Approaching Pavonis Mons by balloon

The SFX Weekender

2012-02-08T05:32:00.000-08:00

I spent the weekend in Prestatyn, along with about six thousand other people, attending the third SFX Weekender. This was my first time at an SFX event, and also the first time I'd been anywhere near what might be termed a "media" convention - certainly a world away from my experiences at Eastercon, or indeed almost any of the more literary-orientated events in the SF calendar, which tend to the "low key" end of things. Even the Worldcon, which has its share of costumers and VIP guests, couldn't compare to the Weekender. As others have remarked, the demographic was very different to the usual experience, skewing toward a much younger audience, and with what struck me as a fairly even gender balance among the attendees. (Less so with the guests and "entertainment", but that's also been well reported elsewhere).

I'm grateful to SFX for inviting me. I think it's important to go into these things with the right mindset. This is Pontins in Prestatyn, not the Atlantis in Reno. So dial down those expectations. I was mighty glad that my chalet was heated, and although the decor was a little distressed, and there were some interesting mold colonies in the bathroom, it was more than adequate for a couple of days. There was extra bedding. There was a television that worked, and a kettle. There was hot water on the saturday. On sunday it was no more than tepid, but I put this down to everyone rushing to have a shower before checking out in the morning.

Equally, having done my homework, I wasn't surprised to find that the dining options on site were rubbish. Fortunately there were a couple of decent restaurants in town, which was not a long walk from the camp. My colleagues from Orion (Jon Weir, Gillian Redfearn, Simon Spanton and Marcus Gipps) took excellent care of their authors, ensuring there was a ready supply of takeaway pizza and chinese in one of the chalets. Less brilliant, but impossible to resolve on the weekend, was the complete absence of tea or coffee in the main entertainment area. There were a couple of bars (I found the service perfectly OK and friendly, though others have moaned) but I'm not one for drinking alcohol during the day and nor am I overly fond of soft or fizzy drinks. Basically, I'm a writer. I'm a machine for turning coffee into fiction. As an aside, there's much talk of making SF events more inclusive, but I wonder how effective these efforts can ever be when so much of SF culture seems to resolve around alcohol? There are times when British fandom seems to be little more than the literary wing of the Campaign for Real Ale.

What would also have been nice would have been an area to sit down and have a quiet conversation. My abiding memory of the weekend is struggling to hear people, be they on panels or in the bars. It was loud, all the time. But, it was also pretty good fun. I saw a lot of basically happy people. I met some good friends and made some new acquaintances. It certainly feels more "buzzing" than Eastercon and many of the usual Eastercon faces were present, but it's too soon to say whether or not the Weekender will supplant that long-running tradition.

I didn't have too much to do all weekend. I was asked to moderate a panel on space opera, a topic I'm frankly sick to death of, but I think we managed to drag out a few interesting nuggets during our allotted time. My thanks to my fellow participants. There was a minor "moment" when I irritated my friend Jaine Fenn by raising the issue of gender disparity among SF writers, but the fault was all mine; it really had nothing to do with the focus of the topic and it was thoughtless of me to bring it up. Apologies all round.

After that, I joined fellow panelist Peter Hamilton for our joint signing session, which I think went very well. I've known Peter for twenty years, at least (did we meet at the Harrogate Mexicon in 1991, or was it a year later, during the launch of the In Dreams anthology?) but our paths have crossed remarkably infrequently in all that time. Peter is a delightful chap with a warmly appreciative readership, and I've always felt that he paved the way for the likes of me by showing that British SF writers could tackle books of truly monumental scope and not need to apologise for it. Thanks to everyone who showed up at our signing, and thanks to Peter for being good company and sending a few of his readers my way.

Saturday night found me drinking with editors Simon Spanton and Marcus Gipps, whereupon we got into a fascinating chat with a pair of couples who'd come down from Manchester. From what I could gather they'd scored some tickets to the event despite having no prior interest in sci-fi or geek culture - they'd come along purely for the hell of it, to see what it was all about. And they seemed have enjoyed themselves, which is great - exactly the kind of "outreach" there ought to be more of. After that, I ended up propping up the bar with the inestimable Jim Burns and our mutual drinking buddie Gary, talking of Jet Provosts, English Electric Lightnings and suchlike. Honestly, you had to be there. Or maybe you were glad you weren't.

Sunday morning brought anticipated travel chaos. There were no trains to Chester, and the replacement bus service couldn't cope with the demand of several thousand fans. Thankfully, I was lucky enough to be invited to share a taxi with Ian Sales and a number of other friendly souls. Thanks! I still only just caught my connecting train, and it was another six hours before I was home, so I shudder to think how late I'd have been without that kind offer.

Would I go again? Depends on the coffee, I think. A chill-out zone, like a hotel lobby, with some comfy chairs and a coffee stand, would make a vast difference. To me, at least.

Forbidden Planet

2012-01-20T08:28:00.000-08:00

I'll be signing in London's Forbidden Planet tomorrow between 4 and 5pm. Hope to see some of you there.

http://forbiddenplanet.com/events/2012/01/21/alastair-reynolds-signing-blue-remembered-earth/

Meanwhile, a reminder that you can read a little bit about the book, as well as the prologue and first three chapters, over at the http://www.gollancz.co.uk/.

This week's progress: 11,000 words on the new book.

The trailer, redux

2012-01-19T08:46:00.000-08:00

I've heard from James Roberts, of thewholebuffalo.com, who was the writer, director and editor on the excellent Blue Remembered Earth trailer (well over 5000 hits, by the way, and climbing). James points out that there's a nice VFX/making-of montage to be seen here, after the main trailer:

http://vimeo.com/33059028

Go on. Watch it again. You know you want to...

A bit more

2012-01-18T05:17:00.000-08:00

Some more of the book up on the Gollancz blog, for your enjoyment (or otherwise).

http://www.gollancz.co.uk/2012/01/blue-remembered-earth-prologue/

Glad to hear that copies of the book are reaching people, and indeed some are already well into the book.

Read an excerpt from Blue Remembered Earth

2012-01-16T08:01:00.000-08:00

Over at the Gollancz blog, they'll be posting some chapters from the new book over the next few days. To kick off, my editor Simon Spanton has written a very kind piece about the author, and you can already read the start of the novel (kind of a pro-prologue, I think).

http://www.gollancz.co.uk/

Blue Remembered Earth reviews

2012-01-12T05:01:00.000-08:00

Some reviews of the new book have begun to appear. In one of his essays Gene Wolfe said something to the effect that, no matter the subsequent reactions, provided the first review is positive, you can always take consolation from that. Fortunately for me, I've never had a very bad first review, although doubtless it will happen one of these days. SFX, who have generally been kind to me, disliked Revelation Space rather intensely - but by the point I read that review, there had already been a handful of broadly positive ones, so the sting was lessened. Of course these things shouldn't matter too much, and they probably don't affect me as much now as they did at the start of my career (when, to be fair, a lot more was riding on those reviews). A wise writer once said that a bad review should spoil your breakfast, not your dinner.

Anyway, on to BRE.

Writing in Locus - you can read the complete review here Gary K Wolfe said: "By the end, when the plot accelerates from its initial methodical pace of investigation into flat-out, cliffhanging adventure, we realize that we’ve read a fairly long novel that seems like a pretty short one (I read this on a Kindle, and was surprised to learn the actual page count later). If Reynolds can keep this up – and there’s enough planted here for future volumes to already suggest that he can – he might have one of the most enjoyable series of the still-young decade."

Writing in the Guardian, Eric Brown said: "Reynolds's near-future is so brilliantly extrapolated, with original ideas fizzing off every page, that the reader is left awestruck at what further wonders await in the following volumes. Excellent." Again, you can read the entire review here.

Not online yet, SFX's reviewer Jonathan Wright had some problems with elements of the plot but went on to say "At other points though, the sheer quality of his writing reminds you why Reynolds is held in such high esteem", and concluded by saying that the book is "convincingly optimistic, life-affirming SF ... a measure of Reynolds's versatility and development as a novelist." The book gained 4/5 stars.

These days, blogging has all but eradicated the division between professional and amateur reviewer, to the point where book publishers are now willing to cite the opinions of online readers as if they carried just as much heft as the traditional reviewers - which perhaps, in the highly connected and web-savvy world of SF, is increasingly the case. Here's an extremely generous review (I don't know the author) which I think gets to the heart of the book, and raises some interesting points, or perhaps concerns, about the direction the future volumes are likely to take:

http://bookblagblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/blue-remembered-earth-alastair-reynolds/

Meanwhile, back in October, Adam Roberts was good enough to write this short piece in anticipation of the book's release this year:

http://punkadiddle.blogspot.com/2011/10/alastair-reynolds-blue-remembered-earth.html

That's it for now; I am sure other reviews will roll in and I will keep an eye out for them as they appear.

Guardian podcast

2012-01-12T02:38:00.000-08:00

Many of you may have already been aware of this, but I did a Guardian podcast last week (along with Sarah Crown, Damien G Sullivan and Jeff Noon, and with contributions from Lauren Beukes and Michael Moorcock). Have a listen:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2012/jan/06/books-podcast-science-fiction-now-tomorrow

Thank you to Simon and Sarah for hosting such an enjoyable event. It was nice to meet Jeff Noon for the first time, too.

Festive wishes

2011-12-24T15:07:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year when I wish my readers the best of the festive season, and a happy 2012. Thanks for following the blog through 2011. Here's a seasonal watercolour by my wife.

Read it in books

2011-12-22T03:08:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I recieved a big brown box containing the first copies of BLUE REMEMBERED EARTH. It's always a bit of a kick to get the finished product. It's not why I write (and I definitely don't do it to see my name on bookshelves - that particular thrill lasts about five minutes, in my experience) but it's one of the high points, and it would be churlish not to enjoy it. Especially, in this case, when the book itself is so lovely to behold. I've had some gorgeous covers in the past, and it's been both a thrill and an honour to have my work illustrated by the likes of Chris Moore. This cover, though, is by Dominic Harman - old friend and a much admired artist. We do go back some way - Dominic illustrated several of my stories for Interzone, back in the 90s, including a particularly lavish and evocative set of pictures for "Galactic North". I don't think either of us would have quite believed that Dominic would be illustrating my tenth novel, here in what is shortly to become 2012. But he's done a grand job, and I think the cover very effectively sets out the themes that will continue into the second and third books.

I've posted it before, but here's the cover in all its maximum sumptuousness.

Lovely, isn't it? I mean, c'mon. That's a fantastic bloody cover.

More on Dominic Harman here.

Blue Remembered Earth trailer

2011-12-13T08:31:00.000-08:00

This is officially very cool. I was thrilled when I learned that Gollancz intended to commission a promotional trailer for Blue Remembered Earth; even more so when I saw the treatment. Two days ago I saw the final product and I'm stunned; it's a lovely piece of work, and very true to my mental image of the characters and their world. Magnificent!

You can watch the trailer by going to:

http://www.gollancz.co.uk/2011/12/blue-remembered-earth-trailer-launch/

or at http://www.sfx.co.uk/2011/12/13/blue-remembered-earth/

Or on Youtube:

Either way, enjoy. For now, this as close as you're going to get a film of one of my books. I'd like to thank everyone involved at Gollancz, including Simon and Marcus, but with a special nod to Jen who has been involved in this from the outset, and very keen to get the right look and feel. The effort and imagination that has gone into this is definitely appreciated at my end. And if you have any comments on the trailer, I'm sure they'd be welcome at any of the links above, or here.

The Belgian Incident - a true story.

2011-12-11T06:00:00.000-08:00

"...but though even words like jujuflop, swut and turlingdrome are now
perfectly acceptable in common usage, there is one word that is still
beyond the pale. The concept it embodies is so revolting that the
publication or broadcast of the word is utterly forbidden in all parts
of the galaxy except one, where they don't know what it means.
That word is... BELGIUM."
(Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Fit the Tenth)

What was it about Belgium that had such an effect on Douglas Adams? I've often wondered what (if anything) Belgian people make of that little slur against their country, however innocently intentioned it may have been. Did Adams just pluck the name out of the air, or was there something more to it? My recollection is that many of the ideas for the Guide were said to have originated while Adams was hitchhiking his way around Europe in the early seventies. Did something especially formative happen to Adams while travelling through Belgium? Was the experience so bad that the only way to achieve catharsis was through the medium of a science fiction radio series?

Speaking for myself, three of the worst hours of my life happened in Belgium. That experience most definitely coloured the way I think about the country – but in rather a different way to Adams. What follows is the true story of those three hours – but before we get to Belgium it is necessary to deal with the small matter of the trip to Paris without which the Belgian Incident would never have happened. Along the way we shall encounter the case of the impacted tree, the Spiral of Doom, the night watchman and the wandering vagrant, the dead woman, the interchange from hell, and the two Belgian drinkers.
* * *

It was the autumn of 1994. I’d been living in the Netherlands for three years and had just succeeded in getting my driving license. It had been an uphill struggle. There were times when I thought I would never learn to drive.

I’d started taking lessons while still living in Wales in the 1980s, but lack of time and money (and, frankly, interest) meant that I never got very far. I went away to do my degree studies in the north of England and another three years passed. Once I’d got my degree I had another go at getting my license, just before moving to the wilds of Scotland. I failed that attempt (can’t remember why, but I don’t think there were any fatalities) and put my motoring ambitions on hold for another three years, while I soldiered through to my doctorate in observational astronomy. In truth I didn’t really need a car, and couldn’t have afforded to run one anyway. But in 1991 I left Scotland and moved to the Netherlands, and after settling down for a few months I decided I really needed to tackle this driving thing. My new job with ESA, the European Space Agency, was likely to take me abroad quite often, and it would make life much easier if I could drive while on those trips.

There followed two years of total frustration. The first thing I needed to know was the rules of the road in the Netherlands, which differed in a number of ways from the British system. The good news was that there was an English translation of the Dutch driving manual. The bad news was that a number of key rules had just been changed, and they hadn’t yet printed a translation incorporating those changes. I had to make do with the up-to-date Dutch version and the out-of-date English version, comparing the two and trying to spot the differences, all the while struggling with a language I’d only started learning a few months earlier.

Despite this I passed the theory part of the test on my first go, with a respectably high score. Passing the practical part of the exam was another thing entirely. My first attempt was abysmal, and I wasn’t surprised to be failed on it. The second and third attempts went a bit better, but I still didn’t come up to the grade. Learning when and when not to give priority to cyclists was my big problem. However I did eventually pass – was it on the fourth or fifth attempt? I don’t remember. I don’t want to remember – I’m already getting a Vietnam-style flashback about the whole traumatic experience. What I do remember is that I still managed to drive the car into a tree during the examination, and pass, which really takes some doing. It was during the parking of the car back in the test centre, which technically is still considered part of the examination. There was a bit of a crunch. The examiner turned to me and said: “That really wasn’t very clever, was it Mr Reynolds?”

Anyway, I passed, and spent the rest of the summer slowly building up confidence. I drove to and from work. I drove from Noordwijk to Leiden. I drove from Leiden to Den Bosch. So far, so good. Then came the Paris trip, of which the Belgium Incident is but one part.

It began like this. J and I had somehow become involved with a charity that had arranged the collection of unwanted children’s clothes (unwanted clothes, not unwanted children) for forwarding to a needy country somewhere in the world. People where we work had kindly donated a huge amount of clothing, and now someone needed to drive it all to the headquarters of the charity in Paris. J and I had agreed to do this part, and after finishing work on a Friday we picked up a rental van, loaded it with the clothes, and set off on the long drive between Noordwijk and Paris. I’d had my licence for three or four months by then, so felt reasonably confident about taking over the driving every now and then – although I definitely wasn’t going to be driving when we actually got to Paris, having already heard more than enough nightmare stories about Parisian traffic.

Everything went very smoothly. Too smoothly, as it happened. We got to Paris late on Friday evening. ESA has one of its sites in Paris, so we’d arranged to park the van in ESA’s underground car park until Saturday morning, when we would collect it and drive to the headquarters of the aforementioned charity, where we’d arranged to meet a woman who would take the clothes from the van. We quickly located ESA’s building. The night watchman on duty was expecting us – he told us to drive around to the back of the building, where we’d see the ramp that led down to the underground car park. Everything was looking very good. Park the van, walk the short distance to the hotel. Have a beer. What could be easier?

Unfortunately we drove the van down the wrong ramp. It was my fault entirely: I was navigating, not J, and she had reservations about the ramp I insisted we drive down. “Are you sure it’s this one?” she asked. “The next one along looks much more promising.”

“Trust me,” I said – always a bad move.

The ramp took the form of a spiral, circling through seven hundred and twenty degrees as it bored its way underground. It was very steep and very tightly curved, but we took things slowly, inching the van down until we reached the bottom of the ramp and the locked metal gate that prevented us continuing further.

“Maybe it isn’t this ramp after all,” I mused.

No, it clearly wasn’t the right ramp. There was nothing for it to drive back up the spiral. That, however, was where our problems began. There was no room to turn the van around, so we had to reverse back up. This would have been tricky enough – rear visibility was poor – but we soon found that the van couldn’t get back up the ramp. It had been raining, and the rainwater had run down the smooth concrete surface of the spiral, making it slippery. The van simply couldn’t get enough traction to reverse to street level. The rear wheels spun impressively, the clutch made a lot of smoke, but nothing happened. So there we were – late on a dismal Friday night in Paris, with our van stuck down a hole. So much for the beer I’d been looking forward to…

J had an idea. Since the problem was one of getting enough grip onto the rear wheels, why didn’t I stand on the rear bumper while she tried reversing the van? This we duly tried. I got my feet onto the bumper, gripped the roof of the van above the rear doors, and hung on for dear life – terrified that the van was suddenly going to gain traction and lurch backwards. But although matters improved slightly, it wasn’t enough to get us out of the hole. We were still stuck.

That’s when we remembered the night watchman. While I waited with the van, J sprinted back up to street level, around to the front desk of the building and explained our predicament. Five or ten minutes later, she arrived back with the night watchman. Since we hadn’t had any brighter ideas, we decided to pursue the ‘standing on the bumper’ methodology. Now there were two of us – me and a lightly built French night watchman. J gunned the van and tried reversing again. By now a worrying quantity of smoke was coming from the clutch, but the van was making slow but definite progress in the right direction. Unfortunately it still reached a slipping point, unable to reverse any further. That was when the night watchman had a bright idea. Since two of us hanging on the rear bumper wasn’t enough, we should enlist a third man. So off went the night watchman to wander the streets of Paris until he found a willing volunteer. Quite how he persuaded this complete stranger to follow him down a dark spiral into the ground I don’t know – but somehow he did, and the man obliged by joining us on the rear bumper.

Success! With three of us, the wheels had just enough traction to do the job. It still took an eternity, inching back to the surface, with the engine and the transmission making horrible sounds. But finally we reversed the van onto the street again and were directed to the ramp we should have gone down in the first place. We thanked the night watchman and his nameless accomplice.

Half an hour later, I got my beer. “That’ll be quite some story to dine out on,” we told each other, imagining that nothing else likely to happen to us in the same weekend could possibly compare to that.

Little did we know…

The morning of the day after, we collected the van (which was still drivable) and navigated the streets of Paris until we reached the headquarters of the charity. But no one was there. The place was closed, with no message to redirect us elsewhere. We waited and waited – half an hour, then an hour. What were we supposed to do now? Finally, J found a contact number (I forget where) and then a public telephone and enquired about the woman we were supposed to be meeting.

J returned to the van. “She’s dead.”

“I’m sorry?” I asked.

“The woman we were supposed to be meeting is dead. She died yesterday.”

Somehow or other, we did manage to find someone from the charity who was willing to take the clothes out of the van. By around the middle of the day, therefore, we’d finished our obligations. We returned the van to the underground car park, did a bit of shopping, then arranged to meet a friend for dinner. Dinner went very well, and we told her all about the ‘ramp’ incident. The day after, Sunday, our friend took part in the Paris half-Marathon, so we stood at the starting line to wave her past. Later we checked out of the hotel, returned to the van and began the drive back to the Netherlands. It must have been around five or six in the afternoon.

We had a plan for the drive back. J drove the first half hour or so, until we were safely out of Paris. Then I took over. The intention was that I’d drive until we had crossed the border into Belgium, at which point we’d be needing fuel anyway. It was a damp, foggy night, but the roads were not too busy, and the drive out of France went uneventfully. After a couple of hours we crossed the border and I saw signs for Kortrijk. I’d never heard of “Kortrijk” before, but then I was completely unfamiliar with the route: J was doing all the navigating, and she knew this journey very well. Around about then we also saw a service station, where we would be able to tank up and have a cup of coffee.

