May update

 Thanks for your patience with the lack of news over the last few months. All's been well, I've been busy with work and travel, but I'll offer a few highlights as a prelude to more regular updates as we go into the summer.

Once the Zurich stuff had died down (see last post), I got back into preparatory work on the new novel. I decided I wouldn't start any actual writing, though, until I'd completed the first round of edits on MERLIN'S WAY. February and March, then, were mostly taken up with planning, chapter outlines etc. It's not always the way I work, but with a book of the kind I'm now writing, it's all but unavoidable.

It wasn't all hard work. In Mid February my wife and I travelled to Birmingham to see Carlos Acosta's ballet production Don Quixote, which was magnificent. On the way, we diverted via That London where we went to the launch for our friend Paul McAuley's wonderful new novel LOSS PROTOCOL, which is certainly one of his best and most personal books, an affecting take on climate change, catastrophe and adaptation in a future Britain four or five decades from now. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

March came and went, as Marches tend to do. I hit my 60th birthday, but not being one much for milestones I kept it deliberately low-key, and was perfectly content with that. As the end of the month neared, edits came in on Merlin so I attended to those (not too bad) and then travelled back up to Birmingham for the Easter National SF Convention, held in a hotel at the NEC. I only went along as a punter, not taking part in any programming but it was nice to sit in on a few readings, panels etc and just generally catch up with friends old and new. I really love Birmingham and its environs; I've always felt comfortable there and it's a particular joy to have that connection affirmed by my link to the Birmingham SF Group (who I also visited during February's trip). I enjoyed Eastercon but I think it reinforced my feeling that one full day is about right for me, especially now that the dealer's room isn't all that great for just general book-buying. 

Peter Hamilton and I had an enjoyable meal the first night, then did the same thing again the second, along with the aforementioned Paul M, and Robin Kilsby from the Brum group.

Back in Wales, I finally made a real start on the new book. Not much to say on that one right now, other than that it's set mostly in Wales, in 2046, and it's structured around a police investigation. It's not noir, but it is very much science fiction.

Later in April I'd agreed to go to Bratislava to attend "VytahConf", a business-orientated space meeting. As the trip neared, I dropped work on the novel to prepare my talk for the closing session. My topic choice was handed to me on a plate, given the recent success of Artemis II. I'd just turned 60 and my whole life - thus far, at least - might be viewed as bookended by crewed Lunar missions. I don't remember any of the specific Apollo missions, but I do remember the fact of them happening, and my interest in space exploration was sufficiently activated that I do have clear recollection of Skylab. It's also one of the great thrills of my life to have met two Apollo astronauts (Jack Schmidt, and the now late Al Worden).

For my talk, I took an overview of those 60 years, looking at the timeline for orbital bases and lunar settlements that we might have had, contrasting visions from both NASA technical forecasts and contemporary science fiction, taking in such ambitious but perhaps unlikely ventures as Von Braun's proposal for a nuclear powered Mars landing by 1982. Although much remains unclear about Artemis III and beyond, the evident success of the Lunar fly-around, re-entry and splashdown was enough to be able to leave things on a reasonably optimistic note. I was captivated by the whole mission, in fact, and can't wait for the next chapter. 

Just a pity they cut the chorus:

Anyway, my hosts in Bratislava, Igor and Adam, made sure I was very well looked after. I loved my glimpse of this beautiful city, which marked my first visit to Slovakia. Indeed, other than a visit to Vienna about thirty years ago, I'm seriously untravelled in this whole part of Europe. I flew in to Vienna, by the way: it's only a relatively short, frictionless car ride across the barely-discernible border and between the two glittering, Danube-threaded cities.

Igor had arranged a Q&A and signing event at a great bookshop, Martinus, for the evening before the conference. The bookshop event was fantastic. Although I've not been translated into Slovakian, a number of my books have appeared in Czech language editions over the years. I signed many copies and chatted to some lovely people.

I don't take being translated at all lightly, but once you've received your contractual allocation of books, it can sometimes feel a bit abstract. Seeing these books, some of the new, but some of them also old and well-read, gave me a fantastic jolt of appreciation for the time and energy taken to put these translations into the world, and to the readers who have sought them out. I loved talking to everyone at Martinus (and the other readers I met at VytahConf, and in the pub later on) and hope my gratitude came across. There are so many legitimate reasons for having a writerly whinge lately: seeing your work scraped for AI training models, the hollowing out of publishing, the creeping death of the mass market paperback etc... but there are good times, too, reasons to keep grinding on. I came back from Bratislava absolutely stoked and threw myself back into the new book with renewed purpose.

