I was looking through Amazon.com's selection of shadowrun books and noticed that SOTA2064 is due out in December 2003. Then I noticed Shadows of Europe is still due out for September 2003. Any ideas?

The release schedule announced at GenCon and RatCon listed upcoming releases in the following order (subject to change of course):

• Shadows of Europe
• Mr Johnson's Little Black Book
• Loose Alliances
• Shadows of Asia
• Running Wild
• SOTA64
• (possible adventure set)

That means SOTA64 is probably at least 5 books away, which in my mind says late 2004.

Also note that Amazon.com's data on SR material is unreliable at best - they've even been known to list Battletech Classic material as SR sometimes and vice versa. Your best choice for updated info is still the official SR website and these boards .

The thing with Amazon is the same as the deal with different book covers in trade magazines: they want you to send info months in advance, which is usually before some of these books are even started. Natch, there's got to be some kind of placeholder image or projected availability date... which can be corrected later when a better date can be given (real or estimated, based on the remaining work needed to be done) or an actual cover image done.

Which reminds me, I was flipping through last month's Previews catalog from Diamond, and under FanPro in the Games section I was surprised to find they had all the above books with relevant mock-up covers for solicitation!

Actually the Loose Alliances and Shadows of Asia mockups were nice illos, though not cover-worthy.