I pulled the van off the motorway, drove slowly through the service area until we reached the line of pumps. I stopped the van and turned off the engine. J got out of the passenger side. She filled up the van while I waited in the driver’s seat.

“I’ll go and pay,” she said, indicating the kiosk next to the line of pumps. “You go and park the van, and then meet me in the cafeteria for a cup of coffee.”

I nodded: this seemed like an excellent plan. I waited until I could see that she had paid the man in the kiosk, then I started up the van and began driving away from the pumps. A few moments later icy terror gripped my heart. I realised that the road I was driving down led back to the motorway we’d just been on. There was no way to get back to the service area! By now I was quite some way from the pumps and didn’t like the idea of reversing, especially with all the fog. Trying to stay calm, I resolved not to do anything rash – I’d only just got my license, after all. I would get onto the motorway, drive as far as the next exit, then return down the other direction and double-back until I reached the service station again.

This too, seemed like an excellent plan. But when I reached the next junction my hopes shrivelled. Here was a major interchange, with roads sweeping in from all directions. I didn’t even know the number of the road I was on: all I knew was that we’d come from the general direction of Paris. But we weren’t even in France now. I took the exit, and kept my eyes peeled for any sign with ‘Paris’ on it. No such luck! The best I could do was try and judge when I’d driven through one hundred and eighty degrees, and take what I hoped was the slip road back onto the same motorway. With the fog, landmarks were few and far between. But after I’d been driving for a few kilometres, I saw nothing that I recognised: certainly no sign of a service station. Clearly I was on the wrong road; hopelessly lost.

Real panic began to set in. What was I going to do? I didn’t even have a map: J knew the route so well she hadn’t packed one. All I knew was that I was somewhere in Belgium – and that I’d abandoned my partner in the service station. What was going through her mind now? Keep in mind this was 1994 - no widespread use of cellphones or satnav back then (and I'm a late adopter at the best of times).

Presently I saw a sign for Kortrijk – the same town we’d been approaching just before the services. In a fit of hopeless optimism, I pulled into Kortrijk and set about looking for some kind of street map which might give me a clue as to how to get back to the service station. By now it was a thoroughly dark and miserable Sunday evening. I drove a little way into town (unsure of how big Kortrijk was) until I saw a sign indicating the direction to the police station. They might be able to help, if nothing else. But I couldn’t find the police station. Time and again I returned to my starting place and tried to find it, but no matter how far I drove, the police station refused to emerge out of the night before the town thinned out to countryside. How big was Kortrijk, exactly? In all my driving around, I’d never once seen anyone out walking, or even much other traffic.

In desperation I spotted a bar with lights on. At least someone might be able to help. I walked into the bar. It was obviously doing quiet Sunday evening business: two or three regulars at the bar, not much else going on. I tried English and didn’t get very far. In my faltering Dutch I made a tiny bit more progress. I explained my predicament as best I could: that I was lost, that I’d abandoned my partner at the service station, and that I was trying to find the police station. One of the men at the bar gave me directions to the police: it seemed I’d been heading in the right direction, but I just hadn’t gone far enough. I thanked him and returned to the van. Once more I set off for the police station. Once more the kilometres ticked by and the town began to thin out until I was driving through fields. What the hell was going on? I began to hate Kortrijk, and – by implication – Belgium. It began to feel as if the entire situation was somehow the fault of the country and everyone living in it. Douglas Adams was right, I thought. Bloody Belgium!

I returned to the bar. By this time I’d really reached the end of my tether. A phone call to some friends in the Netherlands provided no clarification: they hadn’t heard from J, and their map didn’t offer much of a clue as to what road I must have been on. The men at the bar looked surprised to see me again. I told them I still couldn’t find the police station. They looked at me with incomprehension, as if I had some kind of mental impairment. Then one of them asked if I had a car. “Yes,” I said. (I forget whether this was in English or Dutch). “A van.”

He said he’d drive to the police station. All I had to do was follow him. I returned to the van, and sooner or later his car appeared out of the fog, with his drinking mate in the passenger seat. He flashed his headlights and I slipped the van into gear and set off behind him. At least I didn’t have to worry about running out of gas, I thought ruefully: that was no problem.

It was a long way to the police station: far longer than I’d expected. But eventually we arrived and parked our vehicles outside. I still didn’t know what kind of help the police were going to offer me, but I liked to think it would involve a bustling incident room, a crisis hotline and several hovering helicopters with infrared cameras. Unfortunately all I got from the officer on duty was an indifferent shrug, as if I’d come in to report the loss of a pencil. Thinking I had no more Belgian money on me (this turned out not to be the case, but it was what I believed at the time) I asked if I might make another telephone call to the Netherlands, in case J had rung our friends. But the officer wouldn’t let me use the telephone.

I began to feel genuine despair again. I’d got to the police station, after two hours of effort. But I was still no closer to finding my way back to the service station. Those two hours felt like entire months of my life. It was beginning to get late. Was I better off spending more time trying to get back to the service station, or should I just accept the inevitable, drive on to the Netherlands and trust J to find a way home on her own? She’d travelled to Nepal and Afghanistan on her own, after all: getting home from Belgium was hardly stretching her talents. But had she even picked up her coat from the van before going to pay for the fuel?

That was when one of the two Belgian drinking mates had his own bright idea. He’d spotted a big map pinned up on the wall of the police station, showing all the roads in the area. “You said you were coming from France?” he asked me. “And that you stopped at the first service station after the border?”

“Yes,” I said.

He stood before the map and pondered it for a few minutes. “The way I see it,” he said, “there’s really only one road you could have been on. And there’s only one service station on that road within twenty kilometres of here. Could you have driven further?”

“No,” I said, doubtfully.

“Then it must have been the one I’m thinking of. Tell you what: we’ll drive there. It’ll only take us twenty minutes, and if she isn’t there, we haven’t lost anything.”

The two drinking mates talked to each other. One decided to sit with me in the cab of the van while the other drove his car. We set off. We drove a long way, on main roads. By now it was seriously foggy, with visibility close to zero. We reached a large intersection and then what looked suspiciously like the motorway I’d been on all those hours ago. We went down it, and then up the other way. Then the service station appeared out of the fog. It was a desolate scene: most of the lights were off, there were no cars waiting there, no sign of life at all. But it was clearly the right place. And there, standing shivering in the fog, was J. The cafeteria had closed hours ago; they’d turfed her out into the night without a coat.

I stopped the van, overjoyed that we’d found each other again. I think the Belgian drinking mates were just as pleased with the happy outcome. I remember both of us being desperate to communicate our gratitude, but the Belgians simply got back in their car, gave us a cheery wave and disappeared into the night. J and I quickly exchanged stories about what happened, although she had more or less worked out my side of events for herself. Amazingly, two different people she knew had both pulled into the service station over the course of the evening and offered her a lift the rest of the way – but she’d declined, trusting I’d somehow find my way back. As we drove on in the warmth of the van, I remember experiencing a delirious sense of relief. It was a minor adventure in the scheme of things – laughable, really, since neither of us had been in harm’s way. But I still remember exactly how it felt to be lost in Belgium, on a foggy Sunday night.

As for our two Belgian drinking friends, I hope they got back to the bar in time to have another beer and a bit of a laugh. I must have spoiled their evening for them, but they never showed the least sign of annoyance. J and I have been back to Belgium many times in the ten years since this happened, but I don’t think a single time has gone by when we haven’t thought about that night and how helpful those two men were. I often wonder about them and think about their kindness that night. Say what you like about Belgium – and I still don’t know quite what it was that annoyed Douglas Adams so much – but I can think of worse places to get lost in the world. Even the police were helpful.

Actually, no, they weren’t, were they? But they did have a very nice map.

Adapted and updated from a piece I wrote for the Blakenberg Beneluxcon program book in 2004.

New Art Riot - Strange Horizons

2011-11-29T02:05:00.000-08:00

The last for a while, this, but here's a brand new one, and for once I will be giving it away. This picture was done for Justin, one of the winners of the Strange Horizons prize draw. I'd offered to illustrate a scene from one of my books but Justin was good enough to let me do whatever I liked - although doubtless you could find a scene somewhere that more or less matches this picture, if you looked long enough (I mean, spaceship, gloomy planet - how hard can it be?)

Acrylic and airbrush, A3 size. I had a blast doing this and enjoyed working with a more restrained palette than usual.

New Art riot # 6

2011-11-28T05:52:00.000-08:00

My wife found this one - it's mid 90s, acrylic and airbrush. No, I don't know which way up it's meant to be. I've uploaded a few other images to the website in the last week; more on the way.

New Art Riot # 5

2011-11-22T12:22:00.000-08:00

Asteroid miner, monochrome gouache and Letratint - mid 90s.

New Art Riot # 4

2011-11-21T10:26:00.000-08:00

Pen sketch of alien structure and explorer, 1997.

Spacer 1998

Spaceships 1997

New Art Riot #3 - lighthugger

2011-11-16T07:58:00.000-08:00

A little while ago I did this sketch for a correspondent who was interested in building a scale model (well, I hope it was a scale model) of the Nostalgia for Infinity. To my surprise (and delight) there are already quite a few sketches and models of lighthuggers out there on the web - some of them very close to my mental image.

You can view the image at full size by clicking on the version at my website. I couldn't find a way to link to a bigger one from here.

http://www.alastairreynolds.com/id18.html

I semi-pinched the name "lighthugger" from Ian Watson and Michael Bishop, by the way. Their excellent first contact novel "Under Heaven's Bridge" has relativistic ships called lightskimmers. And look - it's available to download:

http://www.sfgateway.com/books/u/under-heaven%27s-bridge/

New Art Riot #2

2011-11-15T03:55:00.000-08:00

Explorers with some kind of levitating alien city in the background.

Proofreading

2011-11-14T14:37:00.000-08:00

It's done. Over the last week I've been proofreading the 500-plus pages of Blue Remembered Earth, and a couple of hours ago I was able to email my notes back to my publisher. That, barring the small business of promotion, is where my obligations to the book end. It should be a time for celebration, but as always it feels faintly anti-climactic. This is my last chance to make any changes to the text, but since the typesetting has already been done, such changes cannot be substantial. My approach has always been to resist the urge to make wholesale alterations (which would be neither welcome nor economic at this point) but I will allow myself the odd word change here and there, and perhaps the recasting of a sentence or short paragraph provided those changes have no consequences to the rest of the text. What that means, obviously, is that a sentence can only be trimmed if it is clear that in doing so, the next sentence doesn't jump forward a line. By the same token, a sentence can only be lengthened if it doesn't spill over onto a new line. The only minor relaxation to this rule (in my eyes) is at the end of the chapter, where the effects of any changes will be confined to one page only, some part of which is already blank. But even so, you don't want to go around making extensive changes. They'll cost money, and perhaps more germanely, time. It certainly won't make you popular.

Besides, at this point the last person with any objectivity on the book is the writer. By the time I get to proofreading, the story is all but dead to me. It's a piece of timber and plywood stage scenery that I've walked around too often, kicked too much, and seen from entirely the wrong side. I've lost any real sense of what works and what doesn't; I can't judge pace or tone because all I can see are paragraphs and paragraphs of words that I know all too well. It ought not to matter, either, because ideally there shouldn't be much to debate, after all the drafts and rounds of editing that the book has gone through. It doesn't work like that, of course. A book like Blue Remembered Earth is 200,000 contingent decisions lined up one after the other. I think I might have managed to write one or two pieces of short fiction where at the time of submission I was happy with every word, but a novel is an order of magnitude more complex. At this stage in the process all one can do is accept that this is the finished product, and another year or two wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference.

If there's one crumb of consolation to be extracted from all this, I've found it really helpful to be forced back into BRE while in the middle of writing the follow-up. As much as I resented the interruption in my flow of work when it arrived, it's been good to be reminded of characters and themes that might profitably be referenced or developed in the new book.

My method of proofreading, incidentally - in the remote event that it might be of interest - is roughly the following. I get a large bundle of typeset pages through the post. I sit and read them, as carefully as I can, in chunks of no more than 20 - 30 pages at one go. Any longer, and my eye starts skating over the page, no longer attentive to missing words, typos and so on. When I find an error, wish to make an alteration, or flag a query, I mark up the change in green felt-tip and then add a mark to the top right corner of the page. I then continue reading, until I'm done with the book. Only then will I go back through the manuscript, noting these changes back into a document on my PC. Reading the book takes about a week, since for obvious reasons it can't be rushed. Compiling the changes into a file takes about a day; I then email it back to Charlie at Orion. No one but me gets to see the annotated manuscript, and on the second pass I'll generally decide that some of my changes are merely changes for the sake of it, and bring nothing to the novel. One of the running queries in the current book was to check that I'd spelled "Oort" correctly; I had, but it's good to be sure.

And that's it - job done. Until the next one.

Literary inspiration

2011-11-03T06:40:00.000-07:00

I'm hoping these two gentleman will guide my hand during the writing of the Doctor Who novel.

"My dear fellow, you appear to have a large black cable growing out of your shoulder."

New Art Riot

2011-10-31T08:22:00.000-07:00

Uploaded a few "new" paintings to the SF Artwork section on my website. Actually this one is new; I started it last monday and finished it four nights later.

Coode Street Podcast

2011-10-30T07:40:00.000-07:00

I'm on the Coode Street Podcast, with Jonathan Strahan and Gary K Wolfe. We recorded it in Reno back in August. It had been a long day - I'd flown in from LA, via Oakland, and then had a rush to check in to my hotel and then get over to the convention centre in time for a meet-up with the Locus crew. After a few beers with Ian Mcdonald and various parties, I then headed for a wonderful but eyewateringly expensive steak, and then Jonathan, Gary and I repaired to a hotel room to record the podcast. I don't think I was firing on all cylinders by that point, but playing it back, and allowing for the odd thoughtful pause, I don't sound quite as slow-witted as I remember feeling, so maybe all was well after all. As always, Jonathan and Gary were terrific company - I could spend all day talking about SF with these guys - and indeed we did continue the discussion, down in the casino bar.

http://jonathanstrahan.podbean.com/2011/10/29/episode-73-live-with-gary-k-wolfe-and-alastair-reynolds/

Radio 5

2011-10-26T15:02:00.000-07:00

For those not following my twitter feed, I'm going to be taking part in Dr Karl's live science phone-in, tonight, on BBC Radio 5's Up all Night with Rhod Sharp. Our segment is supposed to go out between 2.30 and 3.30 AM although it might shift a bit depending on the running schedule. The program will be available on iplayer for those in the UK.

Dr Karl and I did a couple of radio shows back last year and had a great time. We were in the same studio in Sydney then; now we're a tiny bit further apart...

Solaris Rising

2011-10-26T06:20:00.000-07:00

It’s a terrible and beautiful thing I’ve done.

I suppose I already had it in mind, when the last uplink came in. Not that I’d come close to voicing the possibility to myself. If I’d been honest about the course I was on, I might well have requested immediate committal to stasis.

The right thing to do, in hindsight. And maybe we’d be on our way home now, back to the gratitude of a thousand worlds. Our house would have crumbled into the sea by the time we got back. But we could always have built a new one, a little further from the headland.

Let me tell you something about myself, while there’s still time. These words are being recorded. Even as I speak, my suit’s mouse-sized repair robot is engraving them onto the suit’s exterior armour. Isolated in this cavern, the suit should be buffered against the worst excesses of cosmic ray and micro-particle damage. Whether the inscriptions will remain legible, however, or whether in some sense you’ve already read them, I won’t begin to speculate. There’s been enough of that already, and I’m a little burned out by it all. Deep futurity, billions of years – the ultimate futility of any action, any deed, enduring for the smallest fraction of eternity – it’s enough to shrivel the soul. Vashka could handle that kind of thing, but I’m made of less sterner stuff.

Imminent, on both sides of the Atlantic, is Solaris Rising, the new all-original SF anthology edited by Ian Whates. It includes my 7000 word story "For the Ages", about diamond planets, pulsars and the ultimate knowledge limits of cosmology.

Contents:

"A Smart-Mannered Uprising of the Dead" by Ian McDonald
"The Incredible Exploding Man" by Dave Hutchinson
"Sweet Spots" by Paul di Filippo
"Best SF of the Year Three" by Ken MacLeod
"The One that Got Away" by Tricia Sullivan
"Rock Day" by Stephen Baxter
"Eluna" by Stephen Palmer
"Shall I Tell You the Problem with Time Travel?" by Adam Roberts
"The Lives and Deaths of Che Guevara" by Lavie Tidhar
"Steel Lake" by Jack Skillingstead
"Mooncakes" by Mike Resnick and Laurie Tom
"At Play in The Fields" by Steve Rasnic Tem
"How We Came Back From Mars" by Ian Watson
"You Never Know" by Pat Cadigan
"Yestermorrow" by Richard Salter
"Dreaming Towers, Silent Mansions" by Jaine Fenn
"Eternity's Children" by Eric Brown and Keith Brooke
"For the Ages" by Alastair Reynolds
"Return of the Mutant Worms" by Peter F. Hamilton

Cloud Restructured Earth

2011-10-24T04:54:00.000-07:00

Word frequency cloud for a large chunk of BLUE REMEMBERED EARTH, via tagcrowd.com.

created at TagCrowd.com

Elephant Talk

2011-10-14T02:11:00.000-07:00

You'll have likely seen this already but here's the cover of the new book:

I'm delighted with it; I think it does a fabulous job of not only capturing the main themes of Blue Remembered Earth, but also of hinting at the elements (should that be elephants?) that will come to play an increasingly significant role in the successive books. And the colours are gorgeous. I've seen a door-sized blow-up of this cover and it's a thing of real beauty.

As for the next book, I'm well into it. It's a skewed take on very slow interstellar travel, picking up the threads of BRE a few centuries down the line. The main character, like Geoffrey and Sunday in BRE, is an Akinya - but it's a bit less straightforward than that. It's also about humans and machines, longevity, memory and identity, alien intelligence, exoplanets, and elephants.

Support Strange Horizons

2011-09-27T05:04:00.000-07:00

Strange Horizons is one of the best places on the web to find intelligent discussion about science fiction - as well as SF itself. The magazine is free to read but still manages to pay its contributors. In order to keep afloat it relies on fund drives. Along with many other writers and SF people, I've offered a prize in this year's drive.

If you value SH, please consider making a donation:

http://strangehorizons.com/fund_drives/2011/main.shtml

cheers!

Can the Camm

2011-09-26T15:21:00.000-07:00

This man:

Contributed to the design of this:

The Hawker P1127, prototype for the Harrier jump jet, the AV-8B derivatives of which were still being manufactured in 2003, and remain in service.

Camm also designed the RAF's first monoplane, the Hawker Hurricane. Not bad for a career...

Fifty years (redux)

2011-09-24T07:58:00.000-07:00

As a science fiction writer, I'm as equally interested in the stuff that won't change, as the stuff that will. Many of the technologies in our day to day lives are ephemeral: my camera is not the same one I had ten years ago. My television is not the same one. My main car is not the same one (although we still own one made in 1989; we just don't drive it anywhere). My kettle is not the same one. My mobile phone is not even the same one I had two years ago. My PC is nine years old, but that's because I'm freakishly uninterested in computers other than as tools to do a given job.

There are of course classes of technology that don't change very rapidly, like furniture, houses, common tools and simple appliances, as well as cheap, mass-produced consumer goods like biros and paperclips. But actual branded models of things, such as makes of cars, are perceived to have woefully short lifespans. This is something that SF seems to accept unquestioningly, with a few notable exceptions. An SF novel set 50 years in the future might refer to a "Jeep" or a "BMW" but it's implicitly not the same Jeeps or BMWs we know today - unless the author makes a point about the protagonist being a classic car enthusiast, with his lovingly tended period roadster from 2011. Bladerunner, which got so much else right, was also one of the first films to show a future in which old stuff was still hanging around - although with the fish-tailed cars, it was strangely stuff that was already quite elderly at the time the film was made.

As we slide into the second decade of the 21st century, though, it's interesting to take stock of things that not only haven't changed radically in the last few decades, but show every sign of sticking around for a few more. I'll restrict myself to two examples, both from the world of aviation. The B52 is now a very old design indeed. It's been in operational service since 1956, flying since 1952, and the program dates back to 1948. The "youngest" B52s now flying are a mere half a century old. What's interesting, to me at least, is that there is no reason for them not to keep flying for much, much longer - possibly until the middle years of this century. Granted, the operational B52s have had various bits swapped and improved over their service lives, and may yet see more changes - but they'll still be B52s, and recognisable as such to anyone who witnessed the birth of the program six decades ago.

