—assuming she can repair the ship, navigate flight school, and (perhaps most importantly) persuade the strange machine to help her. Because this ship, uniquely, appears to have a soul.
Gollancz has posted the Skyward prologue, for all those who didn’t get to hear it in-person, as well as the official title announcement:
According to Sanderson, Skyward is expected to be published in the US (by Delacorte Press) on November 6 and in the UK (by Gollancz) on November 15. Expect a cover reveal and preorder link (for the US) soon. You can already preorder Skyward in the UK.
Can’t wait for more Sanderson Sci-fi!
The story sounds awesome, but will this new world fit I to the Cosmere?
@@@@@ Tony (comment#2) this doesn’t seem like a cosmere story. They tend to be more fantasy driven, this sounds more science driven.
This is frustrating…
How to Train Your Artificial Intelligence, by Brandon Sanderson
@2 and @3, this won’t be a Cosmere story.
From Brandon’s official announcement: As I’ve played with Skyward over the years, I tried to pull it into the Cosmere, then found it didn’t work there. However, it is in the continuity of something I’ve written before. Something that isn’t the Cosmere, and isn’t the Reckoners. And no, I won’t say anything more for now.
So … any bets, anybody?
Agree with @1 that is like to see more sci-fi from Sanderson. I’ve thought since “Firstborn” that the genre would be a good fit for his love of intricate rules and big themes.
@6 It would be interesting to see Brandon “create” a new universe that has Firstborn, Perfect State and Skyward in it. His sci-fi short stories have been fun to read so I would definitely welcome more on that front!
6. My money’s on Defending Elysium. It’s the only sci-fi story Brandon’s written (to date) which has honest-to-goodness extraterrestrial sophonts (Firstborn only has other humans), and the powers on offer therein could potentially have the ability to transfer consciousness from an organic chassis to a mechanical one (organic-to-organic has already been mastered as of DE). However, that comes with a large asterisk attached: namely, we don’t know the nature of the invaders mentioned in the prologue reading. If they are human, then Firstborn becomes that much more plausible, if not, then Defending Elysium remains the frontrunner.