There was stuff in May, and now I'm back on the book ... but I'm also taking a stab at a new novella, because I don't think I've been doing enough shorter fiction lately. It's a topic I touch upon in this interview with Jon from ScifiScavenger, which I did last month:

I very enjoyed chatting with Jon and if you've not checked out his channel, there's lots to dig into there. On the subject of Youtube channels, too, while it's not an interview, you might want to check out this discussion about Halcyon Years on Robin Kilsby's Bookspin channel:

Well that's about it for me. I'm off sick right now with a nasty chest infection so there's really nothing to be done except lounge around watching Star Trek re-runs. Could be worse, couldn't it?

Cheers and best wishes.

Al R

Halcyon sketches (spoiler-free)

 As promised, a pair of sketches (one complete with authentic coffee stain!) that I drew before writing Halcyon Years. I'd worked out the basic parameters of the story at this point, putting in the locales I knew I'd need, but there are a few bits and pieces which didn't end up playing much of a role in the book. All of the following is revealed in the first few chapters of the book, by the way, so no fear of giving away anything crucial - although if you'd like to go in totally cold, obviously, read no more.

The first one (click to embiggen) is a basic cross-section of Halcyon. I didn't really have a set idea of how big it needed to be, but 50 km long seemed about right for the type of story I was intending. I was thinking, very roughly, of something about the size of greater Los Angeles. I wanted there to be room enough for distinct settlements with countryside between them, not just one big city, and I also wanted roads and railway lines, and especially the former, so I could have cars. I decided that the ship would be completely closed, with no windows to the outside universe, and that there'd need to be a long, thick tube running down the middle to give the illusion of sky.

The little sketch to the bottom right of the picture is me working out for myself what rough percentage of the interior would be visible from any given position on the inner surface. As you can see, it's never possible to see the opposite side of the tube.

The second sketch (also click to embiggen) is the complete interior rolled out as a map:

As mentioned, there's stuff in there that doesn't come into the final story, and which may or may not be in contradiction with it, such as the island in the middle of Midlake. That was going to be a kind of private retreat for the DelRossos, but in the end I decided not to bother with it, just letting them have their estate and the luxury yacht. I wasn't going to draw another map just because the story took me in a slightly different direction.

Should these or tidied-up versions have been included in the book? I'm not sure. Perhaps because I wasn't a big reader of fantasy, I've never expected to see a map at the beginning of a book, and those few times when I encountered one in an SF context, I never found it all that helpful. But that's just me.

January update

 Many thanks, all, for your patience with lack of updates and unanswered comments over the past few months. Everything has been fine here, but what with travel and an unexpected commission, time just seemed to slip away after October.

After delivering Merlin's Way and completing the Cardiff Half, my next big milestone was a trip to France at the end of October. I was one of the guests at the Utopiales festival in Nantes, but prior to that I spent a few days in Paris and was kept enjoyable busy with interviews and a fantastic evening at Millepages, a wonderful bookshop in Vincennes, on the outskirts of the city. My thanks to Clement from Millepages, my friends from Belial, who looked after my wife and I during the whole trip, and the brilliant people at Utopiales. I met many readers, did a huge amount of PR, and came back buzzing with enthusiam. I've always had friendly relations with my different French publishers over the years, but they've not always been able to sell my books in sufficient numbers to make the whole thing viable as an ongoing proposition. Since publishing the French editions of Thousandth Night and House of Suns, though, Belial seem to have tapped into some enthusiasm for my work and I'm really happy to see where this takes us. It doesn't hurt that Belial take a lot of care with their translations and covers, of course.

While I was in France, I got the disappointing news that the play our local theatre group had been working on for some time could not go ahead due to an unanticipated rights issue. We were rehearsing for Neil Simon's California Suite. I've always been a fan of Neil Simon's work, especially The Odd Couple, and it happened that my character was going to be the one played by Walter Matthau in the film version of California Suite - a double bonus because my dad was a big Walter Matthau fan. Ah well, perhaps we'll get another stab at it down the line. In the meantime, with my evenings somewhat more open than I'd been expecting, I decided to knuckle down and throw myself into online French lessons, which I'm rather enjoying. Having received such a warm welcome in France on my recent trips, it seems I really ought to make more of an effort.

Halcyon Years duly appeared in the UK while I was in France. I didn't do much publicity, certainly not compared to the days of ten or twenty years ago, when pub week would be pretty full-on, with trips not just to London but Manchester, Birmingham, etc but that seems to be the way things are now. On the back end of a trip to London I already had planned, I signed some stock for Goldsboro and Forbidden Planet, and I also maintained my long-standing relationship with the excellent Anderida Books in Worcester, who still have some signed and numbered first editions available.