The other example is the 747 - now well into its fifth decade - and they're still building them. Granted, the 747s we see flying around today, or perhaps even fly in ourselves, do not date back to the 1960s. But, stretched and modified as they are, they are recognisably the same machines. By the same token, passenger or freight 747s will still be flying somewhere in the world decades from now, even if they aren't the dominant long-haul carriers that is now the case.

It would have been a brave SF writer who wrote a book in 1970, set in 2020, in which people were still flying around in 747s and in which a major element of the USA's bomber capability was still vested in B52s. But did anyone get it right, I wonder? Are there SF novels that correctly nailed the fact that, while lots of other things change, some major technologies just stick around?

And are there any other examples of very long lived, familiar technologies that ought to be part of the background furniture of any SF novel set in the mid 21st century?

Fifty years

2011-09-23T14:36:00.000-07:00

I wrote Pushing Ice in 2005, setting the main action in 2057 - a little over fifty years from the time of writing. When I started developing the book, mid way through 2004, the story took place a good century further into the future. But I quickly got bogged down in stuff that, while interesting, was a sideline to the main event - this rapidly moving tale of space exploration and first contact. By moving the action much closer to the present, I was free to assume that a lot of stuff had not changed greatly in the intervening years. Spacesuits were still more or less as we know them. Medicine had progressed, but it was not magically advanced compared to our own time. Computers were squishier, but there was no AI or matter-transforming nanotech. People still listened to rock music, played poker and watched global news channels. I was happy with these choices, as they allowed me to present the protagonists as being people much like ourselves. If I could have set it even earlier, I would have.

I did get (and continue to receive) criticism, though, for presuming that there would be huge nuclear powered mining ships scooting around the solar system a mere 50 years from now. Here's a recent example:

http://orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?p=302598

"I found Reynolds' timeline a bit absurd, though. I'll be impressed if we've managed a manned mission to Mars by 2057 - for humans to be mining comets on an industrial scale by then would require an incredible revolution in space travel."

Now, I have no problem with that criticism - it's a perfectly valid point of debate. And yes, from the standpoint of 2011, I'm markedly less sanguine about our chances of establishing an extensive human presence off-Earth by the middle of the century. Blue Remembered Earth is purposefully vague about the next couple of decades, but I do state that there will have been one hundred people on Mars by the year 2059 (and despite the similarity of those two dates, it's not remotely the same future).

But really - 50 years. That's a long old time. It's enough to go from:

This:

To this:

Which, when you think about it, is pretty astonishing. Even more so when you appreciate that many of the key technologies of the Apollo program were essentially mature by the start of the 1960s. The Saturn F1 main engines were part of a program that originated in 1955, a full 14 years before the Moon landings - and a mere 36 after Alcock and Brown made the first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic in a Vickers Vimy.

So you can do quite a lot in 50 years, if you put your mind to it.

Check one, check two

2011-09-21T05:20:00.000-07:00

Atul Gawande is one of my favorite non-fiction writers. A surgeon, he writes with unsparing honesty and insight about the realities of modern day medical treatment - with particular emphasis on the things we get wrong, and the things that, with little effort, we could easily improve. I picked up his first book, Complications (2002), in a Boston airport bookstore and found it compulsive and fascinating. I'm a sucker for medical case histories, especially when they're recounted in such lucid, humane terms. What I found instantly refreshing about Gawande's work was his willingness to document his own errors and fallibilities, even when they had had potentially fatal or debilitating consequences for those under his care. He's the opposite of the Surgeon-as-God: Gawande is simply a normal human being trying to do his best in a staggeringly complex and ever-evolving field. His second book, Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance (2007) was just as interesting, although it broadened the scope of discussion far beyond Gawande's own case histories. If you're a reader of the New Yorker, you'll likely already have encountered some of Gawande's lengthy and engrossing essays on modern medicare.

If you have been keeping up with Gawande's writings, his third book, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right (2009) can't help but feel over-familiar in places. But it's worthwhile all the same: it;s a book about an amazingly simple and yet potentially world-changing idea: the notion that the checklist is one of the most powerful tools we've yet designed to enable us to cope with complex tasks. Gawande talks about the introduction of the checklist in aviation circles as a consequence of the sheer difficulty involved in flying the B-17, which at the time of its development was by far the most complicated aircraft ever developed. When the best pilots in the military couldn't cope with the number of tasks needed to get the thing in the air without crashing, there was no option but to define the necessary actions in a written-down sequence. After the introduction of the checklist, Gawande notes, B-17s proved extraordinarily reliable and airworthy. But they were almost unflyable without it. The checklist culture - involving not only physical lists, but also the devolution of responsibility to many individuals, not just one big, all-powerful boss - has infiltrated many walks of life, from building construction (modern buildings are amazingly safe, but only because of the culture involved in their construction and assembly) to high-end restaurants. Strangely, though, it had not been widely implemented in the medical world - at least not at the level of surgeons and anaesthetists (Nurses, apparently, were much better at realising the value of this tool). Gawande's book is essentially a document of the slow process of persuading medical professionals that checklists not only have value, but can lead to astonishing improvements in basic care. It can be as simple as making sure everyone really has washed their hands, or that the lines fed into patients really have been changed when they're meant to be.

It's fascinating, thought-provoking stuff, and as always it's a model of clarity, elegance and the basic understanding that patients are people, not black boxes.

Elevation

2011-09-19T06:35:00.000-07:00

I remember (or think I remember) reading a description of Colson Whitehead's first novel over on Rick Kleffel's The Agony Column. At the time, as is so often the case, I thought "wow, that sounds right up my street ..." and then promptly forgot all about it. The Intuitionist appeared in 1999, so I'm guessing I heard about the book around ten years ago, give or take. I should pay more attention: it was on Rick's site, for instance, that I first saw mention of David Mitchell's first novel.

In the intervening years, as it is wont to do, my ailing brain began to insert Caleb Carr's The Alienist in the mental slot that should have been reserved for Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist - clearly not comparable books at all, other than in their vaguely similar titles and the "C" in the author's forename. But at some point in the last few months I chanced upon a reference to The Intuitonist, alluding to its theme, and I immediately remembered that this was a book I very much wanted to read. Although I still couldn't remember the name of the author, I broke my usual conditioning to ask a question in a bookstore. It turned out they had a copy of The Intuitonist. I bought it, and I'm glad I did. It's a marvellous novel.

The premise is genius, the kind of gobsmackingly brilliant idea you could spend a lifetime searching for and not get anywhere close. In a nameless American city, seemingly around the middle of the twentieth century, elevators have become so central to modern life, so vital to its smooth and efficient functioning, that elevator inspectors have taken on something of the authority and stature of police officers, complete with uniforms, cars, internal affairs divisions, and ruthless factional warfare. There are two competing schools of elevator inspectors: the Empiricists, who make all their checks by the book, using tools and rigidly defined methods, and the Intuitionists, who basically just feel their way into a diagnosis of an elevator's safe functioning, in an approach akin to meditation. When the book opens, the heroine - Lila Mae Watson - is an Intuitionist with an unblemished record. But Lila Mae isn't just the youngest female inspector in the department. She's also black - "coloured" - and as an Intuitionist she's about to be set up for a fall, when an elevator she's just signed off as being in perfect working order undergoes an inexplicable malfunction. In order to clear her name, Lila Mae has to dig back into the history of elevator inspection - and the Intuitionist school.

On the surface, The Intuitionist is a stunningly rendered slice of noir-drenched alternate history - think Terry Gilliam's Brazil, or the Coen brother's The Hudsucker Proxy, and you'll have some idea of the grey, midcentury sheen so effectively conveyed here. It's all rain, skyscrapers, hats and radios. But it's much more than this. The Intuitionist is also a clever examination of race and the prospects for "elevation", or lack thereof, faced by someone of Lila Mae's status in the real twentieth century. It's also slyly funny, and the writing is never less than magnificent. In terms of its evocation of the textures and perspectives of urban life, the only thing it came close to reminding me of was China Mieville's The City and the City, another novel where the detective structure is both the point and not the point.

I liked The Intuitonist enough to rush off and order some more Colson Whitehead, and I'm intrigued by the news that Zone One, his next book, is basically a post-apocalyptic zombie novel. It'll be interesting to see whether it picks up much discussion within genre spheres, because one senses that The Intuitonist, were it to be published now, would make a considerable splash in the SF&F world.

Website

2011-09-12T12:55:00.000-07:00

Just a minor heads up to say that I've given the website a dust over and will be looking at adding some additional content over coming weeks. Not sure how many people actually read author websites these days, but hopefully there's some vaguely useful stuff there. As always, I'm not looking for help with running or designing the site (I know it's not slick, but that's kind of the point - it's mine, all mine, and has been for 16 years), but any suggestions will be taken on onboard.

www.alastairreynolds.com

Back in the saddle

2011-09-02T22:54:00.000-07:00

I'm back on a horse! It's been far too long - about 18 months since the last time, and maybe as long again before that - and I do miss it terribly. My wife and I used to ride regularly in Holland, but for various reasons found it difficult to keep up the habit once we relocated to Wales (even though we imagined that the exact opposite would be the case). It's even longer since I rode Western, although again I used to do a fair bit of it. This is Tonto, a quarter horse. And I suspect I may be the only person in LA modelling a T-shirt proclaiming the virtues of "Barry, the bracing South Wales resort".

Sod-all relevance to SF, of course, although I have had some good ideas while in the saddle. It's a great place to let your mind wander.

Once again, thanks to Barbara Bella (who rode with my wife and I) for the photo.

Post-Reno

2011-08-30T22:12:00.000-07:00

So I'm still in the States, although our trip is nearly at an end, and in a few days we'll be packing for the long flight back to London. I enjoyed Renovation, the 2011 worldcon, a great deal. Reno was ... well, Reno. I sort of knew what to expect and on that basis I can't say I was disappointed or surprised to any great degree. Las Vegas has never appealed to me (I absolutely don't get the gambling thing, on any level) so the idea of spending time in a downsized Vegas didn't exactly rock my world. But, the worldcon is only ever partly about the physical location. It's the meeting of a community, or a number of marginally overlapping communities, and in my experience the quality of the event spaces and hotels, and ease of transit between them, counts for at least as much as the charms of the host city. In that respect Reno wasn't too bad. I, like most of my colleagues, ended up in the Peppermill, a vast, warren-like resort hotel stuffed with slot machines and bad-taste decor. But, my room was excellent and spacious, it was a manageable walk to the convention center, and I didn't find the heat nearly as oppressive as it had been in LA before my departure. A shuttle bus ran throughout the day, although it mostly managed not to be there when I needed it, but if there wasn't time to walk the taxis were quick and relatively affordable.

Conventions are odd things, and I can easily understand why people either never give them a go, or are put off after one or two bad dealings. My first convention, 1991's Mexicon in Harrogate, was not a particularly joyous experience. I did not know many people and while I'd been published, my handful of stories hadn't yet earned me any kind of name recognition, and certainly not the very minor level of "celebrity" which comes from being an SF pro. Although I met many friendly people, including a number who have remained good friends (and was driven there and back thanks to the kindness of Paul McAuley, who happened to be living near me in St Andrews at the time - we were both writing for Interzone) I still left the convention feeling like an outsider knocking on the door, rather than feeling part of the scene.

I did not return to an SF convention until 2001, by which point I had sold many more stories and had a novel under my belt. It was a vastly different experience. Although still relatively new to the big grown up world of novel publishing, I'd already made enough contacts that it was hard not to walk into a room and spot someone I knew well enough to cadge a pint off. That's been my experience ever since, certainly in the english-speaking world. I've been to foreign conventions where I didn't know anyone at the start, but since I'm usually there as a guest, and therefore being chaperoned, it's not an issue. My wife has often accompanied me to conventions, and still does on occasion, but it's been a while since it was just the two of us, talking to ourselves in one corner of a room.

By the time Reno rolled around - my fifth worldcon - I already had tentative meet-up plans scheduled before I arrived. Before very long I was sitting down with a pint before me, chatting to old and new friends, and not long after that I was into the swing of my program schedule, making sure I was where I needed to be for panels, readings and so on. Since I wasn't attending Renovation as a "guest" writer, my workload was fairly stress-free. As a guest, I often end up delivering talks and these can and do require a large measure of preparation, often weeks in advance. I moderated one panel (the moderator is the one who keeps the panel on track, makes sure everyone has time to talk, takes questions and so on) but that isn't usually too onerous - I normally sit down some time beforehand and scribble some bullet points for discussion in case the conversation flags, but as often as not they aren't needed.

The only part of the con I wasn't looking forward to, in fact, was the Hugo award ceremony. It's a long, long evening and it starts early enough that it's difficult (for me at least) to eat beforehand. There are nibbles at various points in the evening, but also a lot of alcohol, so it's easy to over do it if you're not careful. This time, as well, I had a horse in the race. It was my first Hugo nomination, and a big enough personal deal that it was essentially the reason I was in Reno. I was surprised, in fact, at the number of times I was asked how many of these things I'd lost, as if I had some extensive history of Hugo nominations. Well, no. That was my first, and as far as I was concerned I was going to assume it was just as likely to be my last as well. Now, I didn't think it likely that I was going to walk away with the award. People had liked Troika well enough to nominate it, and there were even some who liked it best of all out of all the novellas, but it was by no means the favorite in what was generally perceived to be a decent set of stories. But, but. We've all seen awards go to stories that were not the favorites, or even the next-best favorites. So - for myself, at least - while you try to chill out and convince yourself that you can't possibly win and therefore need not get nervous as the winning announcement draws near, there's always that small voice at the back of your head that says, but it could still happen. So for me, award ceremonies are a combination of anticipation, discomfort, terror, and (generally speaking) the quiet let-down as the moment passes and it becomes clear that, no, you haven't won. There's an element of disappointment, but it doesn't last too long and I can't say I've ever lost an award to a writer or work I genuinely disliked. Losing the novella category was perhaps more of a let-down that it would normally have been, given that it was the last of three awards that Troika had been shortlisted for (it had lost the Locus and Sturgeon awards earlier in the summer). But, you know, no biggie. The whole shebang - the ceremony, the party afterwards, the treatment of the nominated writers - was faultless, in my experience. Hell, I even got a nice laminated certificate and a neat brushed-steel kaleidoscope to take home. So, no complaints from me.

As to the bigger question - was the whole Reno trip worth it? That's no easier to answer than it ever is. As mentioned, I've been to five worldcons now. Four were on different continents, and the one that took place in Europe was also in a different country to me. Like most of the people who show up, I'm there on my own ticket. That's a long-haul plane flight, hotel accommodation before and after the con (as a jetlag sufferer, I'm not going to the States, particularly not the west coast, for anything less than a couple of weeks) as well as the basic cost of membership and accommodation at the con itself. That's a lot of money. Is it worth it? I'm attending the worldcon because I enjoy the immersion in that community, the discussions, the meetings with old and new friends. But that's only part of it. I'm also there to promote myself as a writer, to (hopefully) reach a few new readers, booksellers and other industry insiders. Speaking for myself, it's much harder to judge whether or not that investment is really cost-effective. Because, aside from the purely monetary side of it, which is not small beer by any means, there's also the fact that I'll be lucky to get any writing done while I'm on the road. Yes, there are writers who can work anywhere, anytime. I don't think I'm particularly precious about my working habits but I'm not one of those. Give me a day in a hotel and I might get something done, but the odd hour here and there just doesn't cut it. Not when I'm also trying to get the gym, fight jetlag, deal with the hundred and one minor complications of being abroad (In my case this included forgetting to pack my driving license). But it's not just the lost time while I'm away - it's the time spent preparing for the trip, the time spent recovering. The last phase of productive writing for me was early August, and I doubt that I'll get back into the swing of things until a good week into September, given that I'll be hit just as thoroughly with jetlag on the return leg. So: it's a big, gaping hole out of my year, and last year I did two big conventions, both of which needed intercontinental travel. Yeah, pity poor me, forced to endure the glamorous jetset lifestyle of the internationally published novelist. Honestly, there are elements of it that I never stop enjoying, and I'm grateful for what SF has given me. Realistically, though, I'm still not at all sure that the time and effort of attending the big cons are justified in terms of maintaining or expanding my profile. That doesn't mean I'd stop going - there's still the friends and community side of the equation, the mere fact of being able to talk SF with people who care as deeply about it as I do - but it does give one pause for thought. That said, I suspect that I go through these contortions every time I come back from a big con, and I don't doubt that I'll be going through them again, this time next year, after Chicago. I hope to be there.

I'm so Hollywood

2011-08-18T22:14:00.000-07:00

Griffith Observatory, LA. On my way to Reno for the World Science Fiction Convention, my wife and I flew into Los Angeles and sent a few days with some old friends of ours in Burbank. We only get to see them every five or six years and it's always great to hook up and renew our acquaintance with the area.

Built on the edge of Mount Hollywood, the observatory is a short drive from Burbank and on a clear day offers magnificent views across town and out to the sea. There was low-lying haze when we drove up, but the observatory buildings were still gloriously sharp and bright against a pure blue sky, doubtless as impressive and inspiring as when they were first built in the mid 1930s.

Griffith Observatory has never been a working observatory, but rather a place of education and outreach. In that respect it still seemed to be doing an excellent job, judging by the many children and adults evidently stimulated by the well constructed and informative exhibits inside. Even as someone with a background in professional astronomy, I found much to enjoy and think about.

In the public imagination, Griffith is perhaps best known for its use as one of the locations in Rebel Without a Cause (it had apparently been used in earlier films, but never in its intended function). Fitting, therefore, that there should be a small memorial to James Dean on the Observatory grounds.

Thanks to Barbara Bella for the photographs, all of which remain her copyright.

I'm in Reno now, which is another story. I'll probably not have too much to say about the convention until I get back, but for now I'm enjoying it tremendously - although one does get rather tired of the sound of ones own voice after a day of panels and general discussion.

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

2011-08-16T11:09:00.000-07:00

This is great.

We could argue the toss about whether it's "science fiction", given that the book is marketed as urban fantasy, and takes place in an alternate 2011 in which shamanism functions well enough to permit the targeted scrambling of SMS texts, and in which criminals are psychically bound to magic animals. What matters is that Zoo City is fantastically good on its own terms. It's blisteringly well written, heartbreaking and funny in the right places, ice cool, and paced like a runaway bastard, and with a sense of place - and culture - that rips you out of wherever and whenever you happen to be sitting and reading. For me that happened to be a transatlantic flight, but I still read it in pretty much one sitting, and finished it with tremendous satisfaction. I look forward to catching up with Moxyland next.

Of battleship turrets and pulsars

2011-08-10T08:15:00.000-07:00

The Crab Nebula is the remnant of a supernova which exploded - or rather was seen to explode - in 1054AD. The pulsar at the heart of the nebula - the neutron star left over when the star's core collapsed at the moment of the supernova - was discovered in 1968, very shortly after Jocelyn Bell's discovery of the first pulsar using the Cambridge radio telescope.

The pulsar, and its associated nebula, have been and continue to be of great interest to astronomers. But the pulsar itself has a direct practical application, in that it's a very precise and well-studied clock. Rotating once every 33 milliseconds, the pulsar acts as a cosmic lighthouse, sending out beams of electromagnetic energy which happen to sweep across the Earth. Visible in both the optical and radio bands, the pulsar offers a reliable means of determining the accuracy and precision of time-based astronomical observations.

S-Cam, the instrument I helped work on, was a photon-counting detector. Each of its supercooled pixels was connected to a complex chain of electronics which enabled S-Cam to record not only the energy and position of incoming photons - individual particles of light - but also their arrival times. As each photon arrived, it triggered a cascade of electrons which rose and fell in a well understood fashion. The amplitude of that electron burst gave one an idea of the energy, or colour, of the photon, and the onset of the burst told one about the arrival time. S-Cam's electronics were connected to a GPS receiver, a piece of hardware which provided a definitive timestamp, accurate to millionths of a second, for each photon.

The raw output data of S-Cam, in simple terms, therefore consisted of a long list of sequential photon events. There would be an arrival time - referenced to some offset zero point - then the X,Y coordinates of the pixel which had seen the event, and finally a parameter which was proportional to the energy of the photon.

In other words, something like this:

0.0045 3 5 15
0.0067 1 4 28
0.0143 2 5 09

... and so on. A typical observation could easily contain more than a million photon events, but we didn't need to concern ourselves with the individual lines of data; we had software to chew the numbers and spit out processed data in astronomically interesting formats: spectra, time versus intensity curves, and so on.

Occasionally, though, we had to dig down really deeply into the data, because something didn't quite make sense.

The Crab pulsar was a high-priority target for S-Cam for one simple reason: it offered us the only independent, microsecond-level test of our time-tagging. It was almost impossible to verify that the electronics chain was working well in the lab. We couldn't use the GPS hardware to generate a test signal because the GPS hardware was already part of the electronics chain - it would have been like trying to use a ruler to measure itself. We were confident that the instrument's absolute time-tagging was good to within a second, and we had no reason to doubt the precision of the individual photon events. But only an observation of the Crab would settle matters.

To our relief, all seemed well. The "heartbeat" of the Crab, as revealed by our instruments, looked the way we expected it to. Importantly, the main peak - the higher of the two "blips" in the pulse profile - was arriving bang on the nail. We could be sure of this because the main dish at Jodrell Bank makes regular observations of the Crab, and the small variations in the Crab's rotation period are tracked and published from month to month.

As an aside, the big dish at Jodrell - now the Lovell Telescope - was completed in 1957. The two hinge points, on which the dish swivels, incorporated components from the gun turret mechanisms of the British battleships HMS Revenge and HMS Sovereign.

So, all well and good. We had our well-calibrated instrument with a reliable time-tagging system. We could then go ahead and do lots of actual astronomy, safe in the knowledge that the individual photon arrival times could be trusted.

But it wasn't that simple. Much later in the program, some of our colleagues raised an interesting point. While our Crab pulse profile looked fine from a standpoint of absolute phasing, there was something a bit fishy about it. If the profile was a heartbeat with two spikes, then the spikes themselves were about 30% fatter than they should have been.

We performed an exhaustive analysis of the system and its data processing software, trying to make the pulse profile conform. But nothing we did fixed the problem. And the deeper we looked into it, the more troubling the discrepancy began to look. That "fattening" of the pulse profile was a hint that, down at the level of the individual time tags, something was going wrong. Some percentage of the photons - some, but not all - were being assigned erroneous timetags.

It only showed up in bright objects. If we go back to that list of photon events above:

0.0045 3 5 15
0.0067 1 4 28
0.0143 2 5 09

and imagine a small error - an addition or subtraction of some small number - being applied to the timetags. Now, those photons can't break the laws of physics - they must arrive in strict time order! And indeed, that's what appeared to be the case - most of the time.

But occasionally we'd see a timetag where it appeared as if a photon had come in earlier than its predecessor:

0.0045 3 5 15
0.0067 1 4 28
0.0059 2 5 09

Now, this made no sense. And it only "showed up" in observations where we were getting a sufficiently high flux of incoming photons for one to hop the queue and seem to arrive earlier than the one before it.

It took weeks to get to the bottom of the problem. And in the end it turned out to be due to a fault at the actual hardware level. A piece of electronic circuitry was not behaving properly, due - it eventually became clear - to a piece of stray conducting material bridging two parts of the electronics board. This component was a set of binary registers designed to convert the raw arrival time of the photon into a different data format, using something called a "Gray Code".

Now what the hell is a Gray Code? I had no idea, but I quickly got an education. A Gray Code, or "reflected binary code" is a very clever mathematical procedure. Incorporating a Gray Code converter into our electronics made very good sense, because what a Gray Code ensures is that there are no sudden "spikes" in the data transmission system.

Imagine sending pulses down an electronic line, encoding arrival times. If your photon events happened at nice intervals, you might get:

0.991
0.992
0.993
0.994
0.995
0.996
0.997
0.998
0.999
1.000
1.001

... and so on.

But that "roll over" from 0.999 to 1.000 is bad news, because instead of just one digit changing, four have changed. And (at least far as I understood it) that's not good in the context of electronic signal processing, where you want things to be as smooth as possible.

The Gray Code solves that. It cleverly ensures that two successive values will only differ by exactly one bit, meaning that - as far as the electronics cares - there is nothing to hint that there has been a "roll over". Later, when you want the data to be intelligible, you apply a reverse Gray Code to put it back into its normal format. And that's exactly what was going on in S-Cam.

Except that, during the Gray Code conversion, that stray bit of conducting material was screwing things up. Basically, if a digit appeared in one register, it would "contaminate" the one next to it, propagating an error throughout the data analysis.
But this effect was so subtle that we had not seen it until someone noticed that our Crab pulse profile was too fat.

Once we understood what was going on, it was relatively simple to construct some simulation software. This verified that we had a complete, self-consistent grasp of the problem. Of course, that didn't help us fix the data that was already affected by the fault.

But actually, it did! By applying our understanding of the Gray Code issue, we were able to build a piece of software which took old datasets and unscrambled the erroneous time tags. It only worked for relatively bright, high-photon output objects - but those were exactly the ones where correcting the time tags really mattered. It was hugely satisfying, at the end of this months-long analysis, to be able to regenerate our original Crab pulse profile and see what we should have been all along.

That's almost it - but for one curious twist. The Jodrell Bank observations were crucial to our understanding of the problem, and I've already mentioned that the Lowell Telescope rides on battleship turrets. Gray Codes have many real-life applications, but one of the most useful is in position encoders - especially for rotary shafts.

Think of a shaft sticking up from the floor to the ceiling. Now imagine parts of the shaft painted in an insulating material, and other parts left in bare conductive metal. Now also imagine metal brushes contacting the shaft at different positions. As the shaft rotates, the brushes will either touch a conducting patch or an insulated patch. The question is, can you design a shaft such that these brushes always give an absolutely unambigous reading of the shaft's momentary rotation angle? Well, you can - but you have to use Gray Codes to do it. And one of the first uses for reliable position encoders was in ... you've guessed it ... battleship turrets.

My life in science

2011-08-08T15:00:00.000-07:00

Here's a short piece, slightly expanded from one I wrote for the program book of Norcon, which I attended earlier this year - hope it's of interest.

From science to science fiction...

In 2004 I turned full-time writer after more than a decade doing science. If there's a question I get asked more than any other, it's why did I quit my day job?

Here's my attempt at answering that. It might help, though, if I said a bit about what that day job concerned, and how I got into it.

I'd always been fascinated by science on some level, but it wasn't until my early teens that I started giving serious thought to the idea of doing it as a career. On the face of it, this was a bit of an odd choice. My natural talents, such as they were, lay far more in the direction of the arts than the sciences. From an early age it was clear that I had an aptitude for writing, and beyond that I was also quite a precocious artist. Most of my family and teachers assumed that I'd end up either involved with words or paint, or some level. But I had other ideas. Inspired by Carl Sagan's Cosmos TV series, and the non-fiction science books of Asimov and Clarke, I had my heart set on being some kind of scientist. By the time I was forced to narrow down my choice of school subjects to maths, physics and chemistry, I was increasingly determined to become an astronomer. The fact that I wasn't particularly good at maths or physics - and even worse at chemistry - did not deter me in the least. Nonetheless my teachers were prepared to give me a chance.

It wasn't plain sailing by any means. I was offered a place at university in 1984, but that was contingent on getting a minimum set of grades. As it happened, I failed in spectacular fashion. I went back to school for another year, while most of my friends left home. It was a humbling experience, but in hindsight a really good one. That third year taught me a lot, and although I struggled to get the university offers that I wanted a second time round, I did apply myself to study with a lot more determination than in the previous two years. Unfortunately I was not able to find an astronomy course willing to offer me a place, but I settled on working with lasers, which at the time struck me as fantastically exciting, given that I'd only seen one in my entire life. As luck would have it, though, after getting three respectable passes, I was offered a position on an astronomy course at Newcastle. I'd never applied to that university, or even been to the city, so when I showed up on day one with my belongings in a rucksack, it was truly the start of an adventure.

I had a good time at Newcastle, and graduated with a decent degree in 1988. The friends I made there are all still close ones, and we keep in touch regularly. Importantly, three years of university life hadn't dented my enthusiasm for science. I decided to continue my studies by embarking on a PhD course. Newcastle didn't offer the doctoral level subjects I was interested in, and in any case I felt that a change of scenery would do me good. In the Autumn of 1988, therefore, I found myself on the way up to St Andrews, Scotland, to begin another three years of study.

Doing a PhD was very different to degree work. For the first time I was expected to show initiative, to develop my own research interests. I found the transition from formal study quite difficult at first, and I can't say I particularly enjoyed the first year. By the second year, though, I had some data to work on and more importantly a sense of direction. Equally significantly (to me, if not to anyone else) I'd also just broken into science fiction publishing. In the summer of 1989 I sold my first piece of short fiction, to Interzone magazine. I was over the moon. Not long after they also took a second piece from me. The stories wouldn't appear in the magazine until the following year, but for the first time I felt the faint stirrings of a possible second career.

My work at St Andrews involved observations taken with an instrument mounted above the main observatory building itself: the 0.5m Leslie Rose Telescope. Although small by international standards this was a big scope to be using in the UK, although not the biggest at St Andrews, and with the right approach it was capable of doing first class work. I spent many, many nights in the dome, often wearing four or five layers - it got cold in winter! Generally I had a radio for company and got through the night on multiple cups of coffee. This was real astronomy: the telescope's data-acquisition system was electronic, but ensuring that the instrument was correctly tracking the target star meant that an observer needed to keep returning to the eyepiece at regular intervals. The dome also needed to be moved manually throughout the night.

I also made use of the Anglo-Australian Telescope at Siding Spring, New South Wales, as well as some data collected remotely from the Canary islands. I've written a couple of stories with an Australian theme and they both stemmed from those exciting visits to the country in 1989 and 1990 (I returned in 1994, but that run was a total washout - we spent both nights playing pool and waiting for the rain to stop, if memory serves).

At the end of 1991, after three years in St Andrews, I handed in my PhD thesis, entitled 'Optical Spectroscopy of Massive X-ray Binaries'. Staying on to do further research wasn't really an option, so I was obliged to look further afield. After seeing a job vacancy I hopped over to the European Space Agency's establishment in Noordwijk, Holland for an interview. Though the job I'd applied for was now filled, they offered me another one. With the bank breathing down my neck, it didn't take me long to accept. I went from being unemployed, to having my future mapped out for at least the next year. That was a great feeling, although I was a little apprehensive about relocating to a foreign country.

The job concerned EXOSAT, an ESA satellite that had orbited the Earth between 1983 and 1986, studying the sky in the X-ray part of the spectrum. X-ray astronomy is a vast field in its own right, with its own language and concepts. Coming from a very different astronomical background, I had some catching up to do...and some pitfalls to watch out for.

To give an example: it's usual to study the distribution of starlight from a given astronomical object by means of a spectrum. A red star humps in the red part of the spectrum, a blue star humps in the blue part, and so on. In optical astronomy, it's normal to plot the units of 'colour' in terms of wavelength, which means that the 'blue end' is to the left of the 'red end'. In X-ray astronomy, however, the spectrum is plotted back to front! No problem if you work exclusively in one or other disciplines, but hopping between them needs a bit of mental agility, especially in the high-pressure environment of a telescope control room where you're comparing plots and trying to assess the feasibility of some observation with the clock ticking and your liquid nitrogen running out...

It gets even worse when you start thinking about the units used to measure the intensity of a given colour - are we using Janskys today, or Crabs, or photon counts? If it's photons, is it photons per second, or photons per second per KeV? Sound of man bashing head against wall...

Most of the science I did in my first three years in the Netherlands concerned data that was already in the EXOSAT archive - observations that the satellite had made, but which still hadn't been analysed in any detail. My studies focused on neutron stars in binary systems, trying to work out details of their magnetic fields, and how the fields interacted with the gas streams being dragged off the other star. The neutron stars all happened to pulsars - emitting regular 'ticks' of X-ray flux akin to a very accurate clock. However, as the gas stream from the other star crashed into the magnetic field of the pulsar, there could be a braking or accelerating force which would cause the ticks to slow down or speed up. Once you'd disentangled the effects of orbital motion you could use the remaining variations to say something about the details of the magnetic field and the complicated gas flows. Needless to say, there were a lot of messy details that got in the way of a clear picture.

I really enjoyed working at ESA, but it often seemed like the database management side of my job was squeezing out any time to get to grips with the science side. My bosses kindly gave me a third year as a fellow, but at the end of 1994 I left to spend two years commuting from Noordwijk to Utrecht, where I worked in the university's astronomy department. Working in a purely academic environemnt was another culture shock and I unfortunately I didn't find that I got significantly faster in my paper writing than at ESA. I often got horribly bogged down in a particular stage of the analysis, fretting over error bars or something, details holding me back for months when I should be surging forward. I could see trouble brewing unless I either changed my career plans or became magically prolific overnight. At the end of 1996 I completed a telescope run in Chile, and then my partner (now my wife) and I took a week's holiday in the Atacama desert. By the time we got back to Holland, I was out of work.

It was scary but liberating. I used the spare time to finish my book, which I eventually managed to sell. At the same time, 1997 was the year when I finally felt that I was getting somewhere with my short fiction. I'd been writing and publishing for what seemed like years, but up to that point nothing had seemed to make any kind of splash or attract the wider attention of other editors in the field. Between 1997 and 1998, though, things started happening. My stories began to be noticed a bit more, and I started picking up interest from the American magazines.

I was also fortunate: I'd applied to work for a small company based in Haarlem, who claimed to have something to do with space science. As it happened, the firm turned out to be run by an amiable welshman I'd already known as a colleague in ESA. The firm took me on, and after a few small contracts spread over the next two years, I ended up working as a contractor on an ESA program named S-Cam. That was 1999, which was a fairly significant year for me. Ten years on from my first short fiction sale, it was the also the year when I managed to sell three novels. One written, one sort of written, the other no more than some vague intentions. It was all very exciting and I was lucky to have the support of my colleagues, many of whom turned out to be closet science fiction readers.

Working on S-Cam was fascinating. It was a project to develop a new detector technology for use in ground and space-based astronomy. S-Cam (abbreviated from STJ-Cam, or superconducting tunnel junction camera) would basically be the ultimate, all-singing, all-dancing camera, with a capability to not just count every single photon of starlight arriving from space, but to also log its arrival time with microsecond accuracy, and also determine its energy or colour. What would have been intractably difficult observations could now be made very easily, almost in a point-and-click fashion.

That was the idea, anyway, but S-Cam was also cutting-edge technology with all sorts of teething troubles that needed to be overcome. Not only was the instrument temperamental - it needed to be cooled to within half a degree above absolute zero, which is pretty cold - it also demanded a completely new approach to data analysis, all of which had to be invented more or less from scratch. I found that my dual background in optical and X-ray astronomy came in very handy, as S-Cam was basically an optical camera that behaved like an X-ray detector. Despite the technological difficulties we still managed to collect a lot of data with S-Cam, hooked onto the William Herschel Telescope in the Canary islands. Along the way we made some very neat observations of eclipsing binary systems, measured quasar redshifts and the temperatures and chemical compositions of stars. Between 2000 and 2004 we worked to upgrade to a larger version of the detector, with 120 pixels rather than 36. The 120 pixel array saw first light in the summer of 2004, just after I left ESA, and performed well despite less than brilliant weather.

So why did I leave? Not because I didn't enjoy the job, but because the demands of writing had increased to the point where I had little time for anything else. It was also deeply unfair on my wife, who hadn't had a holiday or much of a social life since I signed my novel contract. I was sad to give up science, but at the same time excited at being able to give writing more time. I'd found myself turning down approaches to write stories for anthologies - exactly the kind of offer I'd spent most of the last twenty years dreaming of getting! Now at least I'd be able to say yes to a few things that took my fancy.

I do miss some aspects of the day job, especially the banter around the coffee table in the morning. Doing science was also the kind of job where you never really knew what you were going to be working on from week to week, and the challenge of thinking analytically was obviously very different from the kinds of mental process involved in writing. That said, I think I'm reasonably well suited temperamentally to sitting at home all day, and it's surprising how quickly the hours go by. Also, you don't stop being a scientist just because they stop paying you. Science is a state of mind, not a job definition. I'm still fascinated by the entire edifice of modern science, and an avid reader of New Scientist. All in all, then, I'm happy enough with the way things worked out. In my old day job, I got to have fun and work with some amazingly talented and generous people. Now I get to write about other planets and other times for a living, and I'm more delighted than you can imagine that some of my readers are scientists and astronauts, still out there doing what I always dreamed of doing. Being a science fiction writer has probably opened more doors for me than being a paid scientist ever did...

The only thing that hasn't improved is the vast amount of coffee I still drink, but you can't have it all. The mathematician Paul Erdos once described himself as a machine for turning coffee into proofs. Change "proofs" for "science fiction" and you've got a pretty good description of me.

Harvest of Time

2011-07-21T04:00:00.000-07:00

Fourteen months ago I was in Florida, on the eve of the penultimate flight of the space shuttle Atlantis. On my way to KSC to collect tickets for the next day's launch, I checked my email to find some brilliant news regarding the possibility of a future project. But, I couldn't tell anyone about it. What followed was a year of batting ideas back and forth, until all parties were satisfied. Throughout that process I remained enormously excited: this was a chance to be part of something that had always been very special to me. But - I still couldn't tell anyone.

Today I've just watched Atlantis land for the final time. And I'm now pleased to announce that in 2013, in the fiftieth anniversary year of Doctor Who, BBC Books/Ebury will be publishing HARVEST OF TIME, an original science fiction novel featuring the Third Doctor, his companion Jo Grant, and arch-enemy The Master.

I've never had much interest in spinoffery - the idea of writing in someone else's universe generally leaves me cold - but Doctor Who is different. I've grown up with it. It's been part of my life since I was tiny, watching Jon Pertwee on a grainy black and white television in Cornwall, and being terrified out of my mind. All of the usual cliches apply - I was the boy behind the settee, too afraid to look at the screen, but somehow unable to leave the room. Daleks scared the hell out of me, to the point where I wouldn't go round to another boy's house because he had Dalek wallpaper in his bedroom. Above all else, Doctor Who still seems to me to offer near infinite scope for the writer. It must be the least constraining of televisual properties.

I don't remember the very early Pertwee era, but I have very clear memories of the last two seasons, including the introduction of the brilliant and now much missed Liz Sladen. My love of Who transitioned seamlessly through to the Tom Baker period - as a child I accepted unquestioningly that this alien being was capable of regeneration, and I think my "loyalty" had transferred to Baker by about the middle of the first episode of "Robot". I continued watching Who throughout the seventies and eighties, into the Davison and Colin Baker eras. I lost touch with it when I left for university, but never lost my basic affection (albeit tempered with occasional frustration) for the series.

When I was offered the chance to pick a Doctor, it seemed natural to "do" Pertwee. He was the first, for me, and while I have equal admiration for the Baker era, I've always been attracted to Pertwee's portrayal of the Doctor as dashing man-of-science, charming, skeptical and rational. More than that, I felt that I had a better handle on Pertwee's mannerisms and modes of speech than I do on any other Doctor. I also loved the atmosphere of the UNIT era adventures - all that driving around in Land Rovers, crashing through checkpoints, sinister factories and bosses - and, of course, the looming threat of The Master, simply my favorite fictional villain in any medium.

I'll be blogging more about HARVEST OF TIME over the coming year - without giving too much away - but for now I'm as excited as when I got that first email. I hope that the book does justice to the characters and the actors who portrayed them.

Railwayed

2011-07-18T06:02:00.000-07:00

To London, and specifically Waterloo, where my wife and I treated ourselves to two tickets to York Theatre Royal's production of The Railway Children. It's a brilliant, imaginative staging, anchored by Marcus Brigstock's excellent Perks, which we enjoyed tremendously. For me, though, it goes much further than merely "enjoying". The story's emotional hooks are so deeply embedded in me that I am powerless not to be swept along, guaranteed to be reduced to tears on at least two occasions. I suspect that the significance of The Railway Children is very much a British thing, and probably a generational thing as well, but perhaps its reach is wider than that.

The 1970 film, starring Jenny Agutter, is by far the best known version of the story beyond Edith Nesbit's 1906 book. In the UK at least, it's been a staple of television repeats for many years - Christmas, bank holidays, sunday afternoons. I must have seen it dozens of times before I acquired a DVD copy. There had been three previous television adaptations before Lionel Jeffries' film, of which the 1968 production also features Agutter - but I've never seen any of them. As for the 1970 version, I've no recollection of seeing it earlier than about the age of eleven or twelve, and perhaps even older than that. The youthful Bernard Cribbins, who takes the role of Perks the stationmaster in that film, has of course featured in recent episodes of Doctor Who as the grandfather of the Donna Noble character.

The 1970 version will always be the definitive screen adaptation for me, but I've also grown very fond of the TV film from 2000. In a nice touch, Jenny Agutter returns, but this time as the mother of the children. Gregor Fisher supplies an enjoyable Perks.

As a child it was the train sequences that endeared the film to me, and of course the romance of railways and railway travel is an inescapable element of the story, ably captured in the York Theatre Royal production. More than that, though, what gets me every time is Bobby's reunion with her father, returned from false imprisonment after being wrongly accused of treason. The dramatisation of that moment in the 1970 film, as the smoke clears and Jenny Agutter at last sees the reason she has been called to the station, is very possibly my favorite moment in cinema. And if that makes me a big crybaby, so be it.