Although the focus was on novellas rather than Halcyon Years, I did chat to my good friend Robin, of the Bookspin Youtube channel and also the Birmingham Science Fiction Group. You can watch the interview here:

And, jumping ahead a bit, I also had a good chat with Gary Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan on the Coode Street Podcast in December:

https://jonathanstrahan.podbean.com/e/episode-705-the-coode-street-advent-calendar-2025-day-17-alastair-reynolds/

Thanks both for your kindness and support throughout my career.

Halcyon picked up some nice reviews from (among others) The Guardian, SFX, Locus and so on, and I'm really grateful. The US edition is due out this month and I'll be sure to jump on any promotional opportunities that come my way. Timed quite nicely is this interview I've just done with Arley at Clarkesworld, for which many thanks:

https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/reynolds_interview_2026/

That was October into November, and a bit of December, but the big unexpected thing that came along was a short story commission for Zurich Insurance. I'd worked with Zurich in a future-forecasting role about twelve years ago, so if I'm a corporate sell-out I'm afraid it's already happened, but this was something slightly different, paring me up with professional futurologist Tom Cheesewright to take a look at the world of 2050, shining a light on where things might actually improve rather than get worse. Tom and I had to work quickly, with Tom producing a sort of bullet-point forecast about all sorts of things in 2050, from healthcare to food, employment, travel and AI. I then cherry-picked half a dozen or so eye-catching items from Tom's report, and wrote a story around them, taking the title "Meet Tomorrow" from the overall name of the Zurich project. We were all very pleased with how the whole package came together. By a nice coincidence, too, one of the illustrators attached to the project was Amir Zand, who has also done my Belial covers!

We went live on Monday 12th January, and Tom and I spent Tuesday doing a raft of interviews for local radio and TV across the UK, all of which seemed to go well. In fact there's been a bit of repeat business, in that we've been asked to go back onto Radio Wales this coming weekend - which is nice.

The package Zurich has put together looks really slick. We spent a day filming in the Barbican centre, so you can see me talking about the project, and also hear me reading the story. Take a look here if so interested:

https://www.zurich.co.uk/meet-tomorrow

From that page, you can also download and read Tom's detailed predictions across all the relevant areas.

Aside from any more media that comes our way, Tom and I may meet up in October when we are both booked in to do the Cardiff Half! I'll be breaking out the begging bowl again for my chosen charity partner (this time the Stroke Association) but I'll leave that until well into summer. Thank you for those who supported me in my two charity drives in 2025, for Mind over Matters and Cancer Research Wales.

November and December were busy in other ways (I know, is anyone ever not busy?). I went up to London for a reading and signing event at the Super Relaxed Fantasy Club, which was terrific fun, then I was back again for the aforementioned Barbican film shoot, then back again for the inaugural Global Space Awards.

I was there just as a punter, so I could sit back and enjoy the wonderful surroundings and hospitality in the Natural History Museum. It was a really fantastic evening surrounded by the great and the good of the space sector, brilliantly hosted by the physicist Brian Greene (a very cool operator) and with the likes of Tim Peake and Maggie Aderin-Pockock there to give speeches and hand out prizes. I was particularly pleased to see the life of Jim Lovell honoured, with the inaugural James Lovell Legacy Award being given to his family, some of whom were in attendance (below, with Brian Greene and Tim Peake):

I got the chance to say hello to Tim again, which is always a thrill - I've met him three times now and he's exactly as engaging and enthusiastic in person as you'd hope.

Well, that's me more or less up to date. I'm trying to get going on a new book, but I've not yet settled on a theme that really fires me up, but we'll see how that goes over the coming weeks. I've got nothing further to report on Merlin's Way, incidentally, but at some point I should expect some feedback and editorial requests, for which I'll need to stop work on whatever I've got going by then. Whether that'll be next week or next month, I've no idea. Twenty five years ago, when I started publishing novels, the typical turnaround for first impressions was on the order of 3  - 6 weeks, but you can comfortably call it 3 - 6 months now, and longer isn't unheard of. To some extent you used to be able to plan your yearly schedule around these rhythms, but no longer - at least not at my level of sales and name-recognition. No one is to blame; everyone in publishing (should I say "trad publishing"?) is chronically overworked now, but the end result is that writers, at least those in my acquaintance, spend more and more of our time in limbo, hoping to get started on a new thing but never actually sure where we are with the old. It's not really conducive to creativity, but we make do as best we can.

Thanks again for reading me in 2025, and I'll wish everyone a healthy and enjoyable 2026, wherever you may be.

And hey, let's have some B-52s, because nothing could be more absurd than the present moment.

love, Al R