Not a clip from the film, but a link to a YouTube song by the splendid and much-missed Kitchens of Distinction.

Softly softly comes the train into the station.
She has often waited and wondered if he'll come.
Why was he kept away then, held from coming home now?
Was it troubled loyalty or a brand new family?

Year's best

2011-07-12T14:57:00.000-07:00

I can't find a good image of the cover, but the Twenty Eighth Annual Edition of the Year's Best Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois, is now out in the States.

It contains my long story from "The Mammoth Book of the End of the World", "Sleepover". Sleepover attracted almost zero attention upon its original publication (I know, moan moan moan), so I'm very grateful to Gardner for picking it for reprinting. As always, it's a blast to see my name inside the Year's Best, let alone on the cover.

Here's the opening:

They brought Gaunt out of hibernation on a blustery day in early spring. He came to consciousness in a steel-framed bed in a grey-walled room that had the economical look of something assembled in a hurry from prefabricated parts. Two people were standing at the foot of the bed, looking only moderately interested in his plight. One of them was a man, cradling a bowl of something and spooning quantities of it into his mouth, as if he was eating his breakfast on the run. He had cropped white hair and the leathery complexion of someone who spent a lot of time outside. Next to him was a woman with longer hair, greying rather than white, and with much darker skin. Like the man she was wiry of build and dressed in crumpled grey overalls, with a heavy equipment belt dangling from her hips.

‘You in one piece, Gaunt?’ she asked, while her companion spooned in another mouthful of his breakfast. ‘You compus mentis?’

Gaunt squinted against the brightness of the room’s lighting, momentarily adrift from his memories.

‘Where am I?’ he asked. His voice came out raw, as if he had been in a loud bar the night before.

‘In a room, being woken up,’ the woman said. ‘You remember going under, right?’

He grasped for memories, something specific to hold onto. Green-gowned doctors in a clean surgical theatre, his hand signing the last of the release forms before they plumbed him into the machines. The drugs flooding his system, the utter absence of sadness or longing as he bid farewell to the old world, with all its vague disappointments.

The finishing line in sight

2011-07-12T14:32:00.000-07:00

I'm in the late stages of what will probably be the last substantial draft of BLUE REMEMBERED EARTH, mindful that while there will still be chances to make some minor changes further down the line, this is really the last opportunity to inflict major adjustments on the story. Along with detailed editorial feedback, I've also been fortunate enough to have responses from some "beta-test" readers who were generous enough with their time to take a look at the May draft. As always, emotions are mixed - these readers will inevitably pick up on plot holes and inconsistencies that you'd either thought were resolved or were not aware of at all, but at the same time it's encouraging to see that someone else is able to track through the plot from A to B to C and pick up on nuances that make it clear that they understood not only the surface currents of the story, but the implied mechanics of the invented world and its characters. That, in other words, they weren't completely bewildered and lost by chapter three. The hard part is sifting through those reader responses and deciding which you act on, and which you discard. Assuming, of course, that you can reconcile two or more sets of reactions which may not readily dovetail.

A book at this stage is essentially a done deal - a production slot is assigned, artwork commissioned, buyers (hopefully) persuaded of its worth. If a reader tells you that the motivation of character X in chapter Y needs a bit of tweaking, you can deal with that. If that same reader suggests that the entire premise of the novel is flawed, that the only possible course of action is a total rewrite or even abandonment, you have no real option but to discard their advice. That's never happened to me yet, but it's always a possibility. Writers are artists, but publishing is a commercial enterprise with schedules and expectations. The momentum may not be as unstoppable as that which governs the shooting and cutting of blockbuster films, assigned a tentpole release date a summer or two ahead which absolutely must be met, at all costs. But it's still momentum, all the same.

Shuttle

2011-07-07T02:09:00.000-07:00

Brilliantly inspirational piece in the Guardian from astronauts Piers Sellers and Scott Altman on the space shuttle. I particularly like these words from Piers:

"I've flown on two shuttles and they both felt a little bit different. They are real ships with their individual characters and their own nicks and bumps. You look at the shuttle, it's not as if it's this pristine, shining, gleaming piece of metallic technology – it looks like a ship, it's got dents and burns and inside multiple crews have whacked the paintwork and you can see scratches and things. They are ships that have been operated and lived in and done these incredible voyages all with their individual characters. I am personally very fond of the shuttle. When they wind up in museums I'll go and see them and I'll be happy to see them like old friends."

Full article here.

Thanks to Piers I was able to observe the launch of STS-132 last year, a truly memorable experience. A year earlier I also witnessed (thanks to my friend Louise Kleba) the launch of STS-125, which was another Atlantis mission and one commanded by Scott Altman. As documented at the time, I managed to lose my camera hours after the launch but fortunately that didn't happen with STS-132.

Tweeting

2011-07-06T08:03:00.000-07:00

Just a note to say that I've opened a Twitter account. It's early days yet but we'll see how it goes. Follow me on:

http://twitter.com/AquilaRift

This is part of a general profile-raising campaign ahead of Blue Remembered Earth's release in January, but hopefully I'll enjoy it well enough to stick with afterwards.

Year's Best SF16

2011-07-05T10:02:00.000-07:00

Out now:

Features my story "At Budokan", about the future of rock promotion and death metal, which originally appeared in the SHINE anthology. I am very grateful to David and Kathryn for reprinting it, and to Jetse de Vries for buying it originally.

Welcome your new Space Pony overlords

2011-07-01T02:25:00.000-07:00

I spent last weekend in Derby, attending the excellent Alt.Fiction, a slickly run and enjoyable cross-genre event with a nice mixture of SF, fantasy, crime and horror writers (and readers) present. As much a workshop as a convention in the usual sense, it was terrifically good fun and well situated in the heart of Derby, within easy range of restaurants and reasonably priced hotels. My thanks to Alex Davies for the invitation, and to the other guests and attendees for making everything so pleasant.

I delivered a guest of honour talk on the saturday afternoon. Before I got going, Cheryl Morgan presented me with this, which she had kindly ferried home from Stockholm:

This is the European Science Fiction Society Hall of Fame award for best writer, and I'm delighted to be the recipient in 2011, following on from my colleague and friend Stephen Baxter last year. When Cheryl emailed me from Stockholm to say the award was mine, I was doubly delighted because I hadn't even realised I was up for it. It's the kind of thing that makes you want to rub your hands and say "excellent" in a Mr Burns style.

The significance of the pony is that these wooden statuettes are a Stockholm speciality; mine has been transmogrified with a spacesuit and helmet. I understand that the other awards given out that night were similarly wacky.

I am immensely grateful to the ESFS for the award, to Cheryl for bringing it home, and to the organisers, guests and attendees of Alt.Fiction for an excellent time.

Onto book 2

2011-06-21T04:26:00.000-07:00

While we're going through the slow process of editing BLUE REMEMBERED EARTH, I've begun to make tentative inroads into the second novel of the trilogy. I have a title, but I'm not telling the world yet - I may well change my mind.

IF BRE deals with the colonisation and exploration of the solar system over the next 150 years - along with some snapshots of life on Earth, in a peaceful, prosperous post-climate change future - then the second book leaps ahead several hundred years, into the middle of a centuries-long interstellar expedition to an extrasolar planet, a little of which we already learn about in BRE. Not to give too much away, but it's a kind of generation ship story - except there are lots of generation ships, launched over many years, forming an entire spacefaring community stretched across many light years - a bit like the flotilla in CHASM CITY, scaled up a thousand times. The Akinya family, who feature in BRE, show up again in the new book, although there are not really any overlapping characters.

I've often been asked about my working methods, and I've usually answered that I don't do a great deal of pre-planning, preferring to hew out a first draft through blood, sweat and toil. This time, though, I'm taking exactly the opposite approach, blocking out the book on a chapter by chapter basis before I write a word of prose. It may all end in tears, but I'm interested in shaking up my processes every now and then, and I think this will be a good experiment to try. I've tried the elaborate planning thing twice before, with REDEMPTION ARK and THE PREFECT, but in both cases I don't think I got the plot sufficiently well nailed down before diving into the writing. This time I'm determined to resist the temptation. We'll see how it goes.

Vast

2011-06-15T06:44:00.000-07:00

There's been much talk recently about the invisibility of women in SF, for excellent reason. In the Guardian's reader poll of favorite SF writers, for instance, only 4% (edit - apparently it's more like 12 %, not that that's much better) of the 500 plus books mentioned are by women. Polls like that are a waste of time under the best of circumstances but the disparity does serve to highlight the problem. Anyone with an eye on the SF blogosphere is probably more than up to speed on the surrounding debate, but this post by Cheryl Morgan is a good entry point into the discussion.

Let's be honest - it's not too bad a time to be a white male SF author. I make a living from my books, I've been the recipient of a well publicized multi-book deal, and there are a good number of other British SF writers who are able to sustain a career solely on the basis of their writing. Many of these writers, such as myself, Steve Baxter, Peter Hamilton, John Meaney, Paul McAuley, Eric Brown, Keith Brooke and so on, are well into our second decade of full-time authorship. There are also many writers who are sustaining careers while also holding down "proper" jobs, either by choice or necessity - excellent, inventive writers like Tony Ballantine, Chris Beckett and so on. Yet, astonishingly, in the UK there is currently only one British female science fiction writer - Jaine Fenn (who happens to be a friend) - with a contract. This is not a happy state of affairs. It would be a dismal state of affairs even if women hadn't already made a vital contribution to the evolution of the form. Irrespective of the importance of women to the field in the past, though, there's little or no possibility of their having any effect in the future - at least in Britain. Things are reportedly a bit better elsewhere. In a recent piece I wrote for a forthcoming academic book on SF, I was at least able to mention a couple of contemporary American female SF writers doing something like space opera. Not many, though.

In all this I was reminded of one of the most enjoyable SF books I've read in the last 12 years, a book that I don't think picked up anything like the traction it deserved, but which certainly shaped some of my own ideas in books like Redemption Ark and House of Suns. It's not space opera, it's too sober-minded for that, but it is monumentally epic and galaxy-spanning, and it's drenched with really cool SFnal thinking, from speculation about artificial intelligence, posthuman evolution, to the practicalities of interstellar warfare in an Einsteinian universe, and contact with aliens. That book is VAST, Linda Nagata's fourth novel:

VAST was published in 1998; I read it in 1999. I can safely say that it is one of the very novels that has literally haunted my dreams, in that the book exerted such a powerful hold on my waking imagination that come nighttime I found my sleeping brain racing ahead with the story. It's awesome!

On a personal note, I emailed Linda Nagata expressing my enthusiasm for the book and she was kind and generous enough to send me a couple of her earlier paperbacks. Although it hadn't been any kind of obstacle to my reading, I was then intrigued to see that VAST was in fact part of a future history she had already been mapping through earlier books. I must emphasize, though, that VAST works enormously well on its own terms. My own copy is still boxed away somewhere following a house move, or I would re-read it now, but I'd certainly recommend it to anyone in the mood for some head-spinning far future Einsteinian SF in the same general direction as Greg Egan's Diaspora or Greg Bear's Anvil of the Stars. It's very much it's own thing, though, and fully deserving of a wider audience than it gained at the time of publication.

In other news... I've been interviewed by From Bar to Bar! If you've not read one of these quasi-fictionalised interviews before, prepare to be weirded out. Many thanks to Tibor for having me, and I hope my answers are of interest.

Dendrocopos major

2011-06-13T07:31:00.000-07:00

I love the way woodpeckers come pre-installed with Woodpecker 1.0. The bird on the left, with the prominent red cap, is a juvenile, the one on the right an adult female. I shot this picture this morning through two windows (the living room and the conservatory) so it's not the sharpest of images, but it's so rare to see two great spotted woodpeckers on the same feeder that I'm happy with any shot at all. I've been enthralled by these fascinating, intelligent and colourful creatures since I was a child. It's remarkable how they've gone from being a relatively uncommon sight (outside of woodland) to a typical garden bird in only a generation or so. I still never tire of them.

Alt Fiction in Derby

2011-06-10T06:08:00.000-07:00

I should have mentioned this sooner, but I'll be guest of honour (along with Dan Abnett) at Alt Fiction, taking place in Derby on the weekend of 25th - 26th June. In addition we'll be joined by speakers Tony Ballantyne, Cathy Brett, Keith Brooke, Mark Chadbourn, Stephen Deas, Paul Finch, John Jarrold, Juliet McKenna, Mark Morris, Adam Nevill, Mark Charan Newton, Sarah Pinborough, Robert Shearman, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Conrad Williams, Chris Wooding and many more.

http://www.derbyquad.co.uk/altfiction

A program of events is available here.

Look forward to seeing some of you there.

TEDx talk, story sale, Sturgeon shortlist

2011-06-10T04:34:00.000-07:00

The good people behind the Cardiff TEDx event have now edited and uploaded videos of the day's talks - you can access them from the main TEDx website at http://tedxcardiff.co.uk/ or hop directly to YouTube.

In other news, Ian Whates has kindly agreed to take a new 7000 word story of mine, "For the Ages", to appear in SOLARIS RISING, a new original anthology which I would imagine will appear in 2012. My story was inspired by this Scientific American article on The End of Cosmology (unfortunately behind paywall) which appeared in the March 2008 issue. Getting cosmology into SF is hard work, for me, at least, so I was delighted when I found a way into this story.

In other other news, I'm pleased to report that "Troika" is a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial award - its third shortlisting, following its appearance on the Hugo and Locus lists. Good luck to all the authors. I've also just received my contributor copies of the Subterranean Press edition of "Troika" (very slightly tweaked compared to the original version in Godlike Machines), and it's a lovely looking item.

Cryo-arithmetic engines?

2011-06-07T15:49:00.000-07:00

From the Wikipedia entry on Revelation Space universe technology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_in_Revelation_Space

"Cryo-arithmetic engines are a specific class of quantum computer discovered by the Conjoiners. When certain algorithms are executed on processors of this architecture, it leads to a local violation of the Second law of thermodynamics: the computer gets colder instead of hotter. Consequently, cryo-arithmetic engines have massive industrial (as opposed to computational) ramifications for Conjoiner manufacturing; such engines abound in Conjoiner asteroid factories, where their calculations can drain away the heat of starship construction."

I was tickled to note that a number of commentators have drawn a parallel between my made-up pseudo-science and this recent breakthrough:

http://io9.com/5807725/quantum-entanglement-helps-computers-defy-the-laws-of-thermodynamics

In the interests of fairness, though, I'd have to point to Greg Bear's excellent novella "Heads" as an earlier example of SF dealing with computation and weird thermodynamics.

Ladytron

2011-06-03T07:42:00.000-07:00

For the Manic Pop Thrills podcast I picked a few songs for Mike to insert into the interview, but of course we didn't play them on the night. Listening to part 1 of the podcast now, I'm once again reminded of how utterly bloody fantastic this song is:

The video is equally marvellous and bizarre. I have the sense that it's referencing something, anyone know what? Some half-remembered East European childrens TV series, perhaps?

Scales at Lightspeed, and some gratuitous John Grant

2011-06-01T06:49:00.000-07:00

In 2009 I wrote and narrated a very short story for the Guardian. You can now read Scales at http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/. Thank you to John Joseph Adams for taking the story, and to Erin for the interview which accompanies the piece.

Talking of science fiction and space travel ... who wouldn't want to go to Mars? Or even Marz? Actually, it's about a sweet shop, not the planet, but this is a wonderful track from John Grant's new album "The Queen of Denmark", which is itself utterly splendid. This strange and beautiful song has been picking up some airplay in the UK but it's always worth hearing, and I think this is the official video for it. Rather fantastically, it seems to have been filmed around Cardiff.

Manic Pop Thrills podcast

2011-05-31T02:31:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of returning to St Andrews after twenty years. During my stay I was well looked after by Yvonne and Mike Melville, and it was a delight to record a podcast for Mike's excellent Manic Pop Thrills blog. Mike and I have distinctly similar tastes in music.

Part 1 is up first; I rabbited on for so long that Mike had to split the podcast into two. During the podcast I talk about music and writing, and we introduce a few songs along the way. Mike will get part 2 up soon.

http://manicpopthrills.wordpress.com/

Thanks to Yvonne and Fife libraries for making the trip possible. My talk (not the podcast) was part of the Sci-Fife program - Iain M Banks has already appeared, and Ken Macleod will be talking later in the year (with, I think, Charles Stross at some point as well). It's a brilliant initiative and well worth checking out if you live in the area. Thanks also to Waterstones for their support on the night.

Sci-Fife

Skylon concept looks a bit like something from Gerry Anderson

2011-05-30T04:59:00.000-07:00

Mention in the previous comments thread of the similarity between the ESA/UK Skylon concept and Fireball XL-5 reminded me of this even more striking similarity (basically the same concept, I think, just a few years back) with the doomed Fireflash atomic airliner:

Personally I think the world would be a better place if more stuff looked like it had come out of Gerry Anderson shows.

Let's just hope they can get the wheels down for landing, though. Curse that Hood!

Yes, it's a slow news day.

Current reading

2011-05-23T06:27:00.000-07:00

I'm away from home at the moment, and have a book I need to read for review, so with regret (and not wanting to travel with two hefty hardbacks) I've had to set this aside until I return. It's a measure of the book that I can't wait to get back into it.

Mitchell is one of my favorite contemporary novelists, and Thousand Autumns ... doesn't disappoint. It's a mesmering window into a truly fascinating period - the dawn of the modern age - and a snapshot of the intersection of two radically different cultures - feudal Japan in and around Nagasaki, and a corrupt outpost of the Dutch East India Company in 1799. Mitchell is a brilliant, cunning engineer of narrative hooks - it's difficult to imagine a more compulsive, page-turning narrative - but he's also a great writer of character, and on a line by line basis the writing is quite beautiful. When he mentions a bat, "chased by its own furry turbulence", he hooks an image into my mind that I think will stay with me forever.

Terminal World on Wales Book of the Year shortlist

2011-05-19T14:55:00.000-07:00

Delighted to report that Terminal World has made the shortlist for Wales Book of the Year 2011.

From the BBC Wales website:

"A poetry collection, travel novel and sci-fi story are among the works shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year.

The English-language titles are What the Water Gave Me by Pascale Petit, Cloud Road by John Harrison and Alastair Reynolds's Terminal World.

On the Welsh-language list are Caersaint by Angharad Price, Lladd Duw by Dewi Prysor and Bydoedd by Ned Thomas.

The winners in each language will be announced on 7 July in Cardiff."

Wales Book of the Year 2011

More on the award itself:

Literature Wales

Congratulations to all the longlisted authors; it's a pleasure and an honour to be in such company, and I'm genuinely delighted.

BRE, Troika etc

2011-05-18T04:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I sent Blue Remembered Earth back to my publisher, after a substantial round of general cutting and tightening. The draft I submitted in December was 212,000 words; yesterday's was a much leaner 177,000. That's still a big book, of course, but it's comfortably shorter than anything I've done to date. 35,000 words, the difference between the two drafts, is about 100 pages of print, so we're talking about quite a substantial chunk of deleted material. It's never that simple, though, since part of the rewrite also involved adding and amplifying stuff - so the number of words dropped from the original draft is actually a bit more than 35,000.

How do you go about losing that much wordage from a finished text? Stephen King, if I remember correctly, advocated the cutting of 10% between first and second drafts, which has always struck me as basically sound advice. I've gone further than that with some of my books and stories, sometimes much further, but there's always a point where you're cutting too much, beginning to damage the narrative flow with jerky transitions, over-short chapters, too-snappy dialogue and so on. Brevity is a virtue, but we've all experienced books and films which feel over-edited, over-curtailed. There's an argument for ruthless self-editing, cutting and cutting until the text has been reduced to little more than a diagram of itself - but take that to its logical conclusion and there'd be no point in writing novels at all; we'd just skip to the synopsis. Books depend for their effect on contrast - a book that was all tightly-written action, or all cut-to-the-bone dialogue, would be as wearying as one that consisted of nothing but long, descriptive passages. But when you're knee-deep in the writing, it can be hard to take a step back and identify the necessary modal shifts of tone and pace that need to be there. Writers usually learn to make scenes do double or triple duty, so by the time you're editing a book, it can be difficult to delete a scene without damaging something else. That thousand words of introspection in chapter eight may look like a prime candidate for deletion when you're under the gun and looking for something to cut, but if it establishes key information that absolutely has to be in place by the time the reader gets to chapter twelve, it may have to remain.

Anyway - job done. Book off to publisher - though we're not done with editing just yet.

Taking a break from work on BRE, I also finished and sold a new story. "Trauma Pod", a sick and twisted piece about near-future battlefield medicine, will appear in ARMORED, a Baen books anthology edited by John Joseph Adams. Not sure of the pub date of ARMORED, but I'm guessing 2012 is more likely than 2011.

I should also mention that VOICES FROM THE PAST is now available, so if you'd like to contribute to a worthy cause - the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital - get on over and purchase your copy. The ebook contains my story "Ascension Day".

Voices from the Past

Finally (sort of), thanks for the kind words on my Hugo nomination for "Troika". I try to keep these things in perspective but 22 years after my first pro sale, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't very, very pleased to have made the Hugo ballot. Even if it never happens again, I'm enjoying the moment. And I'm equally delighted that "Troika" is also on the Locus shortlist.

While we're on the subject, the Subterranean Press edition of "Troika" will be available before very long. I've signed the sig sheets, and I know they're back in the States.

More information here

TEDx, Wales Book of the Year

2011-04-14T03:06:00.000-07:00

I got back from Oslo (which was great; thanks are due to my excellent hosts - especially Heidi Lyshol - for a very enjoyable visit) and then had to immediately dive into preparations for the TEDx Cardiff event on the coming weekend. As a consequence I'm still not up to date with everything, but bear with me.

TEDx was hugely enjoyable, if stressful. I've talked in public on many, many occasions, both as a scientist and writer, and to audiences large and small. By and large it doesn't bother me, and such nerves as I get before speaking are generally more to do with the nagging background worry of technical problems, rather than the act of standing up and talking itself. As a scientist I used to fret about difficult questions from the audience - the standing joke among astronomers of my acquaintance was that almost any talk could be derailed by someone asking "what role do magnetic fields play in your model/observations?"

By and large, though, talking about science fiction is usually much less combative than defending your latest pet model or cherished data set in stellar physics. But TEDx was different. To be honest, TED hadn't been on my radar before I was invited (which shows you how not very plugged in I am, really). But once I'd agreed to speak at the Cardiff event (TEDx is a series of independently run sessions in the spirit of TED itself) I started encountering it all over the place. There it was in the Guardian. There was Ted Danson talking about it on CNN. My guitar tutor was more clued-up about than I was. And what was clear was that the expected standard of a TEDx talk is very high indeed.

Here, for instance, is Janna Levin talking about the soundtrack of the cosmos. Now I don't know about you, but that's just a tad more polished than the average mildly shambolic presentation at your typical science or literary event. TED talks are also supposed to be brief - there's a strict time limit - and very much to the point. No faffing around, no meandering digression. I generally speak for 30 - 45 minutes, which is more than enough time to pull things back on course if they start to drift. No such luxury with TED. You've got to nail it, and you've got to plan it almost to the second. Once I'd honed in on my subject, I spent two days cutting and cutting until I felt it was easily short enough to fit into my allotted 18 minutes. And yet, I still kept running over-length. I cut and cut again, and when I had it down to 16 minutes I ran it past my wife. I then cut it a bit more and after two further rehearsals I managed to deliver my piece in 15 minutes 30 seconds, both deliveries running within a few seconds of each other. I also learned it off by heart - I didn't want to be referring to notes, or cluttering my slides with bullet points.

Despite all that, I still went a little over-length on the day itself. I'm guessing the mere act of standing up in a big room, and being able to walk around, slowed me down a little more. But, I think it was OK - the reaction seemed good, and it was clear that people had found all the day's talks really stimulating. For me, it was a blast, albeit a nerve-racking one. I was on at the end so I couldn't really relax until I'd done my stint. But that didn't stop me enjoying the other presentations, all of which gave me something to think about afterward. I'd like to thank Claire and Neil for having me, and after all that I'm pleased to have TEDx very firmly on my radar for the future.

Here's me with Tori James, the first Welsh woman to climb Everest. Given my avid interest in armchair mountaineering, meeting Tori was a real thrill.

In other news, today is the announcement for the long list of the Wales Book of the Year, and I'm delighted to report that Terminal World has made the cut. Yes, this is a high profile literary award, with a substantial prize and "proper" books on it, and there's also a big, chunky, unabashed science fiction novel in the running. Speaking for myself, I'm mortally sick of the endless in-genre hand-wringing about the perception of SF beyond the so-called ghetto. Granted, the Booker may still be hostile or indifferent to science fiction, but isn't there abundant evidence elsewhere that many, many people just don't really care any more? Last year I was invited to speak on the subject of the recycling of mythology at an English Lit conference, and guess what? I didn't detect one note of disdain from anyone I met, only a general open-mindedness and curiosity.

Anyway, I'm thrilled with the long-listing.

Fantastic Voyage

2011-04-02T01:17:00.000-07:00

While I'm in Oslo, here's a short essay I did for the BSFA on the film "Fantastic Voyage".

Its many flaws notwithstanding, I've always greatly enjoyed this film. It may well have been the first piece of cinematic SF I encountered - if it wasn't Fantastic Voyage, then it would have been another guilty pleasure, George Pal's 1960 version of The Time Machine. Both films loomed large in my childhood and their occasional appearance on television was always a source of delight.

Fantastic Voyage was directed by Richard Fleischer and released in 1966. The film embodies a wonderful premise: the US and the Soviet Union have developed secret miniaturisation technology, with the result that people and machines can be successfully shrunk to microscopic size for a period of exactly one hour. A defecting scientist, Benes, has developed the means to prolong the process, but after a failed assassination he develops an inoperable brain clot.

After an excellent title sequence, we are introduced to the pilot of the submarine who is tasked to convey his miniaturised colleagues to the site of the clot, where it can be burned away using a laser gun. Played by Stephen Boyd, the pilot knows nothing of the covert organisation behind the miniaturisation technology, but he quickly accepts the reality of it. We are then introduced to the crew of the submarine Proteus as they familarise themselves with the vessel and prepare to be shrunk and injected into the comatose Benes.

The film's slender plot hangs on the fact that the enemy may have planted a saboteur on the sub, intent on preventing the operation from being carried out successfully. Donald Pleasence, who plays the saboteur, may seem too obvious a choice, but in 1966 he was still a year away from playing Blofeld. It scarcely matters, in any case: the film's pleasures have little to do with the cold-war mechanics of the story (the characters are at best sketchy), and everything to do with the awesome burden of the surgical rescue mission, and the degree of seriousness with which the film handles its conceit.

A good part of Fantastic Voyage has already elapsed before the Proteus enters Benes. The top-secret CMDF HQ is as impressive an underground facility as Blofeld, or indeed any self-respecting Bond villain, could wish for, complete with electric carts and underground traffic cops. Once the crew are secured aboard their vessel, the miniaturisation process is completed and the submarine is injected into Benes' neck. The sequence of the craft rushing down the long metal tunnel of the hypodermic needle is particularly striking.

The rest of the film documents the crews' efforts to forge their way through Benes' body. Things soon go wrong and the Proteus has to take a hazardous - and picturesque - detour. The effects are appropriately trippy, not particularly convincing as a depiction of the interior of a human body by 2009 standards but not awful by any means, and with an integrity that wouldn't necessarily be bettered by CGI treatment. Eventually the laser, or "lacer", as it is pronounced by all in the film, is used to zap away Benes' blood clot and the identity of the saboteur is revealed. The submarine is disabled and the remaining crew escape by other means. The much-vaunted logical flaw, in that the abandoned submarine ought to kill Benes when it resumes normal size, doesn't seem to be much of a problem to me. The film establishes that the submarine will be attacked and digested by antibodies long before it poses any threat to Benes. Granted, its atoms will still be inside him, but the film is so murky on the physics of the shrinking technology that for all we know, the atoms will be assimilated harmlessly.

For me, the best part of Fantastic Voyage is its sense of authenticity. The shrinking process is handled with superb conviction and an almost magisterial slowness. Stage by stage, the Proteus is shrunk, placed in water and then inserted into a syringe ready for injection into the patient. Remarkably, the film spends more than twelve of its hundred minutes merely getting the Proteus into Benes. The shrinking process is shown to be highly technological and proceduralised, much like a spacecraft docking or H-bomb test. Whatever happens afterwards, the film achieves a considerable pay-off in taking its time here. We believe, at least temporarily, that if this absurd feat were possible, this is exactly how it would be done. It's difficult to believe that a modern version of Fantastic Voyage would have the same faith in its audience's attention span.

Next up

2011-03-29T02:41:00.000-07:00

VS Ramachandran's Phantoms in the Brain was one of the best pop-science books I ever read, so I'm looking forward to getting stuck into this chunky summation of his work to date. He's an elegant and deeply humane writer, very much in the Oliver Sacks mode, and that's high praise as far as I'm concerned.

Ramachandran's work on mirror boxes and phantom limb syndrome is fascinating; fans of House MD will remember the episode "The Tyrant" where House (after first drugging and kidnapping him) treats a cantankerous Canadian war-vet using the Ramachandran method.

The Cold Ten Thousand

2011-03-24T12:55:00.000-07:00

This is my current bedside reading:

I'd had a glance at Daniel Levitin's book in a Boston bookstore last year, but for some reason hadn't bought it; I don't know why as this is exactly my kind of thing. Perhaps I was thinking about luggage allowance on my flight home. In the end I picked up a copy a few weeks ago in Cardiff, and it's very interesting stuff, both in the specifics of its theme - the science of music perception and appreciation, and as a handy primer on recent developments in neuroscience. Levitin is a scientist, but he's also a muso - if you've ever wanted a book that hops cheerfully from Mozart to Metallica by way of MRI, this is the one for you.

I've still some way to go, but last night I was struck by a section in the book where he talks at some length on the "ten thousand hour" thing. This is the notion, with which I was only glancingly familiar, that it takes about ten thousand hours to get good at anything - by which good is taken to mean "expert" or "world class". In the case of Mozart, for instance, there's no need to assume that there was anything exceptional or freakish about the young Amadeus - he was simply brought up in a household environment where the necessary ten thousand hours of tuition and practise could easily have been achieved at a relatively early age. Levitin stresses that the ten thousand hours applies to far more than just music.

This got me thinking about my own long-documented struggles with the guitar, and how much time I'd need to put in to get near that magic ten thousand mark. Three hours a day for a decade will get you there, but very few of us can hope to spend that much time on what is essentially a hobby - not if we've got day-jobs or other interests. Nonetheless, and barring other factors, I suppose I could do it if I were so minded. An hour in the morning, an hour at noon, an hour in the evening - and then keep that up for ten years...

Well, no - that's obviously not going to happen. But then it occurred to me that I don't have to do ten thousand hours from now, since I've already been playing - or attempting to play - for more than fifteen years. That must knock quite a chunk off the target, surely?

Well, sort of - but not very much. I've been kind of semi-serious with my guitar for the last two or three years, but if I'm going to be honest, I doubt that I spent more than two hours a week on it for most of the time before that. So that's - what - a hundred hours a year, for a decade or so? In other words, and allowing for my increased discipline in the last couple of years, I doubt that I've managed to shave more than two thousand hours off the target. So that's just another eight thousand to go, then.

I suppose I'd better be realistic...

Celebrity Swears

2011-03-21T03:35:00.000-07:00

Naughty but funny spoof video of Brian Cox - contains lots of gratuitous swearing, obviously a good thing in my book but possibly offensive to some:

(Thanks to Jetse de Vries for alerting me to this).

Midlake - Roscoe

2011-03-11T02:56:00.000-08:00

This is bloody fantastic.

Voices from the Past

2011-03-10T10:28:00.000-08:00

The other story I submitted on the same day as "The Lobby" will, I'm pleased to say, appear in Voices from the Past, an ebook anthology of flash fiction in support of the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital.

My piece is entitled Ascension Day; it's a very short science fiction story. This is a great venture and well worth supporting, I'd say. The book will cost you all of 59 New Pence...

When I began my student days, and provided you weren't too choosy, you could just get a pint for 59p. But that was 26 years ago...

More information:

http://www.hhbooks.org/?page_id=7

Lune

2011-03-09T03:56:00.000-08:00

So Liz and I finished our collaboration - it's called "Lune and the Red Empress", it's 16,000 words, set in Paris, in the very distant future, and it'll be appearing in the Eastercon souvenir book (Liz and I were guests of honour in 2010).

Liz and I haven't ruled out another collaboration at some point down the line, so who knows where this may lead...

In other news, in an earlier post I mentioned submitting a couple of stories on the same day. I'm pleased to say that one of them, "The Lobby", will be appearing in Postscripts magazine, toward the end of 2011. It's an urban horror story about a couple of dropout skater dudes and the strange thing that replaces their skate park one morning...

Collaboratorium

2011-03-02T03:00:00.000-08:00

Been working on a piece of collaborative fiction recently, which is something new for me. We started talking about it two years ago, but as is so often the case, life got in the way and we didn't get traction on the story until early last year. Then ... well, life got in the way again, as it tends to do. After Christmas, though, we decided to return to the story and see if we could finish it.

Right now I think it's about 15,000 words and I think I'm about finished with my side of the writing - there's a beginning, middle and end but still a few rough edges. It's a very far future piece, set on Earth, with a kind of Jack Vance/Gene Wolfe vibe to it. Once my colleague has finished with their side, we'll need to fix a title onto the thing and then we're done. As to where it'll appear, that's already "sorted", so to speak, but it's not going to be a publication that will be easily obtainable unless you are or were signed up for a particular convention. Given the limited distribution, though, I think we'll try and get it out to a wider readership at some point.

Anyone care to take a guess at the other writer in the collaboration? First correct answer will bag a copy of the story, once it's available, and I'll endeavour to get it signed by both of us.

[Edit - strictly one guess per respondent, people (although I'll not penalise those who've already commented). And I'll give it a couple of days before announcing the "winner"]

Two weeks

2011-02-22T05:55:00.000-08:00

It's over two weeks since I posted anything here, so what does a typical fortnight in the life of the working SF writer look like?

Monday: blog post about Winston Link. Fiddle around with novel rewrites. Buy rowing machine from Argos. Start watching "The Three Doctors" on DVD while on treadmill. Later, stare at large cardboard box containing rowing machine in the hope that it will assemble itself.

Tuesday. More fiddling around. Guitar lesson with Richard in the afternoon - only a half hour usually, but it's surprising the amount of concentration it takes out of me. Feel like I'm making progress, though. Recuperate with cup of tea and cakes. More writing, then more Doctor Who. Vague recollection of having watched "The Three Doctors" in the eighties.

Wednesday: more writing. Amazon package arrives with a selection of brilliant Cherry Red CD reissues: Furniture, The Passions, Lotus Eaters - all great eighties stuff I've liked but never owned. Also: an Aztec Camera boxset, which is excellent value. After work, assemble rowing machine, which in itself feels like a major exercise session. Amazingly, it seems to work. Early night because of travel next day.

Thursday: up with the lark to catch train to London. In Paddington by 11.30, followed by quick sprint across town to favoured hotel. Check in, then meet another writer friend for enjoyable lunch. Talk about films, world war two, editors, deadlines and so on. Then catch tube to Canary Wharf where we are both present for a book launch at Barclays Bank. Get tour of Barclays Capital trading floor - very impressive, in a "I don't understand a sodding thing that's going on here, but it all looks very shiny" way. Proceed back to Barclays HQ for book event, which goes well. Later, adjourn with a number of other writers and Barclays people to restaurant.

Friday: no rush to leave London, so mope around in enjoyable aimlessness for a few hours, visiting usual haunts. Decide to keep away from guitar and music shops. Train back to Cardiff, then home for tea. No writing or exercise as generally worn out, but in a good way.

Saturday and sunday: weekend off. Don't go anywhere. My wife and I repair felting on shed roof between downpours. Watch "Franklin" on DVD, over which we have divided opinions. Begin watching House season six. We love House but have to ration our watching, or we'd end up going through the boxset in a few days.

Monday: day of preparation and low-level disruption. Into Cardiff for business meeting, then back home. Doing talk on wednesday, so spend evening reviewing Powerpoint slides and try and work out what the thrust of my argument will be. Different audience to the usual, so need to fine-tune. Don't get much actual writing done, but then never do before any travel. General rule of thumb: in order to write for an hour, I need to feel like I've got three hours of potential writing time. Same thing applies to days.

Tuesday: up to London again. My wife comes with me this time as she has to go to the consulate for a passport renewal. Work on laptop on train, deciding to eliminate all text from my Powerpoint slides, keeping the presentation purely visual. No bullet-points. Check in, grab a sandwich and go separate ways. I travel to North London to meet another writer friend, we chat about "the biz" and then travel together to Covent Garden for Orion Authors party. Posh bash, this, with "proper" writers in attendance in addition to snivelling genre types such as myself. In previous years, famous celebs such as Michael Palin and Richard Hammond have been in attendance, but I've never seen them. Last year, spotted both Fat Hairy Bikers. This year, only one of them. Note that general level of drunkenness seems to be moderately down on previous bash. Adjourn to pub for one more pint, then back to hotel where neither of us gets a good night's sleep due to noisy neighbours and paper-thin walls.

Wednesday: early start again, as we need to be back in South Wales by noon. Work on train again, enjoying the benefit of the quiet coach. Collected from station by my mother, who drives us to her house where we left the car overnight. Just time for sandwiches and a cuppa, then off out again. Doing talk at Lifelong Learning Centre in Church Village, between Llantrisant and Pontypridd, to U3A group. Talk seems to go well although I go on a bit longer than I intended. Later, meet librarians downstairs - all very friendly and enjoyable. Stop at furniture shop on way back to mother's to order bookcase. Chinese takeaway with mum, then home again. Tired but generally satisfied with day.

Thursday: attempt to get back into writing groove but don't succeed. Travel is always disruptive. In the afternoon, jump at chance to accompany wife to Tescos and then our local Focus DIY center. We select some paint for some interior redecorating.

Friday: more of the same. By mid-afternoon, decide I'm not going to get any productive writing done. Tidy up, then skive off. Watch more House.

Link link

2011-02-07T03:52:00.000-08:00

I was surprised to see a reference to O. Winston Link in the Blue Nile book. It turns out that the inspiration for the first album's cover photograph was Link's iconic black and white night photography of fifties America. I'm a big fan of Link's work and own two books of his photography. He was an astonishing craftsman and went to improbable lengths to achieve his amazing floodlit images.

It's kind of obvious now, given the "period Americana" themes in so many of the lyrics, but the connection had never occurred to me.

More on Link here:

O. Winston Link museum

Wikipedia article

(Edit: I see from the Wiki article that Link has a cameo in the film "October Sky", based on Homer Hickam's book Rocket Boys, neatly bringing us back to space, rocketry, and all things sci-fi. I highly recommend the film, incidentally).

Bedside reading - Nileism by Allan Brown

2011-02-04T02:27:00.000-08:00

This arrived yesterday. I don't own many rock biographies, but Nileism seemed essential, not least because the story of The Blue Nile simply hasn't been played out in public or the pages of the music press. I've been a fan of the band for twenty five years, and I still don't know much beyond the barest essentials: that they're from Glasgow, that there are three of them, that they had some connection with Linn, that they produce music at a truly glacial pace. Four albums to date, in 1984, 1989, 1996 and 2004 respectively - and that's it. Nor is there much prospect of new material, judging by the state of affairs between the band members.

Never mind, it was fantastic while it lasted. I saw them live, once, and they did Tinseltown in the Rain twice in the same evening. That's the best song, that one. Not the best Blue Nile song, mind, but the best song.

Here they are doing a live version on Jools Holland, and rather magnificent it is too:

Short stories

2011-02-03T02:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, in a fit of uncharacteristic productivity, I finished and submitted two short stories. Having never done that before, I felt that the only decent thing was to celebrate with a glass of Penderyn.

I remember once being amazed by a statement to the effect that Cliff Richard had had hits in five decades (it's probably more like six or seven now). As true as that undoubtedly was, I can use the same reasoning to claim that I've been writing and publishing short fiction for four decades. My first sale was in 1989; I've continued to write and sell through the nineties, noughties and into the current decade.

Strangely though, it doesn't get any easier. Whenever I start a piece of short fiction, I almost never have any idea as to how problematic the writing is going to be, and I'm still extraordinarily bad at estimating likely length of things. I've started 5000 word quickies that have developed into 30000 word monsters, taking weeks rather the days. I've also embarked on what I perceive to be a long, complex piece only to eventually realise that I'm dealing with an idea that's best suited to something much punchier. As m' learned colleague Paul McAuley notes in his blog, stories that ride on their own melting are gifts. In my career, I've only written a handful of stories that were effortless in that sense - "A Spy in Europa" basically wrote itself between one friday evening and the following sunday, and my story "Weather", from the Galactic North collection, was similarly friction-free. There may be one or two others, but the majority had to be dragged kicking and screaming into life. Some pieces are written to a tight deadline, and you just have to finish the little sods, no matter how difficult the progress seems, or how quickly the initial rush of enthusiasm flickers away. Anything longer than about 5000 words, though, and I can pretty much guarantee that there'll be a point in the writing where the momentum stalls, where my confidence in the premise falters, where I have to fight the fatal temptation to work on something else instead. I'm fairly good at not doing that - if there's anything I've learned in those four decades, it's that I generally do finish what I started, once I've committed some critical mass to paper - but it can still be something of a battle to get to the end. And then, of course, it's not the end. It's just the start of a process of revision, tightening, perhaps even submitting the story for further critique before it must take its chances.

I don't keep a notebook, but I do have a folder on my PC where I not only write all my short fiction, but create little dummy files with a few notes in - story titles, attempts at formulating ideas, dialogue fragments, etc. Over the years, I've been amazed at how many of those stubs have eventually developed into finished - and published - pieces of fiction.

Anyway, the two pieces I finished yesterday - one very short, one slightly longer - have been submitted. And I'm as nervous about that part of the process as I ever was.

SciFi Now and other goings on

2011-01-28T09:16:00.000-08:00

As noted in the comments to my 28th December post (thanks) the current issue of SciFi Now (150) has some stuff from me in it, if anyone's interested. I did a short editorial, a book review (Jon Courtenay Grimwood's The Fallen Blade, which I'm pleased to say I liked rather a lot), some commentary on six space-based films that I'm fond of, and a sidebar paragraph on the issue's classic SF book discussion, which I selected. I also chose the other reviewed book titles, although, somewhat disappointingly, there was no SF at all in that month's tranche. Statistical blip, or a sign of imminent End Times? Anyway, it was fun and if you've not had a look at SciFi Now before, it's always an enjoyable read. (SFX is great as well! How's that for fair and balanced reporting?)

I'll apologise now for general lack of activity round these parts in recent weeks (actually, make that months) and equal tardiness in the matter of email correspondence. I've never been great at it, but things tend to fall to pieces in spectacular fashion in the latter stages of novel writing and "Blue Remembered Earth" was no exception. (By the way, it's the done thing in publishing circles to put novel titles IN ALL CAPS but to me it always looks like shouting, so at least for the purposes of the blog I think we'll gently let that one drop).

I mentioned in my December post that there's a possibility of two novels from me this year, and I hope that's still the case, but I'm still waiting on the go-ahead for the non-obvious project; hopefully before long I can be a little more up front about it. I always get irritated when other writers blog about their secret projects, and look, I'm doing it myself. Tsk! Mainly though, I don't want to jinx things.

Not being able to crack on with that, and with a few other things stalled for various reasons, I've dived immediately back into rewrites on "Blue Remembered Earth". I'm still waiting on editorial feedback but now that the dust has settled I can see areas where I'd like to trim things back a bit. The submission draft was 212,000 words, which is a lot longer than any recent book of mine. Ideally I'd like to get the final manuscript down to about 180,000, which would put it in the same sort of length as Terminal World, House of Suns, The Prefect and so on. The last really long book of mine was Absolution Gap, and I've no great desire to go back to doing edits on 275,000 word novels. More than anything, because it's the first book of a trilogy, I don't want to set a precedent that ends up in the third novel being ridiculously long ... because, let's face it, has there ever been a trilogy where the books get shorter? Answers on a postcard to the Outer Hebrides.

That's about it for now. I have a couple of short story things I need to get done, and as winter turns to spring I'll be doing a bit more travelling (although not as much as last year, I hope). Those who are waiting on a response for me, thanks for your continued patience, and to those who are regular and frustrated readers of this blog, I aim to do just a tiny bit better in 2011. Thanks for sticking around.

Computa 2 - continued and concluded

2011-01-28T08:47:00.000-08:00

"The story of a coputer that went rong" - good to see I got the hang of accurate back cover copy at an early point in my career.

Minor update

2010-12-28T03:22:00.000-08:00

November and December were busy months. In addition to finishing the new book, I was also happy to accept the kind offer to guest edit an issue of SciFi Now magazine. I selected some books for review, wrote a review myself, did an editorial and contributed to a couple of book and film related articles. I don't know when this issue will hit the stands but I thought I may as well mention it now - keep an eye out if you're interested, and (of course) happen to live where SciFi Now is readily available.

Now that the new book is off to the editor, I'm in the usual period of minor limbo where one hesitates to embark on another big project for fear that any momentum gained will be immediately stalled when the request for editorial rewrites comes in. What I normally do in this period is crack on with some short fiction. That's not really an option at the moment, though. Yes, I do have a few short fiction commitments, but more pressingly I need to get started on book 2 of the trilogy as soon as possible. That's not only because the schedule is tight, but because I'm chomping at the bit to move the story on and exploit the fact that the details of the invented future are still more or less fully loaded into my working memory.

However (there's always a "however") there's another project looming, slightly less formidable in scope but still fairly "big" and that needs to be off my desk before I can do any serious work on book 2. I'm reluctant to say too much about it until the details are nailed down but it's an interesting one, something you won't necessarily expect, and with luck and a fair wind there may be two novels out from me next year.

I'm away for a week; once I get back I may have some more information. Cheers and Happy New Year, one and all.

Al R

Seasons greetings

2010-12-25T08:18:00.001-08:00

Back

2010-12-21T03:39:00.000-08:00

Sorry about the lack of updates around here. I've just delivered a novel, so normal service (or what passes for it) will resume very shortly. Cheers!

Computa Two - a previously unpublished story by Alastair Reynolds

2010-10-08T04:30:00.000-07:00

TBC.

With Dr Karl

2010-09-10T07:27:00.000-07:00

I was a guest on two of Dr Karl's radio shows - Triple J and BBC Five Live, both on thursday 9th September. Podcasts are (or will be) up here shortly:

http://www.drkarl.com/media-centre/podcasts

Dr Karl is a national institution in Australia and a great bloke as well; it was a delight to sit in with him and I hope we get to do it again sometime. Thanks to Brendan Fredericks and Caroline Pegram for a great day, and to the ABC staff for making it all run smoothly.

A New Life Awaits you in the Offworld Colonies

2010-08-28T04:19:00.000-07:00

Bladerunneresque cityscape, Singapore:

11K update

2010-08-25T15:11:00.000-07:00

My editor and I have been trying to nail down a title for both book 1 of the trilogy, and of the trilogy itself - that "11K" thing, as I hope was clear, was really just my own shorthand for the project as it developed. Well, I think we're there now. There's been some to-ing and fro-ing about whether it's "A: the first book of the B trilogy", or "B: the first book of the A trilogy." But at the moment the state of play is that my next novel will be BLUE REMEMBERED EARTH, book 1 of POSEIDON'S CHILDREN.

There. From the horse's mouth, so to speak.

Worldcon schedule

2010-08-25T04:53:00.000-07:00

Here are the items I'm down to participate in during the forthcoming Aussiecon.

What can the mystery teach science fiction?
Mysteries and crime novels remain overwhelmingly popular, and boast a
literary history at least as rich as that of science fiction. What can
the mystery genre teach writers of speculative fiction? How can the
two genres intersect? In an imagined world of high technology or
powerful magic, are the conventional narrative tricks and twists of
the mystery story even possible?

Don A. Timm, Alastair Reynolds, Sean Williams, Peter M. Ball, Jack Bell
Friday 1700 Room 204

Fred Hoyle: Scientists and science fiction
Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) was a noted astronomer and scientist who also
embarked on a long and successful career as a science fiction author.
Using Hoyle as a springboard and example, what is the result when
scientists turn their hands to writing science fiction - what are the
implications for the science in their books, and for the
representation of scientists and scientific process within them?

Cristina Lasaitis, Greg Benford, Jeff Harris, Alastair Reynolds
Saturday 1200 Room 204

The Fermi Paradox
The great physicist Enrico Fermi asked “Where are the aliens? Why
didn’t they get here long ago?” This is a huge puzzle since the
universe is so old that it is difficult to understand why they have
not already visited Earth, or at least made their presence known out
in space. This is the Fermi Paradox. Have we made any progress
untangling it?

James Benford, Gord Sellar, Dirk Flinthart, Alastair Reynolds
Saturday 1700 Room 219

Far future: Where fantasy meets SF?

Clarke’s Law famously states that any sufficiently advanced technology
is indistinguishable from magic. When writing about the distant
future, where do we draw this distinction? Can we? And, perhaps most
importantly, should we?

Rani Graff, Bob Kuhn, Alastair Reynolds
Sunday 1100 Room 211

Objects in space: The giant artefact in science fiction

Science fiction regularly deals with the ‘big dumb object’, the
strange alien monolith that is discovered on a distant planet, or
which floats ominously into our solar system. What is the appeal of
the giant alien object, and why does it inspire it so many science
fiction stories and novels?

Sean Williams, Alastair Reynolds, Alan Stewart, Mark Olson
Sunday 1700 Room P3

Hand-waving, rule-bending and other dirty tricks of hard SF

Hard-science SF isn’t always scientific. Authors who work in this
field use a wide variety of methods to duck and weave around the
facts, allowing their fiction to be unscientifically scientific while
remaining close to what science is needed to make the stories and
novels work. When you speculate beyond what is known and believed by
contemporary scientists, how do you go about making things up?

Greg Benford, Charles Stross, Alastair Reynolds
Monday 1400 Room P3

Two cool House of Suns related things

2010-08-24T15:47:00.000-07:00

Title says it all: two cool House of Suns related things.

Some while ago I mentioned that Stargate Universe's Joseph Mallozzi was making HOS his book of the month for July. That was amazingly nice of Joe and a few weeks later I got a bunch of questions to answer from his blog regulars. Joe collated my answers, and you can read them here:

http://josephmallozzi.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/july-29-2010-author-alastair-reynolds-fields-your-questions/#comments

I'm still stoked about this, and I hope some of my responses are interesting. Bear in mind I do go into some spoilery territory, so beware if you haven't read the book and still have some intention of doing so. Once again, thanks to Joe. And for those who didn't read my original post on SG:U, I rate it very highly and am looking forward to the new season, which begins in just over a month.

Right, so that's one cool House of Suns related thing ... here's the second. A little while ago I heard from Morgan Smith, guitarist in San Diego based band Midnight Rivals (something of a supergroup, with proper rock pedigree) that they were working on a song called House of Suns. Morgan sent me a link to some other work by Midnight Rivals, which I liked a lot, so you can imagine how ridiculously happy I was about this. Morgan tipped some nods to my work into the lyrics, but not gratuitously so - this ain't a sci-fi rock song.

You can listen to HOS here:

http://www.myspace.com/midnightrivals

I think it's pretty great, and I look forward to the album and maybe even checking out Midnight Rivals the next time I'm in San Diego, which just happens to be one of my favorite places on the planet anyway...

I'll be back tomorrow with my Worldcon schedule, for those who are going to Aussiecon.

Kilimanjaro - The Teardrop Explodes

2010-08-17T05:18:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I picked up the deluxe reissue of The Teardrop Explodes' magnificent Kilimanjaro, their 1980 debut album. I already own a copy of this, but for various reasons I felt compelled to have it. For a start, it's got the better, not entirely terrible cover, and with two additional CDs worth of bonus material, and a nice booklet, it covers pretty much all you need to know about the early phase of the Teardrops' brief but glorious career. Really, this is one of the truly great rock albums, and I really ought to know as I've been listening to it for long enough. Not only is there not a weak track, there isn't a single track that isn't full-on genius. From start to finish it's just bug-eyed brilliance all the way through, and there's nothing remotely awkward or dated about the production. What an absolutely fantastic time it was, the cusp of the eighties, as punk shaded into post-punk. All doors were open and anything seemed possible, and vaultingly ambitious albums like this seemed to pop out at about one a month.

The only minor grumble, as far as I'm concerned, is the entirely justifiable omission of "Reward" from the reissue CD (although it's on one of the bonus sides included in the pack). "Reward" was not on the album when originally released, so it's "authentic" in that regard - even though it should therefore have the crappy cover, rather than the zebras one. But since I've only ever had a copy of the later 1981 release, having "Second Head" followed by "Poppies", rather than going straight into "Reward" ... it's just wrong, man. The seamless transition from "Second Head" to "Reward" is one of the most exciting moments in pop, and it's not here.

Never mind, I suppose - I still have the old album.

Arcade Fire, The Suburbs

2010-08-12T05:00:00.000-07:00

I'm always a bit alarmed when my tastes align with the zeitgeist, as appears to be the case here. According to the estimable Radcliffe and Maconie, tracks from this album are the second most downloaded items of music anywhere on the internet, pipped only by Lady Gaga. Which makes me a bit cautious in my enthusiasm, if I'm going to be honest, because when it's that sort of mass culture, everyone's listening to it type thing, I usually find my interest levels waning pretty quickly. And yet ... track six, "City with no children", has to be one of the most immediately thrilling pieces of music I've encountered in many a moon ... but is that a good thing? Does great rock music disclose its pleasures so readily? It's too damned long, as well - a fault shared by the two previous albums, both of which I now find dauntingly unapproachable in their very hugeness and sense of self-importance. I've yet to listen to the The Suburbs in its entirety. And there are seven of them. There have never been any good rock bands with more than five members, and five's pushing it.

Still. There's so little big, modern, commercial rock music around lately, it seems churlish to complain about abundance.

Trigan Empire State of Mind

2010-08-10T06:21:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I was browsing a second hand book shop in Brecon when my eye chanced upon this:

It wasn't too expensive and the hardcover was in pretty good condition, so I snapped it up. But who remembers The Trigan Empire? Not many of you, I'm willing to bet. For a start, you probably had to be a Brit, and not only that but a Brit growing up in the sixties/seventies. For me, though, The Trigan Empire was very much part of my induction into the world of SF - although I came to it by rather roundabout means.

The Trigan Empire was a comic strip running in the children's magazine "Look and Learn" between 1966 and 1982, although (according to Wikipedia) it actually commenced in Ranger in 1965, before Ranger was swallowed up by Look and Learn. Magazines and comics swallowing each other up was very much part of the texture of British publishing then, and probably still would be, if there was a magazine and comics industry worth speaking of. Stephen Baxter has just done a very good overview of the insanely complex history of Eagle magazine in the most recent issue of Vector, but no comic was immune to these factors. My own experience of the process came via the swallowing up of "Speed & Power" magazine, which my parents had been buying me from issue one. Here's a typical S&P cover nabbed from the internet:

Speed & Power was great, especially if you were eight and almost insanely obsessed with machinery and technology. More particularly - as I've mentioned elsewhere - it did me the singular service of reprinting classic Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov short stories, which was pretty much my portal to the world of written science fiction. I still own every issue. Speed & Power, though, was obviously not a big commercial success and alas it was eventually doomed to be swallowed up by Look And Learn in November 1975.

I didn't much care for Look And Learn, if I'm going to be honest, and bitterly resented the way "my" mag had been reduced to a miserably small logo on the new masthead. Plus, there was lots of stuff in Look And Learn that didn't particularly rock my nine year old world. Stuff about the Bible, stuff about history, lions, kings and queens - all deeply boring, in my considered opinion. I wanted stuff about aircraft carriers, tanks, lasers, sci-fi, not all this boy's own all the world's knowledge rounded education type nonsense. Nonetheless, there was one rather fantastic thing about Look And Learn, and that was The Trigan Empire. I loved it immediately, if only because it offered the one piece of recognisable sci-fi amid all the improving, educational dross I detested.

The Trigan Empire was great for several reasons. Firstly, it was beautifully illustrated - the artist, Don Lawrence (who drew the strip until 1976) had a fantastic eye for scenery, figures and technology, and the use of colour was tremendous. The stories were also easy for me to get my nine year old head around - there was a sense of history behind the strip (it had been running for ten years) but it wasn't hard to get up to speed. Best of all, though, it was proper sci-fi, albeit of a somewhat unusual kind. The strips looked like retellings of Bible stories, except that the various characters and tribes also had access to advanced weaponry and nuclear-powered aircraft. I cropped a couple of frames from internet pages, which I hope constitute fair use in the context of this post.

As the Wikipedia entry puts it:

"The fledgling Trigan nation is established under the leadership of Trigo, with the trappings of a Romanesque civilization with swords, lances and Roman-style clothing, but with high tech ray guns, atmosphere crafts and high-tech navy. In a later story, they create a rocketship in months to fly to one of Elekton's moons. Several of the other civilizations show a blend of low tech and high tech."

It was SF, though. In the first strip, which is reprinted in the volume I found in Brecon, we learn that the action takes place on a planet in a different solar system, inhabited by 12 foot tall humanoids. In fact these humanoids are now extinct: the entire history of The Trigan Empire has been translated by a human researcher, based on documents recovered from a crashed Trigan spacecraft. It all happened long, long ago, lending the whole thing the heft of legend. Nothing overtly fantastical happens in the strips; everything is rationalised. Indeed, one of the main characters, the immensely old and bearded Peric, is a scientist figure. As such, it sits squarely in the tradition of Dan Dare, that other great British SF comic series of the immediate postwar decades.

It's all hideously old-fashioned, of course, from the "typeface" lettering in the speech bubbles, to the resolutely non-PC depiction of women and people of colour in the various adventures. The heroes - Trigo and his mates - are all blonde, square-jawed and muscular; the adversaries are generally dark-skinned, Mongolian-looking baddies. Women exist mainly to scream or scheme. It's futile to complain about these things now, though - I doubt that The Trigan Empire was any more sexist and racist than any other comic strip dating from the same period. What's not in doubt is that by the time I came aboard, the days of Look And Learn - and by extension The Trigan Empire - were already numbered. In punk terms, with its meticulously rendered artwork, sensible plotlines and stoic fifties worldview, it was like Emerson Lake and Palmer versus the snot-nosed Sex Pistols of 2000AD. It couldn't last, and it didn't. But since I threw out all my Look And Learns, I'm very glad to have at least this small part of my past back with me again, and if the stories now seem quaint, Don Lawrence's artwork remains as marvellous as ever.

In other news, I'm delighted to report that my story "The Fixation" won the Sidewise award for best short form alternate history - many thanks to the judges for selecting my piece, and commiserations to the other shortlisted authors. Chuffed to bits about that, me.

Busy busy busy (again)

2010-07-14T04:45:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the lack of updates round here in recent weeks - nothing untoward, just a perfect storm of deadlines and travel and so on. I've been working on the new book, obviously, but there have also been articles to finish, a talk to prepare, short stories to write and various real life intrusions. Meanwhile, I've made tragically little progress on responding to emails, for which further apologies. I'll get there slowly, but it's going to be quite some time before the present backlog is cleared. And in the medium term future, my trip to the World Con in Australia is coming up fast. I sometimes feel that I've been trying to get ahead for most of my writing career. Certainly, life didn't get any simpler when I turned full-time.

Couple of things to mention: as highlighted earlier, Stargate Universe's Joseph Mallozzi has very kindly made HOUSE OF SUNS his July book of the month, and there's some discussion taking place on Joseph's blog right now. Once all the questions are in, I'll respond with answers.

http://josephmallozzi.wordpress.com/

And for those in the South Wales area - you lucky people - I'll be at the Orangery in Margam Park on Wednesday July 21st. I don't have a website link but here's the relevant info:

Neath Port Talbot Libraries: Literature Day with Jasper Fforde, Alastair Reynolds, Phil Bowen and Simone Mansell Broome. Also featuring the longlist announcement of the 2010 Dylan Thomas Prize. 10.30 am - 2.00 pm at The Orangery, Margam Park, Port Talbot. Free admission. For further details contact Paul Doyle at p.a.doyle@npt.gov.uk or on 01639 860000. Supported by Academi (contact 029 2047 2266 for information on funding for events).

Give it away now

2010-06-30T09:02:00.000-07:00

SFX, Gollancz and Waterstones have teamed up to run a promotion on HOUSE OF SUNS. If you buy the current number of that fine periodical (SFX 198, it says on the website) you'll find a coupon that you can take to certain participating branches of Waterstones, and thereby claim a free paperback copy of HOS. That's right - free. Nowt. But there are only 4000 copies, so if you want one, best not hang around.

SFX also ran a brief interview with me in connection with this - read it here.

It's approaching

2010-06-27T05:06:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Strahan has some great news: at last, Godlike Machines, which contains my long story "Troika", looks like it's going to happen. Here's the order page on the Science Fiction Book Club:

http://www.sfbc.com/pages/nm/product/productDetail.jsp?skuId=1024024032

And here's the very cool cover:

The downside is that you won't be able to get this unless you're in the SFBC, and to do that you'll need to live in the US and have a credit card - or know someone with an SFBC membership. However, I know that Jonathan is keen to get the book to a wider audience if at all possible, so an orthodox publication isn't ruled out.

Apocalyptic SF - we don't just do cheery and optimistic, you know

2010-06-02T16:18:00.000-07:00

I'm still blogging over at Babel Clash (see last post) but in the meantime, it looks as if Mike Ashley's Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF has appeared, just in time to be packed for your beachside summer reading. Most of the stories are reprints, but the book does contain new fiction by Eric Brown, Paul di Fillipo, F Gwynplaine MacIntyre, Robert Reed, and myself. Sadly, the book also includes the last new story by the late and much admired Kage Baker.

My piece is a longish story entitled "Sleepover", set off the coast of Patagonia in the 23rd century, after the world has (nearly) ended. The finished cover is slightly different to this, and I was also sent an otherwise identical copy of the book entitled "The Mammoth Book of the End of the World", but I think this is the title they decided to run with.

Blogging at Babel Clash

2010-05-25T05:56:00.000-07:00

For the next week or so I'll be blogging at Babel Clash, the Borders science fiction blog. My first post has just gone up.

http://bordersblog.com/scifi/

I just took a ride in a silver (or light grey) machine

2010-05-20T08:41:00.000-07:00

This is me just before getting into the front cockpit of this Boeing-Stearman Model 75, a WW2 trainer that is now based at Fantasy of Flight near Orlando. I took a half hour flight and was "hands on" for a good chunk of that time. It was an absolute blast. We did left and right turns at 30, 45 and 60 degrees, as well as some "lazy eights". Prior to this my only experience of flying came through Microsoft Flight Sim, and it's a testament to the realism of that software that it felt incredibly familiar, especially as I was using a stick rather than a yoke.

House of Suns under discussion

2010-05-18T08:33:00.000-07:00

Joseph Mallozzi, executive producer on Stargate: Universe has kindly selected House of Suns for discussion as his July Book of the Month.

http://josephmallozzi.wordpress.com/2010/05/15/may-15-2010-julys-book-of-the-month-club-selection-an-anime-recommendation-mailbag/

Excellent!

STS-132

2010-05-15T09:56:00.000-07:00

STS 132 launch, post-roll and srb separation. Many thanks to Piers Sellers for giving my wife and I this opportunity to view a shuttle launch, and to Louise Kleba for doing the same last year. It doesn't get much more awesome than this.

Stargate, Atlantis

2010-05-12T09:58:00.000-07:00

Just a brief update here. I'm in Florida, intending to catch the STS-132 launch on friday. Not that I'll be on Atlantis, mind, but certainly aiming my camera at it and hoping - unlike last time - not to lose said camera a few hours later. If I do get some usable pics, I'll post them up here. Excited? Just a bit.

Meanwhile, thoughts on Doctor Who in the last post prompt me to mention Stargate: Universe, which has resumed its second half-season run (or whatever they call these things) and is - in my view - really quite good and worth checking out. Other than the Kurt Russel film, and the occasional incomprehensible episode caught on some hotel TV channel over the years, I've never seen anything related to the Stargate franchise so I came to this more or less cold, and it's very, very enjoyable. The premise is excellent, big dumb object stuff: a crew of military and civilian types end up stranded aboard a huge alien spacecraft zipping away from Earth. It's the present day, more or less, so they have only limited tech, and of course only what they managed to bring with them during the hasty boarding process. The ship (Destiny) is huge and mysterious but essentially benign - it's like an abandoned ocean liner, with some really inventive and convincing "alien art deco" set and prop design work. Because they've been exposed to other relics left behind by the same aliens, the humans have some idea how to get the ship to work for them, but not everything is (yet) in their control. The ship appears to be retracing the network of FTL stargates left behind during an earlier phase, so it makes period hops through hyperspace before emerging within gate range of some planet or other. Typically, the crew have several hours to use the onboard stargate (or shuttle) to explore the planet, before the ship goes FTL again. In its planet-of-the-week structure, it's a bit like Space:1999, only done right. The character interactions work well, with tension developing between the civilians and military staff - but in a believable, not too melodramatic way. After a botched civilian takeover, the two parties have - shock, horror - to work together and rebuild trust. Robert Carlisle is very good as the scientist Rush, as well, albeit a little too obviously the sociopathic mathematician type. It's a long way from Hamish Macbeth and Begbie, that's for sure.

What's great, though - and has me wondering why this series hasn't been making bigger waves - is the way science is handled. Granted, the show has to work with the existing setup of the Stargate universe, so you've got FTL and some kind of psychic communication network which allows the crew to periodically hop into the bodies of people back on home on Earth. But all that's handled intelligently, and what's really impressive is the amount of actual, honest to god science the writers have managed to work into the episodes. In a recent installment, for instance, the ship came out of FTL around a young star that wasn't even around when the Destiny's charts were compiled. The star was identified as still being in its T-tauri phase, which immediately made a paradox of the fact that it appeared to have an old, Earth-type planet in orbit around it. Now, the episode didn't go on to provide an unequivocal explanation for this riddle - other than by suggesting that the planet had to be some kind of artefact - but it was the mere fact of framing this puzzle in the first place that had me impressed. This is actual stellar astronomy, slotted neatly into TV SF. I don't know the exact extent of his involvement, but one can only presume that "creative consultant" John Scalzi has a lot to be thanked for here - if so, good on him, and good on the show's people for taking the step of bringing someone like Scalzi in. I also can't help but think that if SF:U had been on telly ten or even five years ago, before the recent rash of successful, intelligent SF shows (not all of which have been to my taste, it has to be said) fandom and the blogosphere in general would be going absolutely bananas for it. It's exactly the kind of TV SF show we've been moaning about not getting for years - and now it's on and the general concensus seems to be borderline disinterest. I might be reading things wrongly, though. I hope I'm not, and I hope the show picks up enough viewers to sustain its run, because I want more of it.

So, anyway. Stargate: Universe. Me likey.

Who are you?

2010-05-04T03:05:00.000-07:00

I've been watching the new Who and - for the most part - enjoying it rather a lot. Matt Smith is excellent in the role; as we were promised, he inhabits the character from the off, and within a few scenes of the first episode he simply was the Doctor. I felt exactly the same way when Tom Baker took over from Jon Pertwee. That sense of fluid continuity is one of the great strengths of the show. I'm still wondering where they're going with the Amy Pond character, but for now I'll be glad if she turns out to be just a companion, rather than someone with secret powers or some mysterious connection to Time. As for the differences between Moffat and RTD-era Who, maybe I'm thick, but I'm not seeing some huge step-change in style and approach. It's still New Who, still a very different beast to the old shows before the cancellation. And I like it, generally. I like the way the writers haven't been afraid to put their own stamp on things, even at the expense of irritating long-term fans such as myself - see, for instance, the rebooted cybermen. At the same time, there's a willingness to dig deep back into Who history and toss in references to things we haven't heard of since the Troughton earlier, or even further back. It's all good and I sit there on saturday evenings like I'm eight again. All I'd need is a plate of bangers and mash and I could be sitting down to watch Invasion of the Dinosaurs or the Monster of Peladon.

But ... and this matters, I think - there's something I'm not seeing nearly enough of. Terry Pratchett touches on something similar in this SFX piece but my complaint isn't precisely the same. It's not that the science in Doctor Who is especially ropey now, as compared to before. It always was ropey, from day one - a point I made in my review of "The Science of Doctor Who" book a few years ago. Having the Tardis drag Planet Earth across the universe may have been a low point but I could point to scores of similar absurdities in Old Who, and not just from the bad old days when the show was unloved and near its end.

What's lacking, I think - or not being handled in the right way - is the Doctor's attitude to science. This came up in a conversation I had last year with one of the UK's top public astronomers, like me a lifelong fan of Who and willing to take the new version on its own terms. What we agreed on was that - for us, growing up in the sixties, seventies and so on - the Doctor had been an important role model, one of the few scientists portrayed on television in a remotely flattering light. Beyond the Doctor, there was Mister Spock ... possibly Brains from Thunderbirds ... and that was your lot, basically. The Doctor was the only one you'd conceivably want to be, though. He was the only one who wasn't emotionless or nerdy - and he had a Tardis, groovy companions, and a universe to explore. And he was a scientist - maybe not by profession, but by training and inclination, and through all the adventures, what shone through was that the Doctor always fell down on the side of reason and enlightenment. He had no truck with magic, superstition, religion (although he conducted his affairs with a basic sense of tolerance and fairmindedness) - and he wasn't afraid to parade his own intelligence. Look at the aforementioned Monster of Peladon, for instance. It's the Doctor's insistence that the Aggedor apparitions can't be real - that there must be some technology behind the hocus pocus - that eventually leads to the resolution of the story (it was the Ice Warriors wot dunnit). Yes, the science might be ludicrous - but it was the Doctor's respect for science and rationality that mattered, and ultimately carried the day. This, to me, was as important a strand in his character as his pacifism and decency - not more important, but equally so.

I get flashes of this in New Who but not nearly enough to reinforce this as an essential element of his personality. Nothing could sum this up better than the "timey-wimey" line from the Tennant era. Yes, it was a good bit of dialogue, and raised a smile at the time. But this is The Doctor, for pity's sake - when has he ever felt the need to be so vague, or so apparently ashamed of his own intellect? I was disappointed with that, as I've been disappointed with the questions the Doctor doesn't ask. The Weeping Angels, for instance. They're a brilliant and scary creation, hats off to Moffat. But why doesn't it ever occur to anyone to wonder why they look like stone statues? What's that all about? Are they stone all the way through? Entirely stone? I know the show has to work to a much tighter format than it ever did in the past, and there simply isn't room for every last bit of dialogue - but still, surely there's room for just one or two hints that the Doctor is a questioning man, a scientist at heart.

Anyway, as I said at the start - I'm still enjoying it. But I'd like to see just a bit more of a sense of where our man stands. Is he for the enlightenment, or against it?

(As an addendum, here's a quote from one of the comments in the SFX thread, which says it better than I just have:

"In the old days, of course, the approach, the attitude, was always fairly rationalist. Whatever fantastic events were going on, the Doctor always regarded the universe as ultimately logical and explicable, and would never do anything really nonsensical. Nowadays that’s out of the window and anything goes.")

The Paul Weller Story

2010-04-26T15:56:00.000-07:00

Paul Weller has been much in the news these last weeks, since he has a new record out. I've been enjoying his previous album, 22 Dreams, and will be looking out for the new one. Apart from a rather good compilation, tracing his entire career from The Jam through The Style Council and the solo stuff, that's about all I own by him, which isn't much when you consider the scope of his recorded output. He's very much part of the rock establishment now, of course - the "Modfather", in his early fifties. Melllowing too, by all accounts - he used to be notoriously prickly. But there are a handful of Jam songs that I think are absolutely wonderful - Eton Rifles, Going Underground, the usual ones, in other words. But while I like the fact of Weller, and I suppose I'm sort of a fan of the recent stuff, I wasn't a fan in any sense of the word in 1994, merely enough of a rock nerd to be aware of Weller's place in the pantheon, and respecting him on that level.

It was the end of the summer of that year. My wife and I (we weren't married at the time, but let's keep it simple) were on our way to LA - she'd spent a lot of time there before we'd met, but it was my first trip to that side of the States. We were on our way to stay with friends - she an actual detective in the LAPD, he heavily involved on the production side of what was then one of the highest rated US sitcoms - he's now a producer on another high-rating sitcom. They're still great friends of ours and we get to see them whenever we can, which is typically every four years or so.

I was really excited about going to LA. I'd been to New York a couple of times, Washington and Boston as well, but LA promised to be another universe. But this isn't about LA; it's about a close encounter with rock greatness. For as we were checking in late in Heathrow (our connecting flight had been delayed, and there was a mad, sweaty rush to get to the gate) I realised that the other passenger, also in the same predicament as my wife and I, was a proper rock star, someone who'd come to prominence in the seventies but whose career had stretched well into the following decade. This was 1994, though, and I wasn't really sure what - if anything - this man was now up to.

That man was ... not Paul Weller. It was in fact Midge Ure, him out of Ultravox. Properly pleased with that, I was. Not wanting to embarrass him - we were standing right next to him as our boarding passes were processed, late for the soon to be closing gate - I waited until my wife and I were seated on the 747 before mentioning how close we'd been standing to Midge Ure out of Ultravox. Actually, I'm not sure my wife was all that impressed. She didn't know much about Ultravox, but did at least remember that "Do They Know it's Christmas" song. Midge Ure co-wrote that, I told her. And I was thrilled; I know the purists say Ultravox was better in the John Foxx era, but it's what was in the charts that I remember, and those were the Ure hits - Vienna, Reap the Wild Wind, The Voice. Cracking early eighties synth-pop, and let no man say otherwise. This isn't about Midge Ure, though. It's about Paul Weller.

We landed in LA, and found our way to the line for the immigration control. As usual, it was about a million miles long. It was then that I noticed that the guy in front of us, immediately in front, was none other than Weller. He's pretty unmistakeable, really - I just knew it was him, even though I hadn't really been following his career all that closely. His hair was long, Mod-cut, not too different from the way he looks now, except with a bit less grey. Tall and skinny, though, and well dressed. Looked a lot sharper than I did, after a long-haul flight. But no doubt he was just as keen to get through the immigration crap, get his bags and get the hell out of Dodge.

So, anyway. Again, I don't want to embarrass the rock god, so I don't say anything out loud, although I may have nudged and whispered to my wife a bit. Eventually Weller and his travelling companion (his daughter, I believe) went to one of the desks and we waited our turn. I was getting a bit nervous at this point. I'd had enough experience of entering the States to fear the process. The general surliness of the immigration officials, the awful, illogical layout of the Visa-waiver cards, which seem engineered to encourage mistakes ... just thinking about all that was enough to make me feel shifty and semi-criminal. And that was setting aside any worries about our bags not showing up, and how long we were keeping our friends waiting on the other side of customs. Thank God it all got so much friendlier and more traveller-friendly in recent years.

But in due course we get allocated to a desk, and - although it didn't have to be - it turns out to be the same one that Weller went through. And this, more or less, is what happened.

The guy takes my passport. He's not even really looking at, just flicking through it in a semi-distracted manner. He's a young man and not too unfriendly.

"You guys just come off the London flight?" he asks.

I nod nervously and answer him. "Yes, sir."

"You see who else was on that plane, just ahead of you?"

At this point, stupidly, I say "Midge Ure" - which is sort of true, although I haven't seen the Ultravox frontman since leaving the plane.

"Midge who?" the guy on the desk asks. "No, I'm talking about that guy who just came through."

"Oh," I say. "You mean, Paul Weller?"

He looks really pleased. "Yeah, Paul Weller, man!" At this point, he's just stamping my passport on autopilot. Then he says: "I'm a big Paul Weller fan."

I say: "Oh." (I'm thinking: yeah, I kind of like him as well - Eton Rifles, Going Underground etc).

He says: "No, I mean - I'm a BIG Paul Weller fan. I'm maybe his biggest fan in the whole world! I even own one of his old guitars!"

He told me this; I have no idea whether it's true or not - although I've always liked to think it was. But the guy goes on to explain that he's massively into Weller, has all the stuff, rarities etc - he's not bluffing, no sirree. And, mainly, I think he's just absolutely thrilled that he can unload this onto someone else who sort of grasps Weller's significance. I'm more than happy to go along with it, of course - I realise, for the first time (and last, as it would transpire) I'm dealing with an immigration official who is possibly more flustered, sweaty and over-excited than me.

Then comes the kicker. After telling me all this stuff, he says: "But I froze. I couldn't look him in the eye, couldn't acknowledge I knew who he was. I just stamped his documents and sent him on his way."

I don't know what to say. I can understand where he's coming from, but he's just blown possibly the one chance in his life to tell his idol what he thinks of his music. My wife and I make sympathetic noises.

Then the immigration guy pulls himself together. "But I've got a second chance!" he tells us, winningly. "I know what flight he's going out on! I'm going to pull my shift and make sure I'm on the desk when he goes through again - and then I'm really going to do it, I'm going to say hello to Paul Weller!"

We wish him well. There's a lot of handshaking and general niceness. I really, truly hope that he did get to work his shifts and meet Weller, and that the exchange went well for both of them. I've had a few pleasant chats with immigration people since then, but (alas) more than a few less than pleasant ones, but I always try to remember the LA guy, the Paul Weller fan who couldn't bring himself to make eye contact.

And that's (almost) my Paul Weller story ... except for this. A few months later, we're somewhere else, collecting our bags from the carousel. My wife nudges me and points to another passenger waiting for their luggage. "Isn't that ..." she begins. I squint and can't quite believe it. It's Weller, again. We've been on the same flight, twice.

I don't bother him, but I rather wish I had, that time. I should have asked him if he remembered the LA official, and if not, I should have told him my side of the story. That was sixteen years ago, of course - and to the best of my knowledge I've never been on a plane with Paul Weller again. Mungo Jerry, yes. Joni Mitchell - possibly. But not Weller.

If there's ever a third time, I will ask him. I think he'd like it. He's mellower now, they say ...

Nice while it lasted

2010-04-21T08:05:00.001-07:00

Actually, I like planes. Here's Alain de Botton, via Stuart Jeffries in this week's Guardian:

"How we would admire planes if they were no longer there to frighten and bore us. We would stroke their steel dolphin-like bodies in museums, and honour them as symbols of a daunting technical intelligence and a prodigious wealth."

Full article here.

De Botton's quote (which I agree with) also reminds me of a rather lovely lyric from a song by The Church, The Dead Man's Dream:

Once I had a name, forgotten now
I breathed the air in a century of wonder
I can hear it now in the darkness of the earth
Gorgeous machines, the sound they made like thunder

And here's a gorgeous machine that flew over my house earlier today:

Look mummy, there's an aeroplane up in the sky

2010-04-20T02:40:00.000-07:00

After a while, he noticed that some people had gathered at the bow of the boat, pressing against the railings. They were pointing up, into the sky. Some of them had pulled out phones.

‘There’s something going on,’ Mick said.

‘I can see it,’ Andrea answered. She touched the side of his face, steering his view until he was craning up as far as his neck would allow. ‘It’s an aeroplane.’

Mick waited until the glasses picked out the tiny, moving speck of the plane etching a pale contrail in its wake. He felt a twinge of resentment towards anyone still having the freedom to fly, when the rest of humanity was denied that right. It had been a nice dream while it lasted, flying. He had no idea what political or military purpose the plane was serving, but it would be an easy matter to find out, were he that interested. The news would be in all the papers by the afternoon. The plane wouldn’t just be overflying this version of Cardiff, but his as well. That had been one of the hardest things to take since Andrea’s death. The world at large steamrolled on, its course undeflected by that single human tragedy. Andrea had died in the accident in his world, she’d survived unscathed in this one, and that plane’s course wouldn’t have changed in any measurable way (in either reality).

‘I love seeing aeroplanes,’ Andrea said. ‘It reminds me of what things were like before the moratorium. Don’t you?’

‘Actually,’ Mick said, ‘they make me a bit sad.’

(excerpt from Signal to Noise, copyright 2006)

Chasm City

2010-04-19T15:10:00.000-07:00

Fred (and my American editor) kindly drew my attention to this; it's mentioned in the comments to the previous post but worth linking to from here, I think:

http://www.unshelved.com/2010-4-9

(It's a web comic that mentions CC; more or less worksafe I'd say, other than that it's a COMIC and therefore not likely to be strictly work-related ... unless you work in comics, of course.) I am, of course, enormously chuffed by this sort of thing and encourage more of it.

Other than that, and my continuous, pathetic attempts to "get up to date with email", there's not a vast amount to report. Chugging onward with the new novel, basically, which is going pretty well, and feels (thus far) fairly unlike anything I've ever done before, even though the surface props - spacecraft, robots, colonies etc - are perhaps what I'm mainly known for. It's not space opera, though, which I think is the key thing. Hard SF set in space (just the solar system, in this book), with a mildly thrillerish plot engine, but that in itself does not space opera make. And I'm trying to keep it "realistic" - plausible extrapolation of current political and economic systems (China's still there, so is India), bits of early 21st century tech and culture still hanging around on the margins - Cessnas, jeeps, electric guitars - but at the same time throwing enough offhand weirdness into the thing (merpeople, giant battling robot worms on the Moon, etc) to make the world (counter-intuitively, it seems to me) believable. That's a longstanding hobbyhorse of mine, of course - scruple to keep things rigorously plausible and you don't end up with a plausible-seeming future. But at least in this book I'm not putting any weird or made-up science into the stew ... yet.